An Agent Portal can be a tremendous supervisor asset

CSI's workforce optimization solution offers a differentiating feature suite called the Agent Portal.

The Virtual Observer Agent Portal allows an agent to access their own recordings and evaluations at the tip of their fingers.  The feature's benefits are not exclusive to the Agent, however, as utilizing the portal in a contact center environment is also very beneficial to the supervisors as well. 

Typically, supervisors will find that they spend lengthy periods of time meeting with agents to review calls and performance.

Agent Portal helps make this task much easier, as it allows the supervisor to post an agent review that will automatically be sent to the portal.

Read the full blog post to find out why supervisors are enjoying the benefits of our Agent Portal.

Workforce optimization features and training can dramatically optimize and improve everyday business processes

Many customers end up incorporating process changes once they experience Virtual Observer's flexibility and full capabilities through our onsite training.

One recent example is the ability to send evaluations, calls, or recorded chats back to the agent via our Agent Portal and E-Learning feature set.

When customers learn this kind of automated coaching is available, they often incorporate it into their actual everyday processes, reducing a training cycle time from what used to be 3 days on average, to mere hours.

Another interesting process changes had a client utilizing the system's Agent Types and Agent IDs fields for KPI reporting.

They were able to create these Types and IDs to match their financial cost centers and then they ran performance reports by Agent Type in order to view KPIs into their reports by cost center.

This scenario shows the depth of our reporting as well as the ability to slice and dice the data in many different ways and also shows how users can customize the use of the Agent descriptive fields for many possible applications.

Of course, every user can customize their Virtual Observer dashboard layouts (see a sample screenshot above) in order to bring their important metrics to life.

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• Are your customer initiatives also boosted by the "Voice of the Agent"?

Are your customer initiatives also boosted by the "Voice of the Agent"?

You've invested in a sweet new technology platform which records all of your calls.

Great start. Now what are you doing with them?

Many contact centers have deployed quality monitoring tools for evaluating and scoring calls. Sometimes this leads to live coaching of the agents and other times it leads to scheduled training based on topics where the agents did not fare too well.

Other contact centers have invested in full workforce optimization suites (typically consisting of the aforementioned call recording and quality monitoring, plus workforce management, speech analytics and surveying). These are great and extremely effective, except they lack the "Voice of the Agent".

Empowering your agents with the ability to use a workforce optimization system will do wonders for their self-improvement and personal development. There are several key areas where they can contribute to the quality monitoring process and calibrate with your "Voice of the Customer" (VoC) intiatives:

* Allow your agents to play back their own calls and view their recorded screens"
* Share evaluations with them and let them respond, dispute or accept their scores
* Provide them with targeted e-learning material based on where their scores show they need improvement
* Allow them to collaborate with approved peers, supervisors, groups, etc.
* Enable shift trading, bidding, etc. with integrated Workforce Management technology

Agents should buy into the whole quality-monitoring process and by giving them access to a WFO toolset, they are less likely to take on a "Big Brother" view of your technology investments and more apt to take ownership of their own developments.

Other WFO features such as CSI's "VO Live" exist to provide management with the ability to zero in on agent behaviors which might be inefficient, counter-productive or where supervisors can intercede in real time to help an agent solve a customer issue. Agents who are introduced into the WFO process in an enthusiastic manner will also buy into the concept of pushing themselves even harder to be the best they can possibly be.

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Power to the people: Agent Portal for Virtual Observer 4.0

Placing the quality monitoring process directly in the hands of your agents, essentially providing them with their own accountability, exposure of peer performance, and the ability for them to reach out for help when neccessary, can benefit the overall performance of your contact center in a way a simple, flawed negative scores will never do.

Check out the news release or the Agent Portal webpage itself for more on this exciting new workforce optimization feature.

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Flatten Your Global Cost of Ownership for Call Monitoring

Back in 2011, we launched the latest version of the Virtual Observer (VO) quality optimization solution, ushering in a new web interface along with a fresh and redesigned layout for the application. As the system has seen fast adoption within our customer base, some of the side benefits have begun to emerge.

VO has always offered businesses the lowest cost of ownership in our space, a crowded space (over 30 competitors at last count!), mainly attributable to agile development, minimized overhead costs, fair pricing and managed expenses.

We've been able to scale VO to enterprises across multiple locations, globally, with hybrid voice system integration and mixed business needs.

The new version completely flattens the global cost of ownership for customers in a variety of ways, making it far more affordable to scale recording to the far reaches of your enterprise.

- VO is now accessible anywhere in the world with a simple web browser. Remote workers or customers can now be authorized, with proper permissions, to play back or score calls without having to install any software.

- Virtualized environments: in most environments, customers can spin up a virtual machine as opposed to having to buy hardware or audio boards. This not only will reduce your carbon footprint but also your bottom-line IT expenses.

- The emergence of active recording methods utilizing API (application programming interface) integration directly within the phone system (Avaya's DMCC integration, Cisco active recording, Nortel DMS, Mitel, ShoreTel, etc.) also removes the need for audio boards.

- Reduced training time is created by the ease of use and familiarity of the browser. Training is now performed more often than not via remote teleconference/webinar methods, reducing travel expenses and out-of-the-office time for your key employees.

- Virtual Observer customers enjoy painless upgrade paths to our latest version of product at zero software dollars. They pay only a nominal professional services fee to have the new system installed. This is in stark contrast to the expensive forced upgrade path our industry is used to.

- Agent development and training can now be accelerated with the introduction of VO's Agent Portal features, which brings the agent into the quality optimization process and actually humanizes the automated elements of quality monitoring.

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