One of the most important assets, if not the most important, any given company -restaurant, tech, or contact center- has is its workers. And to not only survive but be at the top it’s important for the contact center’s staff performance, for example, to keep improving.
As the world struggles to tame Covid-19, this pandemic has only heightened the great importance of healthy staff. Hiring great staff starts with the selection processes and ends with the employee embodying the company’s culture and values.
As mentioned before, companies are alive, with their culture, their values, their goals. It is where the majority of people spend 33% of their life, and as always happens where there are human interactions; there will be clashes of different degrees.
With this in mind, those whose responsibility is to organize, manage and coordinate the various operations and movements in the company must have, apart from the required knowledge for their job position, emotional intelligence, and social intelligence.
These two are fundamental and here is why. Think of it this way, if you do not believe in your own ability, strength, and capacity to carry out a task, would you offer to do it? Of course, you wouldn’t because you know your performance and quality of service will not meet what was expected.
The same applies to any company, more so in contact centers. Contact centers are highly competitive and demanding, regardless of if they are working remotely or not, and this pressure falls on all, especially on the agents. If the contact center’s agents are not reaching their KPIs it is up to the manager to monitor their shortcomings. But how can a manager do that? How can one improve the contact center’s staff performance?
UPLIFTING YOUR CONTACT CENTER’S STAFF PERFORMANCE.
As mentioned before, there are three important aspects for any solid manager to master in order to take the contact center’s staff performance to the next level.
- Business knowledge: having insights into what customers want in order to make the right decision or understanding market trends and how to align your business to meet new demands can be achieved with a Business Intelligence solution. Once you have these insights, you’ll need to have the best agents who can satisfy any query or demand customers have. For this, you’ll need a Workforce Management tool that will enable you to have the right agent available at the right time.
- Social intelligence: effective communication in many cases is taken for granted. But it is more complicated that one can imagine. The way agents interact with customers, how they lead a conversation, and craft the message they deliver to the customer could mean the difference between closing or not closing a new deal. By implementing a Quality Management System tool, you can help your staff acquire better skills for their interaction with customers. With this tool, a manager can take the contact center’s staff performance to the next level by providing customized training for each agent for them to be more socially intelligent.
- Emotional intelligence: this is crucial. A manager must know how to awaken the drive, the will, and the desire in the agents to always want to outperform themselves. Motivating among agents in a contact center is an element that can easily sleep away. But did you know you can boost your staff’s performance +20% if you turn business objectives into a game? Gamification is one of the most effective ways to engage agents and make them more committed. By taking a playful, competitive approach you foster teamwork, a thirst for self-improvement, and a deeper commitment to the organization.
Communication is key, both outwards with customers and inside with your employees. 55% of all communication is nonverbal, so having the chance to do it face-to-face, either in person or via video communication is the best way to keep your staff motivated and cover these three aspects to take your contact center’s staff performance to the next level.
