In this current economic climate, contact center leaders are being asked to do more with less. At the same time, growing adoption of digital-first communications means that today’s contact center agents face increasing levels of asynchronous interactions. And as agents deal with the complexity of handling multiple interactions concurrently (across hours, days, and even weeks,) supervisors too must deal with new challenges. Questions around education and training related to these issues—especially in today’s remote and/or hybrid contact centers—are among top concerns for today’s supervisors.

For these supervisors (who may continue to be working remotely themselves), having access to the right tools at the right time is the only way to provide personalized, performance-based coaching. With that in mind, here are some of the trends we can expect to provide greater support and ensure successful contact center operations:

  • Consolidated services. Contact center supervisors access many tools throughout the day, from queue and agent activity to schedule adherence, speech analytics or quality management, and many of these tools are accessed through different interfaces and portals. Moving from app to app and receiving different types of notifications and alerts is frustrating and time-consuming. The ability to bring all of this information into a single, unified supervisor workspace will be a significant boost to productivity and efficiency.

  • Third-party integration. Supervisors often need access to tools and information that are outside of the contact center, such as third-party WFM solutions, line of business applications such as Salesforce and Zendesk, and/or productivity tools like Gong.io. A consolidated supervisor workspace will include the ability to pull in widgets and views from these outside sources, creating a total view of the contact center, without needing to jump from app to app.

  • Personalized experience. No two supervisors are the same, yet most supervisor tools present a static view, with very little customization possible. As supervisors are expected to wear more hats and manage more agents and interaction types, the ability to create unique views and workspaces tailored to their needs will help supervisors work more efficiently and effectively.

  • Intelligent workspace. Just as important as consolidating services and customizing the workspace, an intelligent, context aware workspace that dynamically changes based on recognized patterns and priorities will help users as they move through their day by presenting the tools and workspaces best suited for the task at hand. When a supervisor first logs in they are presented with overnight stats and agent schedules and exceptions to manage.
  • As the contact center starts humming, they are presented with agent and queue information as well as speech and text analytic trends. Towards the end of the day, quality management takes priority so supervisors are prompted to review recordings and provide feedback and assistance.

  • Automated assistance. Just as we’ve applied AI to assist customers and agents, we will see an increase in automated assistance for supervisors. Actionable alerts will not only notify users when conditions are out of bounds, but present the supervisors with one-click access to recommended actions for resolution, increasing the speed to correction. AI-driven decision intelligence will automatically present coaching and performance recommendations to drive issue resolution and free up the supervisor to focus on their agents.

  • Blurring the lines. Just as we’ll see a consolidated workspace bringing supervisor tools together in one location, the lines between supervisor and agent will be eliminated as the same application will allow users to switch between supervisor and agent with the toggle of a button. Supervisors who need to jump in and help out in the queue can do so instantly without needing to switch applications or log-in and log-out.
  • This single unified workspace works both ways. As you start to bring agents into leadership roles, you can quickly enable them with supervisor tools to help them begin their journey, whether they're helping bring a new agent online or leading a team.

Ultimately, bringing together the right tools ( check out 10 Top Items to Have in Your Hybrid Work Starter Kit ) at the right time, combined with focused and effective agent coaching, will help supervisors drive the ultimate customer experience.

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