The demand for remote contact centre agents and flexible employees has never been greater. Since the pandemic of 2020, companies have grown increasingly aware of the benefits of remote employees. Not only are these distributed workers more cost-effective from an overheads perspective, but they’re also a crucial component in business continuity.
In a world where agents may not always be able to operate within the traditional contact centre environment, cloud opportunities are giving any employee the chance to work anywhere. Staff working from home are now more empowered than ever, particularly thanks to analytics and insights.
Reports and analytics, both real-time and historical, provide managers and supervisors with a way to track remote agent and team performance. However, these tools also have an impact on WFH agent performance, by offering motivation, guidance, and insights.
Let’s take a closer look.
The Benefits of Real-Time Analytics for Live Agents
Real-time analytics offer immediate insights into the conversations that agents have with clients – as they happen. Often delivered over the cloud in the form of dashboards with visual data and frequently updating metrics, real-time analytics help remote employees to track their performance.
A dashboard on a contact centre interface, for instance, could show your agents how their performance in calls answered per minute, or first-time call resolution rate compares to their teams. This overview shows employees what they should be aiming for. Companies can even set colour-coded alerts to show agents when they’re dropping below benchmarks.
Real-time insights also motivate and engage home employees. It’s difficult to feel like part of the team when you’re sitting miles away from your colleagues. However, with real-time analytics, you can see exactly how your activities are affecting the business overall. Employees can engage in gamified strategies to compete for the best scores, and business leaders can award prizes.
Real-time analytics can even come with automatic threshold alerts which automatically inform supervisors when an agent is struggling. This could make it easier for managers to deliver training, support, or even access to AI suggestions to agents working remotely. Real-time analytics could even come with access to AI tools, virtual assistants, and chatbots to assist employees as they work.
The Benefits of Predictive Analytics for WFH Agents
Real-time analytics are an excellent way to make agents more responsive in the WFH landscape. Giving your employees a better view of what they’re accomplishing, and how they compare to their peers means you can maintain high motivation levels. Real-time reports also help managers to stay on top of remote worker productivity, check performance levels, and diagnose any problems.
Predictive analytics, on the other hand, often come from insights into larger amounts of historical data. If real-time analytics is constantly keeping your finger on the pulse of a CX environment, predictive analytics is about diagnosing future problems, based on the health information you’ve gathered over time.
