Call Center Management Featured Article
Improving the Call Center Culture Has Huge Benefits
For years, the call center industry was plagued by high turnover rates and agent burnout. That’s because the focus on keeping customers happy outweighed attention necessary to keeping those on the front lines happy and satisfied with the work they were doing.
Over time, many call centers shifted the focus to offer more incentives and care for agents they employed. While it has helped turn things around in the call center industry, there is always room for improvement.
New ways to improve operations internally so company culture matches brand and business goals, are worth looking into. After all, these are the contacts your customers are going to ultimately be interacting with. Whatever image you’d like your brand to portray needs to be projected through them.
Here are 3 things you can do to improve the culture in your call center.
Improve Training
One of the best ways to help support agents so they not only feel confident in their jobs but deliver better services to customers, is to offer better, more frequent training. Everything from helping them to understand the products and services offered, to tips for improving how they communicate and handle customer calls, can increase confidence. An agent’s ability to promote your offerings on an expert level can go a long way in getting customers to complete a purchase.
Reward Successes
It’s not enough to ask agents to do better and leave it at that. Rewarding a job well done with incentives not only makes employees feel appreciated, it also motivates others to mirror their actions and work toward goals in a positive way. Take a poll and ask agents if they’d prefer time off, gift cards or paid lunches when performance goal and expectations are exceeded.
Include Staff in Decisions
It’s important for agents to feel appreciated and to feel like their opinions matter. What better source to work with when making changes to daily operations than those interacting with customers each day. Including these employees and getting their input before making updates gives them a voice and makes them feel central to the operations success.
With a stronger company culture, call centers stand to benefit from greater staff retention, more brand identity and a boost in customer loyalty. When’s the last time you stopped to consider how you can get agent’s on board with your company’s desires?
Edited by Maurice Nagle