Intranet or Chat Box

One of the method of communication in a call center is through email. And communication is a two–way process. There is always a sender and there is a receiver. If the sender keeps on sending message and the receiver is not granted to reply then that’s dictatorship.

There are two methods of communication in a call center. One is through a chat box and the other is through intranet email.

Intranet email is like your ordinary email like Hotmail or Yahoo or Gmail. The only difference of Intranet email is that you cannot send a message outside the company. It is exclusively use within the company to exchange communication. However, you can send message from an external source to your intranet email, it’s just that you cannot reply to it. You can also attach file through an intranet email. Anyone can send you a message for as long as they carry the same domain as you are.

A Chat box on the other hand is like a Chat box in a Chat room like WeChat or Yahoo Messenger. You can send message and receive a reply instantly. You can also attach a file in a chat box. Unlike intranet email wherein anyone can send you a message for as long as the domain you are using is the same, in chatbox, you need to be a part of a group in order to receive or send a message. Likewise, your login may be configured to just send a message or just receive a message only.

One of the advantage of a Chat Box is that you can “read a reply” in real time and “instantly” which is unlike intranet email wherein you still have to open a mail to be able to view the reply. One of the disadvantage of Chat Box is that it could distract your concentration since a pop up message may divert your attention. Chat Box is also good for coaching since agent would just need to view what was being said or thought on the box.

One of the advantage of intranet email is that you can reply to a mail as soon as you become available and the pop up message is as generic as “you have new message.” That message could be ignored since after all you can go back to it as soon as you become available. The message could not distract you as well since you will not be able to read the content unless you open the mail right away. Another advantage of intranet email is that you can put attachment to it thus if you want to attach an Excel file which you customize by yourself for you to resolve a customer issue, you can easily retrieve it from there which a Chat Box cannot do.

One of the disadvantage of a Chat Box is it is prone to be abused. Since messages are read instantly and if the content of the message is exciting and personal, concentration could be diverted to that message. However, if the message needs urgent resolution or urgent reply, a Chat Box could do that quickly. On the other hand, if the message is bad, it could also paint a negative persona on the recipient and may affect a specific call.

One of the disadvantage of Intranet email is if an urgent resolution needs to be executed. The delay in reading the mail may have spoil a specific issue already.

In a call center setting, both Intranet Email and Chat Box is being used to resolve customer issue from another employee’s point of view or relay quality audit, hourly AHT report, hourly RPC report, hourly Sales report, changes in break schedule, HR inquiries, escalation management and feedback, record keeping of list of calls for the day, etc.

If the call center is decentralized, you can report directly to the Country Manager and receive a reply within the day. Unlike other call center wherein Country Managers are aloof to rank and file employees, in this company, for every hour there is a delay in salary, the Country Manager himself is sending apology to employees. Hour delay lang yon ha!! It is of no wonder that the connection of their Country Manager at LinkedIn is at 500+.

As it has been noted in “In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies,” “Another of the more striking characteristics of the excellent companies is the apparent absence of a rigidly followed chain of command. Of course, the chain of command does exist for big decisions, but it is not used much for day–to–day communication. For information exchange, informality is the norm.”

In a company everyone is part of the system, and so feedback is the lifeblood of the organization – the exchange of information that lets people know if the job they are doing is going well or needs to be fine–tuned, upgraded, or redirected entirely. Without feedback people are in the dark; they have no idea how they stand with their boss, with their peers, or in terms of what is expected of them, and any problems will only get worse as time passes – Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman