Blue Ocean Contact Centers Canadian Call Center

Blue Ocean launches new features of The Pier

Blue Ocean Contact Center employees can now access their schedules from home, sign-up for extra hours if available, and have easy access to company communications and alerts. They can even sign up for email alerts for extra hours or urgent notices that are posted.

When Blue Ocean launched their internally developed Agent desktop tool, The Pier last year, it was announced that it would be a project of continuous improvement, welcoming suggestions from users and offering new features on an ongoing basis. The latest addition to the capabilities of this tool designed to give employees more control over their jobs is an Employee Extranet, developed to take fundamental features of The Pier and make them accessible to Agents from their own desktops at home.

Not a lot of companies provide extranets to their employees, either because they don’t have the technical capabilities to do so, or because most don’t need to interact with them outside of the office beyond e-mail. At Blue Ocean, it’s a crucial part of their business for employees to be able to engage with the company, both in the office and out.

“In the contact centre world, there is a precision and discipline required around schedules, rotations, shifts, and managing all of those requirements to meet the needs of our clients in a balance that also meets the needs of our individual employees,” says Patty Isnor, SVP Corporate Services for Blue Ocean and project lead for The Pier. “One of the best things about Blue Ocean is our flexibility around scheduling.”

Extending use of their Agent desktop tool for use at home fits with Blue Ocean’s goal to empower their employees on the job allowing them to manage their schedule to accommodate their lives more successfully and with more self-management.

“This is just one more step in bringing transparency, ease of access, and flexibility to the employees of Blue Ocean, and it makes a big difference,” says Patty.

The Pier and it's new features have been rolled out to over 90% of Blue Ocean's programs and feedback from employees so far has been fantastic. “This is one of the most useful tools Blue Ocean has to offer to their employees,” says one Agent who likes the simple and easy-to-use interface.

Through constant feedback, iterative development, testing, and process improvement, The Pier is continuously being updated to add features, and bring more functionality to the fingertips of Blue Ocean employees – Agents, coaches and managers.