It’s about time for contact centres to reconsider their approach to productivity. Instead of placing the onus on agents and setting targets around how many calls they answer, handling times, and occupancy rates, management must take responsibility.
Daniel Ord, Founder and Director at OmniTouch International, says it best:
“When we manage which contacts come in, get them to where they’re best handled and design how we should handle them, then productivity becomes an outcome – not the overarching target.
“We not only optimize costs in the long run - but we also turn agents into powerhouses of engagement and loyalty.”
Managing which contacts arrive involves removing journey pain points, offering self-service, and improving website navigation. Getting them to where they are best handled requires enhancing call routing and channel shift strategies.
Many contact centres have set such plans in motion while also bolstering call scripts, system navigation, and coaching programmes to improve “how” agents handle customer conversations.
Yet, many contact centres often bypass one critical factor in the process: background noise. When left unchecked, it can prevent agents from becoming Ord’s powerhouses of “engagement and loyalty.”
Removing Background Noise
Background noise is not a new problem by any means, yet it still disrupts customer conversations in 65.9% of operations, according to 2020 Call Centre Helper research.
For all of the heavy-duty solutions available today – including white noise machines, acoustic ceiling tiles, and soft furnishings – many contact centres still struggle with identifying the “silver bullet” that can officially make background noise a thing of the past once and for all.
Making matters worse, many agents have now started working from remote locations, which are prone to an even broader array of distractions and disturbances. These include doorbells, noisy housemates, crying babies, and barking dogs. Any of these noises can frustrate agents (as well as the customer on the other end of the line), break rapport with the customer, and prolong conversations.
To help mitigate this issue, many contact centres have chosen to equip their agents with noise-cancelling headphones. Unfortunately, these are expensive, difficult to distribute in a remote working environment, and do not completely block out all noise.
Explaining this, Robert Schoenfield, COO at Krisp, says:
“Noise-cancelling headphones are great for removing background noise on the agent’s end. But they do nothing to address noise coming from the customer’s environment. This results in distractions still being an issue in customer conversations – and it can really knock both parties off their stride”
In theory, a tool that removes background noise from both sides of the line would facilitate the optimal call handling environment, enabling agents to dedicate their full concentration to the conversation and customers, on the other hand, to enjoy seamless interactions.
Of course, such a solution has proven purely theoretical; until now.