Introduction

 

It is no surprise that contact center employees engage with customers of all different types, some less happy than others. Your employees may be disengaged and uninspired at work due to the rigors of the job. If your agents are disengaged, it is very likely that your contact center’s customer service will plummet over time as well as raise costs for recruiting and training new employees.

 

According to Gallup, only 30% of the current American workforce say they’re engaged and inspired at work. If your contact center employees are lacking engagement, it is time to turn things around like a true leader.

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Why Do Employees Disengage?

 

Employee engagement has been a lifelong topic in contact centers. To battle disengagement, you have to understand why employees disengage in the first place.

 

Agent satisfaction directly correlates with employee engagement and performance. Low agent satisfaction causes employees to disengage with their work and your organization. Often times, unhappiness within employees can be a result of system and services inefficiencies or poor relationship with the organization’s leadership. 

 

Over time, employees feel less and less engaged as their frustration builds whether they are focused on utilizing your platform, providing customer service, or communicating with your contact center’s leaders.

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Measure What is Not Working

 

The best way to understand the specifics of what is causing your employees to disengage is to ask them. Conducting a survey could be extremely beneficial if your intention is to create an action plan to boost your employee engagement.

 

When conducting a survey, make certain that you are digging deeper into understanding what is not working in your contact center. Measure beyond employee satisfaction because happy employees do not necessarily mean engaged employees. To gain deeper insights, interview and listen attentively to what your employees have to say. 

 

The most important step to follow is to not conduct a survey unless you are ready to act on your employees’ responses. If you are not ready to hear their opinions, there are other ways you can measure what is not working, such as verifying performance metrics regularly. 

 

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Supply Your Employees with Effective Technology

 

One of the biggest factors driving a steady decrease in employee engagement is system or services failures and inefficiencies. Keeping your contact center up to date with recent and effective technology affects your employee engagement positively, removing frustration agents experience with tools that are inefficient and unreliable. 

 

Utilizing automated features can provide not only increased productivity but also employee engagement due to the reduction in boring and tedious tasks that agents have to complete on a daily basis. Consider looking into features like IVR, conditional routing, or automated call transcription to remove tasks that cause dissatisfaction among your employees.

 

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Provide Knowledge Tools

 

Nothing disengages your employees like stress from trying to find a solution to a problem they have no idea how to handle. Regardless of how well your agents are trained, they may answer to problems they have never dealt with before or do not feel completely comfortable with answering about without additional reference. 

 

To make your employees feel comfortable about seeking help and referring to your organization’s solutions for customer support or sales questions, give agents the tools that will help them succeed when it is time to speak with customers. For example, call scripts are excellent tools for providing agents with all the knowledge they could possibly need to help a customer.

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Conclusion

 

Employee engagement greatly affects your contact center’s customer service and experience. 

 

To improve your overall employee satisfaction, focus on upgrading your contact center services and listening to what your employees say to form a further action plan. Make certain that you recognize what is not working in your contact center by regularly measuring and tracking your contact center’s performance.