Contact Center Management: 3 Tips for Improving Agent Performance
The foundation of any company is a strong contact center. After all, consumers generally make their buying decision based on their experience with the business, no matter the quality of their offerings. And you can generate conversions and sales by ensuring that your agents perform well. On the other hand, without skilled representatives at your disposal, you’ll risk your reputation and clients, ultimately leading to lost revenue.
But the question is, how do you improve the performance of your agents? You’ll be happy to know that it isn’t as complicated as it appears. Below, we’ve laid out some practices and strategies that should help you out.
1. Empower Your Representatives With Technology
Technology is at the forefront of most modern businesses today, and contact centers aren’t an exception. Even your most efficient and motivated representatives will struggle to remain productive and produce the desired results if they’re forced to use complicated and outdated processes and systems. For this reason, you need to empower them with the right technology.
A predictive dialer is one such example. With it, agents are able to take in greater volumes of calls, enhance contact rates, avoid busy signals and answering machines, and maximize workforce utilization. Moreover, it can help them avoid errors that may result in activities prohibited by TCPA compliance regulations, such as accidentally dialing numbers in the DNC registry or using pre-recorded or ATDS messages.
2. Provide The Agents With Transparent Career Paths
It’s easy to get demotivated if you don’t know where your career is headed. While most contact center jobs are advantageous for one’s professional life, the agents may not be aware of it. The reality is that it’s easier to get to higher positions in this industry than in many others. In addition, contact center work teaches valuable skills, including empathy, problem-solving, persuasion, adaptation, and communication. And these are all valuable, no matter the profession.
So make sure that your agents understand what they can expect if they reach their metrics, whether it’s an increase in salary or moving up the corporate ladder. The more transparent you are with their career paths, the easier it’ll be to encourage them to perform.
3. Avoid Detailed Scripts
Scripts are common fixtures in the contact center industry, and for a good reason: they enable companies to remain as consistent as possible with their services. However, they can also make your agents too robotic, which may throw customers off. Instead, avoid making them stick to overly detailed scripts and give them the freedom to make their conversations with consumers more natural. In this way, they’re more likely to engage consumers and get the intended outcome out of every call.
Conclusion:
Like any business, every contact center fails on the performance of its agents. When you get right down to it, their success hinges on how well their representatives do their work. For this reason, you need to find ways to get the most out of your agents. And these strategies should enable them to perform well.
Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/agent-business-call-center-18741/
