3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

It’s come to be commonly accepted in the call center industry that people will be hired, trained … and then leave.

The job is a stressful one, no doubt, but is that any reason to just “accept” that people will leave sooner rather than later? Martin Teasdale doesn’t think so.

Teasdale is the Quality Solutions Director (UK & EMEA ) at BPA Quality U.K., a global leader in independent-quality evaluation, customer insight and people development solutions. As such, his job is to look at the bigger picture and find solutions to existing problems.

In a recent blog post he did just that, advising readers that one way to keep employees is to think of them as people first. In his post, “Encouraging Employee Engagement in Your Contact Center”, Teasdale lists five ways smart managers can better get to know their workers, and use that knowledge to address their concerns and make their work environment a better place to be. His points are worth exploring:

Put Your People First: “Being a contact center manager or team leader is more than understanding metrics and disposition codes. In some respects you are a social worker,” Teasdale says. “You need to listen to and understand your team members. You need to ask ‘What’s your story? What motivates you, what are your concerns and fears?’  Ultimately you need to say ‘I care!’”

Create a Flat Structure: “One of the most successful teams I was lucky enough to manage had a very flat structure with all team leaders reporting into me,” Teasdale said. “This meant everyone had to step up a level – team leaders and the team members had much more responsibility – but they thrived on it.”

Develop Careers: If you truly are serious about developing talent, then success as much as results is measured by the progression of your team either to higher performance, skills, promotions either within the contact center or the wider business. “Once your team understands that you are not a career-limiting leader and that you actually support them in moving up, attrition and absence fall significantly below the levels often seen in contact centers,” Teasdale says.

Be Creative with Incentives: “I have been lucky enough to have been in teams that have taken an innovative approach to incentives, by involving the teams in creating them,” he recalled. “Rather than dictating an incentive and saying ‘you will have fun’ we asked the teams to come up with ideas.” The end result was incentives that team members came up with on their own, that really mattered to them.

Manage Quality Carefully: “We ensured our quality team members spent more time sitting alongside the calling teams, and encouraged them to spend time on the phones themselves,” Teasdale said. “This gave them credibility when scoring other’s calls, but also gave them much better understanding of what makes a good call.”

In short, management needs to shift its thinking away from being a “boss” and more to being a “partner.” Everyone has the same goal, and if all are on the same page, it will be easier to achieve. As Teasdale puts it: “There are many other areas that could generate a positive culture in your contact center; theme days, employee forums, blogs, team meetings, buzz sessions, community and charity activity, but all have the overarching objective of enhancing engagement and engendering a feeling of belonging within the center.”

Well said.