4 Ways To Increase Agents’ Commitment In The Call Center

With the growing focus on customer experience, workforce commitment (WEM) management has increased. This is a key way in which organizations can raise and maintain the CX in the call center by:

• Reduce agent wear.
• Provide agents with the tools they need to offer better customer service.
• Align users with the best-trained agents to quickly and satisfactorily resolve customer service inquiries.
• Add benefits that agents want.

That’s why Gartner predicts that by 2020, raising agent engagement will become a key differentiator in more than 20% of contact centers, compared to less than 2% in 2015.

But this change will require more than new tools: call center leaders should change the way they work and the ways in which they interact with agents.

4 Ways To Increase Agents’ Commitment In The Call Center

1) Empower Agents

All employees like to be heard and to consider their ideas, and call center agents are no exception. An easy way to empower agents is to involve them in more business decisions, particularly those that affect their processes and work environment.

Agents can be involved in the identification and selection of new training topics and technological tools that can help them offer better customer experiences. For example, it is difficult for many agents to resolve a query quickly if they do not have user-specific data. By involving agents in solving this problem, which can turn out to be a combination of data, technology and processes, they will feel strengthened while solving a query.

2) Measure What Matters

There are various analyzes available to measure contact center data. However, like any tool, the way it is used is as important as when it is used.

For example, there are analyzes that identify new opportunities for self-service and that serve to prevent agents from performing routine tasks so they can spend their time attending more valuable queries. Thanks to the self-service tools, users are satisfied because they resolve their queries more quickly, and agents are happy because they do not have to answer calls that can be resolved more effectively by other means.

3) Offer A Flexible Schedule

Agents, particularly Millennials, value the balance between work and personal life. Therefore, they expect call center leaders to balance those desires with personal and work needs. As a result, an easy way to improve this aspect in agents is to offer a variety of schedule options that recognize their performance and age in a tangible way.

For example, the dynamic programming of some contact centers goes beyond the offer of traditional and current shifts to increase the commitment of their agents, decrease turnover and promote more efficient operations.

It is a multi-step process that combines the Voice of the Agent (VoA) with the needs of the call center, by inviting agents to select their preferred shifts according to the pre-established work needs, with a priority selection granted to those on high performance, those with seniority, or those noted for their performance.

With significant rewards available to those who work to be among the first to participate in this programming process, commitment is encouraged and healthy and continuous competition between agents is encouraged.

4) Use Gamification

Gamification uses the science and psychology of the game to increase agent productivity while reinforcing positive behaviors and teaching new skills. While gamification affects and recognizes agents, motivating them to meet or exceed expectations by completing specific objectives and exceeding their peers, their ultimate goal is customer oriented: to offer superior experiences that retain users and keep them satisfied.

Most call centers launch gamification initiatives that present one or more of these three key strategies: rewards and recognition, peer competition, and training and development.

For example, when it comes to rewards, recognition and peer competition, you could:

• Grant “badges”: visual representations that track and measure the status of the agent and his progress to higher levels according to different achievements.
• Offer quarterly incentives to agents that maintain higher adherence and productivity numbers and quality scores, and weekly incentives to agents with the lowest weekly closing time and the highest weekly adherence.
• Use a BINGO card program where agents mark a space when they complete the designated activities (that is, when they reach their objectives) and demonstrate the preferred behavior (that is, when they achieve 100% compliance with the schedule), with agents who they achieve “BINGO” by receiving a day of telecommuting of their choice.
• Deliver gift cards to agents who meet the key quarterly performance indicators (KPIs), attendance and quality scoring objectives.

It should be borne in mind that, at times, creative and inexpensive gifts, such as giving the best agents of each month a reserved parking or additional free time, have a supervisor cover the phone while the agent takes a break for Drinking coffee, or giving agents the option of working from home, increases their labor involvement considerably.

The agents’ commitment, or WEM, is rapidly increasing in importance due largely to the changing expectations of call center agents. To involve and retain the professional and experienced agents demanded by users, new tactics such as those mentioned above must be adopted. Agents and users will thank you.