Boost Agent Performance and Build a Reliable Call Center using Push Queues

By Jeff Valentine, CEO, Callfinity. Coming up in the March 2010 issue of Call Center Times.

Let’s face it... even the most motivated individuals sometimes need a push to get going. In a call center environment, timing is paramount. If your agents aren’t on their toes, hold times skyrocket, emails begin to pile up, and customers start to abandon ship. Unfortunately, if customer support isn’t up to par, it’s up to the call center administrator to get the team performing at 100%.

The issue with many call center solutions is that they rely on “pull queues” to process customer inquiries. With a pull queue, agents simply ‘pull’ an interaction from a specific queue they’ve been assigned. The problem with pull queues is agents need a significant amount of training in order to determine the priority of tasks in an unfiltered queue.

Some agents can be trained to glance through queues...

... and properly recognize high priority faxes, emails, etc. but this can be rather time consuming and inconsistent. Ultimately, the success of the contact center depends too heavily on humans making sound decisions and taking the initiative to grab the right interactions at the right time.

Although pull queues can work with extremely motivated agents and a hands-on approach from the administrator, the effort required often causes quality loss in other areas of the business. If an administrator has to constantly check up on agents and move work to appropriate queues, there’s very little time allotted for managerial duties.

Push queues push tasks to agents

An alternative to traditional pull queues are “push queues.” Where pull queues rely on agents to pull tasks, push queues in turn push tasks to agents. As a result, agents always receive the right interaction at the right time. Another advantage of push queues is that agents don’t have the ability to refuse a pushed interaction. Administrators can see exactly when an agent received a task and how long it took that individual to respond and subsequently move on to the next pushed task.

ContextACD

Callfinity’s ContextACD utilizes push queues to ensure that agents are constantly assigned tasks and escalated interactions are moved to the appropriate queues so customers aren’t left in the dark for extended periods of time. With ContextACD, the contact center administrator has the ability to customize all queue rules based on the needs of the business.

For example, let’s say that ordinarily phone calls are a higher priority than emails. But what happens if a phone call has been waiting ten seconds while an email has been sitting in an inbox for eight hours? In this case, the admin can create a specific set of rules to override typical priority routing and push the email to an escalated queue or specified agent.

Obviously it would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone had the skills and motivation to make calculated decisions and act on them in a swift manner. Unfortunately, sometimes we all need a little push to get going. If your call center isn’t operating as smoothly as you’d like and you’re still relying on pull queues, you should definitely consider the merits of moving to a call center solution that takes advantage of push queues.

Not only will push queues ensure your agents are working to the best of their ability, but it will significantly reduce the amount of time call center administrators spend monitoring agents and streamlining workflow.

With your call center team operating as a collective unit, your business is free to focus on more important tasks like ‘pulling’ in customers and ‘pushing’ out orders.

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