3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

“How was your day?” It's the question that launched a thousand conversations, whether heavily focused on banalities, packed with excitement or even a little rage. It's also the question that Altitude Software (News - Alert) is asking contact center workers, as part of a larger contest, and a new report from contact-centres.com details not only how the contest is being run, but also what's at stake and what impact it might have.

The contest in question challenges contact center workers to turn to Instagram and post photos about the best part of the workday, complete with two tags: #myccdayaltitude and @altitudesoftware. Altitude Software staff will then vote on the resulting photos, and the photo landing the most votes will garner a free travel gift card. A second gift card will be given to the contact center staffer whose photo garners the most likes on Instagram.

David Romero, who serves as Altitude's chief marketing officer, noted that Altitude solutions were in wide use all over the world, with 80 countries represented and “hundreds of thousands of agents” involved. So Altitude launched the contest in a bid to “...build a community of what is a very diverse group of people but that have quite a few things in common by way of their daily work at contact centers.”

It's not a bad idea, but it's worth wondering just how much impact this will actually have on the wider community. Calling attention to the lives of contact center staffers will put a humanizing face on an ordinarily faceless voice on the other end of a phone, or phantom text-typers at the other end of a Web-based chat window, depending on how it's organized. The contact center workers might get some fleeting glimpses of fame as pictures are liked and shared around Instagram, but this likely won't last long. Even those who win the contests will likely enjoy the prize and then the high spirits might wear off. It's a great program, but it's not likely to have much of a lasting effect on contact center morale because it's just too transient in nature.

Still, a good start is a good start, and with an increasing number of workers getting in on contact centers these days, being able to build morale by any means is worth considering. Let's just not forget the contact center staffers after the contest dies down, or this short contest will only have a short impact on the contact center environment. Keeping in mind just how a contact center staffer's day goes can be a great way to remember that these are people too, and when everyone's humanized, it makes for a more courteous and better functioning environment.