Productivity is a big deal for call centers. Most are constantly looking for ways to process calls faster while achieving better outcomes so that they can achieve their goals. At the same time they need to juggle their budget with high customer expectations, frequently low employee engagement, and poor employee retention rates.
So how can you boost the productivity of your call center agents and keep them motivated? Here are five great ways you need to try:
1. Track agent performance levels
Keeping tabs on the performance metrics of your employees will let you objectively evaluate their productivity. This will give you the data you need to take concrete steps that optimize employee efficiency.
All you need to do this is employee monitoring software like Controlio. Its features will let you know exactly how your agents are spending their time, how long they take to perform tasks, and whether they’re active or idle. It’ll even calculate a productivity score for each individual employee.
2. Improve the wellbeing of agents
Being a call center agent is often stressful – leading to a drop in productivity levels and an increased risk of burnout. To avoid this you should focus on improving the wellbeing of your agents by advising them on how to handle tough calls, or allowing them to leave early if they’ve had a stressful day.
It will also help to encourage your agents to take short breaks on a regular basis. With Controlio’s monitoring you can keep tabs on whether or not your employees are working excessively long hours in a stretch, and intervene where necessary to ensure they don’t burnout.
3. Incentivize good performance
One of the best ways to motivate your agents and improve their productivity is to incentivize and reward good performance. These incentives could be based on customer feedback, meeting pre-defined work goals, or achieving the highest performance on the team.
As you can imagine, Controlio’s monitoring data will help make it easy to incentivize good performance. Not only will it give you an objective way to measure performance levels, but its reports and analytics will let you quickly identify top performers.
In Controlio you’ll even be able to schedule regular reports and have them emailed to you so that you can conveniently check on the performance of your agents and reward them accordingly.
4. Provide clear operating procedures and policies
As far as possible try to provide your call center agents with clear operating procedures and policies. Doing so will give them a solid structure so they know what is expected from them in any given situation.
While it is important that your operating procedures and policies are clear and well-defined, avoid making them too restrictive. Giving agents a certain degree of autonomy within the parameters of your standard operating procedures can often lead to better outcomes while maintaining a minimum standard of service.
5. Encourage agents to give their input
Giving your agents the opportunity to have a voice can make them feel more involved. Ask them what they think about your policies, what issues they’re facing, and what can be done to help them improve productivity.
If you want you can use Controlio and give them access to their monitoring data so they can see their Key Performance Indicators (KPI). With this data they’ll be able to provide more informed feedback, and it’ll help them feel more in control which can motivate them to perform better.
6. Allow hybrid or remote work
Hybrid and remote work have both become very popular nowadays – and it is easy to see why. Allowing your agents the option to work from home can often lead to an increase in productivity as it will build trust, give them greater flexibility, and allow them to work in the environment that suits them best.
Needless to say, Controlio will have a crucial role to play in managing employees who are working from home. It will provide the means for you to keep tabs on employees, track their work hours, and ensure they are productive and not distracted too frequently.
Each of these five steps can help to motivate your agents and boost their productivity. At the same time many will also be useful at improving employee engagement and retention levels.
Overall that should have a huge impact on your call center as it will allow you to process calls faster while achieving better outcomes. And it goes without saying that will definitely help improve customer satisfaction as well as your bottom line.
