How To Improve the Participation and Agents’ Commitment in a Call Center?

The benefits of agent engagement are obvious to any call center supervisor. Agents who are committed align their personal goals with those of the company they work for and strive to do an excellent job, because it makes them feel good to achieve the goals that have been proposed to them.

They perform better and treat customers better. Engaged agents stay in your workplace longer, which improves your bottom line along with your customer experiences (CX).

What Are the 9 Best Practices for Engaged Agents?

1) Use the Golden Rule

Treat your employees as you would treat your customers, that is, with respect and empathy.

2) Be Proactive

Focus on agent retention rather than agent recruitment. To do this, we must focus on retaining talent instead of looking for new ones.

3) Encourage Two-Way Communication between Supervisor and Agents

Call centers must provide the appropriate tools so that agents can carry out their work correctly, provide feedback to their supervisors and thus know what needs to be improved.

4) Offer the Opportunity to Grow Professionally in the Company

Agents need to see that their professional development and growth is possible. In this sense, it is very motivating to offer them more options than just becoming a contact center supervisor. They may also be offered to be a Quality Management (QM) Specialist, Workforce Manager (WFM), Artificial Intelligence Specialist, or Robotic Process Expert, among others.

5) Facilitate Multiple Work Tools for Hybrid Environments

That is, allow agents to work in the office, remotely with products such as Enreach Contact or offer them the possibility of working in a hybrid environment.

6) Provide Flexible Scheduling Options

With remote work the new norm, agents want the flexibility to schedule shifts according to their needs.

7) Build a Corporate Culture Dedicated To Ongoing Two-Way Communication and Training

It is a mistake to monitor agents and only give them negative feedback. Rather, reviews should be presented as personalized training, to show that the supervisor and agent are on the same team to help them achieve their KPIs.

8) Provide Access to Personal Performance Metrics

You need to allow agents to view their performance metrics, just like supervisors do. Transparency builds trust and gives them the visibility to identify their areas for improvement.

9) Give Timely and Meaningful Recognition and Rewards

Recognition for a job well done raises morale not only for the recipient, but for the entire call center.

It is important to note that most of these points require empathy and emotional intelligence from supervisors and managers, while others can be optimally facilitated with the right technology solution. For example, tools to help make performance data visible to agents, notifying supervisors which agents need training on what, and providing gamification to develop a healthy sense of competition among agents to improve their performance.

In conclusion, contact centers provide some of the information that can improve the effectiveness of the organization by monitoring and enhancing the development and commitment of employees to help meet company objectives. Why? Because when employees are more engaged, they feel more empowered, they are more likely to achieve their strategic goals. And that’s when you see the growth and positive KPIs on a larger scale.