Today’s business leaders know that they need to deliver exceptional customer experiences to survive and thrive in a competitive landscape. However, the only way to guarantee customer satisfaction, and ensure your business is operating smoothly, is by tackling the issue of agent experience first.
The more engaged and empowered your team members are, the more effective they’ll be in their role. The less you invest in employee engagement, the more your turnover rates will rise. In fact, 47% of managers now feel the biggest issue they face in running a contact center is dealing with agent turnover and absenteeism.
So, what does it take to delight your employees in the modern contact center? This agent engagement checklist will give you all the guidance you need.
1. Invest in Continuous Development and Coaching
Few things are more important than giving your agents the coaching, education, and guidance they need. Investing in everything from the right initial onboarding process, to ensuring employees can thrive in their roles, to providing ongoing educational opportunities does more than enhance engagement.
It also ensures employees can rapidly adapt to changing market dynamics, and new challenges emerging in the contact center. As contact volumes grow, and customer queries become more complex, your agents need extra support to ensure they can handle every interaction perfectly.
Unfortunately, in a fast-paced environment, it can be difficult to offer consistent one-on-one coaching and guidance. Tools like Evaluagent’s agent improvement platform can help you deliver highly targeted, semi-automated training and coaching programs, specific to your agent’s needs.
You can leverage performance reports to determine exactly which issues agents are struggling with, and provide them with real-time support, as well as complete training sessions, delivered at times when staff are most likely to be available (thanks to WFM integrations).
Plus, you can create comprehensive workflows which include everything from online lessons, to quizzes, standalone sessions and more, with ease. Now, the entire end-to-end process of coaching is all taken care of.
2. Deliver Transparent Insights to Agents
Just as business leaders and supervisors need the right insights to build personalized training programs for agents, staff members need the right insights too. Transparent dashboards of crucial metrics presented to your agents can help them identify their strengths and weaknesses, so they know when to seek out additional support.
Customizable dashboards can also help agents to set specific goals, and monitor key metrics related to their targets, keeping them motivated and focused in the flow of work. With the right reporting tools, companies can even provide agents with access to a range of resources connected to their reports, such as e-learning modules, and quizzes, to help them continuously improve.
Transparent insights also serve an additional benefit in the contact center for agent engagement. With conversational analytics, for instance, QA teams can feed back on very specific interaction metrics, enabling agents to adapt their responses once they’ve received feedback, and take action on the next call with a customer.
“It’s really important that agents themselves feel empowered by the same data that they’re being judged on. By giving them access to their own performance metrics, they’re better able to manage their own progress and use their coaching and 1-2-1 sessions more effectively.” – Chris Mounce, QA & Coaching Specialist, evaluagent
3. Explore the Power of Gamification
Studies show even a basic level of gamification in the workplace, such as the use of leaderboards and badges, can increase engagement by 48%. Creating the right gamified experiences can also enhance company culture, strengthen connections between employees with healthy competition, and making the workplace feel more fun and playful.
With gamification software connected to your agent’s contact center tools, you can build highly immersive experiences that transform the way your teams work. For instance, you could give each agent a personalized profile, where they can track their progress and any points or badges, they’ve earned. You can showcase leaderboards on dashboards to show agents their rankings, and encourage them to strive towards new goals.
Platforms like evaluagent even allow you to create real-time auction experiences with instant notifications, performance boards, and engagement events you can align with your company’s goals. All of this helps to drive excitement and happiness in the contact center.
4. Recognize and Reward Your Staff
Going hand-in-hand with gamification, the right recognition and reward program is crucial to agent engagement. 81.9% of employees agree that recognition for their achievements makes them feel happier and more motivated at work. There are plenty of ways to approach a reward program, such as:
- Awarding points: Giving points to employees when they complete specific tasks or reach certain goals. Those points can then be exchanged for prizes at a later date, such as an extra day of holiday, or a financial bonus.
- Providing positive reinforcement: When your supervisors see an employee’s performance metrics improving, encourage them to share positive feedback. Thank your employees for their hard work, or share a congratulatory announcement with the entire team.
- Setting milestones: Give your employees milestones to work towards based on your company’s goals. When they reach these milestones, reward them with a free lunch, a badge they can showcase on their profile, or something else they want.
“Agents are the heart of the contact center, so keeping them happy, engaged and motivated is important. But that doesn’t mean all rewards have to be tangible or financial – for many people, having their great work recognized and shared is enough to make sure they feel seen and valued. It’s worth asking your team what would resonate best with them, so you can ensure the actions you take will have the desired impact – not only for your agents, but the customer too.” – Chris Mounce, QA & Coaching Specialist, evaluagent.
5. Invest in Transparent Communication and Collaboration
Studies show that transparent communication, and a collaborative company culture are crucial to nurturing engagement. Employees won’t feel connected to your business if they don’t feel they have a voice. With this in mind, implement strategies for two-way communication that facilitate transparency, and open collaboration throughout the contact center. You can:
- Streamline appeals: Encourage active participation in your contact center’s QA program with an intuitive appeal system that tracks changes to trends and scores.
- Request feedback: Ask agents to submit ideas, suggestions, and concerns anonymously, helping to guide your business leaders towards intelligent decisions.
- Bridge the gaps between teams: Ensure employees from throughout the business, including remote and hybrid workers, can share content and communicate seamlessly, using collaborative tools for video and audio conferencing, and messaging.
- Centralize announcements: Make sure no-one misses important updates while they’re away or on different shift patterns. Top-down communication needs to be clear and easy to find so you know your entire team are on the same page.
6. Give Agents the Technology they Need
Finally, ensure your employees have the technology they need to thrive in an increasingly complex contact center environment. Make sure they’re equipped with real-time insights into customer trends, experiences, and behaviors with comprehensive conversational analytics.
Ensure they can track quality assurance metrics, and leverage intuitive resources to streamline their tasks, such as AI-powered tools and software for automation. Make sure your contact center technologies integrate with all of the solutions employees need for call recording, conducting customer surveys, managing support tickets, and workforce management.
Connecting all of the resources your employees use for customer service, scheduling, collaboration and more into one ecosystem boosts productivity, and helps to foster engagement, by eliminating issues like context switching and technical frustrations.
Keep Your Contact Center Agents Engaged
Engaged agents are the lifeblood of an effective contact center. If your employees aren’t motivated, empowered, and satisfied in their roles, then they can’t drive your business towards the right results. Don’t run the risk of losing crucial talent in your contact center this year.
Use the checklist above to ensure you’re implementing all of the right strategies to engage your workforce, and hit your targets.
