Day: July 31, 2020

The past few months have presented significant challenges for the contact center and employees around the world. While the majority of contact centers are well past the initial hurdle of providing agents access to work from home, it was no easy feat as many didn’t have an agile infrastructure that supported a seamless transition.

Now that we are a few months into getting our bearings, the excellent news is employees have positive feelings about working from home. Employees are appreciating the work-from-home benefits they have like increased productivity and focus (fewer office distractions) and no commute, helping them find the right sweet spot for work/life balance.

While employees are enjoying the benefits of working at home, we found that 71% of contact center managers are concerned that working from home can impact the customer experience. So, the next question is, how do contact center supervisors and managers begin to bridge the gap between the apparent benefits of working from home and ensuring that customers don’t suffer?

Here are some tips for keeping your agents engaged and motivated to continue to deliver exceptional customer experience in challenging times when resiliency and adapting to change are critical.

1.  Keep Consistent

Try to keep your in-office routine at home. Continue to hold regular daily stand-up and weekly team meetings, using collaboration tools to provide a remote alternative to in-person interactions. Show agents that you’re still available. Working from home, you can’t just peek your head out of your office door or stop by desks to talk to your team. So, make sure you are proactively engaging with your agents to see how they are coping and quickly respond to their requests for assistance or support.

2.  Continue Communicating

Keep scheduling weekly 1:1s for direct communication and stick to them. Communication is always essential to team productivity, and even more so when managing remote agents. You can also try a virtual open-door policy where agents can hop on and get their questions answered or concerns addressed. Keep agents in the loop. It is also essential to make sure your agents are kept up to date on the latest plans related to COVID-19 and your return to the office policy – even if the update is just that the plan isn’t changing. This approach helps alleviate and get ahead of any unfounded rumors.

3.  Be Flexible

This pandemic has made all of us accept that life today is very unpredictable. Lead by example and show your agents that you’re open to new ways of working, solving problems, and supporting both them and your customers. Talk to each of your agents to understand their unique situations. Some may have kids at home or have spouses that work opposite hours. Once you know their specific situation, you might be able to offer accommodations to help like adjusting schedules. Something as simple as a more extended lunch period could be the difference between sanity and chaos in your agent’s house. Workforce management techniques like block scheduling, split shifts, or optional, voluntary time off can help your agents balance their personal and professional responsibilities.

4.  Share Performance Metrics

Let technology bridge the gap. Many agents get performance insights by quickly glancing at wallboards in the contact center, or by hearing the latest information from their supervisor as they walk by or from a colleague at the coffee machine. In the absence of these in-office touchpoints, you need to find ways to make sure agents are still getting those insights. Use technology to make the delivery of these insights and feedback as efficient as possible.

As an example, use a software that sends automatic notifications to your agents’ desktop to let them know that a new quality management evaluation or coaching package has been routed to them. When the work is automated, there is no delay in keeping agents updated.

Empower your agents with performance data. Use the real-time dashboards and agent scorecards that are available on the agent desktop to replace the gap left by not having wallboards. These insights are great because they act as a barometer on how individual agents and the team are performing. The ability to see this in real-time from home is tremendous, rather than waiting daily for a performance email from a supervisor, in which case it’s too late to course-correct.

5.  Have Fun!

Schedule ongoing virtual coffee breaks and happy hours. These informal get-togethers are also a good idea because you can mandate them as work-free zones, where you get together and chat. Incorporate more gamification than before. Incentivize specific performance metrics– just make sure the metrics make sense for your business, and you keep it fair, providing enough equal opportunities to win. Assign remote work buddies. Outside of planned coffee breaks and happy hours, have someone check in on your agents, and ask how things are going. This type of informal outreach can go a long way in making sure agents feel supported.

This pandemic has proven to be more challenging – and lengthy – than many of us predicted. Qualishore has taken great steps to help our employees adjust to working during a pandemic, but even more, to support our customers through these uncertain times.