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Cloud contact centres win the race to migrate

Earlier this year, many businesses, including contact centres, moved their staff home in a matter of weeks. Without Covid 19, most organizations would have taken years to achieve this. By the 22nd April 2020, “Call Centre Helper Magazine” reported that 73% of UK contact centres had more than 75% of their staff working from home.

From the technical perspective, businesses on the Cloud made the move relatively easily. Anyone using Cloud solutions is effectively a “remote worker”, since Cloud systems, such as Amazon Connect and associated applications such as agent desktops for Amazon Connect, are installed on hardware in a Cloud provider’s data centre, not on the company’s premises.

Why “on-prem” solutions were not so fast

Challenges for on premises technology included getting everyone working from home through a VPN. Some home broadband providers didn’t support VPNs. Some companies had to buy many extra VPN licences. Some on premises telephony platforms could not route calls and CRM data to agents’ homes easily.

Cloud contact centres – the benefits

Cloud may be the best way to address these issues in the future. Many regard a “second wave” as inevitable.

Staff at home can log on to a cloud contact centre just as they log in at work. The interfaces and the features are exactly the same. Cloud solutions usually come with detailed audit logs tracking how agents use the systems and work with sensitive data.

As volumes grow and shrink throughout the day, agents can be added or removed without any fear of running out of seats, or office space, or of seats and equipment standing idle but costing money during slack periods. Cloud contact centre providers usually charge users by minutes used, so optimizing costs.

Francis Dinha, the CEO and Co-Founder of Open VPN Inc, recently described Cloud in Forbes Magazine as: “a powerful game-changer for companies of all sizes; it made growth and scaling far more accessible, not to mention remote access.”

If your organization has an on-premises solution, perhaps it is time to look into Cloud, you might see there is a silver lining after all.

About OMNINGAGE:

OMNINGAGE Connect is a Cloud based agent desktop for Amazon Connect delivering high quality voice. Its user friendly, data-rich UI promotes agent engagement with its dashboards for Amazon Connect and boosts productivity for those working in the office or at home.

Every second counts – especially on cloud contact centres

The cost of a call is directly related to how long agents spend handling it. For cloud based contact centres such as Amazon Connect, every second counts and every second is charged for. Average Handling Time (AHT) is the KPI that contact centre managers watch constantly.

The cost of a poor UI

A poorly designed user interface (UI) can slow your agents down, so pushing up AHT and the cost of each call.

Amy Harvey, the Principle Software Engineer with IDD Inc, writing in “Usability Geek”, said: “A great UI is so seamless that we don’t even think about it – we just use it, get what we need, and move on.”

Here are 3 key factors to look for in a well-designed UI

It is built around the agent workflow:

Using interfaces such as an agent desktop for Amazon Connect, your agent will pick up a call and speak to the customer. Maybe she will put him on hold or even transfer him. If not, she will finish the call and wait for him to hang up before entering a wrap up code, then make herself ready for the next call.

This sequence should be reflected in the agent’s controls. The right controls should appear at the right time, saving her vital seconds hunting for them because they are too small or placed in an odd corner.

Familiarity breeds speed:

Jakob’s Law is one of the UX designers’ “Ten Commandments”. It states that what the user is doing should “be familiar”. Interfaces should resemble processes familiar to users, so they can learn how to use it faster.

Most UIs are designed to be read from left to right like a page of text. Many websites have their menus on the left, and key action buttons running across the top. The logout button is on the extreme right. It’s the final action the user will take.

Not too many decisions at once:

Have you ever looked at a TV remote and wondered why they have so many buttons?

Hick Hyman’s Law states too many choices dramatically increase a user’s decision time.

When an agent comes to a decision point, they should have only two or three options, so that the choice is clear.

Being beautiful like the Mona Lisa is not enough for your UI, it needs to be something your agents can use quickly, otherwise your AHT will wipe the smile off of your face.

About OMNINGAGE:

OMNINGAGE provides a modern and cloud-based agent desktop for amazon connect platform which delivers high-quality voice via the user’s web browser. Its user friendly, data-rich interface promotes agent engagement, reduces AHT and boosts productivity for those working in the office or at home.

Staff turnover and absenteeism

A Contact Babel report stated that average levels of staff turnover in the US were 29%. Meanwhile, Carolyn Blunt of Amber Real Results consultancy mentioned that average absenteeism in the UK was 11%.

Imagine a 200-seat contact centre. 58 agents will leave each year, while 22 agents will be on the payroll but not at their desks.

Where staff turnover and absenteeism are low, engagement is invariably high.

A McKinsey survey stated that only 2% of respondents left contact centre jobs because of technology.

While it may not drive staff turnover, technology can still be a constant irritant and source of stress.

How can we improve agent engagement with technology?

Make life easy

Contact centre work is very repetitive. Agents perform the same tasks 50 to 100 times a day while keeping multiple applications open, such as their agent desktop on Amazon Connect. Agents work with these solutions which operate on different software platforms and connect to different databases while watching their Average Handling Time. This can be very frustrating and stressful.

Advanced call routing through platforms such as Amazon Connect sends the right calls to the right agents. They will have the experience and expertise to handle their customers’ requests.

Modern technology, especially cloud contact centres such as Amazon Connect, brings multiple applications, such as the telephony platform and the CRM system, into one interface. The agent will feel like she is playing a piano with both hands instead of keeping 10 plates spinning in the air.

