FROM THE PAGES OF CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE
SHOWCASE YOUR STAFF’ S TALENTS Expand your recognition efforts beyond job-related tasks, skills and goals. Do you have talented artists, musicians and craftspeople among your agent base? Show your staff that you care about their personal lives and what’ s important to them by helping to showcase their talents. Create a space in the company break room, cafeteria or conference room where your agents’ artwork or crafts can be displayed on a rotating basis. If you have musicians on staff, play their songs as background music in break rooms and common areas. Publish a story / poem of the month by your center’ s creative writers in the company newsletter or on the intranet.
THANK BACK-OFFICE STAFF Give back-office staff the credit they deserve for their role in the speed and quality of service the contact center delivers. Have your agents decide on the nomination categories and types of awards.
Practical pointer: Include back-office staff in your Customer Service Week activities. Put together a team of agents to plan a special ceremony at which the awards will be presented to their back-office colleagues. It doesn’ t have to be a formal event, and the thought and effort they put into it will go a long way toward strengthening interdepartmental camaraderie.
NOMINATE STAFF FOR INDUSTRY AWARDS Don’ t limit your recognition efforts to internal programs. Recognize your agents’ hard work by nominating them for a contact center industry award. Being nominated in itself is an honor for agents since they will recognize the time and effort that you put in on their behalf. And if they become a finalist or winner, your contact center and company will share in the positive publicity and prestige.
INVITE SENIOR EXECS TO THE CENTER A word of praise from a company executive can have an incredible impact on your team’ s focus and motivation. It’ s also a great way to kick off Customer Service Week. Eric Berg suggests hosting an opening keynote event in which senior execs publicly acknowledge the value that the contact center and agents provide to the overall growth and stability of the organization.“ Agents will better understand their impact and focus on what they need to do to further help the organization meet its goals,” he says.“ Nothing shows appreciation like senior executives taking the time to come to the center and personally thank the frontline staff for everything they do to help the company meet its goals.”
AND WHILE THE ANNUAL APPRECIATION IS MUCH ANTICIPATED BY CUSTOMER SERVICE STAFF— AND WELL-DESERVED— MOST CENTER LEADERS AGREE THAT THANKING AGENTS FOR THEIR VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION SHOULD TAKE PLACE FREQUENTLY AND ALL YEAR LONG.
--SUSAN HASH
16 CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE
Practical pointer: Prep executives with customer success stories, examples of agents who went above and beyond to deliver outstanding service, and highlights of exceptional performance by individuals, teams and the overall center.
PEER RECOGNITION Recognition from peers can be even more powerful than praise from a supervisor or manager. Let frontline staff award those colleagues whose performance they deem deserving of recognition.
Practical pointer: A low-effort, yet still effective approach to peer-to-peer recognition is the traveling trophy. Have agents nominate and vote on the agent who provided outstanding internal support or who went out of their way to help a colleague. The winner is awarded the traveling trophy at a department-wide meeting and has the honor of displaying the trophy at their workstation for the month. At the end of that time, the agent selects the next recipient and presents him with the trophy at the next department meeting, along with details on what the agent did to earn his coworker’ s praise.
TAP THE SKILLS OF YOUR TOP PERFORMERS Give your best agents the opportunity to participate in coaching or mentoring those whose performance needs improvement. Peer coaching has been proven to be highly effective since agents can speak to their coworkers in the same“ language.”
Agents get the chance to pick up insider tips and best practices that have helped their colleagues to be successful. For top agents, the recognition of their skills and high performance is very motivating and it helps to expand their leadership skills for long-term career development.
BY MICHELLE RANDALL
Employee engagement, and yes, happiness with their jobs in large part depends on how well employees are supervised and coached. Here are six ways to be a better contact center leader while also improving the CX:
1. Be empathetic. Just as customers want an empathetic CX, to be heard, and to have their issues resolved, your employees want the same. Remember that your customer support agents are the difference between mediocre or brag-worthy CXs. By empathizing, educating, engaging, and empowering your teams, your employees will be better positioned to provide empathetic CXs.