You're facing technical issues in your call center. How do you troubleshoot them without causing disruptions?

Assess the Problem: Determine the scope of the issue. Is it affecting a few agents or the entire center? Is it related to hardware, software, or network issues? Prioritize Based on Impact: Focus on resolving issues that impact the entire operation first (e.g., server outage) before addressing smaller, less critical problems.

Personally I’ve found that the initial assessment also assist with any escalation procedures. If the assessment of the issue is thorough, it saves times if unable to resolve and must escalate to the next level.

Stay calm and at ease. I understand that people might be coming at you with frustration. Just take your time and keep the user updated step by step. Make sure your tone remains gentle, as they're already frustrated. Focus on getting the basics right—check the logs, intent, and the application's flow. If things aren't clear, be honest and ask the user for more time to investigate. Remember, this field is all about continuous learning.

When we have a quality problem the first questions we asked ourselves was 1. What is the actual problem? 2. How big is the problem? 3. Which customers are affected (Internal and external)? 4. Can we identify the point of origin? These three questions were crucial to find an effective containment.

Go through the last week of tickets and look for a pattern something that is common within multiple tickets. Analyze those and if possible listen to the recording of the agents contact with the customer. I find that 9 times out of 10 this is a training issue and a simple refresh will do wonders.

Do you often hear that the system was slow? Check your incident logs. The logs should have every agent that submitted a ticket, the level of a ticket, when it happened, agents impacted, systems impacted and a resolution. If you hear that systems are having problems, then check your logs. Don't see any tickets? Encourage people to report issues. Teach people how to open tickets and report a technical problems. If you lead the contact center, then read the logs or the summary. Do you have a regular meeting with the resolution team? Great way to promote team work for operations and technical support.

it's important you log incident report as soon as you have identified the issue. make sure you write all the details of the incident and report to the relevant parties of the organization.

Be specific. Time, action, system, station, location, etc. Does a customer tell you that the music was fuzzy while on hold? Report that issue. Are you an agent that always waits 15 seconds for a credit card authorization? Report that issue. Do you have a common work around because the "system" doesn't work? Report that issue. Many call centers think the technology doesn't work but the tech team can't fix bugs or latency if they don't know there is a problem.