Five Tips to Energize Your Contact Center

New technologies, a changing workforce, increased competition and evolving customer expectations have made today’s contact center a very different environment than it was even a decade ago. With so many changes, has your contact center changed the way it operates? Here are five tips that can help energize your center in today’s performance-driven, customer-centric business climate.

1. View yourself as a business owner. Step back and think about your company’s goals and how your center contributes to them. Are you staffed correctly to meet the need? Are there things your center should be doing differently? Does your center’s technology support the goals? This isn’t pie-in-the-sky philosophy; this is Common Sense 101: If the people, processes and technology in your contact center are not aligned with the overall goals of the enterprise, your center is almost certainly doomed to being perceived by senior executives as a burden on overhead. It won’t matter how hard you work or how precisely you meet your service-level goals.
   
   Think like a business owner. If, for example, the company’s goal is to increase the number of new customers this year by 15 percent, how can your center support this? What obstacles might slow you down? What processes must change? This is a very different way of thinking than simply focusing on average handle time or average speed to answer.
2. Empower yourself with the right tools. These come in many forms, from technological advancements such as VoIP, to business process advancements, such as workforce optimization. Deploying the right tools can make a huge difference in the efficiency and effectiveness of your contact center. Since your budget isn’t going to magically double to accommodate new expenditures, do your homework: Look at the company goals, find the tools you need to support them and make your case to the senior management. Be prepared to show a projected return on investment — remember, you’re thinking like a business owner!
3. Collaborate with other departments. That’s right — collaborate. Frankly, if you follow the first two recommendations, you will be driven to collaborate with other departments out of sheer necessity since it is unlikely your center can operate strategically without input from marketing, accounting or other areas of the organization. Pick one or two areas in which better collaboration with a particular department would provide an immediate business benefit, call the appropriate person in that department and get the ball rolling. You may feel awkward initially (and you may meet with some suspicion or resistance), but be persistent. Emphasize what you are trying to accomplish. You’ll not only create important partnerships, but also get great ideas!
4. Protect your investment in team members. The concept of treating agents like spark plugs — simply removing them and replacing them in the event of failure — is 1970s thinking and should have been retired with your platform shoes. Agents aren’t commodities; they are assets, and they need to be treated accordingly. While we’re on the subject, don’t forget your front-line supervisors, who play a vital role in the success of your center. You’ve heard the adage that “employees don’t quit bad companies; they quit bad supervisors.” It’s true. From a strictly financial perspective, if it costs $30,000 to replace an agent and your supervisor manages 15 agents, he or she is managing a nearly half-million-dollar company asset. Supervisors need coaching and mentoring as much as agents —maybe more.
5. Recognize, reward and reinforce the right behaviors in your center. To do this effectively, you must provide continuous feedback to agents about their performance. Scorecards allow agents to be evaluated fairly across the board and can be used to drive incentive programs, such as bonuses, priority in receiving desired shifts or scheduling vacation time, etc. This is a far better method than seniority-based programs, which can actually foster mediocrity over time. Tying performance to recognition, compensation and special perks is probably the best way to retain a staff that now includes members of Generation X and Y, who are technology savvy but skeptical about the idea of working for a single employer for extended periods of time.

By Oscar Alban, principal global market consultant, Witness Systems.

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"What does it take to be the best? Everything. And everything is up to you."

-- Emmitt Smith, Football Player

Contact Professional magazine provides useful management tools and resources to the contact center professional. Written for executives, managers and directors of contact centers, the editorial focuses on real world solutions to issues faced on a daily basis. From hiring and training to technology implementation, each article emphasizes ROI and increased efficiency within the contact center.

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