A 3-week engagement can boost your outputs and revenues, as well as reduce costs

By Jeff Bowyer, Manager Professional Services at Jasco Enterprise

10 January 2012

A contact centre is futile without agents; and the quality of their service represents the bread and butter of the entire contact centre. But management of agents is not the only task of contact centre executives. Running any business well means optimising processes and operations, and strategically targeting outputs that will deliver on the objectives set. That may mean getting in professionals - the business analysts, training experts, developers or project managers -- to get the job done.

Good generalists rely on skilled professionals and experts in business for a very simple reason: they are keenly aware that managers may well be able to identify a problem, but are often too close to the coalface or operations of the business to see the root cause of that problem or resolve it adequately.

When they are fully capable of solving the problem, they often lack the time needed to do so. Business specialists, on the other hand, know how to zero in and resolve the challenge quickly and effectively. They bring fresh methodologies, insight gained from previous experience and even new and useful technologies. But specialised business knowledge alone won't deliver a successful outcome - industry insight and experience are vital.

A typical challenge in a contact centre may be improving agent processes; for example speeding up wrap-up, reducing agent error, reducing average call length, automating repetitive manual tasks or improving first call resolution levels. This may entail adapting processes, modifying or integrating systems. In a contact centre providing support for banking customers, asking a business analyst that works in the bank's back offices to assist may be of limited use. Without insight into the contact centre environment, finding a suitable solution or developing new services will be very difficult.

How much value can a professional add? It's hard to give an absolute measure, but processes can always be improved, so there is always value to be added.

.               A Jasco Enterprise client was using several applications on the

agent desktop. Agents needed to navigate through the                different

applications for security checks, to enter transactions and for record

keeping. As a result much of the process was not             followed and the

agent time spent on administration was excessive. By doing the necessary

process work and supplying the right      technology solution, the client was

able to increase the time agents could talk to customers, rather than

navigate applications. In               addition risk was reduced by ensuring the

security processes were followed every time.

.               Another client needed to improve the efficiency and success rate of

its outbound agents. By improving the process and identifying the right technology solutions, staff productivity was more than doubled, agents

sold more and turnover increased. This client was able to             do twice the

work with the same number of agents.

In our experience - and Jasco Enterprise has been in contact centre and enterprise telephony enablement and optimisation for three decades - speeding up bad processes is no answer at all. And throwing more technology at the problem is also not fail proof. In fact, today only a small proportion of the available functionality of technology systems in contact centres is actually being exploited. A specialist - a professional with the right experience - will deliver you a tailored solution that works.

For more information, visit Jasco at www.jasco.co.za