Managing by Walking Around in a Virtual Contact Center
Virtual contact centers are becoming more popular as businesses discover their advantages. Much has been made of the cost savings through lower real estate costs or hiring agents in areas with lower cost of living. Furthermore, there is a great morale benefit in having agent work from home or in an office close to home. But like any new capability, virtual contact centers bring changes in the working operations of the implementing organization.
Even with today’s agent monitoring solutions, one of the best management practices remains management by walking around (MBWA). By spending some time on the calling floor interacting with agents, contact center managers and supervisors create personal connections with agents and build an atmosphere of teamwork and collegiality. Familiarity is also a key factor in building trust between the agent and management. Managers need to know that agents will properly handle the calls presented and agents need to be sure management will support them. Time spent personally interacting builds a measure of familiarity between agents and management.
Through time with agents, Managers can also gauge the tempo of the calls and get a feeling of the types of calls have been coming in through the queues. In time of crisis, managers on the calling floor can manage from the front lines, making the quick and tactical decisions. For managers and supervisors in traditional contact centers MBWA enables personal connections and at the same time allows them to keep their fingers on the pulse of the contact center.
Management by walking around works well when the agents and management are located in the same building, but what about when agents are in a different city? In a virtual environment managers do not have the opportunity to make that constant physical connection and it may seem that management by walking around is not possible when agents are across the country or across the world. This is not true. Managers can still make personal connections with agents even thought the agents are not in the same location.
Several years ago, while managing a group of senior agents, I experienced management by walking around in a virtual environment. Keep in mine this is Pre-UC. One day, an agent mentioned to me that his wife had taken a position in another city and he needed to resign. Rather than loose a valuable employee (he had been in the contact center for more than five years), the company allowed the agent to work remotely. Shortly after he started working remotely, his production started to decrease. During the mandatory performance meeting, he mentioned he missed the collegial nature of the department. So as a department we started a daily 9:00 AM conference call to discuss ongoing issues and to pass information. In addition, I called him personally every other day to “check in.” Finally, the contact center worked with the IT department to allow AOL’s AIM to be used between the agents (allowing him to virtually call over the cube wall). The agent eventually moved back but we kept the infrastructure available and used it during inclement weather. Eventually other departments (such as field service and sales) picked up on the structure.
As I said, my experience was prior to the development of unified communications. But with modern contact center solutions as well as unified communication solutions, the same principals employed with managing by walking around (informal conversation, personal communication, etc.) still apply. In the modern pantheon of contact center and communication solutions, mangers have a large variety of ways in which to touch base with at-home and remote agents from a single unified desktop application. Supervisors can view the agent’s activity and presence status and at the same time have a number of communications channels (e.g. IM and email) available at a click of a button.
But, video may be the most effective tool in the UC toolbox for enabling virtual management by walking around. We human’s are hardwired to respond favorably to a friendly face (or at least a non-threatening face). Anyone who uses a webcam to communicate with a child in college or a distant friend knows how nice it is to see each other during the conversation. Video conferencing tools within some UC packages should enable the process of teambuilding easier.
No matter whether a contact center uses UC or simply have a telephone handy, to effectively take a virtual walk through the contact center, managers need to keep three simple rules in mind:
Daily is best: A daily, informal, and personal phone call (or video call), in addition to weekly or bi-weekly, a formal one-on-one meeting, is an excellent way of creating a personal connection with remote agents. If time does not allow the manager to make a phone call (such as high volume times or on those days of endless management meetings), an occasional quick IM from a smartphone is acceptable.
Reading is not personal: Reliance on email, IM, SMS and other text base communication channels is not an effective way of creating personal connections with remote agents. Voices and faces create human-to-human connections and remote agents need to be contacted by telephone or video. Formal one-on-one meeting are also best completed via phone or video conferencing.
Team meetings are informational not personal: In the time-sensitive worlds of contact centers and depending on the time aside from team meetings, managers need to use their team meetings to pass on information or discuss team or department wide issues. Contact center manager should not try to save time by using team meetings to build personal connections.
These rules also apply when managers and directors have other managers and supervisors reporting to them. Manager are not immune to the disconnecting effects of virtual contact center, in face, it may be harder to be a remote manager than a remote agent.
Working as an at-home agent or in a remote location can be lonely. Managers in a traditional contact center have many opportunities to make a personal connection with the agents. However, when working in a virtual environment, MBWA is not as easy, but it is not impossible. Managers need to make a more concerted effort to reach out to the remote agents, making sure they are supported and feel part of the team. Tools like instant messaging, unified communication, video conferencing, and even the venerable telephone allow managers to, and the old AT&T commercial says, reach out and touch someone.