It’s well known that a high performing Agent Desktop, coupled with high performing Agents, has a positive impact on the customer experience. What is less well known is that the Supervisor Desktop for Cisco Finesse has a key role to play in ensuring that technology and people combine seamlessly to deliver a premium service.
Agents, quite rightly, are focused on their own performance. They need a Desktop that’s simple to operate, intuitive and provides just the right level of flexibility to allow them to follow through on all the business processes they must comply with in order to fulfill their roles.
By contrast, Supervisors have a much broader remit. In addition to providing their staff with the right tools with which to do their job, they must make sure they’ve recruited the right people and then trained and motivated them accordingly. Once their team is in place Supervisors require a Desktop which enables them to manage their performance – both as a whole and individually. This demands the same level of intuitive, flexible, easy to use functionality as that found on the Agent Desktop. Plus, a bit extra.
However, in today’s world, where the rate of technological change and customer expectations seem to increase exponentially, providing an effective and efficient Supervisor Desktop is no easy task. The Supervisor Desktop must be effective in terms of supporting a positive customer experience and efficient in terms of how that experience is delivered.
For a Supervisor Desktop to be effective the company using it must already have a clear vision on how to deliver a positive customer experience. Business rules for achieving this vision must be clearly defined so that the Desktop system can be configured to make it happen whatever situation the Agents and Supervisors are faced with. Furthermore, users will need to have mapped their customer journey from initial contact through to the first sale and beyond in order for all necessary services, options and scripts to be readily available.
Once the Supervisor Desktop has been configured to match the desired customer experience and customer journey it’s time to focus on the efficiency/productivity of the system. Two key components of this are:
- Management & analytics
- Supervising and coaching
These are crucial to ensuring Agents deliver against the customer experience vision.
The management & analytics portion of the Supervisor Desktop must include all relevant metrics for measuring actual vs desired performance. These metrics should be defined and agreed upon in advance, be measurable via the Desktop system and focused on providing the best possible customer experience that the user’s budget and capabilities will allow. Within a minimal number of clicks, Supervisors must gain a holistic view on how their team is performing as a whole and have a clear understanding on how each individual Agent is doing when compared with their peers.
The metrics must also be clearly understood by all Agents so that everyone knows their role and can work towards a common goal. It goes without saying that while they can be tough performance targets must always be achievable otherwise morale will inevitably suffer when teams realize the impossibility of their task.
Once the customer experience vision is agreed and communicated and the management and analysis tools are in place attention can turn to the supervisory and caching features of the system. Supervisors should always be able to monitor calls made or received by their Agents to ensure standards are being maintained, check for training issues and to discover and highlight best practices. If Agents get into difficulties when dealing with customer Supervisors must be able to join or ‘barge in’ on the call so they can resolve any problems.
Similarly, they should also be able to relieve the pressure on their teams during excessively busy periods by intercepting and handling inbound calls themselves. Additionally, Supervisors might wish to intercept calls to ensure they retain their front-line skills and direct access to the customer. Furthermore, Supervisors must have access to all recorded calls. This allows them to research training points and review the more qualitative aspects of an Agents role.
A good Supervisor Desktop system provides management, measurement & coaching functionality. It’s a link between the company’s customer experience vision and how it’s delivered by front line staff. And, it’s also a bridge between the customer and the company, ensuring that expectations are met – on time and every time. Ignore it at your peril.
