Chill Pills for Call Center Stress

Like anything else, managing a call center comes with its own set of unique challenges. New product launches, seasonal spikes in call volume, and other hurdles pop up every day, and this means endless call center stress for managers of these businesses. But for every stressor, there is a chill pill: here are a couple we recommend for our call center clients before they start pulling their hair out.

Stressor: Temporary Staff

During new product launches, integrations, or season spikes, temporary staff is often a necessary part of making sure business continues running smoothly. This is a thorn in every hiring manager’s side. Not only is the hiring process a pain, but where do you put them? You can pay for more staff, but you can’t easily pay for more office space.

Chill Pill: A Virtual Call Center

Your regular staff works on-site, but that doesn’t mean your temporary staff has to. If you face space restrictions, use a virtual call center to enable seasonal employees to work from anywhere. By logging in remotely with the agent panel, their call status is easily monitored as if they were sitting right outside your office, and with sophisticated call routing, incoming calls are routed to any phone they choose (even Skype), no matter where they are. Not only is it a load off your mind when it comes to office space, but the ability to offer this kind of flexibility to seasonal employees might have a favorable impact on the staff you’re able to hire.

Stressor: High Volumes of Support Calls

Every business that has call center responsibilities knows the pain of overwhelming support calls. No matter how many agents you have on staff, holidays calls are beastly.

Chill Pill: A Zendesk Integration

Zendesk is known for the ability to make customer support easier for businesses to manage. With a Zendesk integration, you are able to elevate the support and service experience for everyone—your customers and your agents. Integrating with Zendesk means calls are automatically recorded to capture important call information and you have a system that tracks the progression of your customer support calls and shortens overall hold times.

Stressor: ….Even Higher Volumes of Support Calls

Yes, it’s that stressful. When the holiday spikes hit, even the most efficient businesses can be overwhelmed with the volume of calls they receive. While a Zendesk integration can help manage the support tickets that are opened, other measures need to be taken in order to trim down hold times and do everything possible to ensure a positive customer experience.

Chill Pill: Sophisticated Call Distributor

When businesses are experiencing a large volume of calls, one of the main objectives is to get that caller to an agent as soon as possible, but if that agent isn’t the right agent, then time is actually being wasted, not saved. Rather than wasting caller—and staff—time with unnecessary transfers, ensure callers are being distributed to the correct department or specific agent from the moment they enter your phone tree, whether based on the call tracking information gathered from the unique phone number they dialed, or based on information the caller provides to the sophisticated IVR.

Stressor: Lackluster Agent Performance

This is a biggie. Agents are what make the call center run, but when their performance is leaving something to be desired in terms of closed deals or poor response times, managers can become frustrated.

Chill Pill: More Information

The best thing we’ve found to improve agent performance is more information. It’s easy to set up “whispers” for incoming calls; messages that the agent hears before they accept the call that provides them with helpful information about what product or service the caller is interested in. It can make the agent’s job a lot easier: with a little added insight into the caller’s needs, the path to either closing the deal or resolving the issue is a lot smoother.

Managing a call center will always involve a little stress, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. When it comes to managing the chaos during hectic times and peak seasons, order can be found in just a few easy tools. Want to learn more? Download our free white paper, Beyond the Cloud: The Next Generation of Virtual Call Centers.