The customer service representative (often also called “agent”) is clearly the cornerstone of a contact center. Well designed automatic systems always help of course, but they cannot really compete (at least not yet) with the flexibility a human representative can offer and the warmth of a friendly human voice.
There are several qualities that a customer service representative must possess in the new breed of tech-supported contact centers. The first and foremost is, of course, sufficient knowledge of the subject(s) the agent deals with. This can be facilitated by usage of software (CTI, reporting tools) that provides personalized information for each customer, but the representative also needs to have a very firm grasp over the products/services and business processes of the company. Sufficient knowledge of how to use the automated software tools is also required. Another important characteristic is the agent’s language skills (speaking and writing fluently). And of course multi-tasking capabilities that allow the representative to communicate with the customer while taking the necessary actions to serve him simultaneously. All of the aforementioned skills can be developed to some degree with sufficient training.
And then, the personality of the agent comes into play. All the knowledge and technical skills in the world are not going to help if the representative does not like what (s)he does. A positive, outgoing and people-oriented attitude is crucial. The best customer service representatives, the stars that we occasionally encounter and we are all very happy to do so, shine mostly because they want to shine. Like Mary, for example, from this very nice story. (which was the inspiration to write this post in the first place).
These crucial agent personality traits are also trainable to some extent. But the development and manifestation of these traits is also greatly influenced by the environment (s)he operates. Being a customer service representative is often a high pressure job that requires quick reflexes. Situations where queues increase quickly (when something has gone wrong big time) are common in most contact centers, and supervisors press for even quicker issue resolutions than the agent can actually handle. Other contact centers walk on the edge with representative staffing, to decrease costs. This can lead to constant agent over-utilization. I happened to work in such an environment for a couple of months and the experience is far from pleasant. Keeping one’s composure in such a situation is not easy.
In this fast-paced and often emotionally taxing environment, some key factor in sustaining a good morale among the contact center personnel are how the management treats its representatives, the relationships between people within the contact center, specific performance incentives documented in business processes known to the agents and so on. All these conditions collectively define the culture of the contact center itself. And this culture can be defined and influenced by the top management in many aspects.
Allowing the representative some breathing air in some situations may be as important as following the rules. With the workforce optimization software packages that every large contact center utilizes, sometimes being an agent feels like being a slave rowing in an ancient Roman Galley, with the whip lurking above your shoulder.
In very large contact centers though, flexibility harder to achieve. In the outsourcing call center company I worked for as a customer service representative, there was a huge building with agent farms on every floor working for many different customer-companies. The supervisors were very strict and adhered to the “letter of the law” because their own managers were also enforcing rules in detail and so on. Individual effort and performance assessment were mostly based on the average call handling time. As long as the inbound queues were small, everyone seemed to be happy, regardless of the ridiculous problems many of our customers had.
Not long after I quit that job (which I would have never really fit into anyway) I had the chance of visiting, as an engineer, a couple of small contact centers with less than twenty agents. The difference in the atmosphere was breathtaking. The agents in the small contact center seemed more like a family. Other large contact centers I visit are more often than not like the one I was working on.
Of course the size of the contact center is not the only factor that affects the culture, but it definitely is an important one. Another equally important contributor to a good atmosphere is a sufficient number of agents to handle the average traffic without burning out. Cutting down on human resources budget too much can have a devastating effect to the morale of the representatives.
The company culture and its effect on how agents behave can make the difference between a successful and a failed contact center. At the end of the day, the agents are humans, not machines. The way their are treated by their superiors is reflected to their behavior towards of the customers. And it is surprising how often we all forget that, on either side of the phone.
Note: The above opinions and beliefs are based on the current situation in Greek contact centers which I am familiar with, but most of these should apply in contact centers around the world. If you are experiencing things differently, please be so kind as to leave a comment.
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