A hybrid contact center workplace
TCDRS has been using 8x8 Work and 8x8 Contact Center since 2015. To support its large membership, the organization operates a busy contact center that’s staffed by 20 agents. Historically, everyone had worked in the office, taking calls from desktop phones connected to Jabra headsets. But when the pandemic hit, everything changed. “We had to make a pretty quick transition,” says Catherine Sorahan, Manager of Member Services at TCDRS. “Within a week, everyone was sent home. One of the helpful things about 8x8 was that as we were setting up our phone equipment at home, we switched to taking calls via the 8x8 mobile app.” Today, TCDRS agents work in a hybrid work environment.
8x8 tools to coach and improve performance
To keep operations running smoothly, Sorahan spends much of her time focused on monitoring and improving team performance. She recently enabled 8x8’s call recording feature to help her coach agents by sharing example calls. “This feature has saved me time and improved our call quality as I can select calls to review with our agents to help with training efforts.” 8x8 Analytics helps the team stay on track with their performance goals. Sorahan explains, “I use 8x8 Analytics a lot. I have my own dashboard, there’s another one for my team, and a third for my supervisors that gives them a more high-level view. We send out weekly reports to the team that show where they are in relation to their KPIs.” To further boost productivity, Sorahan plans to gamify this experience for the team so that they can either join a fun competition or focus on their own self-improvement goals.
Integrating 8x8 into the contact center ecosystem
Like many call centers across industries, call volume at TCDRS increased significantly during the pandemic. The organization increased its staff to improve service levels. Sorahan says, “We have a really good foundation now. As we grow, we can optimize our staffing by managing schedules, time off and break time more efficiently.”
In fact, 8x8 integrates seamlessly with Verint’s Workforce Management platform to help Sorahan manage operations and forecast future staffing needs.
8x8 Professional Services team helps with optimization
In an effort to further optimize her team’s use of 8x8, Sorahan engaged 8x8’s Professional Services team to review their set up and provide recommendations. She says, “We wanted to take a fresh look at our KPIs to ensure that what we are measuring is aligned with improving our members’ experiences with TCDRS.
One area of focus was determining which measures would have the most impact for optimizing operations. “Our 8x8 consultant shifted our perspective,” says Sorahan. “For example, he helped us understand that agents have control over unavailability and that finding ways to reduce the unavailable time would be a helpful place to start.”
Another focus has been to shorten call answer time to reduce overall wait time for members. TCDRS has increased the accuracy of availability status. This has improved service levels by reducing the calls being routed to representatives that are unable to answer, which was causing calls to roll to another agent if not picked up in 15 seconds.
Going forward, Sorahan and team will look for more ways to optimize their use of 8x8, including using the new Agent Workspace. As TCDRS grows, the contact center team is ready to scale.
