Ben Drakeford, one of our Business Development Managers, speaks to a contact centre agent about what really motivates him
I met recently with Habeeb who is a contact centre agent that loves his job. It was off the back of some research QStory did called “Voice of the Agent” alongside Davies Hickman, in which we surveyed over 200 agents from contact centres across a range of industries. The majority of research gave a bleak insight with an alarming 37% of agents expecting to leave in the next two years. Habeeb was the complete opposite though, which prompted me to find out more.
Habeeb said he had worked in three contact centres during his career. The first was in the travel industry where he left after becoming frustrated with having “no life” outside of work. He was often cursed with the late shift which usually meant missing out on evening events. He moved on to work at one of the UK’s largest banks where he was trained to handle specific current account queries. This was fine to start with but Habeeb quickly became agonizingly bored at the repetitiveness of his work.
After a friend inspired Habeeb into a move, he’s now happy and positive about his current role in the insurance industry, where he works for a client of QStory. He is now multi-skilled and says his duties are more versatile, handling different types of queries throughout the week. He feels more valued and has never done so much extra training. Whenever there is spare time in the schedule that appears during the day, he and other agents are usually put into training to improve their skills. He also has more control over his schedule. He’s able to request break and shift changes, as well as holiday, and the system automatically accepts/rejects it based on service levels, so at least he knows where he stands.
Habeeb’s new experience is not a common one. Up until now, contact centre schedules have remained rigid because how else could you ensure service levels are met? Over the years forecasting has become more and more accurate and more recently real time information has enabled management to retrospectively assess issues which can be improved on in future. However, this approach is not geared towards solving problems or utilising spare time as it happens. It still takes resources and time to pinpoint issues, make a change and compile reports based on siloed data from a multitude of different sources. That’s why you need to consider a real time workforce agility platform.
What is workforce agility?
Workforce agility in the contact centre is essentially the organisation’s ability to move agents to support a changing environment. If you think about supply and demand: workforce agility enables you to quickly and easily move agents with the right skill sets from a queue where demand is low to another where demand is high. Alternatively, you could move surplus agents into training or conduct 1-1’s during time that would have otherwise gone to waste. The key is having up to the minute information and the capability to make changes instantly.
What is needed to achieve this?
In order to achieve workforce agility, you need a completely data driven approach. You need a system that integrates with your planning tools, phone systems, customer reporting and all the other systems in the contact centre to create a single source of truth. You need an up to the minute view of exactly what resource is available factoring in sickness alerts, absenteeism, AWOL, who’s in training and meetings, break times, lunch times, holidays, call status, skill sets – everything! All of this information that is constantly changing is far too much for any one person to comprehend and make a decision. But with AI taking all things into account and making rule driven recommendations, you can react to the changing day in an instant.
Why will workforce agility be essential in 2021 and beyond?
As we begin to adopt remote and flexible working trends into the future, we need a clear view of exactly what is happening across the contact centre in a single place; a single source of truth. With all of this data, we can then identify the usually invisible blocks of time that exist in the schedule over the next few hours and turn it into usable time that becomes productive. By doing this we maximise the productivity of every agent across the contact centre. As teams become more comfortable with this dynamic way of working, long term forecasts tend to become more lean, which increases the efficiency of the contact centre operation as a whole. Performance also soars because queues are better balanced throughout the day. Furthermore, extra time for training and increased agent engagement and motivation improves the attitudes of staff towards their work which ultimately improves the customer experience.
Summary
For Habeeb, the most important element that workforce agility gave him was being able to move his schedule to fit around his life. Secondary to that, the organisation invested more time into upskilling and training him which ultimately made him a more motivated employee and much less likely to leave the company.
If you were able to identify and access the hidden time that exists in your schedule during the day, and had the data and capabilities to adopt a more agile workforce management approach, what would that mean for you?