Rewarding Back Office Personnel: a Call Center’s Invisible Employees

Written by KOVA Corp

 

So often, the people working in a contact center’s back office—the people who perform clerical duties, fulfill orders, approve refunds, and many other tasks, depending on the industry—are essentially invisible to the customer.

It makes for an odd situation, as what they do each day actually has a huge impact on the customer experience. At a credit card company or bank, it’s the back office that approves lines of credit; in the insurance industry, they’re the ones approving or denying claims.

Yet back-office employees get neither the thanks when things go right, nor the blame when something goes wrong. It’s a mixed blessing, for sure. Dealing with an angry customer is rarely an enjoyable aspect of a contact center employee’s job, but it can also be difficult when managers, supervisors, or other employees fail to notice and applaud the things that back office workers do to make the front office’s job easier.

While it’s true that many back offices can be seen as inefficient, compared to the minute-by-minute standards of a contact center’s front office, there are excellent employees in every organization. If you want to improve your contact center culture, it’s important to recognize their hard work. Here are a few things to focus on when you’re letting your employees know how much you appreciate them.

Money isn’t everything

As important as monetary rewards like bonuses, reward cards, and raises are to employees, those things alone will not make someone feel truly appreciated. It’s equally important to show your gratitude in more personal ways. That could mean verbally thanking your employee, whether in private or in a larger team setting, or hosting an informal get-together in the employee’s honor. For more ideas on how to reward your employees without spending much money, check out this list from American Express’s Small Business blog.

Get creative with your rewards

Plaques, gift certificates, and other standard “thank yous” are just fine, but why not get creative? If an employee has been working extra overtime during a period when you’re short-staffed, send an appreciative letter to the employee’s significant other along with a gift card for dinner at a nice restaurant. If you know a helpful employee has a particular hobby, like birding or painting, give a small gift that’s somehow related—a nice set of paintbrushes, for example. Include a handwritten note to make the gift even more personal. The extra time and thought you put in will be more than rewarded.

Time is almost always better than money

If you have back-office employees who have consistently exceeded your expectations, the gift of time will go a long, long way. Who wouldn’t want an extra vacation day or two? For some organizations, flextime—shifting work hours to avoid commuter traffic—or giving the employee the opportunity to work from home a day or two a week are possibilities. These rewards not only show that you trust them and are grateful for their work, but will encourage loyalty and appreciation in your employee as well.

Little things make a big difference

You don’t have to make a big gesture to tell your employees that you appreciate them. If you give someone a token of appreciation one day, but ignore their hard work the other 364 days of the year, your thanks won’t seem very sincere—no matter how nice the gift is.

Instead, try to make your back-office employees feel appreciated regularly. It doesn’t take much: a Post-It with a nice message stuck on your employee’s keyboard, a quick visit from you and the CEO or CFO to say thank you in person, or a gift of flowers for someone whose child or spouse has been ill.

Identifying great employees

It can be more difficult to pick out outstanding employees in the back office, partly because the productivity tools don’t really exist, and partly because you’ve got a lot of other tasks and issues that take up most of your time.

But there are ways to free up some of that time, allowing you to put more effort into identifying stellar workers. One of those ways is KOVA’s Verint Media Recorder Workforce Management software, which helps managers build optimal staff schedules based on accurate forecasting. If you think this KOVA solution might help you, contact us today!

Is Your Organization Ready to Optimize their Public Safety Systems?

eyeusers