A strong call center consists of call center agents who are satisfied with their work conditions and can flourish in their positions. And as we like to call it, happy agents bring along happy customers. While improvements on the contact center processes are of high importance, improving agent performance is a must for a contact center team to perform in the best way possible. When the call center agent satisfaction rates are high, agents work more effectively, show more profesinbound and outboundsionalism and this positive manner affects sales and customer satisfaction rates positively.
In this blog post, we have gathered our tips & tricks to boost call center agent performance that you can use in the upcoming year to improve call center agent performance and reach call center agent performance goals.
1 – Benefit From AI to Improve Agent Performance
‘Human contact’ and ‘real help’ are among the top phrases that are being used in chatbot dialogs. It doesn’t come as a surprise since people still don’t fully trust artificial intelligence and don’t want to waste any time with them. That’s why contact centers are the biggest aid for any type of business. However, one thing needs to be emphasized: AI is not here to replace contact centers, it is here to help them.
According to Kindly’s 2022 chatbot statistics:
Chatbots are proven to increase user satisfaction by 80% more than non-chatbot shopping experiences.
Using chatbots can result in a 30% reduction in call center referrals.
Chatbots help with automating as much as 90% of customer support responses.
As the data proves, the use of AI helps ease out daily tasks and improves call center agent performance with the instant help it provides to customers. Hence, it is highly advisable for businesses to benefit from these new technological marvels.
2 – Know Which Metrics to Track
Contact center software comes with a dashboard where you can analyze your agents’ performances. Call center agent performance dashboards help you have full control over the processes, however, there are certain metrics you need to focus on in order to get to the root cause of things. These are:
Number of inbound and outbound calls
Total time spent on inbound and outbound calls
Average customer wait time
Average duration of inbound and outbound calls
Average number of calls per user
If you are interested in the most important metrics you need to focus on for your call center, you can check out our article on the issue by clicking here.
3- Prevent Avoidable Calls
Time means everything when it comes to efficiency in any contact center. Even millimetric calculations can affect the performance of your team, hence it is of huge importance to eliminate repeat calls. You can gain a lot of time for your agents by taking certain precautions to avoid certain calls.
In order to avoid unnecessary calls & gain some time for the agents you can:
Block undesirable phone numbers
Benefit both from voice-based & text-based chatbots
Create an easy-to-use comprehensive FAQ menu
Guide customers to the FAQ page on your website
Categorize calls & automate answers
4- Boost Your Business & Empower Your Team With Training
Call center agents always have to be prepared to answer customers’ questions. To do this they have to possess knowledge and up-to-date information. A good call center agent has great listening skills, the patience to handle all kinds of queries, the ability to pass along the necessary information, and an innate reflex for identifying customers’ pain points.
Fortunately, most of these skills can be honed through the right kind of training and practice. Not only interpersonal skills but also more technical aspects such as having a full grasp of the products and services can be practiced with the right tools and training. You can organize regular training to educate your agents more on the products and services you provide and help them improve their skills to increase their performance.
5 – Offer Timely Rewards & Acknowledgements
Regardless of the title or industry, everybody wants their work to be seen and appreciated. It isn’t any different for call center agents. Research shows that 69% of employees would work harder if they were better recognized.
While tracking your KPIs and assessing each of your agents’ performances, you can pay more attention to those on top and reward them by acknowledging their work or offering personalized rewards.
By providing rewards & acknowledgments, you can get your best-performing agents to feel seen and appreciated all the while motivating others to work harder and enjoy their daily tasks more in order to achieve a certain reward determined by you.
Giving your agents rewards & acknowledgments will have a high impact on them and bring along certain positive impacts. It will primarily:
Gamify their work
Spark friendly competition
Build a dynamic atmosphere
Increase agents’ motivation and concentration
6- Provide Flexible Conditions to Increase Agent Satisfaction
Happy agents bring happy customers along. To fully function as an organization, a business must first have a fully functioning inner system in order to serve customers in the best way possible. For contact centers, the main element of that inner system is the agents’ satisfaction.
To serve your customers in the best way possible, you first need to make sure the needs of your agents are met regularly and their satisfaction scores are high enough to represent your business in a positive manner.
In addition to what you already provide, you can consider giving them some extra facilities such as:
Offering remote or hybrid work model
Benefitting from contact center softwares to make shift-swapping easier
Giving out rewards & acknowledgments
Calculating annual leaves in hours instead of days
7 – Regularly Update Your Strategy
With a good call center software, you can see statistics and real-time data and use them to analyze your performance and determine the problematic or under-functioning parts of your strategy and make the necessary changes by reviewing the data regularly.
To improve your call center strategy and improve agent performance, you can consider practices that are being applied all over the world. These are:
Organize regular trainings
Work with advisors
Hire a team of professionals to improve recruitment strategies
Benefit from surveys to control agent satisfaction ratings
Listen to your employees to hear their suggestions
Hold group sessions to allow agents to share their both good & bad experiences
8 – Invest In Contact Center Softwares
Contact Center Softwares help both customers and call center agents in increasing their quality of life.. Easy-to-use software integrations, personalized services, and chatbots that help with the frequently asked questions help deliver a seamless customer experience.
While customers experience an advanced level of customer service, agents also get to do their jobs more easily and quickly with the help of a centralized knowledge base they can access during phone calls, ability to listen to previous calls, re-read emails, and check social media posts, and several other features.
To have an enhanced call center experience and to increase call center agent performance, we offer you our cloud-based contact center solutions. If you would like to try and see for yourself, feel free to request a demo from our website. Our team is always happy to welcome you.
