“If you wonder what getting and keeping the right employees has to do with getting and keeping the right customers, the answer is everything.” – Frederick Reichheld, American author, speaker, and business strategist.
When it comes to excelling in customer support, your contact centre agents play a pivotal role. They are all the more instrumental in a crisis like we’re facing today—when being available to your customers matters more than ever. Though businesses tend to focus on retention at this stage, employee motivation is vital to keep your organisation afloat amid the crisis.
In fact, there couldn’t be a better time to appreciate your front-line team that keeps customer experience at the top levels. In such times of crisis, customers want brands to hear them out, understand their needs, and resolve their concerns. They can clearly establish the difference between genuine concern and empathy from a brand and marketing fluff or ‘brand speak’. Your agents are the ones who can step in and ensure you stay on the right side—in the customer’s good books.
But working from home makes their job harder. Not only do they have to match high expectations of apprehensive buyers in a pandemic, but they have to do so remotely—with its own set of challenges. Therefore, it becomes imperative for you to go the extra mile with measures to boost their motivation levels.
It’s well-known that your employees will thrive on appreciation and recognition for their hard work. But you need to think beyond the conventional incentives and rewards when it comes to appreciating their efforts and boosting morale.
So what can you do? It’s important to come up with better tools and strategies. Here are some initiatives that can elevate call centre agent motivation in the new normal.
Appreciate Work Well Done
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on consumer expectations is unprecedented. Businesses need to align their customer experience accordingly. With in-person interactions becoming less frequent, agent workloads have increased even as they work from home. Moreover, they have to work even harder to convince the stressed callers that they have the right solutions. They need to be empathic enough to understand the concerns and handhold them through the resolution.
When agents go the extra mile, businesses should also do their bit by giving them the recognition they deserve. If your profits are running low and you cannot incentivise them with money, consider giving tokens or rewards to the top performers. Gamification tools can go a long way in fostering a positive mindset. Apart from rewarding employees who are doing well, provide additional support to others so they can also improve their productivity.
Empower Them with The Right CX Tools
While words and incentives are great for motivating agents, they aren’t a substitute for tools that can empower them for delivering better performance. Since most businesses have embraced the remote working model in the new normal, it makes sense to keep a track of the latest tools and platforms that make working from home simple and hassle-free.
As a silver lining, the pandemic has encouraged businesses that weren’t tech-savvy originally to take the leap of faith. There are new cloud communication tools and platforms that you can embrace for enhancing collaboration between remote teams. These tools also help them deliver better service and curate long-term relationships. Investing in remote infrastructure is a subtle way to show that you value your team and want to do more for them.
Enhance Workforce Engagement
According to Gallup’s meta-analysis, organisations that had the highest levels of employee engagement showed 21% higher profitability levels and also scored 17% higher on productivity. It comes as no surprise that companies are showing an increased interest in workforce engagement management tools.
The core objective of ramping up worker engagement is to help your team be productive amid the social isolation and remote distractions. For example, you can keep agents motivated with traditional engagements such as daily stand-ups and weekly check-ins to stay in touch. Take this opportunity to thank them for keeping things going even through the crisis.
Ramp Up Training and Support Systems for The Team
Recognising the contribution of your contact centre agents is also about helping them keep their performance up. The best way to do this is by bolstering their training and support systems to match the current and upcoming challenges effectively. The benefit of such an initiative extends beyond boosting the morale of your team. Rather, it can also drive the long-term growth of the business.
Moreover, the challenges your customers are facing amid the pandemic are quite unique. Therefore, the support you provide has to be equally extraordinary. It is important to be empathetic towards the agents so that they can do the same for customers. You need to ensure that empathy is an element of your current training programs.
Also, invest in support systems that are flexible enough to adapt to the evolving expectations of the customers.
Scale-Up with Data Integration
Showing how much you value your staff is all about making their job less challenging and reducing their workloads. You can do so by investing in innovative cloud contact centre software. You need to look for a solution capable of integrating customer data from disparate sources, analysing it, and serving useful insights that agents can use for elevating the level of customer experience for your call centre.
Such solutions cut down the time and effort required for repetitive exchanges of personal information and transaction details. In addition, agents can get straight down to resolving the query with proper knowledge of customer expectations and previous interactions.
The calls would be shorter, which benefits the customers as well as agents. Moreover, these software solutions reduce the waiting times and delays that would increase the level of frustration for callers.
The Takeaway
Even though the pandemic has brought an unprecedented crisis for businesses, it has also opened the opportunity to realise the potential of their people. At present, it is vital to appreciate those who deliver value and productivity for your business—even as they work remotely. Your contact centre agents deserve it the most.
The small effort on your part not only motivates them but also enhances their performance and loyalty towards your firm. Apart from giving genuine appreciation to the employees, investing in cloud communication solutions is a smart measure to empower them as well as your business.
At Servetel, we help businesses looking to empower their teams to provide top-notch customer experiences. Our contact centre software is tailored to deliver flawless services regardless of the challenges of the pandemic. It enables agents to stay connected and give their best even when they work from home.
Want to boost the performance of your contact centre agents amid the COVID-19 pandemic? Connect with us at 1800-120-4132 and get your cloud communication curated today!
