You may be using agent owned leads for at least some campaigns in your call center. It’s important to remember your agents don’t actually own the leads. Whether it’s just making sure the scheduled callback comes back to the correct agent, or if you’ve got a CRM integration where the same agent is expected to work the same lead, you may need to reassign those leads.
One case where lead reassignment comes up fairly frequently is the case where agents are hoarding leads. Whether they’re converting everything that hits their screen into an agent owned lead, or just scheduling more callbacks in a session than they can reasonably call back in a shift, you have a problem. If there’s no mechanism in place to reassign these leads to other agents, these contacts won’t be managed in a timely manner.
Another case where lead reassignment makes sense is when your agents are cherry-picking prospects. They may have prejudices that cause them to skip certain leads. I’ve seen cases where a supervisor said “Those people won’t ever buy” in regards to a specific ethnic group. In other cases, an agent might believe a certain metric makes for a much easier sale, and choose only those contacts. Either way, you’ve got leads that aren’t getting managed (and a possible training or discipline issue).
More obvious cases are when an agent is assigned to a different set of campaigns, a new area in the company, or is let go. The leads this agent has been working are too valuable to leave lying unworked. You need to get them assigned to someone else.
Lead management is an important part of any contact center technology. You need to make sure that you have the reporting available so you can monitor the situation. You have to make sure that your call center software has the ability to allow you to reassign leads quickly and easily when needed.