Five Tips for Keeping At Home Agents Connected
Posted by Kerry Engle on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 @ 01:30 PM
We recently hosted a webinar with inContact and Michele Rowan of Customer Contact Strategies was our guest speaker. Michele shared how she led the Hilton@Home program to success by addressing the issues dealing with people and processes as the biggest challenges to managing an at home call center agent program. She gave some great tips for keeping at home agents connected.
1) Email is ineffective. If it's an important piece of information, it needs to be in a knowledge bank so that if the agent has to refer back, it's much easier to find than in an email.
2) Let them collaborate on the design and development of their work schedule. One of the attractions for the people who work as at home agents is the flexibility with their work schedule. The more flexible and collaborative you can be on the schedule, the more likely you'll attract the right people.
3) Create a culture of reward. Offer a reward program that works for agents not on premise. For example, let the agents earn points for a behavior or performance that they can redeem on line for gift certificates.
4) Calibrate all of the touch points for the agents. The best and most efficient way to ensure that the agent is receiving streamlined information is to make sure that all touch points are calibrated and consistent for the agents. This means that the supervisor, training dept., Quality Assurance dept., and the Help Desk are all calibrated in terms of the knowledge they're imparting to agents. You can do that through scoring calls together on a monthly basis, reviewing knowledge banks together, etc.
5) Give them the opportunity to connect as a group. While they prefer less social interaction or touches from supervisors, what they do prefer, however, is to get together as a team on a monthly basis and share experiences in a group setting and learn from each other. Management can benefit by using that information as a focus session on what's working and what's not in your at home agent program.
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HOW HILTON BUILT A SUCCESSFUL AT HOME AGENT PROGRAM? Listen to the webinar recording.