“Employee engagement.”
According to Heather Arthur, who manages a 1,400 person contact center as Senior Director of Business Care at Canada’s largest telecommunications company, it’s the key to success.
“We've seen a direct correlation to increased revenue and customer satisfaction,” she told ICMI in 2017. “Happy employees are better able to handle difficult calls and solve problems. They share their happiness with customers. Their attitude makes them strong brand ambassadors.”
Research appears to support Arthur’s experience. A Gallup study concluded that poor employee engagement cost US companies over $500 billion in lost productivity every year.
With that in mind, here are three strategies contact center leaders should consider in the pursuit of boosting agent engagement:
1. Empower your Agents to Lead on Their own
Arthur told ICMI that one of her primary objectives is to make employees feel invested in the success of the company, and that they have an ownership stake. Her agents meet weekly in small groups to discuss what’s working and what could work better. They also received weekly feedback on their performance, empowering them to improve and adapt quickly instead of waiting until the end of the month.
2. Invest in Employee Health and Wellness
In an interview with Fast Company, Tenacity CEO Ron Davis explained how his company piloted “an app for guided breathing exercises for the employees to use independently, and encouraging moderate physical activity” at a contact center for one of the nation’s largest telecom providers. The result: Turnover fell by two-thirds as agents improved themselves mentally and physically.
“It turns out that by focusing on the people rather than the work product, we are addressing the neglected part,” Davis noted. “The great thing for our business is that this also produces spectacular results in terms of work product and retention.”
3. Equip Agents with the Right Tools
Agents who want to do their jobs well may become disillusioned or disengaged when they’re not given the tools they need to do so. Some of this goes back to empowerment – making sure agents have the knowledge and authority to take action and solve their customers’ problems. In other cases, giving agents access to a particular service or piece of software can mean the difference between success and failure.
Voiance provides one such service, pairing your agents with our interpretation and translation services and enabling them to succeed in helping customers in hundreds of languages. Partner with Voiance, and your agents will be able to reach qualified, professional interpreters with just a couple of mouse clicks, connecting in seconds and relaying your agents’ words to the 65 million US residents who speak a language other than English at home. We employee thousands of interpreters in large-scale US contact centers and provide 120 hours of in-depth, in-person classroom training prior to putting them on the phone with your customers.
Contact Voiance today to learn more about how quality multilingual support can impact your organization’s performance. Email info@voiance.com or give us a call at 1-844 727-6739.
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