OUR BLOG

May 14, 2013 @ 8:09 AM

What Makes A Great CSR?

By Gregory J. Robb, Research Assistant, Applied Business Technologies, LLC.

It seems a laughably simple question: what makes call center customer service representatives (CSRs) great? Training, flexibility, skill and ambition. Surely. The more relevant consideration is how to achieve these CSR objectives in tighter fiscal frameworks while enhancing contact center productivity. In the modern contact center, great call center agents drive both productivity and profit as well as Quality Assurance.

 

Today’s contact center agents receive enhanced training in order to boost customer service levels and call center profit. Customer service representatives engage the demands of consumers all over the world and in ever-expanding ways, such as chat, instant messaging an on-screen. Clients are increasingly contacting CSRs via mobile devices. Great call center agents must assimilate reams of Information Age technology at a break-neck pace in order to answer the “voice of the customer.” Ironically, the cost of enhanced training is often exceeded by the rewards of customer loyalty andcontact center productivity.

 

The Role of Call Center Technology

 

Contact center technology poses a continuous challenge to customer service representatives (CSRs). Call center agents are under pressure to improve on key performance indicators (KPIs), such as first-call resolution (FCR), average handling times (AHT) and average speed of answer (ASA). Yet, the same contact center agents must manage so much more information coming into the call center in so many new ways. Thus, great CSRs must assimilate advances in contact center technology in order to deliver premium customer service, productivity and profit.

 

The Technological Toolkit

 

Call center technology is driven by amazing software advances which allow customer service representatives(CSRs) to process client inquiries at the speed of now.

 

While speaking directly to customers, supervisors can coach contact center agents using Screen Recording, a visual CSR management tool. Screen Recording empowers coaches to monitor call center agents in real time. Therefore, Screen Recording is a window into the very CSR behaviors that lead to enhanced customer satisfaction as well as contact center productivity and profit. The great CSR is able to be coached by experience.

 

The best customer service representatives(CSRs) are supported by Quality Assurance software tools for performance enhancement. Put simply, Quality Assurance telephony platforms – such as that available at Applied Business Technologies – provide the key words and phrases which characterize successful CSR-client interactions. Contact center managers and agents look to automated Quality Assurance tools for the business intelligence (BI) of greatest influence on positive key performance indicators (KPIs). Obviously, call center agents(CCA: 5) develop improved KPIs with fluency in Quality Assurance tools.

 

The Call Recording Era

 

Call Recording is a digital linchpin in modern call center customer service. Not only does it hold all digital and voice data in volumes unimaginable in bygone times, but Call Recording addresses customers’ use of expanded technologies. Applied Business Technologies’ Call Recording software works with virtually any contact center telephony platform. Call Recording tools, such as Speech Analytics, assures CSR Quality Assurance and regulatory compliance all at once.

Comments are closed.