Call Center Management Featured Article
Improve Customer Loyalty with Team-Building Efforts
It’s a well-established fact that when it comes to customer support, happy customer support agents lead to happy customers. Customers like people who listen to them, empathize with them and seem genuinely interested in solving their problems. And while every contact center organization should treat its employees fairly – paying them well, offering paid sick time and vacation time and housing them in comfortable and attractive work environments – this isn’t always enough. Call center work is stressful work, and the most successful agents need tools that don’t come in the form of an annual raise and an occasional pat on the back.
According to Monet Software CEO Chuck Ciarlo in a recent blog post, it’s also important to build supportive relationships between agents so they feel they have a supportive work “family.” This can be very tricky, since most agents spend the day talking customers and not their coworkers. The way to accomplish it is to create an infrastructure for team building.
“Team building is an excellent method to encourage company loyalty and create happier, more effective agents,” wrote Ciarlo. “This is especially true if you have remote agents and employees that work from home, as they have even fewer opportunities to network with coworkers.”
Turnover is often higher in contact centers than in other types of corporate work. While individuals in other departments who may stay for years can build affinity simply by long periods of proximity and daily interaction with one another, this isn’t always possible in the call center during work hours.
Ciarlo recommends regular off-site get-togethers at a restaurant, for example, or a public park. It may not be an inexpensive option, but it could prove to be critical in order to build the kind of working relationships that lead to employee engagement (which, of course, leads to customer engagement). Ciarlo also writes that companies can foster better connections between employees even on the work premises.
“There are also team-building practices that can be introduced at no cost, such as a huddle at the start of each shift – a few words of encouragement, a reminder of the importance of the customer, and singling out a few agents for their contributions can be a great way to start a day,” he said.
Even if your efforts are clumsy at first (and there are seminars, Webinars and other ways to educate managers about team building), it’s important that employees perceive that the company is trying. There are often “take charge” social butterflies among the employee base who are able and willing to coordinate efforts on behalf of the company. Tap these peoples’ skills for ideas. The time and money invested in this effort are likely to be worth it.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi