Analyst Perspectives

Envision is an established provider of workforce optimization (WFO) products and last year was rated a “Hot” vendor in the Ventana Research Value Index for Agent Performance Management (APM). Its suite of products includes recording, quality monitoring, workforce management, coaching, e-learning, performance management and speech analytics. The WFO market is now quite competitive, and along with other vendors, Envision recently announced some product improvements. As well as a number of technical improvements – such as support for more Microsoft products, performance and scalability – the main improvements center on quality monitoring and training of contact center agents. 

In response to customer demand in Europe, Envision has introduced an appeal process into quality monitoring. It allows agents, when they disagree with an evaluation, to send the evaluation form to an anonymous “review advocate,” asking the person to review the judgment. The advocate can review the evaluation form and other linked information, for example a call recording, and either uphold the assessment or amend it. The result can be communicated back, anonymously if the advocate so decides, to the agent, the original evaluator and any other interested parties using workflow internal to the application. This feature is likely to appeal to agents and could produce more careful assessments from supervisors. 

There are two significant improvements to call recording. The first allows users to pause recording so that sensitive information is not included into the recording. The second allows users to mark a location in a recording so that a reviewer can jump straight to it. The reviewer also can copy and paste a section of a recording either to attach to an evaluation form or to create an e-learning clip. Training lips can be annotated using a voice-over description to explain the learning points being made, and if required can be linked to a recording of what the agent was doing at the desktop while speaking to the caller. The person being trained can thus hear the lesson and the call recording while seeing the agent’s actions. Envision has also improved reporting and analysis so, for example, managers, supervisors and agents can see the impact of taking different training on key performance indicators. 

Another small but enhancement is the introduction of an agent portal into workforce management. This allows agents to see their schedules and “bid” for different shifts that meet their personal requirements, thereby giving agents more visibility into their schedules and an opportunity to influence the times they are available. 

Applications in the Envision suite are tightly integrated, allowing users to enter data once and see the impact in other applications. All this helps to close the various performance management cycles associated with improving agent performance, for example, tagging a call recoding as part of the evaluation process, being able to play the recording back during the review and then making it part of an appeal process. This can lead to additional training sessions being set up that include clips from best practices in handling of different call types, and these can be slotted into agent shift schedules. Ventana Research’s benchmark research into agent performance management shows the importance companies place on agent performance and the impact it has on the customer experience. By closing the loops Envision enables companies to take a more thorough and structured approach to agent quality monitoring, which can improve agent performance. How are you structuring your quality monitoring process?  

Regards 

Richard Snow – VP & Research Director