Another View of the Non-Agent Agent

If you happen to be skeptical about this whole idea of using enterprise employees as ad hoc contact center agents, you're not the only one.

Melanie Turek of Frost & Sullivan raises the legitimate issue here--using non-agents as agents may help your contact center, but how does it affect the productivity of the people being so re-purposed?

And Kevin McPartlan, VP of Contact Center Solutions for Intervoice, just isn't sure about the whole idea. I talked to Kevin this afternoon, figuring that since he hadn't brought up the subject, like Aspect and others do, maybe he felt differently about it.

Kevin breaks employees down into three categories with regard to this issue: contact center agents; non-contact center customer service employees; and those who have no connection to customer service. The first is obvious; the second is someone, for example, working in a bank branch--"The guy standing at the counter could answer that call, and that's his job."

On the other hand, "Getting Sally in Accounting [to serve the role]....I don't think that's ever going to happen."





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