Call centers are perhaps the world’s hardest workplace, and call center management problems are most common as compare to other businesses.  There may be a couple of operators and call center managers that may term a horrendous experience of either working or manage a contact center. Dealing with puzzled clients, strict work routines, penny-squeezing administration and customers super high expectations don’t make it simpler for them. It can be extremely unpleasant to work in a call center without solving these issues.

Given what a vital part contact centers play in the achievement of goals of companies, it’s difficult to trust that they’re not the most cared for part of an organization. But then, call focuses to have innumerable issues, operational and some of the uncommon types. Here we will discuss the most widely recognized contact center challenges 2018 and how to fix them:

Employee Turnover Rate

Contact center biggest challenges involve high employee turnover rates. Moreover, if you don’t want to compromise on delivering the satisfactory services to clients, keeping your agents with you is a smart strategy.

According to a recent Linkedin report, low wages and low chances of growth is the bigger reason for the high staff turnover rate in the call center industry!

Another obvious reason behind this dreadful issue is, no chances for growth in this industry as compared to other jobs.

How to reduce down agent’s attrition rates in 2018?

• Improve the culture. Make efforts to make environmentally friendly and competitive and appreciable.
• Hire smarter by making a top-notch team for it. Only keep the certain individuals for this specific job.
• Provide your call center agents with the tools they need to work effortlessly. Example include predictive dialers, clients recording database, and IVR system!
• Set approachable and real-time goals. Don’t forget to track them!

Call Center Agents Absenteeism

Customer problem-solving process slows down if there are less number of agents available in the contact center at any time. According to call center case study, the global absenteeism rate of agents in the contact centers is about 11%. Although, it is may not seem very high, for a small contact center for a seat of 10 persons, an average of a single person missing. And for bigger organizations, even more, are missing on a day is dreadful!

There are different reasons behind the issue, including, health issues of the representatives, loss of job interest, low salary and no rewards and more!

How to reduce call center agents absenteeism rate in 2018?

• Give your agents chance to work outside their comfort zone. Rotation to different seats of the same kind is even a smart move!
• Tracking the call metrics regularly or weekly. Do letting your agents know about their performance.
• Increasing the 100% attendance bonuses and introducing the rewards!
• Improving the interest of agents in the job by announcing trips and other indoor activities!

Call Center Agents Engagement

Keeping in mind the end goal to be fruitful in a call center operators must be talented at settling both the standard issues and in addition finding practical answers for more unpredictable issues. Either the health effects of working in a call center or a stressful job may result in low motivation and demoralized agents in contact centers. Let’s be honest. For call center managers, low agents engagement is big trouble.

The top reasons behind low level of agents engagement level are sitting in cubicles for hours, a high number of unanswered calls, low wages, no room for growth or simply lack of interest in the job.

How to improve call center representatives engagement rate?

• Sitting for an hour is the biggest factor of loss of interest in this type of job. Introduce small breaks.
• Introduce cloud-based call center software to that there is a high number of answered calls. This keeps the agents highly motivated!
• A competitive salary is another biggest factor to keep the agent’s interest in the job. Add rewards and bonuses schemes.

High Customer Expectations

Call center manager challenges 2018 include a high level of customers’ expectations. Nowadays, there are a lot of technologies available to contact centers and on the other hand, a lot of choices is available to consumers. Therefore they expect, immediate solutions for their inquiries, no longer waiting, fast customer support criteria and call feedback from them. Inability to respond in the manner as your clients, expected can be dreadful for any type of organization.

The top reason behind high customer demands is a lot of choices available, numerous communication channels available and others.

How to fulfill your consumers’ hopes?

• Identify the problem, and then outlining a possible and fast solution for the clients.
• Be available on all the communication channels like web chat, telephone, and social media.
• Identify the services and customer support your competitors are providing and then prepare for it!
• Ask for feedback from your customers.

Workforce Optimization

Keeping a balance in the work environment is highly smart move to progress in this decade. With a high number of choices available for technology and the high customers’ demands, both understaffing and overstaffing is trouble. System issues in a call center and first-call resolution are important to call center measurement metrics, however, they are simply improving with workforce optimization.

Lack of collaboration in the workforce, integration in technology can simply result in compromising over the progress level.

How to improve workforce optimization?

• You need to check your contact center needs and requirements and then outlining the staff requires.
• Job rotation is helpful and improves the interest level of call center agents.
• It keeps the contact center management costs to the minimum level!

Insufficient Technology

Self-service is the single most important element to improve the productivity level of the inbound/ outbound call centers. With the availability of cloud-based technology, agents and customers both can remain happy and in peace.

How to improve call center technology?

• Choose the right IVR system, as customers are able to make their own way.
• Use technology program which provides the customer database timely!
• Predictive dialers can automate the calling procedure!

Conclusion

Independent of the client’s area, contact centers adopt a vital part of conveying quality customer services. Contact centers have their own one of kind objectives that must be met however toward the day’s end everything comes down to giving quality support to the clients. Industry reviews have shown that if the call center management hitches are reduced down to least level, there are high chances for call center progression and victory!