Online Community For a Call Center? 138
kirkmacdonald writes "I work as an analyst in a small call center. There are about 200 on phone agents, but half of them work from home. About a month ago I submitted a Project Charter to create an online Community for the agents. The basic premise was something approaching the combination of a wiki application and a standard forum (phpbb and the like). We already have an online knowledge base for company policies, training and system documentation. This community environment would be intended to simulate being able to talk shop with the person next to you, along with the lunchroom and water cooler.
The Charter was well received but there were questions from upper management about how using this type of environment could affect the call center metrics (average handle time, after call wrap up, etc). Can anyone comment on other companies that have online communities for their staff? How did they mitigate productivity risks?"
Work From Home? (Score:4, Funny)
Are you hiring? Any language requirements? What company? What kind of call center? Come on man, hook a brotha up!
Re:Pilot, Explain, Measure (Score:4, Funny)
You work for Accenture, don't you.
I remember Accenture. They'd come in with their lattes, casual dress, and sunglasses all the way to the conference room, then sit in there and eat Thai while they talked about how many agents my company could lay off and stay within handle time target.
I hated that vendor, because I sat by the conference room.
Re:tsk tsk (Score:4, Funny)
And if you ever wake up and think - "wow, my boss finally gets the new web paradigm," you will have people like the submitter and commenters who post productive advice to thank.
Btw, I have never dealt with the subject the poster is asking about, so I have no productive advice to give.
Online Community for a Call Center? (Score:1, Funny)
I recommend setting up a Team Room to house all kinds of different information (schedules, colleague home phone numbers, pager information, etc). You can also house important documents in this style of environment that can be updated in real-time (word documents, excel spreadsheets, etc). It's also a great place to draw the line in separation of storing sensitive client information (recommended for the knowledge base), and storing the information required for YOUR company (store this information in the team room).
Lotus Notes has this type of functionality in it, and many, many high-end call center's user this type of approach to keeping people connected (using a team-room in conjunction with a knowledge base).
As for keeping in communication with your colleagues in real-time, I recommend another Lotus solution; SameTime. It is IBM's solution for corporate instant messaging; it's very, very secure. Another professional alternative would be Microsoft's Office Communications Server. Additionally, you could go for free and use Jabber.