Call center managers have tried a number of methods over the years to keep employees informed about the status of a department. One of the most effective has been using wallboards to display pertinent information in a central and visible location.

Why Use Wallboards?

Employees need goals and motivation to keep morale high. A worker who comes in, pounds on a keyboard or answers a phone for eight hours, and then heads home with no sense of accomplishment or progress quickly becomes unhappy, and then productivity drops.

Wallboards keep employees in the loop on department activities. It allows them to see where the team is, how goals are being met, and what needs attention. When call center workers see queue lengths dropping or customer satisfaction rising, they can see how their efforts change things. These displays reinforce that the employees are not individual agents lost in a sea of phone calls, but rather a member of a team. As the team excels, so does the individual, and vice versa.

Old Technologies

The biggest problem with past reporting solutions has been timeliness. Employees might see reports of how the department did last month or last week. However it's hard to plan for the future with your eyes focused on the past. Old call center reports aren't necessarily relevant to today's call volume, and it's hard to stay motivated when you won't see the effect of your changes for another month.

As information technology has improved, attempts were made to keep these reports more current. Printed reports were posted daily. Whiteboards could be updated hourly with the latest call center statistics, but this was labor intensive and still not real time statistics. These were steps in the right direction but the concept was waiting for a true revolution in computing technology.

Modern Wallboards

Modern offices are all wired into the network, and the latest generation of electronic wallboards is tied directly into the system. They display up-to-the-minute statistics on how the call center is performing right now, not a few hours ago. Managers can use these displays to dynamically administer the workforce, moving agents on and off the phones as call volumes change. The agents themselves can use these to adjust their workflow as conditions change throughout the day.

Electronic wallboards have another advantage: visibility. These bright LED displays are easy to read at a glance without agents needing to leave their chairs. Since all boards are tied together, companies can deploy as many as needed, knowing that each will display the same information as the others. Software makes it easy even for non-technical managers to customize the displays as needed.

Companies typically report their call centers run more efficiently the first day wallboards go live. Faster call turnarounds, less stressed workers and happier customers make these displays a lucrative investment for any call center.