Working as an agent at a contact center is a tough job for anyone. It’s no surprise the contact center industry has a high employee turnover and job dissatisfaction. Agents never know when an incoming interaction is coming in. Now combine that with high stress, long hours, minimal opportunities for advancement and seasonal fluctuations. How can businesses improve their contact center culture?

 

Make Your Contact Center Culture Better

 

A contact center agent is challenging, and it is important to build an uplifting and fulfilling environment which encourages open communication. Provide agents the tools they need to be effective as well. Don’t know where to start? Here are four ways to improve the culture at your contact center that will minimize employee expenses, increase job satisfaction and maximize customer experience.

 

Creating a positive working environment

 

Agents need plenty of privacy and a quiet place to respond to customers daily. Providing a personal soundproof space might be almost impossible but there are other ways to create a better, welcoming and positive atmosphere for them.

 

First off, focus on the common spaces. Adding a few live plants, new seats and snack carts can be a good start. Be mindful of the atmosphere and create a friendly and efficient office space will improve culture tremendously. And people who feel better connected to their work culture and colleagues are less likely to pursue another job.

 

Leverage chatbots so agents become subject matter experts

 

In the contact center industry, we hear a lot about how businesses are creating a better customer experience with chatbots and it is real! With the technology advancement we have today, bots are getting more and more sophisticated at delivering repetitive questions with immediate responses. Alternatively, a well-built bot will bring complete customer information and history into the dashboard automatically any time a customer reaches out for it. However, chatbots should not replace humans, they should instead empower them. Chatbots allow time for routine questions, so that agents can work on more complex problems for their customers.

 

When a customer wants to connect with a business to resolve an issue, they’re looking to have a more personable experience with an agent. That’s why bots alone won’t do. Yes, a chatbot might be an amazing way to offer a 24/7 customer support but having a human touch is way more important. It is time for bots to do the easy work and let agents go off script, to provide a memorable customer support and have more time to concentrate on more complicated customer issues.

 

Make your agents feel appreciated by acknowledging them for their job well done

 

Contact center agents work very hard to provide customers the best customer support they can give. Therefore, it’s nice to make them feel appreciated for their efforts as they often deal with frustrated customers and give them a solution to a problem. Managers  must have confidence to trust agents to do the right thing in a given period of time.

 

Contact center managers should know when to acknowledge agents who have stellar performance and motivate the ones who don’t. Who has the most or highest highly rated feedback from customers? Which agent tends to make frustrated customers more upset? Customer service is at the pillar of any business, and stellar agents deserve recognition from their managers.

 

Giving incentives to performing agents is one of the ways to motivate agents to improve and excel in their work. Continuous training and coaching will also increase employee satisfaction.

 

Investing in the perfect contact center software

 

Your business might have great agents but how easy is it for them to get their job done and also do it well? Simple. Make their lives easier by allowing better communication using a technology that ‘completes it all’ in one platform. A contact center software should enable agents to connect with customers and each other easily. Are they able to interact with customers across all channels and get assistance from other agents when they need help resolving an issue?

 

Cention software has been developed for the ease of agents to respond to customer issues. Customers are looking for agents who can provide quick and accurate responses. By doing so, you eliminate the danger of leaving them to more client-focused companies with an ALL-IN-ONE platform that links across all the communication channels your customers favor. Therefore, having a suitable platform that matches your client’s needs and a healthy contact center culture is crucial and will determine how your team can guide your customers appropriately. Higher productivity means more business return. Better employee experience means better customer experience.