Recently, we were given a unique opportunity to sit down for an exclusive interview with Allan MacGowan, the Vice President of Marketing for CaféX. We not only had a chance to quiz Allan about the growth and development of CaféX over the recent months, but he also gave an insight into the potential of Supervisor Assist, one of the latest CaféX products, from a more tangible perspective.
The interview was our chance to consider how real-time technologies, such as those produced by CaféX, could really make a difference to the changing tides of agent coaching and monitoring in the contact centre world. Here, we’ll dive into my interview with Allan, and discuss everything I learned about the power of CaféX Supervisor Assist.
What is Supervisor Assist?
Though I was excited to see the numbers that highlight just how effective CaféX’s new product could be, the first thing I wanted to do when I sat down with Allan MacGowan was get a deeper understanding of what Supervisor Assist actually is. As Allan explained:
“Supervisor Assist is a remote coaching solution for agents – a single web-based tool. It’s designed to empower service agents, and give them the resources they need to improve the buyer journey, and enhance customer care.”
There are several incredible benefits to consider when establishing the possibilities of Supervisor Assist. Not only is it a real-time application that allows supervisors to help agents the moment a call starts to go south, but it’s also a multi-channel solution, complete with the security modern-day businesses need for absolute peace of mind. Supervisor Assist is essentially a data-driven way to support mentoring in the contact centre, and improve auto-escalation processes. With it, remote workers can get help from a supervisor instantly during interactions with customers.
Perhaps one of the most appealing elements of Supervisor Assist is that it’s compatible with a range of different vendors, including Genesys, Avaya, and Cisco. With this simple tool, experts anywhere in the enterprise can listen to the conversations between customers and agents, provide guidance in a heartbeat, and even control an agent’s desktop. All of this can be prompted by alerts from a real-time third party analytics engine, devoted to better call centre experiences.
What Makes Supervisor Assist So Special?
Now that I fully understood what Supervisor Assist was all about, Allan was happy to talk me through the ROI for the system. He told me that while early business cases for Supervisor Assist started with an evaluation of ROI based on cost per call, they’ve now switched to industry accepted Erlang calculations to help estimate the potential of the platform.
According to Allan, “Supervisor Assist can be used in four key areas”, including:
- Education: for agents, in real time, with coaching and training during calls
- Observation: “which can be passive or more intrusive based on the needs of the interaction”.
- Escalation: Supervisors can communicate with agents, and escalate issues through chat and screen sharing.
- Intervention: “Third party analytics can be used to ensure that issues are automatically escalated depending on the circumstances. For instance, the system could tell a supervisor to watch a call about a topic an agent doesn’t have much experience with, or inform a supervisor when a call goes on for too long.”
In those areas, Supervisor Assist early pilots have shown benefits for three key metrics, according to Allan:
- Average handling time: “The time on calls, and follow up work after a call”
- First contact resolution rate: “The percentage of calls resolved first time”
- Net Promoter Score: “The likelihood that a customer will recommend your service to others”
What is the ROI Potential for CaféX?
Allan went on to share more information with me about the independent studies CaféX have done into the performance of Supervisor Assist.
“While we have looked at soft benefits like customer satisfaction rates, NPS, and revenue attachment rate, those are often not included in business cases. Our users are focused more on hard cost saving metrics like average handling time and first contact resolution rate.”
Importantly, Allan established that it’s not just telephony that benefits from Supervisor Assist. The system does provide audio listening but also comes with a chat interface, remote desktop observation and click-through solutions to help support omni-channel customer interactions, such as email, social connections, and instant chat. However, for CaféX, many enterprises are focusing on telephone calls with customers as an initial case example.
“We’ve calculated the ROI of Supervisor Assist looking at how improvements in key metrics allow contact centres to maintain service levels with fewer agents. The payback is incredibly aggressive in some cases.”
Just some of the numbers that Allan shared included:
- A 9 second decrease in average handling time with Supervisor Assist
- First contact resolution rate increase of 2% across channels
- Shrinkage reduction (amount of time agents spend not in calls) of 2%
Allan noted that CaféX are as realistic as possible when considering investment numbers too. They don’t expect benefits to start showing within the first month, and they factor in prices for hardware, maintenance, and other expenses.
“Even with conservative estimates in place, our customers are seeing a payback on investment in well under 12 months.”
Even the agent to supervisor ratio is seeing improvements in CaféX’s studies, as supervisors can more effectively manage agents who may be home-based or in remote locations. This means that fewer supervisors are needed, and the ones working can be held more accountable for their performance.
The Future for CaféX
Right now, CaféX are beginning to see more traction in the UK, to correspond with their incredible popularity throughout the rest of the world. With results like this in place, it’s easy to see why so many people consider CaféX and Supervisor Assist to be a viable solution for improving contact centre efficiency, and productivity.
With one simple tool, CaféX are giving businesses the chance to improve customer/brand relationships, simplify the process of monitoring home-based workers, and enhance the overall performance of contact centre agents.
