In our last blog, we revisited the concept of call centre productivity and offered some tips to call centre managers to help them improve performances at their places of business. In today’s blog, we’ll pick up where we left off with three more excellent tips for how to bolster production in your call centre.
1. Find ways to constantly boost employee morale.
Never assume that your phone agents don’t need motivation on a regular basis. Make no mistake about it, their jobs are gruelling. In many cases, your reps will take more than a hundred calls in a day. That’s a lot of people to talk to! The job can become tiresome and monotonous. If you’re not finding ways to inject energy and enthusiasm into your working environment, you’ll be managing a team of employees who will burn out.
“Agents who have energy and focus toward their call center work will deliver higher quality customer care,” writes Jade Longelin on Playvox.com, “There are two types of motivation: intrinsic (from within oneself) and extrinsic (external rewards). External rewards in a call center could include any number of bonuses and perks, but intrinsic motivation is stronger and more long lasting than extrinsic.”
2. Hire smart and train well.
Never throw your new hires to the wolves. Far too many call centre businesses falter because of their high turnover rates. Because the job positions they offer require a lot of patience and perseverance, they go through a lot of employees who end up quitting after short periods of time. You should have a focus on hiring candidates who are strong fits for your company culture. You should also ensure that you have a very effective training program before their jobs start.
“The call centre representatives need to undergo extensive training before they begin to interact with the customers,” insists Prashanth H N on Knowlarity.com, “Every representative is supposed to have thorough knowledge about the process, they are working for. This helps them to resolve customers’ queries efficiently. In the case of weak process knowledge, the concerns raised by the customers may remain unaddressed. This could be very frustrating for the customers and as a result the company’s name also gets tarnished.”
3. Put performances on display.
The best way to inform a team of call centre phone agents about how they’re performing is to put it all on display. Set up a scoreboard and make a game of it. Friendly competition has always been a strategy that has helped to boost production in call centres. By seeing the numbers up on a board, your team members will be able to assess their performances against their co-workers. Offer incentives to inspire each rep to rank higher in the office standings.
“Giving your agents a real-time snapshot of how the entire center is working hard together can motivate individual agents to contribute valuably to the team,” says Longelin, “Consider investing in a projection area that is highly visible to agents which displays statistics that give a glimpse of customer satisfaction and agent productivity.”
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