The last several years have felt like a whirlwind for call and contact center managers and employees. The market has shifted irreversibly amid the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and other technological advances. But for every step forward, there’s usually also a shuffle back. The industry has wrestled with managing an avalanche of data, fluctuations that make it difficult to appropriately scale call center teams, and an overwhelming trend toward impossibly high customer expectations.
Effective call center management isn’t easy, but it can be simplified with the use of AI. AI-powered tools enable your team to optimize call center operations and improve customer experience without sacrificing quality assurance. In fact, 40% of contact center workers in the U.S. say that AI has made their job easier, and most agree that customer satisfaction is on the rise thanks to their use of AI.
Of course, embracing new call center technology doesn’t happen overnight. Here, we’ll explore contact center best practices and ask whether AI really is the solution to maximizing agent performance, creating streamlined workflows, and boosting call center performance. Then, we’ll take a look at how you can adopt an AI tool that can change the game for your call center with Observe.AI.
Key Challenges Call Center Managers Face
Before we look at best practices, it’s always helpful to get a handle on the current state of affairs. Call center supervisors are at the frontline of operational efficiency, but they have many common obstacles in their path, including:
- Lagging staffing levels, high turnover, and decreasing retention
- Constantly changing technology and evolving call center software
- Understanding the evolving customer journey and training agents to be prepared for customer interactions
- Balancing adequate customer support with operational efficiency
- Staffing and scheduling to handle rising call volumes
- Measuring and tracking KPIs to ensure call center performance is meeting expectations
- Expanding to an omnichannel approach to offer options that meet a variety of customer needs
- Coaching employees effectively at scale and reducing onboarding time
- Managing workloads to reduce employee burnout
Call Center Management Best Practices
Meeting the challenges call center managers face requires understanding contact center optimization strategies and the role that data plays in effectively carrying them out. Luckily, there are some best practices your contact center can employ to streamline operations and maximize employee productivity.
Empowering Your Agents with Real-Time Tools
Agent feedback, while extremely important, often comes too late to help during a live interaction. Real-time tools step in during live calls, offering immediate feedback and guidance so agents can get the support they need when they need it.
AI-powered tools, like Observe.AI’s Agent Assist, provide real-time coaching and assistance that promote intelligent handoffs, suggest smart scripts with visual checklists, and offer supervisors a bird’s-eye view of active conversations as they happen.
RealDefense used Observe.AI to close the feedback gap by delivering real-time coaching moments based on live conversation data. With immediate insights into agent performance, they were able to act fast, course-correct in the moment, and build stronger behaviors. This proactive approach led to a 103% sales quota attainment and a 13% boost in revenue.
100% Call Monitoring to Spot Trends
You are the eyes and ears of your call center operation, and that means you need to know what’s happening on customer calls and in other omnichannel communications so you can identify trends and stop those that may be harmful.
When you have insight into your center’s communications, you will better know when agents need support, which digital channels are not performing as well, and when agent performance is dropping.
Track KPIs That Matter Most
Get ahead of your team’s biggest challenges by using contact center data to track key metrics, forecast service gaps, and guide smarter decisions. Be sure you’ve outlined all your key performance indicators (KPIs) so you can set smart goals and monitor the performance metrics that matter, mining them for valuable insights.
Nations Info Corp leveraged AI-powered call insights to double their save rate from 9% to 18% and reduce Average Handle Time by 43%. By shifting from partial call sampling to 100% conversation visibility, they gained deeper insights into agent performance and customer behavior, proving how important data-backed KPI tracking can be.
Provide Data-Driven Coaching and Feedback
With all that data you’re collecting, you can ensure optimized performance from agents by using it to train and coach them. You don’t need to wait for customer issues to pop up.
By using data-driven insights, you can build both hard and soft skills in your employees, so they’re prepared and confident enough to manage problem-solving on their own.
Implement Data-Backed Workforce Optimization
Understanding how to manage staffing levels in an industry that is constantly changing can be challenging. Workforce management for call centers is most effective when you utilize data for forecasting call volumes, scheduling call center agents, and managing employee engagement. A happy workforce is an efficient workforce, and efficiency leads to cost savings, optimal service levels, and positive customer relationships.
Build a Continuous Improvement Culture
Quality assurance is key to your call center performance, but by focusing on continuous improvement, you can track critical KPIs like first call resolution (FCR), net promoter score (NPS), average handle time (AHT), wait times, follow-ups, and others.
The proof is in the numbers. As your call center metrics reflect successful efforts, you can engage employees to keep up the good work. Or, if you see numbers declining, you can use data to identify concerns and address them to prevent churn.
How AI Specifically Drives Better Results
Call center quality management is getting better all the time. What’s the biggest reason? AI. The bottom line is that AI delivers results. But, how?
Real-Time Assistance for Agents
Agents aren’t abandoned in situations that could damage their confidence or lead to a quality issue that results in negative customer feedback. With AI support, your agents are ready with the right language at the right time in any scenario, and it will show in your CSAT score.
Actionable Insights for Leaders
You’ve seen it mentioned here too many times to count. Data is the key to effectively using AI for call center management. The data analytics you use could mean the difference between success and failure for your contact center agents.
Using an analytics tool like Observe.AI will help you sift through the data and extract valuable insights you can use to make informed decisions.
Automated QA and Analytics
Quality assurance shouldn’t be a shot in the dark. Instead of playing a guessing game, use an AI tool that allows QA monitoring and forecasting so you can get ahead of potential issues. Improve scores and KPIs, and give impactful and effective feedback.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Your success all comes down to the customer. You can improve customer experience with AI-powered tools that walk beside you throughout the customer journey, from onboarding and agent training to real-time agent assist, post-interaction coaching, and QA.
Overcoming Common Objections
A lot of people are still pretty skeptical of AI, and we totally get that. It’s smart to go in with your eyes open so you know what you’re getting into. But what are the most common FAQs call center operators have about AI?
Isn’t AI expensive?
Not as much as you’d think! AI tools span a pretty wide price range, which means you can usually find something that fits your budget. Consider whether you want to purchase or develop a proprietary tool, or if your money would be better spent on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product.
Subscription-based models like this can often be a good, cost-effective choice. Remember that AI uses automation to cut down on repetitive administrative tasks, which will save you quite a bit of time in the long run and increase your ROI.
What about agent buy-in?
It’s only natural that your agents will have some concerns about the shift to AI. Be prepared to answer their questions and let them know that in most call centers that utilize AI, the agents are happier and feel that their jobs are easier. Most often, they feel they have more time to focus on their work, are less prone to burnout, and feel empowered by real-time assistance.
Will this replace human managers?
No, AI is not designed to replace human call center managers. AI tools like Observe.AI have been created to complement the work done by human supervisors, acting as a support that aids them in better strategic decision-making.
Contact center managers can use AI much like a carpenter uses a hammer — the tool is required to do the job, but the human is necessary to operate the tool.
How Observe.AI Can Help You Better Manage Your Call Center
Successful call center management is possible with Observe.AI. Our cloud-based tools cover the entire customer and agent journey, whether you’re looking to go omnichannel with voice AI agents, want to support your team members with real-time assistance, or make your feedback count with post-interaction automation.
It’s hard for us to tell you how great Observe.AI is and how we can be a game changer for your contact center, so we’d love to show you instead. Book your demo today and let’s get started!
