A common complaint among phone agents is that the work is monotonous. This boredom can translate into reduced production and bad attitudes, which in turn affects the quality of the customer service provided. Advances in call center software have given rise to an exciting new idea for companies: blended phone centers.

Changes In Contact Centers

Contact centers used to be considered nothing more than expenses. They were considered the cost of providing customer service, but not seen as potential revenue generators. More recently, managers have been viewing phone contacts as promotional opportunities and have been changing how agents do their jobs.

Of course they still needed to handle the customer service aspect of the operation, so it became essential to be able to monitor traffic patterns closely. This inspired development of sophisticated call center software that allowed real-time monitoring of caller traffic by both agents and administrators, creating a more dynamic and responsive operation. Agents could now use their time on the phone talk to customers about additional products and services, generating revenue. Once managers realized agents could be more flexible, the idea of the blended call center was born.

What Is A Blended Center?

In a typical contact center, each agent has a single job. If an agent provides technical support, all she does is take technical support calls. If another agent takes order calls, he just takes orders. This is inefficient since one agent might be idle while another is swamped. This is in addition to the tedium of doing a single task all the time.

In a blended center, call center software allows agents and managers to judge which activities need extra help. By cross-training agents, someone from the order staff can switch to technical support during a sudden spike in calls. Agents who have no inbound calls can move to other tasks such as placing outbound sales calls or taking on internal projects.

Advantages Of A Blended Center

Agents who work in blended contact centers become less bored with the job because they have a variety of activities each day. This doesn't mean agents are allowed to bounce from call to call at random. Workers will still typically have a single primary role and be trained on one or more backup areas. However this diversity of duties makes the day go faster and keeps agents from falling into a rut.

Call wait times even out with this system because the staff can automatically respond to changes in traffic loads. When the call center software alerts the department to a spike in incoming calls, additional agents can be put on the phones in a matter of minutes. Policies in place mean managers don't necessarily even have to intervene as employees automatically shift to needed roles.

Blended contact centers are just one of the advantages that sophisticated and affordable call center software can bring to a service operation.