Maintaining employee retention for long periods has become important for companies to ensure their stability. In the following report, we will review tips to improve customer service employee satisfaction.
Tips to Improve Employee Satisfaction in the Call Center
There is no single recipe for success when it comes to improving employee satisfaction in the contact center, according to a report by invoca. Each organization will need its own unique mix of things.
Create a strong company culture
The term “company culture” is a somewhat vague concept, but most people can agree that it includes the set of shared goals, attitudes, and values of a company.
When you create a strong company culture, your call center employees will feel like they belong with you and, regardless of their background or experience level, they will feel that their efforts are appreciated and that they contribute to the success of your organization.
So how do you go about building a great company culture? It all starts at the top of the company and down. Company leaders need to create guiding values for your organization, such as “accountability,” “collaboration,” “innovation,” “continuous improvement,” and “transparency.” But simply putting these things on paper isn’t enough. If you don’t live your values every day, it will detract from your culture, and it can be seen as hypocrisy.
Additionally, your hiring practices are a major contributor to your culture, and in addition to screening for competency in each position, you should ensure that candidates live by the values you preach. If you don’t hire people who can live by your principles, it can erode your culture over time.
Provide employees with a flexible work environment.
The pandemic has changed the way call center agents work, with many shifting to remote and hybrid models. Now that lockdowns and social distancing measures are easing, some organizations are pushing agents to return to their offices full-time.
This presents a problem, as agents have become accustomed to the flexibility of remote and hybrid work and do not want to give up this new convenience.
If you force your call center employees back into the office, you will create a morale problem, which may also lead to high employee turnover rates.
Because according to a new study by Robert Half, 50% of U.S. workers would rather quit than be forced back into the office full time.
This will undoubtedly hurt your job stability score, and with the current labor shortage, could leave you understaffed for the foreseeable future.
The best solution to improve employee satisfaction is to allow your call center agents to work the way they choose – in-person or hybrid.
To support a flexible work environment, you need to give employees the right technology to succeed. Legacy on-premises solutions are expensive and not scalable for remote employees – you should consider using cloud-based platforms instead.
Not only are cloud-based tools more flexible, they also tend to be more intuitive and easy to use, especially for younger workers who are accustomed to modern cloud software.
You should also brainstorm ways to maintain a strong company culture when employees aren’t physically present all the time.
You can create workplace groups like book clubs, organize virtual happy hours, or host off-site events to give employees a chance to interact in person.
Create opportunities for career advancement
In a recent survey, 87% of call center employees reported high levels of stress in their work, a type of work environment that does not allow for long-term employment.
In fact, it can often lead to burnout and employee turnover. One of the best ways to keep your employees invested in their jobs is to give them opportunities to advance their careers.
You must ensure that career paths in your organization are uniform and that every employee has the same opportunity to move up the ranks.
You should also create measurable goals for achieving promotion – do they need to hold a position for a certain amount of time, make a certain number of sales, or resolve a certain number of customer complaints? This gives them a target to work towards and reassures them that their hard work and perseverance will be rewarded. It also removes any illusion of favoritism, as all employees have the same opportunities.
Compensate employees fairly for their efforts.
I hate to break it to you, but your employees aren’t answering dozens of calls a day. The numbers on your paycheck have something to do with it.
Perhaps the most effective way to improve employee satisfaction is to ensure that they are fairly compensated for the hard work they do every day. This means evaluating your salary structure compared to the market and making sure you are competitive.
You should also make sure that the benefits you get are of a good standard, just throwing a ping pong table in the break room will not do the trick.
Instead of illusory perks, make sure you get solid core benefits like high-quality health care coverage, health benefits, and career development opportunities.
It’s important to gather feedback from your team to see what types of perks and benefits they like so you can continue to improve.
In addition to base salary and benefits, you should consider offering performance-based bonuses. This will ensure that your employees are working towards a goal every day.
But beware of the risks that come with rewards programs – you need to make sure you are evaluating your employees’ performance fairly.
This can be difficult to do, as you can’t fully listen to every phone call that comes into your call center.
Remove Bias from the QA Process with Conversational Intelligence
One of the best ways to improve customer service employee retention is to ensure that every team member’s performance is measured fairly—and that they are fairly compensated for their efforts. That starts with implementing a strong quality assurance program.
Some companies choose to listen to a small sample of their calls to ensure quality and record the agent’s performance. However, this method is flawed – your quality assurance only represents a superficial portion of the calls you receive.
The sample size is probably not accurate enough to truly assess agent performance – you may be able to catch your best agents on their worst days or vice versa. Not to mention, listening to and recording hundreds of calls manually is tedious and extremely time-consuming.
To solve this problem and gain clear visibility into every phone conversation, advanced contact centers use conversation intelligence to automate call quality assurance.
Give employees their quality assurance scores immediately after the calls are over.
In many organizations, call center agents don’t receive regular feedback on their performance. In a recent study, only 17% of call center agents said they receive feedback on their performance more frequently than once a week – the most common response was once a month.
This delay in feedback can exacerbate problems and slow down an agent’s progress. With more regular performance reviews, agents can correct problems before they become habits and continually grow their skills.
