Agent Productivity

Customers needs and expectations have increased greatly in recent years. To address this, organisations must ensure sales and customer service departments maintain high productivity levels. As expectations continue to rise, reserving continuous investment into agent productivity in favour of saving money is a false economy.

Achieving consistent agent productivity comes down to acquiring and maintaining the right suite of capable, well-trained agents, contact centre tools, workflow processes, culture, and management.

How to Increase Agent Productivity

Ensuring the correct mix of the components mentioned above can be a challenge for many businesses. Due to the widespread variation of organisational structures, external market influences that impact staffing and/or revenue, many of these components are exceedingly harder to implement for some companies.

Here are some best practices to improve agent productivity:

Technology Stack

Providing agents with the necessary tools to achieve is a requisite. Strong talent acquisition capabilities and management will not ensure results if agents don’t have the resources they need to be successful. Good agents will leave and eventually, management will too. Utilising a stack of relevant technology such as consolidated CRM, Workforce Management (WFM), knowledge sharing, and telephone systems enables agents to streamline interactions with customers. Use technology that aids to simplify the customer journey and focus on easy integration to mitigate the risk of fragmenting processes.

Comprehensive and Ongoing Training

An efficient technology stack can’t be effectively deployed unless agents are adequately trained. Implementing comprehensive onboarding training will give agents the confidence and aptitude required to integrate into campaigns harmoniously. Conducting continuous training will serve to maintain agent productivity and using that continuous training process when new technology is being implemented will minimise any disruptiveness during its induction.

Invest in Morale and Incentivise Agents

Staff are trained to be customer-centric in all their interactions. Taking a similar approach to agents has a circular effect. Recognition for good work creates and maintains morale. Awarding agents for reaching KPIs and milestones provides incentive while increasing retention levels.

Making time for social events in or out of the workplace, particularly in an environment where remote work is common, deepens co-worker relations and fosters a greater collaborative culture within teams. All of this directly influences customer interactions and greatly enhances the value a team of agents can provide.

Performance Measurement and Analytics

Leveraging advanced reporting and analytics provides actionable insights into agent performance, operational inefficiencies, and subsequent customer satisfaction levels. These insights help to identify areas for process improvement, evaluate agent performance and make decisions based upon relevant data.

The Benefits of Agent Productivity

The maintenance of agent productivity offers a plethora of direct and indirect benefits. Some key advantages include:

Enhanced Brand Reputation: Agents are the sole representative of a brand whenever they’re engaged in a customer interaction. Ensuring agent productivity will greatly increase both the quality and consistency of quality in customer resolution. Satisfied customers lead to referrals, testimonials and brand evangelism. This increases brand reputation in a way that can’t be otherwise achieved.
Retention: Agent productivity and morale are typically mutually exclusive. Maintaining productivity means maintaining morale which leads to a lower turnover in staff.
Talent Acquisition: Similarly, higher productivity and morale creates a more attractive workplace. Brand reputation is increased not only in customer perception, but in the eyes of prospective employees. Over time, this creates an inbound recruitment funnel of high-quality applicants.
Scalability: As established, investing in agent productivity increases retention levels, acquisition capability and the quality of applicants. The presence of these benefits allows organisations to scale operations to a level that may have been previously unattainable.
Cost Savings: Consistent agent productivity creates cost savings in both commercial and internal operations. The resulting increase in retention and agent quality saves costs on acquisition while facilitating the ability to scale. Gaining brand reputation through memorable customer interactions expands inbound business, creating a more beneficial ratio of inbound to outbound business.