Delivering superior CX isn’t a solo sport.
Contact centre agents must work in a collaborative environment learning from each other and gaining from the team’s collective knowledge base to solve customer queries. Research suggests that 60% of all failed first-call resolutions happen because agents are unable to ask someone for the right information or the necessary help at the right time. This is a massive deterrent to customer experience (CX). Given that speedy resolution without unnecessary transfers or escalations is a top priority for callers, you need to equip agents with timely assistance.
This is where the agent help feature comes in.
What is Agent Help in a Call Centre?
Agent help can be defined as a call centre functionality typically used in inbound call centres that allow an agent to alert a supervisor that they might need help for an ongoing conversation, without the caller becoming aware of the same. The supervisor can then choose to listen in, whisper, or even barge into the call, as needed.
Nearly every call centre setup will have this functionality, including a hardware button that allows agents to discreetly send an alert message to their supervisor as well as a software integration to capture agent help data analytics.
Why is Agent Help Necessary?
Agent help is an invaluable feature during the early days of a new employee’s tenure, when they are still undergoing training, and are yet to become fully conversant with the product, the company’s processes, and its customer base. Timely help ensures that common or simple queries aren’t escalated, causing customer frustration.
The feature also enables agents to stay on the right side of compliance. If any customer request or query seems to fall into a grey area, the agent can quickly alert a supervisor without taking risks.
Agent help is crucial to the customer experience, as it ensures that there is a maximum chance of a request getting fulfilled, without interrupting the interaction or having the customer explain the problem all over again to a different agent. Research reveals that lack of agent knowledge is the most frustrating aspect of a poor CX. Agent help makes it possible to address these gaps without having the customer know.
What Happens if an Agent Asks for Help?
At the agent’s end, they can use the Help option on their contact centre software interface to alert a supervisor if intervention is necessary. These alerts are conveyed to the supervisor’s interface, where they appear as a queue. The supervisor can launch the help feature at their end by pressing a button and glance through the details of the help request (agent name, the time when the request was raised, agent ID, etc). Supervisors can choose to accept the help request, choose to see more information or deny the request altogether.
In case the agent help request is denied, it can either appear as terminated (or an equivalent) to the agent or be escalated to the next stakeholder in the chain of command, depending on your contact centre process hierarchy.
