Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Can Gamification Help Improve Call Center Scheduling?
In the world of call center scheduling, we tend to focus a considerable amount of time on finding the right candidates, schedule adherence, shift projections and skills-based routing. All of these activities are important, but they pull attention away from the value of onboarding quality employees. If we expect them to perform, we have to give them the tools and training to do so in a short amount of time.
A recent post in eLearning Industry by Gal Rimon highlights the opportunities in gamifying the onboarding process. The process itself is important as it introduces the new employee to your culture, the tools you have available, your brand and your goals. It can also help them fast-track to productivity. The key is to not make it so fast that they can’t grab hold of the methods needed to do their job well.
The idea of introducing gamification into the mix may give some in call center scheduling pause as it seems to suggest playing video games. While the concept is the same, it is really about applying the mechanics of the game to enterprise applications that allow you to communicate with your employees, encourage changes in behavior and boost overall performance.
Gamification can be used in the onboarding process as it allows you to incorporate eLearning. Employees – whether new or not – can be awarded for completing a learning task, which helps to encourage personal satisfaction and accomplishment. Given the dynamic call center environment, the use of such a tools ensures you can spread activities across the employee base without a significant amount of time focused on one individual.
Rimon offers a few tips on how to use gamification for onboarding your call center employees. Included are recommendations for new levels of achievement, the eLearning experience, promoting team involvement and taking the experience beyond simple onboarding. The goal is to take a broader approach to the tool and how it can help in the overall management of the call center, beyond onboarding and call center scheduling.
The key is to understand how this tool can work within your culture. Will employees embrace it as fun and valuable and not busy-work? Will it contribute to increased productivity across the board and not serve as simply a distraction? If you develop any type of system meant to make the experience more fun, the ultimate goal should be measurable in the bottom line through improved efficiencies, shortened onboarding time and overall enhanced performance. If so, you’ve achieved the ultimate benefit to using an innovative tool.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi