9 Simple Tips For Improving Contact Center Workforce Satisfaction

Written by KOVA Corp

It’s a simple fact – the happier your contact center workforce is, the higher your center’s level of customer service will be. A satisfied employee is one who will truly take ownership of their job, and will do what it takes to make customers happy.

So how do you ensure that morale in your contact center is high, and that each and every employee feels a sense of job satisfaction? We’ve assembled 9 tips to help you do just that.

1. Let agents see you on the phones! Employees respect a boss who doesn’t ask them to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. If you jump on the phones every once in a while, it will demonstrate to your agents that you don’t consider their job to be beneath you, as well as promoting a feeling of solidarity with you. It’s also a good way for you to model best practices, or any changes in procedure, to show your workforce how it’s done.

2. Solicit feedback from your agents. They’re the ones in the trenches, who know better than anyone how things work. Before implementing any changes, ask them for insight – not only will they appreciate being asked, but their involvement in the decision-making process will make them more likely to accept the outcome.

3. Keep the workload realistic. As pressured as contact center managers can be to do more with less, it’s important to keep the workload at a level where employees feel it is do-able. Otherwise, customer service will suffer, as agents scrape by doing the bare minimum.

4. Get to know your workforce. Developing personal relationships with each of your employees is a great way to make them feel appreciated as individuals. Make sure you know all their names, and let them know you care about them as people, not simply as employees.

5. Make customer satisfaction your target, rather than length of call. Allowing agents to really focus on each customer rather than on keeping calls short will enable them to connect with customers as people, which will make for happier customers and happier agents.

6. Make sure your technology is up-to-date. There’s nothing worse than being asked to do a job with substandard technology that makes everything harder. Providing employees with the tools they need to do their best shows them you value their time and effort. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, check out KOVA’s Enterprise Workforce Optimization Solutions.

7.  Ask for customer reinforcement. The more positive feedback, the better. Have agents ask customers if they are satisfied with the results they’ve gotten at the end of each call. Hearing it from the customers themselves will boost morale.

8. Test new training ideas out temporarily first. Rather than springing a new training  or coaching program on employees unannounced, let them test drive it first, and then give you feedback. That way they’ll be more likely to truly engage with the training.

9. Reward agents for good performance. Recognizing employees for a job well done is a vital part of making them feel valued in any organization.

Taking these 9 simple steps can make your contact center a place in which employees feel valued, which goes a long way towards agent satisfaction. And with morale high, your customer service levels are sure to increase, as well.

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