Humanity as we know it has been forced to adapt to the so-called new normal during the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, consumers have fundamentally changed how they interact with brands. For example, most purchases now take place online, and have switched permanently to having all their daily products delivered. Among all this change is also how and where employees work– one that according to experts had not been expected to take place for at least another seven years.
Working from home, or remote working, has catapulted businesses, brands, and their workforces several years into the future with many organisations. Some organisations were better prepared for this shift, already having some type of remote or hybrid workforce, but many others had to build infrastructure from scratch to support employees working remotely.
One industry that faced this colossal step, is the contact centre. We’ve heard much talk on how businesses have grappled with getting live agents set up with the right solutions during lockdown, highlighting the importance of the cloud as an example of best practices when it comes to managing a remote workforce. But little has been said about those in the all-important role of holding a team together during this historic period in our lifetime – the work from home supervisor.
In this exclusive interview, CX Today welcomes CallMiner’s Frank Sherlock, VP International, to discuss the best technologies to support the work from home supervisor in their crucial role and help them excel at it within the four walls of their homes – or wherever they choose to work. And as Sherlock points out, the remote contact centre is likely to continue even after the pandemic ends, so organisations must adopt the tools to support supervisors now and in the future.
The WFH Supervisor Role
Sherlock begins: “CallMiner’s recent commissioned study, conducted by Forrester Consulting, found that 67% of organisations will retain some form of remote or hybrid contact centre. This includes investing in future-proofing their contact centres by prioritising empowering customer service representatives and their supervisors to address customer needs.”
“Being a supervisor is already a challenging role, but especially so while doing it remotely,” Sherlock continues. “Supervisors working from home have to keep their eyes across all sorts of customer experience (CX) and performance, objectives and outcomes, and all while keeping the agents engaged and instilling that ethos of team. This is all done alongside trying to monitor people who perhaps have different and more challenging personal circumstances. Agents are no different than other workers – they have communications issues, childcare problems, noisy environments or they could be emotionally challenged through excessive isolation.”
Sherlock’s words are – essentially – a crash course in the role itself of a working from home supervisor. There is an exhausting amount of detail to the position to take in. This, Sherlock adds, is why it’s so vital the demands of the role are known inside and out, so an action plan can be put into place.
“In March last year, one in eight agents were working from home. Now, it’s something like one in two. So, let’s think about that from a supervisor’s point of view, who was used to multiple face-to-face interactions with individuals and with a team, and was completely engaged with the team as a result. Now, they’ve had to move to a work from home environment, meaning there’s an immediate change in their leadership and interpersonal skills capabilities.
“They’re left wondering ‘How do I keep my team engaged? How do I assess and manage performance?’ And this is a significant shift in the role.”
Sherlock isn’t wrong here. What many businesses fail to understand is that, as the locations workforces work from change due, so too do their roles. This has been highlighted by a whitepaper published recently by CallMiner called The Work from Home Supervisor: How Speech Analytics Can Improve Remote Agent Management, Coaching and Decision Making.
The report states that the work from home supervisor has a mountain to climb when it comes to managing the workforce, because while remote, agents can be less engaged, productivity can dwindle, and efficiency may be problematic due to distractions surrounding live agents. This means supervisors, who are facing their own set of challenges, are also tasked with managing teams under entirely new circumstances. Add technology challenges to the mix and the role could become a hotbed for low employee satisfaction ratings too. But, as Sherlock explains, CallMiner has some solutions to help.
He says: “Customer expectations haven’t changed. At the very early stage of the pandemic there was more sympathy generally, more empathy and more understanding from consumers towards the brands that serve them. But I think that’s gone. We’ve now entered into a stage where customers expect the highest-level of service regardless of other circumstances.”
Using Analytics to Manage a Workforce
Analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), Sherlock adds, are vital tools to help the supervisor achieve high customer demand. Conversation analytics monitors 100% of interactions and empowers supervisors to deliver the insights needed to create an improved working culture done through engaging with and coaching agents. Through the power of AI, the right tools can identify reporting processes that need to be adjusted while remote and modify vital KPIs to stomp out remote working challenges through data insights it creates. It also empowers the work from home supervisor by fostering a team approach and culture of engagement and optimisation.
“Insights that can only come from conversation analytics will allow the work from home supervisor to take a holistic approach of all of the interactions of the team and see if they are maintaining a company’s high standards.”
As well as battling to engage with a live agent workforce remotely, work from home supervisors may also find it hard to maintain the voice of the brand or business, Sherlock adds. But there are some fantastic technologies on hand from CallMiner to help the work from home supervisor achieve this.
Sherlock says: “Previously, the work from home supervisor was able to consult the colleague that was sitting on the desk next to them in real time. Based on what’s being said and on the progression of the call, they could very quickly and easily push information based on that. For example, if a live agent detects vulnerability language from someone who has financial issues or is suffering from physical or other vulnerabilities real-time alerts can detect and automatically push appropriate information to guide and counsel the agent through interaction.
“This also means these insights allow the supervisor to monitor the progress of the call and whether it is becoming problematic, prompting action.”
Tools such as training, coaching and performance metrics can also help with keeping the brand voice consistent. But what about the change in KPIs due to COVID-19?
Sherlock says: “Certainly in the early days, the work from home supervisor role was less about handle time. People were building rapport with live agents about the pandemic and the situation.
“That’s now gone away. Now, calls are much more normalised. But through that period, the focus was on metrics that looked at customer effort.
“Now, there is more of an emphasis on call outcomes. Questions being asked are ‘Were we able to achieve the desired outcome for the customer?’ and ‘Have we promoted brand loyalty with this customer interaction?’ I see more metrics now around measuring CX, customer effort, first call resolution and repeat calls. In short, it’s less about the operational side of the metrics and more on the outcomes and the customer side of the metrics.”
In conclusion, the contact centre and CX world has become a battlefield following a year of endless change. But as we move toward normalcy, many of these shifts will remain permanent. The implementation of the correct technologies can allow for roles, like the work from home supervisor, to be a driving force behind an organisation and get a leg up over the competition, regardless of whether they ever go into the contact centre again.
