Millennial agents have high expectations, just as your customers do. To prepare millennials for interacting with customers in the digital age, you have to make certain they have all the right resources and inspiration at their disposal.
As more baby boomers retire, the jobs that were once held by them are being distributed to millennials all around the globe. No matter where your millennial agents are, you can give them all that they need to become a part of your workforce. A leader that can provide digital engagement capabilities, effective communication, gamification, and motivation for its employees is sure to have a successful contact center.
Give Millennials the Right Resources
The first step in preparing your millennial agents for the digital era is exposing them to technology with digital engagement capabilities. As you may guess, this includes specially designed desktops and other tools.
Digital dashboards are extremely useful in making agent lives easier and attracting millennials. Millennials tend to be less patient with devices and tools that are slow and outdated. Providing dashboards with capabilities such as CRM integration, multiple channel synchronization, and easy to access solutions, allows millennials to stay engaged as well as give better customer service.
Easy Collaboration
Despite preferring non voice communications to voice communications such as email, social media, or chat, millennials are just as social as any other generation but have higher expectations for channels through which they communicate. If your contact center uses outdated methods for collaboration between peers, you may need to consider looking into a contact center solution that provides seamless communication among everyone.
Gamify Your Contact Center
Gamification is an excellent way to get your millennial agents engaged and motivated by their own work and the work of their peers. In order to gamify your contact center, you need to set complete objectives that are achievable by your agents.
You can utilize a number of metrics to determine how you are going to gamify your contact center and what to expect from your employees. Some metrics may include:
hours worked
average handling time
number of calls resolved from the first call
This helps your millennial agents understand exactly what they are competing for and how to become recognized for their work.
It is especially helpful if you are transparent with how the workforce is doing individually. Displaying scores or recognizing certain employees allows participants to foster healthy rivalry and ensures that those recognized are recognized fairly.
Motivation, Motivation, Motivation
Even though gamification works wonders in engaging your millennial agents, there are other ways in which millennials need you to motivate them. Being a good leader requires you to communicate with your employees regularly and address their concerns if needed.
If millennials are not motivated by the work they perform, they may become dissatisfied and quit, causing you to spend more money on recruiting. To avoid this, pay attention to what your employees may need from you, such as short breaks, flexibility regarding family emergencies, or verbal and tangible rewards. To further motivate your millennial agents and inspire work ethic, provide opportunities for them to move up to higher job levels in your contact center.
It is easy to view your employees without considering their age, however, millennial agents have higher expectations than any other generation and require your contact center to have the right tools, communication, and inspiration for them to work for your organization.
To achieve ultimate employee engagement and give your customers the best service, consider adopting a contact center platform with the right tools for your millennial agents as well as providing incentives such as job opportunities.