Supervisor Capabilities | Call Center Telephone System

Supervisor Agent Features

Supervisors may have the option of serving as agents. Supervisor stations may be able to support all agent features in addition to supervisory features from one telephone.

Real Time Displays

Supervisors are responsible for ensuring high agent productivity without sacrificing quality service. The supervisor's most important tool for accomplishing this task is the set of real-time screen-based displays of agent and group performance provided. To be most effective, these displays may be color coded and presented in either tabular or graphic formats as a user selected option. Displays may show real-time status as well as historical information.

Groupings

Any one supervisor may typically be responsible for 10–15 agents, even though the entire group serving a particular function may be much larger. Supervisors may be able to identify agent information for their specific agents without scrolling through the entire group display. Similarly, supervisors may be able to display a subset of agents from several different groups, if necessary (for example, in evaluating trainees throughout the Call Center). This super group/ sub group capability is very important in larger Call Centers.

Reports

In addition to real time information used for daily supervisory functions, historical reports are necessary. These identify trends and are vital to planning.

Reports may include information about individual agent and group performance, trunk usage, transaction codes, emergency recording and alerts. In addition to standard reports, systems may permit supervisors or administrators to develop custom reports, unique to their own Call Center requirements. Raw data is stored for some management-defined period of time, and is available for additional reports for a period of at least a week, up to one or more years.

Monitoring

Displays and reports tell only part of the story of agent performance. To really evaluate agent performance and to assess the quality of service provided, supervisors must be able to listen to agents in actual telephone conversation with callers. This has traditionally been accompanied by a supervisor walking to the agent's desk and listening to the call by plugging a second headset into the station set. This approach has become an accepted part of Call Center culture for many organizations. However, the same result can be achieved with silent and split/silent monitor.

Silent monitor allows the supervisor to listen, undetected, to both the agent and the caller. If necessary, the supervisor may join the call as an active participant at any time. Split/silent monitor allows the supervisor to listen, undetected to both the agent and caller, but if necessary, the supervisor may prompt the agent and remain undetected by the caller. This is particularly useful in training situations, or where threatening or harassing calls are anticipated. Typically silent monitor is invoked on demand, or it may be timed, or it may rotate through the group as calls are terminated.

Forced Answer

When supervisors notice that the number of calls in queue is rising, they may wish to artificially improve the average time to answer (decrease caller time waiting in queue) by forcing agents to answer new calls as soon as prior calls are terminated. This is done by forcing a group-wide override of the wrap/work features.

Move

In the past, supervisors watched Call Center traffic, then physically moved agents to the groups that were most active. Today, it is no longer necessary to move the agent to the call. Sophisticated, intelligent systems now bring the calls to the agents. Nevertheless, Call Center supervisors want to retain the option of moving agents between groups should the need arise. Thus, systems offer an agent Move command that allows agents to be moved even while busy on an incoming/ outbound call. At the end of the call, that call's statistics apply to the original group. Then the agent should get his or her next call from the new group.

Messaging

When supervisors walked around the Call Center to monitor agent activity, they could easily stop and speak to any agent at any time. Now that Call Center systems have eliminated the need to actually go to the agent's work station, supervisors must find a new way to "talk" with their agents: hence, supervisor-to-agent messaging. Supervisors can send text messages to agent telephone displays. These messages may be predefined: "Good job!" or "Waiting time down 15 minutes" or may be created as needed. Alternatively, the supervisor may be authorized to send messages using a wall mounted display unit. Unlike display phone messaging, the wall-mounted display message is visible to everyone in the viewing area.