Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Call Center Agents Who Feel More in Control of Their Work Are More Engaged Workers
While it’s a little hard to attach hard numbers to the amount of money and time disengaged workers cost businesses each year – employees don’t usually broadcast how much time they are wasting – some analysts peg the numbers in the hundreds of billions. Contact centers, whose workers often engage in repetitive work dealing with cranky or picky customers, have some of the highest turnover in industry, and some of the lowest employee engagement. It’s safe to say that unmotivated agents cost most contact centers, even small ones, the equivalent of several full-time salaries each year.
To avoid these types of losses, contact centers need to do a better job at motivating their employees in a way that’s meaningful to them. (Pinning up a sign that reads “Let’s Get Excited About Work!” in the break room doesn’t count as “meaningful.”) Customer Think’s David Miller recently wrote that before you begin a motivation program, you must first find your weakest spots where improvement can make the biggest difference.
“Motivating agents these days takes hard work and good planning,” he wrote. “But first need to assess the attitude of your call center agents before planning any activities.”
What bothers agents the most? Is it the physical working environment? Some contact center facilities feel little better than cattle pens. Are supervisors or managers screaming unrealistic expectations all day? Machiavelli would not have made a good call center manager. Are agents being trained properly? Do they have enough autonomy in their jobs that they can really solve customers’ problems and not just read scripts at them?
All these factors are important, but one of the most critical is providing employees with the ability to influence their situation. Whether it’s allowing them to use their problem-solving skills to really help people or letting them see the decisions of management in a transparent way, it helps when employees feel control over their situations.
A good call center scheduling solution can go a long way toward putting some autonomy in agents’ hands. Too often, schedules are handed to workers in a way that feels like a dictatorship. Agents are expected to work whichever shifts the manager picks, sometimes arbitrarily. Some workers want overtime and others don’t. Nearly all workers need the benefits of a flexible schedule on occasion. The very best workers should be rewarded with first picks of schedules, days off and vacation time. The ability to do these things is the hallmark of a good workforce management (WFM) and scheduling solution.
With modern WFO and scheduling solution, the creation of schedules is a more transparent process. Employees can access schedule details when they need to (even from phones and tablets), so they feel less like orders from on high. Employees can automatically bid for overtime and/or vacation time based on parameters like performance or seniority, and workers can even swap shifts with one another without a manager’s input as long as they have the right skills.
The end result is a more open, transparent and fair scheduling process that makes employees feel like are in better control of their work schedules, with favoritism and arbitrary rules eliminated. Putting some control of an agent’s day-to-day work into his or her hands will feel a lot like more autonomy, and help agents to re-engage with their work.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi