EXPERT RESPONSE
As companies increasingly recognize the benefits of remote call center agents, many managers find themselves confronted with the challenge of overseeing and managing this new workforce. Remote monitoring and replay have become important capabilities for organizations that have centralized quality assurance (QA) groups monitoring outsourced or remote agents and supervisors. The good news is that most quality monitoring (QM)/recording vendors offer a variety of tools to record, monitor, coach, support and develop the skills of remote agents. Below is a breakdown of some of these tools.
QM/recording: All of the leading QM/recording applications have remote call and screen monitoring capabilities, including the ability to live-monitor, record, retrieve and replay calls and to conduct quality evaluations for remote agents. Agents can also retrieve and replay calls and screens and review evaluations at his or her remote location via their desktops. These applications can also track and report on the number of evaluations that an agent has reviewed. Some applications include IM capabilities for remote agents to rapidly communicate with a supervisor when they need immediate assistance with a call.
Coaching: Coaching applications allow supervisors to annotate evaluations with comments or tips, and link them to the relevant call and screen for an agent to review. The evaluation, along with the coaching session, is delivered directly to the agent's desktop. Coaching applications facilitate two-way communication with remote or on-site agents. They allow supervisors to rapidly provide support and recognition to agents, while agents, in turn, can send back comments to the supervisor or coach (verbally or in writing) about a call, evaluation and/or clip. Additionally, best practice clips can be created and sent to an individual or group of agents, providing real-life examples of service quality excellence. This is particularly useful for remote agents, who otherwise would not be able to listen and learn from how their peers handle interactions.
eLearning: eLearning applications provide the ability to build, deploy, track and store training classes for employees and agents. Of particular importance for a remote agent population, these applications deliver training courses or modules directly to agents' desktops. This is very beneficial for organizations that continually up-train their staff about new products and services or changes in policies and procedures. eLearning applications track the status of training and monitor performance once the course is completed. Most eLearning applications allow agents to self-select courses from a library. This enables remote agents to manage their own development.
Performance management: Most QM/recording applications provide dashboards and scorecards so that agents can access and view their performance statistics and compare them with their peers. This is especially important for remote agents who want to know if they are doing a good job.
For additional information on managing remote call center agents, please refer to Managing remote call center agents: 14 best practices.
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