Keeping Contact Center Agents Motivated and Efficient During Uncertain Times

Since the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have looked to find ways to keep everyone safe, yet still continue business without interruption. For many contact centers, staying safe means that agents are staying home. This abrupt shift from in-person office employees to basically becoming a virtual contact center has many companies scrambling to make it work, especially companies without robust contingency and redundancy plans in place.

Let’s face it, your company may not be equipped to handle this part of the new normal. After all, you’ll need to learn how to effectively manage a remote workforce, and not all employees or employers have this kind of experience. Here are some tips to make the transition easier and ways to keep your contact center agents motivated and efficient during these uncertain times.

Setup for Success –

Encourage employees to have a dedicated work space at home, with minimal distractions. Provide your at-home agent with all the tools they will need to focus on work, such as a laptop, headset, monitor, comfortable chair, and perhaps even subsidized internet access. Your company provides these items in the office location, so it is only reasonable to expect they would need these items for their home office setup as well. Agents working with secure customer data may also need access to VPN tunnels as part of the security protocols established as part of data security compliance programs. Also consider a project management platform that provides easy to access daily and weekly goals.

Another vital part of an at-home agent’s set up is access to information. It’s easy for an agent to ask a supervisor a question when they are both in the office, but it is more efficient in a home set up for the agent to have access to the information themselves. The more in-depth your knowledge base of data is, the quicker the agent can assist the customer without having to escalate to a different service tier level. This is a tip that can be used to help make agents more efficient even after they may return to the office in the future.

Invest time in training your managers specifically to lead a remote workforce. This may involve how to trust your team in an environment where you aren’t nearby to see everything. In a WFH environment, micromanaging is not typically effective. Train agents to use new programs, especially if they have been introduced during the WFH period. If an employee is unfamiliar with a program and doesn’t receive proper training, they are less likely to use it, and won’t be as efficient as they could be.

Set Expectations –

Anytime employees begin working from home, it is a good idea to discuss what is expected of them. Remember that your agents are humans, juggling work duties, parenting responsibilities, and other priorities since beginning their work from home journey. Be flexible where you can. Also, recognize that your agents and team leaders may not have worked as part of a team remotely previously. Everyone will be gaining new skills during the “work from home” period. Here are a few things to consider.

• If you need agents to work specific times, make that clear. If not, one of the most valued aspects of WFH is schedule flexibility. Allowing agents to have staggered start times can also keep you from having to ask anyone to work overtime.
• Outline straightforward goals for teams and individuals with clear deadlines. This ensures that no one is sitting at home, wondering what they should be doing.
• Make sure that your team understands data security risks and the steps that they should take to be compliant with all information.
• Set boundaries for your agents (and yourself). Having quiet hours apart from work hours is critical. This is actually a key issue for a lot of remote workers. Feeling like they cannot “turn off” and “go home” with WFH can become a point of frustration.
• Remote workers will deal with distractions at home. While the distractions may not decrease over time, agents should become more able to handle them and refocus back to the work tasks at hand more quickly.
• Consider adding guidelines for WFH employment in your Employee Handbook. This will give agents a reference in case of questions and also removes doubt from what is expected.

Communication and Feedback –

Communication is key – no, really, it is vital. Over time, working from home can begin to feel like you are alone on an island, but there are a few ways to prevent this from happening and get back on track if it has already begun.

• Conduct regular virtual meetings via Zoom, Skype or another similar provider
• Schedule one-on-one meetings and team meetings
• Ask how the agents are doing
• Include both company progress and team-related info to boost the sense of community and keep everyone connected to the day to day happenings
• Have CEO or team lead recognize good work, not just in the one-on-one check-ins, but also in virtual group meetings. Leave anything negative for one-on-one interactions to prevent embarrassment in front of co-workers.
• There are differences in how team leaders communicate with teams and how agents engage with other agents. Offer a communication method that agents can use to stay connected to other team members with communications tools – apps like Teams, or Slack. These also allow for quick clarifications or speedy assistance when troubleshooting issues
• Listen to agent successes, needs, and frustrations and adapt as needed.
• Understand that there will be an ebb and flow to productivity and engagement. Everyone has off days but keep an eye out for continued disengagement.

One of the known drawbacks to a work from home position is that employees can feel stuck, left out of professional development, and career advancement opportunities. And truthfully, it can be hard for an employer to address this aspect because they aren’t sure where things are headed either. This is where frequent informal performance reviews can be helpful. When agents do well, let them know. When agents need a boost of positivity, having programs like the Centris employee spotlight recognition program, Kudos, can be helpful.

Remember to Have Fun –

Even though a lot of WFH right now is due to the pandemic, just as in the office, building a sense of belonging in the company and teams can be very motivating. So, don’t forget to have fun as a team. Host virtual coffee breaks or happy hours, play short games, have show-and-tell with pets, or meaningful items from their homes. Keep teams engaging with each other.

Also, encourage everyone to take regular breaks to boost efficiency. Rarely do employees perform their best when they sit for too long. Take a walk, load the dishwasher, do stretches with pets, it doesn’t even matter what the time is spent doing. Having a fresh perspective after a quick mental and physical break can do wonders for productivity.

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About Centris –

Centris is a nearshore contact center. Providing support for businesses for over 30 years, Centris delivers quality customer service, tech support, Live Chat, Soft Collections, and more. We are ready to help if the unexpected happens. Centris has comprehensive redundancy and contingency plans in place to ensure our clients don’t experience a lapse in service.