For call centers, efficiency means finding the delicate balance between boosting agents’ productivity and making them happy.

Boosting the organization’s performance without affecting agents’ physical and mental wellbeing will always be a challenge for brands and their contact center partners. Customer support reps are prone to burnout because of the very nature of their job, which requires them to answer plenty of calls and attend to irate clients.

However, enhancing employee performance is a task you can’t run away from. Your agents rely on you for strategic directives so the entire team can help achieve the company’s goals. Thus, part of your initiatives must be to provide everything your staff needs to carry out their tasks efficiently. This consists of:

• knowledge resources
• tech tools
• workplace facilities

Here are the five things that can bolster both employee engagement and productivity in the contact center.

1. Optimized Training

   

   Product knowledge and customer service skills enable reps to provide the best customer experience. While training does give multiple opportunities to learn, refining that knowledge must be a continuous process that goes beyond new hire training programs.

   For this to success and to ensure your partner call center consistently offers high quality support, you’ll need:

   • Enhanced and Updated Knowledge Base

     As the brain of your program’s operations, the knowledge base serves as the backbone of a good customer experience. It must be regularly updated along with every change to the brand, products, process, or existing promotions.

   
   • Retrievable Training Materials
     Making your training materials and resources easily retrievable can be extremely beneficial. This will allow agents to revisit and review their previous modules, helping them form a skills development habit.
   • Coaching and Refresher Courses
     Team leaders and the training staff must also make refresher training opportunities available to all employees. Reps having difficulties reaching performance goals may be granted coaching sessions. Quality Analysts may also specify pain points that updated training curriculums will focus on correcting.

2. Online Collaboration Tools

   

   For large call centers composed of several smaller teams, it can be hard to keep everyone updated about the latest projects and developments in the organization. Here’s where online collaboration apps and virtual workspaces come in handy.

   Typically, these productivity tools provide a dashboard or a platform where users can share documents with one another and brainstorm as a group. Therefore, as a workplace resource, these applications can help organize workflows, which then boosts your team’s productivity. Specifically, they enable employees to:

   • keep track of several projects at once
   • access documents from a single location
   • coordinate with other departments easily

3. Relaxation Hubs

   

   Customer support reps have to deal with stress every day, and it’s not just because they often encounter angry customers. Aside from this, shifting schedules can add to their everyday burdens.

   Thus, it’s important to provide a space where they can relax and re-energize. For instance, you can create sleeping quarters for those who want to take naps during breaks. Some companies also opt to build areas for sports and video games, while others provide free beverages such as coffee, fruit juices, and tea. These fun zones don’t just boost employee engagement, they also allow agents to get to know one another and build great friendships within the workplace.

4. Employee Rewards

   

   Happier workers always tend to do better. Acknowledgment and rewards can go a long way to recognize those performing impressively and to motivate those who haven’t been able to perform their best.

   It doesn’t have to be anything big. A small token for their performance and a heartfelt kudos are sometimes all it takes to make them feel just how valuable they are to the program. Even a simple dine-out can do you great wonders in keeping your agents delighted.

   On the other side, it’s best not to punish those some agents don’t always meet quotas or earn passing performance scores, but rather give one-on-one feedback or offer training sessions. Unless they have no drive for improvement it would be thoughtless to immediately let go of them without warning and a chance to improve first.

5. Open Communication

   

   Poor communication can easily cause mishandled tasks, conflict among coworkers, demotivation, loss of interest to collaborate, and reduced productivity. All these can lead to resignations and poor customer service.

   To prevent these, most call centers establish and maintain open communication as part of their workplace culture. It ensures that everyone, regardless of position in company, is encouraged to express their thoughts, share their honest opinions, and contribute ideas without the fear of being judged. This helps resolve conflicts, avoid friction, and prevent issues from growing building. The resulting diverse ideas and opinions help build a rich, meaningful office experience.

   Agents who feel valued and heard will value and respect the people they work with. Keep this in mind when building your management strategies.

These practices can help your contact agents be more productive and improve your program results. High-performing agents are happy ones, so creating a positive and open workplace for them must be a priority.

Open Access BPO is an advocate of creating safe spaces where everyone can work comfortably and communicate openly as their authentic selves. Our people-first culture also empowers our people to be productive.

Contact us today to learn more about how our recruitment and training practices, employee management, and employee engagement strategies contribute to our high-quality customer experience.