5 Ways To Improve Call Center Agent Engagement

It’s not uncommon for employees to leave a call center because they are unhappy. Most call centers in America experience an employee turnover rate between 30 and 45 percent. As the manager you want to lower the turnover rate in order to keep a steady group of agents. Having consistency, well trained, and experienced call center agents will inevitably help the business as a  whole. 

Why Agent Engagement Matters

Engaged employees make a company thrive, disengaged employees do just the opposite. To help a workplace flourish, the agents need to be fully engaged. Call centers can see a great decline in productivity and synergy when they have disengaged employees. This is why agent engagement is so important. It must start with the satisfaction of the employees and everything else will follow suit. 

How to Improve Call Center Agent Engagement?

Employee engagement starts with understanding your employees. Once you understand your employees you can use tools and tactics to align their goals with the company goals. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, but ultimately employee engagement can only happen when your employees are happy. 

1. Get to Know What Agents Like In Their Job

The agents are working for the company for a reason. Yes, it’s because they get a paycheck, but there are likely more reasons than just that. Finding out what your agents like about their job will help you create incentives and boost morale in the workplace. 

Another benefit to understanding what your agents like in their job is the knowledge that you now have when assigning tasks. For instance, if you knew that employee A enjoyed and was thorough in updating customer contact information, you could assign them with more of those tasks. When your agents are doing things they enjoy, they are much more likely to contribute positively to the company culture and be more productive. 

2. Organize Events and Activities Their Job

Keeping your employees engaged is just as much about down time and relaxation as it is working. It’s a given that you want to keep your agents engaged in the business goals and their work tasks, but you also want them to engage with their team and enjoy their job. 

Hosting events and activities for your agents in a great way to boost morale and encourage times of rest. If you do events and host activities, that will help ensure that everyone is getting a break, then when they return to work, everyone will be ready to get back to work. 

3. Focus on Employee Recognition

Similar to a teacher using rewards for students who pay attention, managers can use recognition for hard work. People often underestimate the power of recognition, but employees need and want to be recognized for their hard work. 

When work goes unnoticed, agents begin to feel under appreciated. Many employees are driven to hard work in hopes that the manager will notice and reward them with more pay, extra vacation day, etc. By consistently pointing out and rewarding hard work, the manager is incentivizing this work ethic, which will produce better and better employees with time. 

4. Encourage Good Call Center Culture

Call center culture is very important to nurture and maintain. It sets the tone for the business and will promote all areas of the business to be successful. 

Call center culture is all about your business’ values. Whatever the call center culture is, it will determine how your employees act, how they view their work and how business is conducted. The right culture can strengthen your brand and help employees feel more dedicated to the work they do.

Building call center culture begins with looking at the current values and culture and seeing whether everyone is working toward a common goal. Learning how to improve call center culture is different for each organization. When you clearly lay these aspects out for employees, and they feel as if their everyday tasks are meaningful, they will be more motivated to come to work. When the call center culture is healthy and positive, the entire team and company will flourish from the increased morale and productivity.

Every business’s culture will be different, but the benefits remain the same. A focus on a strong call center culture can easily translate into lower employee turnover, improved customer service and increased revenue.

5. Create Growth Opportunities

Give your agents opportunities to grow. You likely notice that most employees want to work their way up in a company or be given new projects/tasks in order to feel fulfilled within their job. Not too many employees are okay with never moving forward. It is easy for employees to feel stagnant if they aren’t being challenged or trying to reach higher standards. Agents want opportunities to perfect their skill sets and improve upon the job role that they currently have. While also striving for new or more responsibility within the company. Here are a few ways you can provide growth opportunities: 

• Hire from within: If agents feel like they have opportunities to move up in a company they will be encouraged to grow in order to get those positions. 
• Offer cross-training: Give your agents the opportunity to grow their skill set and even move to a different department if they feel they could be an asset in another position. 
• Coach/Mentor: Agents can gain a lot of knowledge and growth from experienced agents and manager coaching. 
• Create project groups: Designate a group of people and a leader to handle a project or task. This gives agents opportunities to prove their leadership skills and contribute to the solution of the assignment. 
• Offer online training and webinars: There are many resources online that businesses can use to help their employees grow in their careers. By offering training sessions and webinars every employee would be able to grow and learn. 

Now let’s put the 5 best call center management practices into action!