Agents that are truly multi-skilled are a gift to any contact centre as they offer the flexibility of being allocated to departments depending on incoming contact volumes. However, being able to accurately predict where they will be needed when is essential to making the most of them.
Here is how.
Identify what skills are needed when
Allocating human resources is essential to being productive, but especially so when it comes to customer service. An understaffed area will lead to longer waiting time and dissatisfaction.
Nowadays, workforce management software offer insightful information about call volumes and patterns. They will collect data to analyse which communication channels are being used and for how long, what problems customers are using them for and thirdly what time of the day they are calling.
With this information, it will be very clear which skills are needed when and where.
Use a single skills database
Your agents may be multi skilled, but they should all be part of a single database. Having multiple database will only fracture information and make it impossible to utilise them the most efficient way. Needless to say that your systems need to be able to record and categorise the skills of each individual.
Don’t create too many skill groups
It is important to be specific about the skills your agents possess to manage their time efficiently. However, don’t fall into the trap of creating too many category skills. This would unintentionally create issues when forecasting staff demand as your manager of software would have smaller pools to choose from.
However, if you end with a reasonable number of skill sets but few agents in each, it can be indicative that you need to invest in some training to increase your agents’versatility. Or maybe you need to recruit.
Use an outbound dialler
Using a predictive dialler that can combine inbound and outbound calls will maximise the use of your multi-skills agents. You can configurate it to prioritise either type of calls depending on what you want these agents to do. The calls will automatically be flagged up and directed to them when their skills are required and they will have the option to reschedule the call if they can’t take it.
Identifying multi-skills agents can also have other benefits, such as revealed skill gaps in your contact centre so get started!
