In order to provide your customers with the quality support you first need to set aside everything else and think about the customer service from your customers point of view. It is your Customer service rep work quality that the customer will ultimately remember any agent that is courteous, helpful, knowledgeable, attentive, and professional will be able to form a lasting impression on your customer that will eventually result in your company getting a good reputation. By improving the agents’ performance along with the technology and processes, you will be taking the most important steps required to enhance the overall service support.
Improving your groups and employees performance depends on you using the best human resource practices that have been identified in recent years. By implementing these practices, you can motivate, build trust, and develop loyalty among your agents which will then enhance your customers’ experience.
Here are a few simple steps that have a very high impact on the agents’ performance
Set goals that are SMART
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. Your managers are responsible for the setting these goals and conveying them to the employees. There should be a clear discussion about these goals, and you should ensure that they are written down so as to avoid any kind of miscommunication in the future.
Provide Feedback Regularly
Every manager should know the value of the feedback that they give to their agents. This kind of feedback accomplishes two things
Positive feedback motivates and encourages your employees to maintain the right behaviour. On the other hand, negative feedback allows the agents to make changes and accomplishments in their work habits mid-course. When you give feedback to the employees, it needs to be clear, honest, easy to understand, and ready for the users to put it into action.
The process of providing feedback should be ongoing as reserving giving feedback quarterly or annually can mean that you may miss an opportunity to improve your operations continuously.
Train your Agents
Excellent customer service practices are continuously changing and seeing up with the latest trends is essential to maintain the quality of your support. Ensuring that your agents update their skills by attending trainings and seminars can help them grow and improve their skills of using a help desk effectively. There are a few crucial times when your agents will need to undergo training. This is usually when there is any kind of change in the companies policy or if their company is taking on a major account. In general, whenever there is a major change in the company, your agents should undergo short trainings.
Recognize and reward success
This is a step ahead of just giving feedback. You can implement an agent reward program that helps recognize agents that have been able to achieve a set goal. This could be in the form of an award, public recognition, or incentives.
Team building activities help improve your team
By finding out of the box ways of getting your team to play together outside can help you improve the work that they do indoors. There are a lot of innovative team building exercises that you can find online. Conducting team building sessions can help build camaraderie among your employees and get them to work better as a team in the future. At a contact center, your team usually spends most of their time in their cubicle with their headphones on. This does not give them the opportunity to interact with their team members or build relationships with them. Having fun together allows them to build strong bonds which will reflect in your agents’ performance.
Build a positive culture
Research shows that if there is a positive environment, there will be positive outcomes in any relationships, profitability, health, and employee engagement. However, on the other hand, if there is a negative environment, it can have an adverse effect on the work culture and can increase stress and lower the engagement levels. Some impacts of lower engagement results in
- High absenteeism
- Low productivity
- Low share prices and profitability
- Reduce job growth
- Higher costs of healthcare
- 40% more accidents
- 60% more defects and errors
Empower using technology
While this may not really be a best practice for human resources, it is still an essential need for your employees. By giving them the tools that they need you will be empowering your employees and allowing them to perform better in the long run.
What should be on your must-do list
Agent Utilization:
Agents who spend more than 60 to 70% of their time interacting with their customers will not have enough time to take breaks between the calls to unwind. It is vital that you utilize your resources properly so as to avoid your employees getting maxed out and providing low-quality services.
Agent Satisfaction:
A poor agent satisfaction score can directly lead to an unwanted turnover. It can also directly have an impact on the cost of operations as you would need to replace your agents more often. If agent satisfaction scores are low, it will also affect the customer service score that ultimately has an impact on your reputation.
A negative agent satisfaction score can be contagious, and it can soon affect the entire process if you are not careful.
