Tips to Keep Your Call Center Reps Motivated and Engaged

Are you a Call Center Manager or Administrator? If so, you are on the front lines of supervising one of toughest and most difficult jobs around: training and motivating your Customer Service Representatives. (Or- as you know them: CSRs.) Your goal: maintain a positive outlook in handling increasingly challenging customer questions and issues. A generation ago, it was much simpler. All your CSRs needed then was a desk, a phone, a headset, and a script, indexed by situation or problem. Today however, things are much more complicated. Your company's programs and offerings combined with credit, return and customer satisfaction issues require that your phone reps be trained to handle a whole host of unique issues. Plus, many United States residents are not native to this country and speak languages other than English. This means you must handle these issues in multiple languages, and insure that the rest of your company has the resources to back up the commitments and promises your Contact Center management or CSRs may make.

Because of these challenges, turnover in Call or Contact Centers has been traditionally very high. The American Teleservices Association, an industry trade group, estimates the national average may be 43% per year for the United States. High customer demands combined with sometimes stressful situations have caused CSR employees to "give up" on the job. Aside from the staffers who may try the job, but are clearly not well suited, how do you prepare, train and equip your phone reps to successfully handle these demands, and at the same time adhere to stated company policy plus maintain a positive outlook about their job?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Ryla Teleservices had a problem with high turnover. The job's repetitive nature (the task: outbound telemarketing) can lend itself to stressed or burned out employees and low morale. However the founder of the company, Mark Wilson, had, according to the Wall Street Journal, run a larger company's Call Center previously and was determined to provide a workplace where people could advance and feel like they were part of a team. He told the Journal: "The industry has a bad stereotype of sweatshops and high turnover. We're proving you can overcome that if you take a creative approach." Some of his approaches include an open door approach to any suggestions and problems that his Customer Service Representatives may encounter, as well as keeping workers fully informed about company plans, including future moves involving hiring.

Providing your staff the right tools is also an important part of high employee satisfaction in a Call Center. For instance, you might try this exercise: If you have not done so already, perform all the duties that your CSRs may perform for one or two days. That is, remove your "manager's hat", temporarily move out of your office and find a cubicle. Do the same work of those you supervise. Based on the issues that arise, the questions that customers ask, and other customer needs you encounter, can you say your reps have all the tools and job aids they need to do their jobs? If not, how do you resolve the situation? According to the Call Center industry website Callcenternews.info, make sure that your Call Center reps have an adequate on-line manual, search-able by call type or situation. In addition, insure a Supervisor or other knowledge resource is available to assist. Your rep can even email or send an instant message to these support resources while they are on the phone, preventing the annoying "hold, please" while they obtain help.

Another important aspect: training. In advance, let your CSRs know what to expect when they take or make a call. Callcenternews.info also suggests that if you record your calls to tape or disk, take some time and search for some excellently handled, model calls that your reps took. Then make those available to use as teaching and training aid. Real examples of "how to do it" are often more effective than explaining the right procedure.

Hopefully some of these suggestions and experiences may provide call center administrators and managers some creative ideas that they can implement to insure better employee morale, lower turnover, and greater customer satisfaction.

Sources:
Covel, Simona, Telemarketer Bucks High Turnover Trend. Published 11/19/07. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119524733448796085.html); Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com)
American Teleservices Association (http://www.ataconnect.org)
Call Center News and Information (http://www.callcenternews,info)