Requesting supervisor assistance

[the1kid]

I have recently been doing research on Call Centers where supervisors often have as many as 20 agents they manage in a pool of 500+.

It is not uncommon that the customer on the phone will request to speak with a supervisor or the agent is asked a question that they do not have an answer for. When this occurs many different techniques are often employed to notify a supervisor that their input is required.

One solution was to press a button that would light a panel at the supervisor's station. This only works if the supervisor is AT the station.

Another potential solution was using email. Same problem as before.

Yet another solution has been for the agent to raise their hand and await assistance. There are many problems associated with this not the least of which is an issue of prioritization.

My question then is - has anyone found a technology that will provide prioritizational and trackable notification of supervisory/management personnel who are moving in/around/about a large, fully staffed, call center environment?

Thanks for your input!!

[Jason Crew]

Hello Kid:

I suggest your center get a new manager or possibly if you are that busy employ more! We have a paging system that is a vibration station pager which allows the manager to know exactly what station to go to due to a series of vibrations. It also beeps once for section A) Two times For section B and so on and so forth. It alerts the manager to look in the general direction of the section and he then will see a blinking station.

Hopoe it helps...

J.Crew

[James]

I have seen two different solutions for this problem both involving connecting wireless phones to the PBX.

One solution used off the shelf wireless phones that were set up to take a call whenever the agent hit the supervisor button. It would cause the wireless phone to ring wherever the supervisor was at that moment. This approach eliminates the need to have the supervisor in a specific location to assist the agent. The agents don't have to wait and they don't have to get up and look for someone while the customer waits.

The other approach was a call center that uses the Nortel system. Nortel has a product called Companion which is also a wireless phone system. What I understand is that the Companion system can be set up so you can monitor all the normal call center statistics for agents except its for supervisors. Agents can reach a supervisor by just hitting the supervisor button on their sets.

Depending on your call center maybe your best bet is to talk to your telco or PBX supplier to see what they can do for you.

[tlavin]

You may be solving the wrong problem.

The first question to ask is, why do the agents require so much interaction from the supervisors? Why aren't the agents empowered to deal with the problem? What balances and checks are in place to determine the judgment ability of the agents?

Perhaps have the supervisors begin to log all of the issues and questions that the agents are bringing to them. This is hard to do "on the fly". Then, see if there is a common thread that could possibly be addressed by recurrent training or the implementation of a process that would empower the agent to meet the customer need. Then, what process could you put in place to coach and/or recognize the agent on the quality of their decisions? Could this be managed via database, quality monitoring, or third party verification?

This is a classic call center problem and one that will cause you to chase your tail for years, that is unitl you address the real problem.

[Clare12]

Another suggestion that I have used is to set up a small group of more senior/experienced agents to serve as first level escalation. These people take short turns during their shift to cover the "escalation desk", can do other things between calls (reports? letters to customers? other "between call" work) and are able to assist the other agents with calls by either coaching them through or actually taking the call as an escalation. This can free the supervisors to supervise, allows the senior agents to use their expertise and practice new skills, serves as a good step to see how they will handle this new responsibility, a step on the road to promotion. They DO need to have access to a supervisor if the call really is beyond their ability to handle, but it reduced those escalations for us significantly. We only needed two agents at this desk for most times of the day, but each center would need to decide how to staff this.

[ky boyle]

I have to agree with the previous comment that the power to handle the calls should be in the associate's chair. However, if that is not possible, we have gone to another easy solution. The handheld radios which are available in any discount merchandiser's store for +/- 99.00 pair.
The radios eat a lot of batteries but do not use resources that are dedicated to the customers. Nor do they have yearly licensing costs or requirements.
When the static on one particular channel becomes too much, we merely send an e-mail to change to another.
Quick, easy, painless.
That being said, we have coached and trained our associates to solve the customer's issue as close to the customer as possible... that is the easiest and cheapest way.

[LJCPyxis]

A customer will not object if the supervisor is not available at the time of the call and is told he will receive a call shortly.

Think of your SLA when you have an agent looking and can't get ahold of a supevisor. That agent could be answering another call that he or she can handle without the assistance of the supervisor.

There are some callers that will insist on speaking to a supervisor immediately but others will be satisfied with a call back.

I second the other idea of wireless phones. We had Companion phones in our shop and it worked great. But there was always the situation where the supervisor was assisting other agents and could not assist a second agent. That's where you need to suggest a call back to the customer.

Also, don't for get that other agents may be of assistance. Not only the supervisor has the knowledge in the shop. It sort of goes along with the theory to empower your agents. Encourage them to help one another. Team spirit.

[Scott]

This is an operational solution. Our Customer Service department uses a "Mentor" queue to resolve the problem you are having. If an agent has a question they put the caller on hold and call the "Mentor" queue to get an answer. This frees up the supervisors to take more a a management role. The Mentor queue is staffed with slightly higher paid experienced/well trained agents. This can be a career path toward management for the Customer Service Reps. Also, there is a "Manager" queue to transfer callers to if the customer asks to speak with a "manager". This is an escalation queue. And finally, each Supervisor has 1-2 assistants. Hope this helps...

[Joe_M (los angeles)]

We use the cheapo raise the hand method. CSR that needs supervisor assistance raises their hand, the supervisor on agent watch, monitors the ACD and the agent with the longest talk time is the first priority...

I've also found that a second tier of escalation such as Lead CSRs or CSR II works well. Lead CSRs strategically placed around the call center is a good thing, frees up the supervisors for other tasks.

Look into why customers are asking for supervisors, and see if you can empower the CSR to handle the call.

Hand held radios are good for communicating across the call center too.

joe

[Andrew Bates]

while many before me have offered good suggestions, the fact that your ratio is 1:25 is most likely problem.

If sounds like your company is trying to cut costs...in a big way. I have a number of ideas on how contact centers can increase productivity and cost effectiveness.

Let me know if you need further assistance.

[FrankLea2k]

I am the supervisor over the Senior/Mentor group. Very early on we had Managers taking escalations. I put a stop to it right away. Our senior staff is more than capable of handling the calls. We scheduled a shift into the senior schedule for over a year but found that it was more of a problem than it resolved. Our TM's do not have the time to take care of calls and take care of their agents which is our priority for TM's.

[Mr Morpheous]

I am a call center manager. There are times when we face overflows of customer calls in the inbound process. At the same time, our outbound processes requires a supervisor closing on every successful sales call. In the outbound telemarketing process, although the supervisors are supposed to close most of the calls, I have trained all the older CSRs on closing skills. The CSRs can now assist their neighbour instead of running to the supervisor all the time. This give me customer retention and allows my supervisors to spend more time towards agent monitoring and other management tasks. This also motivates the new call takers to learn faster through their own level collegues. This is also a significant indicator that can be used during staff appraisals for promotions,etc.

With the above in practice, i dont need to hire too many supervisors and increase my costs. Also, it acts as a very strong motivator for each call center agent since their powers are increased to a certain extent. There is also no place for mistakes since all calls are recorded and verified by the quality and compliance departments every day as a pratice. My supervisors can now spend more time improving their management competencies rather than just taking esclations throughout the day. (something which they have already expertised in)

For the inbound process, i have cross-trained my complete outbound process to take incomming calls if required. As as when the outbound agent completes his/her que, they are moved to the inbound to take care of the flow. All of this is done by studying the peak call times, call trends analysis,seasons,etc.

Please feel free to contact me for any suggestions or clarifications.

...Morpheous...