Real-time management is often viewed as a matter of responding to workload quantities. What’s often missed in these discussions is how to respond to the nature of the workload. If it’s heavy, there usually are underlying issues driving it. You can throw all the resources at it that you want, but if your organization isn’t prepared to handle the content of the work, it’s going to be a struggle — for customers and employees.

The secret: empowerment. Effective real-time management depends on it. Many organizations want to do the right thing for customers, but too often put a multi-layered, time-eroding approval process in place to get there. By then, the customer is gone, or the loyalty that could arise from their experience has dwindled. That’s not effective empowerment; in fact, it’s not empowerment at all. Your agents must be able to take action as circumstances unfold. You can’t expect them to be effective unless they have the authority and means to make decisions.

Excerpt from Contact Center Management on Fast Forward by Brad Cleveland. Read the full article excerpt at icmi.com.