Contact centers, or call centers as they have been known, are still a widely used and an indispensable tool for businesses to provide customer service as well as marketing their products or services. Consumer-facing contact centers are wholly dependent on their frontline teams to deliver those interactions and customer experiences can be entirely tied to the representative’s call quality and performance. Team mood and morale has a direct impact on those interactions and call center leadership should prioritize understanding current motivation and happiness levels among that critical part of the business. Inbound and outbound contact centers are a stressful environment and the entire industry suffers through high turnover. Managers and supervisors can help mitigate expensive attrition and increase worker experiences using engaging frontline teams on a regular basis. Using different communication and engagement strategies with individual employees can reveal and identify issues that could negatively affect productivity and efficiency. Uncovering potential roadblocks and addressing them in real time will help maintain higher morale and team happiness while positively impacting statistical results.
Listening to Outside Noise
Contact center managers have the arduous task of keeping their frontline team motivated and understanding their mood and mindset are key elements to determining whether the team is happy or not. In the digital age, the art of venting has fallen on the shoulders of social media platforms such as Facebook, Reddit and X and chances are, if one or more representatives is unhappy, they are posting their feelings on one of these or other major platforms. From a business productivity perspective, monitoring these sites for information related to the business could be an efficient and effective way to discover general feelings of team members. Social media scanning is a time consuming task which call center supervisors don’t have, but investing a little time and energy into these types of searches could yield very important information regarding the business. Worker happiness and motivation cannot improve automatically but acting on and solving employee issues is a giant leap in the right direction.
Have a Question? Just Ask
The most efficient way for call center managers to gauge mood and motivation is by direct engagement with the frontline team. Casual interactions with individuals should be used as opportunities to explore a team member’s mindset. In addition to the usually daily interactions, call center leadership should have a plan that defines timing and process for direct engagement of staff. Structured interactions such as small group huddles and 2 or 3 person mini-meetings can be a practical and efficient way to get the pulse of the frontline team. Leadership that fosters a culture of open communication can expect more honest engagement from frontline staff when it comes to gauging overall worker experience. Open door communication policies should be publicized to help build that culture.
It’s All About the Numbers
An obvious indicator of worker mood is also the most important, performance results. Unhappy and unmotivated individuals cannot hide behind poor or declining performance. Call center leadership that reviews key performance indicators (KPIs) on a regular basis can spot gaps in service and quality and address those concerns directly with the individual. Declining productivity and efficiency in certain areas can signal a problem with the representative:
- Decreasing or inconsistent call quality scores
- Call length times that are not in line with team averages
- Missing call or business targets on a regular bases
- Shift lateness or leaving significantly early
The benefit of using statistical results when addressing motivation and performance challenges is that any performance improvement solution for the individual can be mapped out in detail, with clear numerical and statistical goal expectations.
The Bottom Line
Contact centers depend on their frontline teams to deliver customer interactions and performance can be greatly affected by worker experience and morale challenges. Managers that pay attention to team dynamics and mood can quickly identify potential problems and address them early on. Understanding frontline team mindset is critical for maintaining consistent high performance from individuals and by utilizing engagement strategies, leadership can be more proactive in maintaining a highly motivated workplace. External factors can also indicate ‘the mood of the shop’ as employees may take their issues outside of the business. Focusing on employee happiness in call centers is essential as worker experience can influence customer experiences as well as other statistical metrics and KPIs.