Call Center Games Can Help Boost Agent Productivity

If you engage in call center management, you'll know that motivating agents is one of the hardest jobs. Call center work is difficult and can be boring and repetitive, and getting agents to work up to their best potential can be one of the hardest jobs of a call center manager. So what to do?

What if you can turn call center training and skills development into a game, wonders UK call center site CallCentreHelper.com. After all, your call center employees, if they're like most people, probably engage in computer or online gaming and probably prefer them over center work. What if you can implement the kind of enjoyment people get from playing games into your call center training program?

“The idea of making performance management into a game is simple enough,” writes CallCentreHelper. “Games are fun. Make work fun, and people will want to do it, without needing to be told. Games have been used in call centers for years, mostly as a relatively short-term motivational measure to inspire a burst of competitiveness and to boost productivity.”

Boosting call center agent productivity, of course, is one of the prime tasks of call center management.

Chris Thomas, Workforce Optimization Business Manager for call center solutions provider Aspect (News - Alert), has looked at introducing this change to customer service performance management.

“Although the actual use of games as a performance management tool might be considered a novelty, there is something to be said for the idea,” said Thomas. “Understanding how playing games affects the way that humans think and behave can be an effective technique to promote soft competition among employees, as well as motivate staff to hit targets.”

A downside of games, of course, is that people invest a lot in winning, and making a call center gaming environment thrive would risk that there are “losing” individuals and teams as well as winners. Too much of this, and people might get discouraged. A solution is to have call center workers compete not against each other, but against themselves, as with say...a game of solitaire.

“For example, top performers are rewarded and celebrated, but low performers’ performance is not exposed, instead showing personal bests, etc. There is a competitive element, but it is kept trivial and fun, instead of daunting and aggressive,” said Thomas.

Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli