Thursday, July 05, 2012
High staff turnover is a problem for many businesses in a range of industries. It can act as a major drain on efficiency and productivity.
According to AME Info, staff retention has become a serious drag on contact centers in the Middle East. Speaking to the news source, Shaheen Haque, a contact center manager, argued that technology can help improve employee retention rates in the region and around the world.
Work at home advantages
One of the principle ways in which organizations can leverage contact center technology to improve staff retention is by making customer support positions more appealing to people. For example, many people would rather work from their homes than in an office, if given the opportunity.
As Haque noted, voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and real time monitoring technology can allow an individual to serve as an at-home agent. Essentially, all of the equipment and hardware that was traditionally required to create a contact center can now be utilized remotely, without a significant degradation of service. The flexibility offered by the option of working at home can make agents more satisfied with their positions.
According to Call Centre Helper, these factors make at-home agents an increasingly common fixture of contact centers. The news source goes so far as to suggest that this arrangement may soon become standard operating procedure for the industry.
Database benefits
Another way that technology can improve contact center agent retention, according to Haque, is via knowledge databases. He noted that employees generally dislike being forced to handle situations for which they have not been prepared. Such an arrangement will cause the employee to feel stressed and less satisfied with his or her position.
With a thorough, easily accessible knowledge database, however, support agents will have a much shorter learning curve. Additionally, by making customer information available, interactions will become less demanding.
