6 Proven Strategies to Enhance Contact Center Productivity

Imagine a contact center where customer satisfaction isn’t just a goal but a daily reality. Agents consistently exceed expectations, while routine inquiries are swiftly and efficiently resolved long before a live agent steps in. The organization sees you as a significant value-add rather than a costly overhead.

Sounds ideal, right?

This level of efficiency and outcome – where high-performing agents, seamless operations and soaring CSAT coexist – is the hallmark of a truly productive and valued contact center.

So, how do you transform your contact center into a productivity powerhouse? It comes down to not just choosing technologies because they are trending in the media (*cough* looking at you, ChatGPT…), but also making sure that they are practical and that they help you meet your business goals.

6 Groundbreaking Strategies from Experts to Elevate Your Contact Center Productivity

When it comes to technology, companies are moving beyond pilot projects to scale their use of AI within customer service, aiming to enhance both the customer experience and overall productivity. However, technology alone won’t deliver the expected productivity gains unless the people using these tools and the processes supporting them are optimized.

With that in mind, let’s look at six groundbreaking strategies to improve contact center productivity from industry experts:

1. Invest in the right set of technological integrations
2. Harness the power of data and analytics
3. Empower agents with technological assistance
4. Improve agent morale by taking an empathetic approach
5. Automate Outbound Communications
6. Rethink Agent Training and Development

Let’s explore each in detail.

1. Invest in the Right Technology, and Do it Right

One of the biggest drivers of productivity in a contact center is not just the right technology, but how effectively you leverage it. This focus on technology is reflected in a recent Gartner report ^[1], which highlights that customer service leaders are reimagining self-service, piloting generative AI for employees, and exploring advancements in customer journey analytics (CJA).

But why are these technologies so critical, and what other solutions can deliver significant productivity gains? Here are some of the applications for AI that are getting CX leaders excited right now:

• AI-Powered Virtual Agents: Virtual agents ^[2], like those from Enghouse Interactive, handle customer queries independently across voice, email, and chat channels. They’re capable of managing complex queries by pulling information from knowledge bases, reducing the need for live agents while functioning across all channels. They can be scheduled and evaluated for performance, just like their human counterparts.
• Real-Time Chat Translation: AI-powered real-time chat translation eliminates the need for multilingual agents by enabling real-time communication in customers’ preferred languages. This optimizes staffing, reduces dependence on language-specific resources, and boosts efficiency.
• AI-Enabled Summarization: AI summarizes lengthy conversations into concise, actionable summaries, saving agents time when reviewing past interactions and completing post-call tasks. This reduces manual documentation, speeds up resolution, and frees agents for more fulfilling tasks.
• Video Integration: Video calling allows customers to visually demonstrate their issues, leading to quicker resolutions and fewer call transfers. This enhances first-contact resolution and overall efficiency. And in industries like eCommerce, video can be used to show or demonstrate products to a customer, helping accelerate buying decisions.
• Intelligent Interactive Voice Response (IVR): Advanced IVR systems use natural language processing to understand customer queries in real-time, connecting callers to the right agent when necessary. This streamlines customer interactions, reduces wait times, and improves agent effectiveness.

Enghouse CCaaS integrates all these technological solutions into a single platform that is customizable to your needs.

2. Harness The Power of Data and Analytics

Unsurprisingly, Deloitte reports ^[3] that improving efficiency is a top priority for contact center leaders. By leveraging the absolute treasure trove of data generated from their customer engagements, contact centers can extract actionable insights to enhance efficiency and boost overall productivity.

Here’s how data-driven insights can help boost productivity:

• Unlock Agents’ Areas for Improvement: Traditional agent evaluations cover only a sample of interactions, with consequently random results. AI-driven tools like Automated Agent Evaluation analyze 100% of conversations in real-time, offering unbiased, comprehensive insights and – because of the volumes – reliably identifying overall engagement trends. This helps highlight specific areas for improvement, enabling targeted coaching that truly hits the spot.
• Uncover Opportunities to Improve CX by Hearing the Voice of Customer: Businesses collect thousands of customer interactions daily across channels like voice, email, chat, social media, SMS and more. This vast dataset holds immense potential for improving customer experience (CX), but traditionally, analyzing such volumes was difficult, leaving key insights untapped. AI now enables organizations to process this data and uncover the “why” behind metrics like CSAT and NPS. These AI-driven Voice of the Customer (VoC) ^[4] insights enable an accurate view of emerging trends, allowing businesses to address issues that will boost customer loyalty and reduce churn, and can maximize upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Optimize Staffing with Accurate Forecasting: Historical data can be used to predict staffing needs more accurately. Tools like Enghouse Interactive’s Workforce Management (WFM) can forecast resource demands down to the hour, not just based on historical data, but also taking into account campaigns, market shifts, seasonal holidays and more, ensuring contact centers maintain optimal staffing levels. As Enghouse Interactive’s Dane Smith observes:
  

  By optimizing scheduling and resource allocation, WFM solutions help maintain high service levels, reduce agent burnout, and enhance overall customer experience during peak periods.

