Managing Customer Service Agents – Does One Size Fit All?

nevo peretz
by Nevo Peretz
December 28, 2015

Imagine that you’re a customer service manager and you only have one agent at your disposal. What would that be like?

Know your agent at a personal level

The first thing of course is that you would be able to know your agent really well. You would know her strong sides and weak sides – for example, that she’s not a morning person but that she’s really good at dealing with angry customers and finding the right solution for them.
You would know where she went to school, what she studied, and that she previously worked as a customer service representative at an insurance company.
You’d know that she tends to say yes a lot during conversations and that she finds satisfaction in solving customer problems.
You’d also know that she wants to learn and develop her skills and expects to get honest feedback about her performance.

Drive performance through knowledge

Knowing your agent at such a personal level is of course a great asset to any manager because as a manager, when you know someone and understand what they’re capable of, it is much easier to drive them to reach their full potential for contributing to the business.

You’d be able to:​​
  • Know exactly when your agent is most needed and adjust her work hours accordingly
  • Know exactly what you need to guide and train your agent on in order to improve her performance
  • Know when your agent is struggling and needs your help to produce the right results
  • Plan ahead and know when your agent will not be able to help and you need to find another solution
  • And if you need to recruit another agent, you’ll know exactly what traits are important to look for

But when you manage customer service at scale the only people that have the ability to relate to agents at an individual level are the direct managers, but all they have at their hands are one-size-fits-all processes to manage their operation.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

NICE Adaptive Workforce Optimization suite is here to help you treat your agents as individuals, improve their performance and drive customer experience. Click here to learn more

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nevo peretz
About the Author
Nevo Peretz
Nevo Peretz is a customer development expert who spent the last decade in leading customer development, marketing and strategic initiatives in large organizations and startups. In his role at NICE Systems, Nevo acts as a liaison between the product house and the market, demonstrating the different ways NICE brings value to its customers.
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