Workforce Management Featured Article

Keeping Call Center Employees Happy is the Key to Customer Service Excellence

It’s conventional wisdom that happy contact center employees offer the best customer service. Those who approach their job cheerfully, glad they can be of assistance or even simply pleased to be building a career in a growing industry are always going to be far more effective with customers than those who are only in it to earn a paycheck. Engaged employees care, disengaged employees do not.

Staffing your contact center with engaged and happy employees, however, it’s not something you can do by following a quick checklist or hiring a consultant, however. It’s a career-long process that is continually ongoing and constantly needs refining. It involves frequent evaluations, a good reward system, interesting and varying work assignments, some friendly competition and many other factors.

But it may also involve hiring the right people in the first place. Someone taking a job just to fill in a hole while they wait for something better isn’t likely to turn into a great call center workers. An individual who views the job as an opportunity to learn and grow is the right type of employee. So how do you sort out the two from each other?

Zappos, the online apparel company, has found an interesting answer, according to a recent article on LinkedIn (News - Alert) by David Filwood, Principal Consultant for TeleSoft Systems. Zappos, which has been very highly rated for its customer service by many different studies, hires call center employees and puts them through a four-week, fully paid training process. Then, things get really interesting: the company offers to pay the employee to quit. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, in his book “Delivering Happiness,” says the company makes new employees what they call “The Offer.”  In addition to the pay they’ve received for the first four months, employees are offered $3,000 to quit. Between two and three percent of new employees take “The Offer.”

What has the company accomplished here? It has weeded out individuals who are approaching a call center job as a fill-in to make a little extra cash with no intention of making a commitment. These are the people who are least likely to do a good job servicing customers.

Once you have hired a pool of engaged people looking to make a difference in a customer’s life, the next steps are to keep them happy. Nobody likes being treated like an employee ID number or a cog in a big, impersonal machine. Regular training and evaluation is critical to uncover weak spots in performance and reward good work. Adding some challenge and fun to the process in the form of “gamified” solutions also works well. Incentives such as office parties and holiday decorating, plus offering perks such as fitness equipment, dry cleaning and an occasional free meal works well, too.

But gimmicks, however much they sweeten the pot, won’t be what keeps an employee engaged in his or her job. Most employees quit because they feel they’re not being treated fairly, and fairness in the contact center often boils down to schedules and vacation times. When employees believe they have some flexibility in their schedules, they will value the job more highly. Advanced workforce management features such as schedule bidding and swapping can go a long way toward creating this perception. So too can automated vacation requests (determined by a pre-determined set of factors such as performance and seniority instead of a manager’s whim).

In the long run, keep contact center employees happy isn’t about any single thing a company can do. It’s a complex mix of factors from hiring and training all the way to rewarding longevity and strong performance. And it’s one of the most important things a contact center manager can do.