An excerpt of the Customer Interaction Solutions article is below. To read the full article, please visit http://www.tmcnet.com/call-center/0609/displays-go-beyond-the-readerboard.htm
Electronic displays in contact centers have been about bringing agents’ attention to vital information such as average handle times and calls in queue. Now it is about bringing the data and more of it, to the agents, team leaders, supervisors, managers, and senior management and the business wherever they are.
Electronic displays are no longer on LED and newer LCD and plasma readerboards or wallboards on call floors. They are on screens in break rooms and lobbies. They are also on agents’ and supervisors’ desktops in bricks-and-mortar contact centers and in home offices. They are just beginning to appear on 3G/4G+ smartphones.
The datasets have exponentially expanded to customizable employee performance information, HR policy changes, product updates, traffic and weather to help staff plan their commutes, and feeds from senior executives as well as emergency alerts. The material is becoming presented also with graphics and video rather straight text.
This evolution has been driven by contact center customers and by suppliers. More centers have been changing their thinking from purchasing a product i.e. ‘I need a wallboard’ to ‘what are my staff information needs?’ And the vendors have responded with robust, flexible, feature-rich solutions.
The LCD/Desktop Revolution
Display suppliers continue to add capabilities to and refine their solutions. Inova Solutions has for example made several improvements such as enhanced messaging capabilities to its digital signage solution, Inova Broadcaster™.
The Blended Environment
To get the best of all worlds many contact centers are now creating or looking at blended display environments with LED and/or LCD/plasma signage integrated with desktops, with each method highlighting each others’ benefits while covering for their shortfalls. This technique also leverages existing investments in wallboards. The right mix of media outputs will depend on the contact centers’ needs and goals.
“When LEDs and LCDs are used together contact centers can take advantage of various multimedia tools to engage and inform agents and give supervisors a quick view of changing conditions from anywhere on the floor,” explains Larry Moulis, Engineering Manager, Inova Solutions. “In environments where the physical layout makes signage use impractical, like in home offices, a desktop reporting application can deliver the same critical ACD statistics and event-driven messaging directly onto the agent screens. This kind of desktop solution is now in higher demand as the at-home agent becomes commonplace in many organizations.”
More contact centers are discovering the benefits of expanding displays to additional locations in their buildings, such as break rooms, elevator access areas, and lobbies: wherever employees congregate to deliver vital information. Inova Solutions has been working with a customer to design a system that incorporates emergency messaging and mass notification throughout their corporate campus, using the core contact center solution as the foundation for message delivery.
“Once the initial investment has been made to provide the center with the advantage of visibility to real-time information, it makes sense to extend that coverage to as many areas as possible,” says Moulis.