3 min
The Voice of the Employee (VoE) is the process of collecting employee feedback, complaints, and suggestions about their experiences and satisfaction with their workplace. The goal of VoE is to improve individual and overall employee satisfaction.
Just like customers want to do business with an organization that offers a great customer experience (CX), agents want to work for a contact center that delivers satisfying employee experiences (EX).
Agent well-being also directly affects a company’s reputation and brand: More than 70% of employees who strongly agree that their organization cares about their well-being defend it as a place to work, compared to only 12% of employees who disagree, according to Gallup.
There is also a connection between agent satisfaction and the quality of service customers receive. The way agents are treated is the way customers are treated. If you want service to be a competitive differentiator in a contact center, retaining the best agents who are trained to solve customer problems on any channel and on the first contact is one way to achieve this, and it can have a big impact in a company’s revenue.
Likewise, Deloitte indicates that organizations that care about the well-being of their employees are 25% more profitable than their competitors.
With so much at stake, giving employees a voice isn’t just a way to engage agents to reduce churn; it’s the way to retain high-performing employees, improve CX, and ultimately increase revenue.
How To Reduce Churn with Agent Engagement
Call centers need to execute an agent engagement strategy that accomplishes three things:
- Provide a structured channel to collect feedback for analysis, e.g. surveys.
- Demonstrate that a culture of acceptance exists so that agents feel comfortable sharing negative comments.
- Act on the feedback received so that the agents know that they influence organizational changes and improvements.
Supervisors know how engaged their agents are by looking at scheduling and absenteeism data, but that doesn’t explain how to increase engagement. Therefore, it is advisable to encourage their sense of purpose by providing them with clear objectives and showing them how their performance impacts the client and the company in real time.
3 Ideas for Getting Feedback and Improving Agent Experiences
1) Virtual Suggestion Box
A virtual suggestion box is most successful when agents see management act on feedback and receive awards or recognition for their work.
2) Brainstorming Sessions
Hosting virtual brainstorming sessions is a great team building exercise. These sessions help agents develop each other’s ideas in a fun way.
3) Leadership and Team Meetings
It’s a good idea to meet with agents weekly, monthly, or quarterly so they can ask questions and talk with executives. Agents need to know how their role impacts the success of the company, so they feel included and valued. This informal, personal time with executives provides frontline agents with leadership visibility.
Employee Communication Options: Informal and Formal
There are two types of communication under the Employee Voice concept: informal and formal. Informal voice allows employees to make comments or raise concerns on a daily basis. This provides insight into how agents feel, not just what they say.
Formal employee voice uses more structured communication channels, such as having a process to present complaints. Or you can create a participation study in which agents, supervisors and executive managers are interviewed. You need to analyze the results, publish the findings, and use them to inform CX and employee engagement strategies.
Employee Voice Cycle: Ask, Listen, Communicate, Act and Repeat
Giving employees a voice is a valuable opportunity to share and transfer knowledge. Promotes an inclusive work environment and affects their morale; that is a key factor in reducing absenteeism and job turnover. If agents feel valued and like their jobs, it shows in how they serve customers.
In conclusion, today the work of agents has expanded far beyond simple support: they handle complex technical problems, cross-sell and add-on products, and offer customer service. Sometimes the interaction with agents is the only human contact a customer has with a company. As such, they have deep insight into the pain points in the customer journey and ideas on how to modify their own processes to transform CX.
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