In our last blog, we revisited the topic of boosting call centre productivity. In today’s blog, we’ll continue to provide you with more insight into how you can inspire your phone agents to give you their best efforts.
Spark some friendly competition.
This is a tip we’ve doled out in the past and it’s not likely to fall off the charts any time soon. Friendly competition in the work place is a great way to boost numbers. Break your team up into smaller teams, create a standings list and keep score on a weekly basis. Reward the top teams and the top performers with valuable incentives and watch the rest of your staff members become motivated to perform at higher levels moving forward.
“Agents tend to work individually,” says Jade Longelin of Playvox, “Break the routine by forming teams and have them compete for a top prize. This is especially useful for retaining and engaging work at home staff. When done right, competition and teamwork is a powerful tool used to create team bonds and produce better outcomes.”
Accept employee feedback and implement changes based on it.
There are few things that make an employee feel more valued than being listened to. It’s important that you regularly pay attention to the comments made by your phone agents. Who better to listen to about how to improve your business than those who deal directly with your customers? As SpiceCSM points out, contact centre agents are usually the first people to know about broken processes and procedures.
“After all, they are on the ones on the front lines, taking the calls and interacting with the customers,” notes their website, “It is very important to setup a feedback loop for your agents to provide input and suggestions. By consistently implementing agent ideas, you will not only increase their efficiency, but also help to boost motivation and morale.”
Avoid “one trick pony” training.
For the most part, call centre managers train their phone agents to be just that: phone agents. Why not teach them about other important facets of the business? Enable them to make decisions and handle customer concerns that would otherwise be delegated to the “higher ups”. By removing the limitations of your training, you will embolden your staff members to feel they can move up in your company and contribute more than standard customer service over the phone.
“Don’t limit agents to being experts in one single particular area,” insists Longelin, “Coach agents to become well-rounded experts who can assist a customer without having to transfer them to another department. By doing so, the agent will feel that their job adds real value. As a bonus, customers will be happier that they didn’t get transferred around and were able to get their questions answered by a single person.”
Give them access to the best technology.
It can be argued that your call centre can only be as productive as its technology allows. At MeloTel, we’ve long been proud to offer call centre businesses DaFeeder Preview Dialer – a web-based telemarketing software that allows even the most inexperienced computer users to manage campaign dialing and dispositions.
For information about DaFeeder Preview Dialer, please don’t hesitate to contact us at 1-888-MELOTEL or use the Live Chat feature on our website!
