Call center appraisal is pivotal in ensuring that quality performance is meted out by employees. Thus, this should be prioritized by the management team behind every call center.
A call center, or a contact center, is generally defined as a centralized office where hundreds of agents are based to receive and transmit a large volume of telephone calls. Countless major companies hire the services of these call centers to be able to interact with their customers easily. Depending on the nature of the services they provide, these centers may be equipped to take incoming calls or to launch several outgoing calls. For call center managers, call center appraisal and call center performance management, as well as timely updates on recent call center technologies, are some of their most urgent concerns. In particular, call center technology systems are important, as they can make even a small company with only a few agents become as powerful and as efficient as those contact centers that employ hundreds of agents.
For companies, using a call center system provides three major benefits namely, improved customer service, improved management, and efficiency and cost reduction. Hiring an efficient call center will almost always have an immediate effect on customer satisfaction. After all, the customers’ perception of a particular company would be positive, especially when they no longer have to wait several minutes to be able to speak with a company representative. Moreover, having such a system will no longer limit customer feedback to just telephone calls. Today, various call centers have the technology to address customer concerns relayed through email or chat.
A call center system likewise will result to improved management, as it will allow managers to focus on other operational aspects without having to neglect customer service. Lastly, it will reduce operational costs, as the company would no longer have to purchase expensive call center hardware and software as well as hire agents to take and receive calls.
Given all these benefits, what is crucial for companies is to ensure that the performance of the call center they have hired is at par with their standards. This can only be achieved through an efficient appraisal of call center and agent performance.
In many contact centers, the pay-for-performance program is implemented to encourage improved performance of agents. Most of the time, the performance review is based on call quality and given an appropriate rating that falls in different levels with a progressive rate of pay associated with each level. Generally, call center salary increases are based on the guidelines that are set by the Human Resources Department of the company. A fact-based scorecard is usually designed to make it easier to compare actual performance with the established standards. Agent productivity scores, sales metrics, customer satisfaction survey scores, quality scores and work habits are taken into consideration in the appraisal.
An important part of call center appraisal is effective planning. This involves setting performance goals and expectations for agents so that they will know their roles in the achievement of call center objectives. Agent involvement in the planning stage is crucial, as it will help the agents understand the goals of the company and the reason why these have to be achieved.
Tags: call center, call center appraisal