With traditional workforce management platforms and processes, the motivation for increased visibility over CX teams is to monitor agents, measure their performance, and track their time and attendance. This has some rigid productivity benefits for managers who view their teams more like metrics to be driven, but for the empowerment and happiness of CX team members (surfers), the traditional way of looking at visibility over your team is outdated and narrow-minded.

The good news is that there’s another way. Increased visibility can be used as a tool for surfers to gain more autonomy, become more flexible, and be happier in their roles. Read on to find out how to increase CX team visibility.

4 Reasons Why Increased Visibility Leads to Happier CX Teams:

Better Rapport

In organisations using traditional workforce management platforms to manage breaks, surfers are given a set time and there is often no deviating from it. Or even worse, they have to ask a manager for a break on an ad hoc basis whenever they get a chance to do so (see an example below). This method of time management within customer experience teams is not only unproductive and disorganised, it’s hugely frustrating for surfers and managers alike.

When surfers are busy throughout the day, it’s nice to be able to see who else is working the same shift as them and coordinate their breaks to spend lunch together. Having visibility over the rest of the team allows surfers to connect with their team and build rapport.

Stronger Support

Any seasoned customer experience leader will know that a lack of support is one of the major causes of burnout in CX teams. When managing a customer experience team, it’s important to know who is working, and what they are working on. That includes both surfers and managers. If, for example, a surfer needs assistance and they have no idea who is working or what the team is working on, it’s exceedingly difficult to know how to ask for help. This can feel very isolating in a traditional in-office setting, and even more so if a customer experience team has made the transition to remote working.

For surfers, having the ability to quickly look at who on their team is working, what managers are available, and what everyone is doing, is a game changer. This enables them to get support from their team throughout their shift, and as a result, empowers them to pass this support along to the customer.

Surfboard Team Snapshot Feature:

Customer Quote:

Don’t take our word for it, check out how delighted Maja was about it:

“Team Surfer View is one of the most helpful features released since we joined the Surfboard community. We have 30+ agents and we handle multiple tasks and channels every day. Giving the Team visibility into others’ schedules saves us time, makes us more efficient and ensures a smoother operation.”

Maja Basinska, Scheduling Executive & Supervisor

Wolf & Badger

More Flexibility

Customer experience teams will rarely have two days that are the exact same. It’s Inherently a dynamic function of an organisation and as such, CX teams need to be flexible. Surfers need to to see who is working if they are in a bind and need to swap shifts, or even swap activities. “The next-door neighbours are drilling holes in the wall, let me jump on emails while you take calls for a bit?”. Flexibility not only allows managers to plan ahead and ensure that service levels remain high in an ever-changing CX environment, it also allows surfers further freedom to do their best work.

Happier Surfers

Customer experience teams who have been given the autonomy that Surfboard allows (through valuable tools like team snapshot) are supported by their team, and are provided with flexible schedules, will undoubtedly be happier in their roles. And after all, happy teams means happy customers.

Bonus Feature – Blocked Time:

Another element of Surfboard that increases transparency and visibility within customer support teams is the blocked time feature. So, how does it work?

Surfboard will automatically schedule around any event in any linked calendar using the Block feature. To link a calendar event to Surfboard, team leaders can simply invite block@teamsurfboard.com. All event attendees that are surfers will not be scheduled on any tasks for the duration of that event. The result is that the whole team knows exactly how one another are spending their time, making things fairer, simpler and smarter.

Get in touch to learn more about Team Snapshot: