Enhancing call center agent productivity is a company objective contact center team leaders have a huge impact on. Although this is a complex task, implementing even a few basic modifications can show spectacular results in terms of efficacy and also can result in a more efficient and engaged work-environment, which then using continuous improvement in small incremental steps can turn around a call center relatively quickly.

Delegate your agents (with more) autonomy

Teleworking has become fully widespread all around the world in the past years and the majority of contact center organizations and employees proved great adaptation skills by not only overcoming the difficulties of working remotely but also exceeding the general expectations of employers. This new norm transformed the general sense/ image of work environments by enabling employees to work-from-anywhere therefore IM applications and video conferencing services have gained major significance in the business world, in terms of internal and customer facing communication as well. Being isolated from our co-workers can cause delayed emails and answers to our questions and even misunderstandings. During a busy work day your agents might not have time to wait in order to be able to resolve customers problems or execute at-home troubleshooting. Proactivity is necessary on the agents’ behalf and managers and supervisors shouldn’t be reluctant anymore to allow their team members to work more independently. Resolving difficult scenarios creatively and independently boosts confidence and can greatly contribute to employee engagement. If necessary, improve your training techniques and trust your agents aptitude.

Appoint reasonable goals

Setting major milestones to reach is extremely useful in the long run. It provides a sense about the next big checkpoint and we can assess our current state in comparison to that. Knowing where you stand now and where you would like to go, makes planning the road ahead way easier. Crafting a script can help you guide your team's actions in accordance with the preset vision, highlight the focal points and enable you to estimate the necessary time-frame to reach your goals. You should maintain a steady work pace, the currently ubiquitous pressure and even tyranny of deadlines will only wreck morale.

Raise awareness of agents’ task significance

According to Wharton management professor, Dr. Adam Grant employees who personally experience the value of their work through their beneficiaries tend to enable them to maintain their motivation. However a typical call center environment doesn’t allow the traditional face-to-face communication between agents and customers. In a wired economy where customer service associates are increasingly likely to be physically isolated from clients, customers are easy to be seen as data rather than individuals in need. In order to avoid that, more and more companies are redeveloping their databases with features that can help humanize their data dump. Associating records with the customers’ image is a significant component to highlight the beneficiaries of call center agents’ work and as the research shows that is a crucial factor to boost employee productivity. Attaching photos and personal comments to calls and messages, hyperlinking recordings to CRM records and displaying customers feedback.

Here are some tips from our team:

• Attach customers’ photos and agents’ personal comments to calls and messages.
• Hyperlink recordings to your CRM records.
• Forward customers feedback and quality evaluation results to the competent agents and associates.
• Share positive testimonials with both your co-workers and future customers.
• If you have not already, implement visual wallboards to display these significant information.

Make sure your team is a union

Working in a team remotely may have sounded contradictory before but it has become a common practice by now. Although a contact center is a fast-paced environment to work at, make sure your team can squeeze in some light-weight meetings into the schedule too. Use these opportunities to reflect on your team’s work and to brainstorm together to increase collaboration and lift morale.

Please Contact us if you are interested how you can apply these principles using your favorite compliance recording solution.