With the holiday season fast approaching, there are many different reasons to inject festive cheer into your work atmosphere. Now, while we, at MeloTel, are advocates for year-round cheer, this is certainly the time of year to up your efforts in boosting employee morale. We’d also argue that this is especially important for call centre employees.
As we pointed out in our last blog, call centre workers have tough jobs. Therefore, attracting new talent to your business isn’t always an easy feat. What can you do to make your call centre a go-to destination for employment?
Create a fun work atmosphere.
Consider the traditional demographic of the individuals who apply to work in your call centre. Do they tend to be young people? If so, it’s probably a wise choice to develop a fun work environment that gives employees ample reasons to want to come into work every day. As is often said, a happy employee is a productive employee.
According to Mark McDermott of Australia’s CX Central, many call centres attract 18-24 year olds in their first serious employment. “The challenge for any organization with this demographic is to provide a fun, rewarding and challenging environment that quickly spots talent and fast-tracks these people as possible promotion candidates,” he writes, “Frontline supervisors and managers are key to the success of the onboarding and development of the new recruits.”
Give agents the power to make important decisions.
Your employees want to be more than simple cogs in a wheel. They want to feel like they matter. And why shouldn’t they? They do matter! Make this known to them. Offer them opportunities to make important decisions on behalf of the company and let them know their contributions are appreciated. For example, if an agent is given the freedom to decide when a goodwill credit is due to a customer, he/she will feel more like a trusted and respected member of the business.
“Internal policies can often hold agents back,” says Nancy Pais on 31West.net, “The more complicated your internal policies the harder it is for agents to help customers. While internal policies are important, give your agents permission to go off script when necessary, which can boost first call resolution rates.”
Work to quickly resolve difficult issues.
Not every day is going to be a good one. Be sure to prepare yourself for worst-case scenarios such as conflicts between employees, irate customers asking to speak to managers and absenteeism. Dealing with such issues can be challenging, but they shouldn’t be ignored.
“These issues, if ignored or dealt with passively can have a detrimental impact on motivation and performance of the entire team,” believes McDermott, “Investing in development for your managers to effectively confront and challenge underperformance through performance coaching will have a measurable impact on morale and therefore the performance of your people.”
It can be argued that your call centre can only be as productive as its technology allows. At MeloTel, we’ve long been proud of our DaFeeder Preview Dialer It’s a web-based telemarketing software that allows even the most inexperienced computer users to manage campaign dialing and dispositions.
For more information about DaFeeder Preview Dialer, please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-888-MELOTEL or use the Live Chat feature on our website!
