[asterisk-users] (Getting OT) Re: Call Center SoftPhone with Auto Answer

[Anselm Martin Hoffmeister]

Am Dienstag, den 18.09.2007, 17:33 -0400 schrieb James FitzGibbon:
> On 9/18/07, David Gomillion <david.gomillion at gmail.com> wrote:
>         I've stayed out of this thread for a long time, and really
>         didn't read the past comments, so if I'm repeating someone,
>         I'm sorry. I've been thinking this for a while, and just have
>         to say it. If you feel like you have to keep people from
>         turning off the auto-answer feature on a softphone, you don't
>         need a new softphone. You need new people.
> 
> Yes, but have you ever drawn up a budget for a full-blown meatware(tm)
> upgrade?

I do not know American work law, but if you tell your people to NOT turn
off auto answer, and they do for having a break, would that not count as
work refusal? As long as they get all the breaks they are supposed to
take, of course. If for example a cashier in a supermarket here in
Germany would just leave her position for a few minutes for a smoke,
small-talk or whatever, outside her assigned break times, she could
afaik get a written warning, and at the second occasion the full wad of
papers (aka been fired).

On the other hand, if you count only times while they are on-a-call,
with appropriate logging software, adding a few seconds per-call for
overhead, as their worktime, they pretty soon will keep auto answer on
to get the required number of work minutes during their shift, I would
expect.

But this is not as much a technical problem as a social one: If your
agents are unmotivated, they might spend time talking off-business to
any caller/callee on the phone that seems to be interested in
small-talk, and _that_ you could hardly find out technically.

So you might get an upgrade without paying for the deinstallation of the
previous "meatware", but the installation process of course has costs.

BTW putting too much pressure on your agents might do bad things to
their effiency, motivation, even mental health. Getting the balance
between control and good atmosphere right is not easy, and something
that cannot be generalized but must be tailored to the situation. The
value of a "human asset" (imagine me vomiting my way through those
words) can materialize in the number of sales, calls, ... and also in
the customer experience he creates, which is hard to be counted in
numbers.

For example, I recently bought some music instrument and accessories at
a phone-order company. The people there were relaxed, friendly, helpful
and made the effort of giving me competent, quick information that I
needed. All contact with them was extremely positive.

As I needed some more stuff that I knew was a bit cheaper at another
store (which only deals with customers in a matter-of-fact way), I
decided to honour that effort. I also recommended the company to
friends, which they probably will never know about and as such cannot
count in as a bonus for their sales personell.

*Just my loose change. Man, there were lots of coins in that purse.*

> Makes Vista look like a picnic.

IMO Vista is an apple short of one ;-)

To get the Asterisk relevant topics:

You could
- count on-call minutes to rate agent performance
- track off-call intervals on a certain line and so track the turned-off
auto answer
- do some "social engineering" or "policy work" to get this sorted in a
non-technical way (work contract terms, etc)
- pay some softphone manufacturer to implement needed changes

BTW what would hinder your agents from shutting down the softphone app
when they do not want to answer calls? What would hinder them from just
not talking to the caller when they do not want to?

Best regards,
Anselm