Today, ensuring employee engagement is crucial in a contact center! A stilted agent floundering to do the bare minimum for a customer implies an unreliable business while a happy agent who is truly engaged in connecting with a customer signifies a trustworthy business. Because agents are often the first one-to-one interactions customers have with a brand, the mood of your contact center agent will set the tone of the interaction they have.
It’s simple: Happy agent, happy customer!
Truly happy employees search for steady meaning in their work. That’s why it’s so important to manage contact center agent engagement as an ongoing opportunity for employee retention instead of an occasional obligation from HR. Here are 8 ways to secure the professional fulfillment of your agents:
1) Be Selective
2) Introduce the Culture
3) Prepare Well-Rounded Professionals
4) Give Authority to Take Initiative
5) Free Their Minds
6) Foster Connection
7) Enhance Customer Ratings
8) Appreciate the Agents
1) Be Selective
Let’s start from the bottom line—to keep your agents happy and engaged, you must first build a happy and engaged contact center by hiring the right agents. An ill-fitting hire can cause unnecessary distress for both the employee and the employer. After all, not everyone is built to withstand the challenges of customer service.
You need a proper vetting system to make sure an agent is an ideal fit for your company. Such a selective hiring process would also up the ante for the prospective employees. Increasing competition would, in turn, enhance employee engagement.
2) Introduce the Culture
It goes without saying, every employee is happier and more engaged when they feel a sense of belonging to the workplace.
A good old-fashioned orientation program is always useful to officially welcome the new agents. Let newcomers mingle with the seasoned vets of your call center and learn about the culture directly from the people who live in it. Or you can conduct Onboarding in order to help your new call center agents personally understand both the value of your products and the process your customers go through to get to them.
3) Prepare Well-Rounded Professionals
It is no longer viable to unload all the technicalities of work on an employee and expect them to fend for themselves—especially not in the customer service department where employees interact with dozens of customers daily.
Today, companies provide training not just for professional preparation but also personal development to improve employee well-being at work. For instance, stress management and EQ courses could assist a contact center agent in alleviating anxiety for everyone involved in an encounter.
Basically, don’t leave your employees psychologically unequipped to deal with the professional requirements of work—it could cause you an unwanted increase in agent turnover.
4) Give Authority to Take Initiative
An amicable agent who is under the pressure of having to defer to a superior with each customer experience challenge is not going to be an effective problem-solver. The freedom to make decisions is a crucial catalyst for employee empowerment and engagement.
Some companies allocate a budget to each employee to take initiative and solve problems without personal repercussions. For instance, if a customer was sent the wrong size and called the contact center to complain, the agent can offer them a discount or free shipping on the next purchase to ensure customer satisfaction, without ramifications to their salary.
Applying this method to a call center will give agents the necessary independence to take initiative, feel responsible, and remain engaged.
5) Free Their Minds
Strict scripts and time limitations not only remove the personalizations customers request but also eliminate the individuality of the contact center agents—it is important to let the agents feel personally involved and responsible for the conversations they are having with customers since they are the very front line of your operations.
Companies that are famous for their customer services, often remove scripts and time limitations altogether in order to foster a more natural dialogue with their consumers. These organic interactions will culminate into agents who recognize their own competencies and feel more fulfilled. This may seem way different from the textbook understanding of productivity, but it is certainly effective in nurturing a satisfactory bond with customers.
A little personalization in your workflows can go a long way in having your callers feel special and cared for. That is exactly why Call Center Studio offers a fully customizable IVR system for you to optimize your customer experience!
6) Foster Connection
As the direct line to consumers, contact center agents have invaluable intel about your customers. In fact, some companies require all new customer service employees to first work at the contact center for a few weeks in order to learn more about the consumers. So, make sure you take advantage of your agents’ experiences.
Include the contact center agents in the overall business of the company. Ask for their opinions with regular meetings. Organize workshop events and peer guidance activities, where they can share ideas. Conduct focus group studies to solve their problems. Remind everyone in the company that contact center agents are an essential part of the business.
7) Enhance Customer Ratings
Customer Ratings are perhaps the most common form of KPI for contact center agents. But, they can also be extremely daunting since customers often give feedback offhandedly. Design an agent feedback system that makes sure your customers know they are rating other humans.
It can be harmful to quantify the value of contact center work by how many customers an agent interacted with or their AHT. Optimizing these factors require robotic behaviors that are off-putting for both the agent and the customer. Instead, use FCR data or acquire personalized feedback for the agents to analyze.
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8) Appreciate the Agents
All anyone ever wants is to be appreciated, and contact center agents are no exception. Acknowledging the success of an agent, especially after you’ve given them the freedom to take initiative, can be a powerful motivator that rapidly increases contact center agent happiness and engagement.
Recognition in the workplace can range from gift cards and social media accolades to bonuses and extra paid time off. Or, you can go crazy and ask them what they want or need! To give you some inspiration on where to start from, here are 5 best practices from award-winning contact centers that provide agents with better experiences!
Beyond the Personal: Equip Them With Necessary Tools!
You must remember that the developmental support resources you provide to your agents need to be built on a strong software foundation—an easy-to-use platform to strengthen all the hard work you’ve put into keeping your agents happy and engaged.
A friendly and accessible software can allow remote working opportunities for your agents and assist them in their journey wherever they please to work. Plus, with future-proof software that stays on top of all the recent AI developments, your agents will be motivated to smile, more than ever!
Contact us today to learn how you can turn your contact center into a place every agent wants to work at!
