One of the most challenging environments for any business is the customer service center. Also known as a contact center or a call center, it is where the frontline of your staff work to help boost your business. While we recognize this as the frontline, we seldom treat it accordingly. In fact, employee engagement can be low in call center environments and, as a result, can prove to be the reason your business can struggle. This is why you need to make sure that you are treating your call center appropriately. But with this in mind, what are some of the key components to ensure it is effective?
Improve the Technology
One of the biggest problems in a call center is the communication between the customer and call handler. Ensuring that you improve your technology is pivotal. This could mean having sophisticated phone systems for call center environments or having a stronger approach to metrics and the workload. Technology is so important to have a business, but it’s also got to work to help our employees improve productivity in the right ways.
Prioritize Employee Engagement
If an employee is not engaged in the process, it’s hardly a surprise they are not productive. We need to prioritize employee engagement to ensure that they can deal with the rigors of being on the frontline, while also making sure that the line managers are working effectively with the staff and listening to their concerns while also being proactive in responding to them.
Provide Targeted Feedback
Feedback is something that every call center does as a knee-jerk reaction to any problem, but the issue of giving feedback is that it becomes very generalized and tends to be geared towards the targets. Targeted feedback shouldn’t be exclusively about the metrics, but rather should be a comprehensive and holistic approach to ensuring your employees know how to achieve the desired results of the business while also being able to improve their attitudes towards the work. This is where giving effective feedback becomes invaluable. If we do not give feedback in the right way, it will not help to improve morale, and the employee will not understand what they need to do to work better.
Start Delegating to Employees More
We seldom find that we trust our employees to do the important tasks of the business. If we are to boost morale, especially in a call center environment, we’ve got to start delegating responsibilities even more so. When we start to delegate more effectively, we will be placing more trust in our employees which means they are able to serve the needs of the business, but we are also giving our employees autonomy. Employee autonomy is pivotal, even in a call center environment. When we start to put more trust in our employees, they will feel more inclined to step up to the plate.
A call center environment shouldn’t be the equivalent of a factory line. But if we are to improve these environments, we’ve got to start working more effectively.