  Dane Smith Global L&D Manager
  Enghouse Interactive

  

While technology forms the backbone of a productive contact center, it can only deliver results when agents are equipped to maximize its potential. Next, let’s explore how empowering your agents can further enhance productivity.

3. Empower Agents with Technological Assistance

Empowered agents are at the heart of every high-performing contact center. With the right tools, agents can deliver better service and stay engaged. Here’s how:

• Implement a Knowledge Management Service: A well-managed KMS equips agents with instant access to accurate, relevant, consistent information, enabling them to resolve customer issues quickly.
• Integrate Your Contact Center Solutions with CRMs and Unified Communications Software: Integration with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software offers real-time access to customer data, allowing agents to provide faster, more personalized support. With integration to collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, agents can interact with supervisors and non-agent staff, such as subject matter experts and back-end teams (both onsite and remote), to resolve customer queries more quickly.
• Facilitate Shift Bidding: Shift bidding offers agents the flexibility to choose their preferred shifts, boosting job satisfaction. With advanced workforce management solutions, contact center managers can optimize scheduling, ensuring full coverage during peak times. This approach helps maintain service-level agreements and positively impacts agent and contact center productivity.
• Allow Remote Work Flexibility: Remote work options, supported by most contact center solutions, increase agent morale and retention while ensuring efficiency from anywhere. This flexibility reduces absenteeism and boosts productivity without compromising service standards.
• Provide Real-Time Response Assistance: Leverage AI and Knowledge Service to deliver real-time suggestions to agents during live chats. Agents can either edit or use these suggestions directly, enabling quicker query resolution, saving valuable time, and driving overall productivity

4. Improve Agent Morale by Taking an Empathetic Approach

Empowering your agents goes beyond just providing them with the right tools; it’s about creating an environment that values their contributions, nurtures their growth, and motivates them to excel. As Dane Smith notes:

Acknowledging the significant pressure agents experience during peak seasons and cultivating an environment where they can express their concerns without fear encourages mental health awareness and support. Promoting agent well-being can greatly enhance their performance during high-call volume periods and help prevent burnout.

Dane Smith Global L&D Manager
Enghouse Interactive

Voice of Employee (VOE) Programs, agent autonomy, rewards and recognition go a long way in empowering agents. By embracing these empowerment strategies, organizations can cultivate a workforce primed for excellence.

Next, let’s explore how improving or automating processes can contribute to significant contact center productivity gains.

5. Automate Outbound Communications

Proactive outreach is an often-overlooked strategy that can significantly enhance contact center productivity while boosting customer satisfaction. Contact centers can reduce the number of inbound queries by reaching out to customer contacts before they encounter issues, preventing escalations, and streamlining operations.

With automated outbound communication tools, contact centers can efficiently manage high-volume tasks such as notifying customers of potential disruptions, sending service resumption updates, or providing solutions to common issues in advance. This reduces the need for agents to handle repetitive tasks, improving operational efficiency and minimizing agent downtime.

6. Rethink Agent Training and Development

Onboarding alone isn’t enough; without ongoing training, agents struggle with new technologies and complex customer interactions, leading to poor performance and higher turnover. Continuous, personalized training is key.

Contact center vendors should deliver dynamic, role-based programs—self-paced or virtual instructor-led—that adapt to real-time data, helping agents stay productive and improving customer satisfaction.

Reviewing these options, it’s clear that selecting solutions must go beyond the headlines and take the specialized needs of your customers and agents, along with your organization’s business goals, into account. If you would like to know more about how Enghouse Interactive addresses these needs, we’d love to hear from you.

Enghouse Interactive – Flexibility and Choice

Enghouse Interactive offers an expansive range of contact center solutions and services that can turn your contact center into a productivity powerhouse. With over 40 years of industry leadership, Enghouse Interactive stands at the forefront of delivering innovative, customizable CX tools that are designed to maximize contact center productivity and enhance customer engagement. Whether your focus is improving efficiency, enhancing customer experiences, or scaling operations, Enghouse offers tailored solutions for your unique challenges along with the expertise to deliver them effectively.

From small businesses to large enterprises, our solutions are built to scale with your growth, ensuring you stay agile in a competitive landscape.

Ready to take your contact center to the next level? Discover how Enghouse Interactive can transform your operations today.

Contact Enghouse Interactive

Footnote Links

1. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-02-05-gartner-identifies-three-top-priorities-for-customer-service-and-support-leaders-in-2024
2. https://info.enghouseinteractive.com/rs/547-FBA-390/images/EI-NA-EX-brochure-EnghouseAI-04-2024.pdf
3. https://www.deloittedigital.com/content/dam/digital/us/documents/insights/insights-20240501-gcs-survey-charticle.pdf
4. https://www.enghouseinteractive.com/products/insights-and-analytics/ai-insights