User Interface (UI) design has matured with the software industry. Modern UIs are easier for agents to learn and master, so reducing training time and increasing agent satisfaction.

Make life fun

Gamification is a technique where aspects of game playing, such as awarding scores, facilitating competition etc. are applied to non-gaming contexts, such as “work”.

The contact centre industry is driven by statistics. Statistics are used to measure every aspect of agents’ behaviour. They are often published for all staff on see on Wallboards for Amazon Connect. It’s not a major conceptual leap to turn the statistics you want to see more of into the “score” of a game.

Computer gaming has boomed in the past 20 years because players get instant feedback on what they do, instant recognition of their success and the chance to achieve mastery.

These principles can be applied to a contact centre even without a gamification solution.

Agents can use their dashboards to track their own performance. They can be given incentives based on productivity and quality KPIs to compete with themselves or their colleagues. Gamification can be applied to training. Knowledge tests can be turned into competitive team-based quizzes.

If technology, such as agent desktops or dashboards for Amazon Connect can be used to make the employee experience less stressful and more rewarding, this will help to give staff more of a reason to stay than to leave.

About OMNINGAGE:

OMNINGAGE provides a modern and cloud-based agent desktop for amazon connect platform which delivers high-quality voice via the user’s web browser. Its user friendly, data-rich interface promotes agent engagement, reduces AHT and boosts productivity for those working in the office or at home.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and contact centers go together like fish and chips.

When contact center platforms were developed, agents’ performance started being measured by technology, such as reporting for Amazon Connect, that generates a blizzard of statistics.

With this KPI data, contact center managers can track almost every aspect of an agent’s working life to the second.

A brief history of KPIs

In fact, KPIs are nothing new.

The first recorded KPIs were devised by the Emperors of the Chinese Wei Dynasty in approx. AD 250. They would measure the “performance” of various family members who were competing for their attention and favors.

The father of gamification

Robert Owen, a 19th century pioneer of industrialism, devised his own rudimentary KPI. Painted wooden cubes were hung over each worker in the mill to display how well he was performing. Other workers, looked at them and were motivated to compete and spin more cotton, and so change the color of their cubes. You might say that Robert Owen was also the father of gamification.

As work became industrialized, psychologists, HR managers and operations research consultants developed more ways to measure employee performance.

In the 1980s, when Mrs. Thatcher was PM, the public sector adopted KPIs in great depth to measure the performance of organizations which were never intended to make money. Previously, their performance had been considered largely immeasurable.

The impact of IT

The impact of Information Technology did for the office what the assembly line did for manufacturing. Many office tasks were redefined as repeatable processes. ERP systems used by large companies could generate massive amounts of data, giving managers in offices the kind of insights that had only been available in manufacturing.

The contact center industry adopted this data driven approach from the very beginning. This is why no contact center application is complete without its own reporting module. This is why reporting for Amazon Connect is so essential.

Theoretical perspectives

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. This has long been the mantra of the contact center profession, but are we necessarily measuring the right things? Here are 2 approaches to categorizing KPIs.

The value chain approach

Michael Porter, the industrial economist, applied the concept of the assembly line to any business process, where raw materials and parts went in one end and finished products left the other end.

Any activity that directly contributed to products being manufactured and sold was seen as a part of the value chain. Any activity that was not directly related was considered to be a “support activity”.

KPIs can be seen as measuring parts of a value chain. They can be classified under the following headings:

Inputs – Process – Outputs – Outcomes

Inputs: These are the financial and non-financial metrics that cover what happens before the call starts. This can include recruitment and training metrics or the running costs of facilities. Many of Porter’s “support costs” would be seen in this category.

Process: (Also known as Activities or Operations): These are the metrics that measure what is happening from the moment the caller is connected to the IVR to the moment the agent finishes entering wrap-up data and puts himself back into “ready” state. A lot of these numbers are to be found on systems providing reporting for Amazon Connect.

About OMNINGAGE:

OMNINGAGE provides a modern and cloud-based agent desktop platform which delivers high-quality voice via the user’s web browser. Its user friendly, data-rich interface promotes agent engagement, reduces AHT and boosts productivity for those working in the office or at home.

Supervisor Connect

Supervisor Desktop for Amazon Connect

OMNINGAGE Supervisor Connect for Amazon Connect

OMNINGAGE Supervisor Connect is a next-generation cloud desktop for Amazon Contact Centre.

·         Modern Design and intuitive UX / UI

·         Analytics-based Dashboards and KPIs view

·         Inbound and Outbound calls

·         Phonebook

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·         No license to buy or maintain => pay as you consume.

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Agent Connect

Agent Desktop for Amazon Connect

Looking for a modern and intuitive desktop for Amazon connect? Meet OMNINGAGE Agent Connect for Amazon Connect!

OMNINGAGE Agent Connect is a next-generation cloud desktop for Amazon Contact Centre.

·         Modern Design and intuitive UX / UI

·         Analytics-based Dashboards and KPIs view

·         Inbound and Outbound call routing

·         CTI Controls

·         Phonebook

·         Customer Journey Visualizer

·         Customer Interaction History

·         Wrapup Application

·         CRM integration

·         WFO Integration

Boost Agent productivity and engagement with OMNINGAGE connect.

·         No license to buy or maintain => pay as you consume.

·         Serverless Architecture => No Hardware or compute resources needed

·         Free Trial => Try Supervisor Connect for free for 30 days.