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Best strategies to curb agent attrition: I

An attrition refers to a common problem when call center employees feel stressed, unrecognized or underpaid. It can further be defined as the rate at which members of staff voluntarily leave the workforce over a given period of time. A thorough understanding of all of the reasons employees resign from call center positions can help determine which factors contribute to the call center’s attrition rate. Thereafter employing effective strategies can help combat this situation:

1. Optimized recruitment:

Hiring the right agents for your team is the very first step in curbing agent attrition. Implementing a referral program as well as allowing agents to work from home can help increase the quality of applicants. Consider personality, communication skills, cultural fit, team-oriented attitudes and the skills of the applicant, while hiring. A clear description of job roles, common tasks and performance expectations will help them know what is expected of them and can opt out of the job if it is not a suitable one.

Hiring the right agents
Hiring the right agents

2. Work towards the empowerment of your team:

Agents should have clearly defined expectations, receive feedback based on these expectations and should know who to talk to when they have an issue or concern. Moreover, they should be involved in business decisions, informed about company goals and strategies and be polled about their experience working in the company. Establishing clear communication channels and including agents in decision-making processes will make them feel more empowered and motivated. This will further reduce the problem of agent attrition.

Empowering agents
Empowering agents

3. Provide your agents with progressive software and applications:

Providing your agents with progressive call center software that is easy to learn and use, can help them start working sooner and be better at what they do. Providing them with adequate software and applications increases the agents’ satisfaction with their work and reduce agent attrition.

Tools and software
Tools and software

 

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Tips to reduce FCD in a call center: I

As we mentioned in our earlier post, FCD refers to a scenario where a caller hangs up the call after listening to the notice that ‘our customer care agents are currently busy, your call is important to us, please hold the line’. Fast clear down is a result of the fact that such customers are not ready to wait even a minute or two. This makes it a little harder to tackle FCD in an effective way but by making use of the following tips, it can be curbed to a large extent:

FCD
FCD

1. Consider employing advanced call center software:

All your call center needs can be met using the different types of advanced call center software available in the market. They help achieve productivity and benefit you in the long run. Using highly efficacious software, your agents will be able to provide exceptional customer service and resolve the customer’s issue in a very short time. This is because advanced software enables the agents to have all the information at their fingertips. So, the moment they start their interaction with the customer, they can refer to the available information and provide the fastest query resolution. Moreover, the software will help to optimize the after-call work of an agent hence, further increasing customer satisfaction and reducing FCD.

Call center software
Call center software

2. Train your agents adequately:

When the agents are not adequately trained, they are not completely familiar with a process and this impacts the call. In such cases, the agents are not able to troubleshoot properly. Also, they may have to get help from the seniors on the call which would prolong the overall call time. As a result, the customers may get frustrated with the inefficiency of the agent and ask for the supervisor. In order to avoid all this, and reduce FCD, you need to train your agents thoroughly.

Training call center agents
Training call center agents

 

 

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Screen pop and its importance in a customer support center

A screen pop is an enticing feature of a computer telephony integration (CTI) application. It automatically displays all of the relevant caller and account information on a call center agent’s screen during a call. In order to match the incoming call against a customer database, caller ID , voice response or an automatic call distributor (ACD) may be used. This is done to identify the caller before the connection is made to the agent.

Screen pops
Screen pops

In other words, a screen pop is a feature that automatically displays caller information on call center agent screens when a call rings into the system. It is also known as automatic screen pop, automated screen pop.

CTI

How it works:

i) A customer or prospect reaches out via a phone call

ii) As soon as the call center software receives the call, it alerts the agent.

This alert includes information that there is a caller on the line and other relevant caller information found in the system. A screen pop can pull the data from a number of sources. As an example, some of this information can be pulled from public databases like data.com. However, the main information present in a screen pop should come from a company’s robust database as accessed through their call center software and helpdesk systems.

Screenpop
Screenpop

A number of advanced call center software solutions allow for customized screen pops, where companies can choose specific information to be displayed. Generally, this may include the caller’s name, phone number, address, email address, company, job title, information entered in your IVR, and other relevant information.

The screen pop feature is of utmost importance for a customer support center as it is a way to ensure that call center agents are primed to help customers even before the call is answered. Also, it is easy and automatic. Moreover, it allows agents to personalize conversations from the get-go, which improves customer satisfaction. This personalized service speeds up call resolution and helps your company stand out of the crowd.

 

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Your guide to speech analytics software

Speech analytics refers to the process of analyzing recorded calls to gather customer information to improve communication and future interaction. The process is primarily used by customer contact centers to extract information regarding client interactions with an enterprise. Speech analytics is somewhat similar to automatic speech recognition, however, it can also be used for analyzing the topic being discussed, which is weighed against the emotional character of the speech and the amount and locations of speech versus non-speech during the interaction. The technology can be leveraged to know about cost drivers, trend analysis, identify strengths and weaknesses with processes and products, and help understand how the marketplace perceives offerings.

Speech analytics
Speech analytics

Speech analytics applications are capable of spotting spoken keywords or phrases, either as real-time alerts on live audio or as a post-processing step on recorded speech. It can also be used for categorization of speech in the contact center environment to identify calls from unsatisfied customers.

Spotting spoken keywords and phrases
Spotting spoken keywords and phrases

Call centers employ speech analytics software to identify things like the reason for the call, the products mentioned and the caller’s mood. Speech analytics software is capable of quickly identifying a customer’s needs, wants and expectations if used efficaciously. Moreover, it also helps in identifying areas that need improvement for agents and the business.

Speech recognition for call centers
Speech recognition for call centers

Speech analytics software can also be used to monitor and coach agents. It can further be used for assisting in managing customers and their data. In the case of call monitoring, speech analytics software can help identify selling opportunities and track script adherence and regulatory compliance. When inculcated in the training module, this software can help to improve first call resolution and shorten call times. Operational and performance issues can be found and managed effectively through customer as well as agent monitoring.

Training agents
Training agents

 

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All you need to know about automatic speech recognition

Automatic speech recognition, also known as speech recognition is the inter-disciplinary sub-field of computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enables the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. This technology is known by various names such as computer speech recognition or speech to text (STT). Automatic speech recognition can further be defined as the independent, computer‐driven transcription of spoken language into readable text in real time.  In other words, ASR is a technology that allows a computer to identify the words that a person speaks into a microphone or telephone and converts it to written text.

Automatic speech recognition
Automatic speech recognition

The ultimate goal of ASR research is to allow a computer to recognize all words that are intelligibly spoken by any person, with 100% accuracy, in real time. Moreover, this recognition is independent of vocabulary size, noise, speaker characteristics or accent.  Commercially available ASR systems usually require only a short period of speaker training and may successfully capture continuous speech with a large vocabulary at normal pace with a very high accuracy.

Speech recognition
Speech recognition

The entire process that takes place in an automatic speech recognition is described below:

i) The process begins when a speaker actually speaks a sentence.

ii) The software then produces a speech wave form, which embodies the words of the sentence along with all the extraneous sounds and pauses in the spoken input.

iii) Next, the software converts the speech signal into a sequence of vectors which are measured throughout the duration of the speech signal.

v) Lastly, using a syntactic decoder it generates a valid sequence of representations.

Working of ASR technology
Working of ASR technology

Being an amazing and highly efficacious technology, automatic speech recognition offers various benefits. Some of those benefits include:

i) Accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing

ii) Cost reduction through automation

iii) Searchable text capability