In this article, you’ll find tips that make managing work-at-home contact center agents easier. This post will be highly useful if you’re looking for call center motivation ideas, management, and performance tips.
Keeping work-from-home employees happy, motivated, and productive is becoming a problem for managers. You’ll find this even more difficult if you manage remote call center agents. With contact center representatives spread across multiple locations, achieving motivation may seem exhaustive and almost impossible. However, on-site call centers are steadily evolving and virtual ones are here to stay. So, how do you manage remote contact center agents, keep them motivated, and improve customer relations?
Provide access to relevant resources
Remote call center agents will easily become frustrated when they don’t have access to adequate resources for the job. For agents to be able to help customers, you must give them access to your knowledge management system, operation procedures, CRMs, customer data etc.
Always ensure that agents are able to navigate between all the tools in your tech stack and make frequently used resources easily accessible. Pay attention to the network and system requirements of your tools and make sure all agents are stable.
Train your remote call center agents
Providing training resources for remote agents will help boost their confidence and motivation. They’ll feel valued and eager to deliver the best results. Training can be done via virtual meetings or e-learning resources. Another way to upskill remote agents is by tracking their activities and providing feedback or help where necessary. Managers can use screen recording tools to monitor how agents interact with different applications. Reports can be used to identify issues, evaluate performance and train agents.
Respect non-working hours
It’s possible to lose track of time when managing remote call center agents. However, tasking your employees beyond stipulated working hours leaves them unhappy, stressed, and less motivated.
While working from home, remote agents may be with their devices all day. However, it doesn’t mean they want to handle customer queries after work hours. Ensure you adhere to time boundaries and help them maintain a work-life balance.
Use video conferencing for meetings
Communication is important in building highly connected and motivated remote teams. Even though you can’t hold physical meetings with remote agents, virtual communication tools help to build connections between team members. Video meetings allow agents to become familiar with each other and keep them highly engaged.
Agents get motivated and understand better when they are able to see your expressions as you provide updates, reviews, and feedback. Video conferencing may not be as personal as physical meetings, but it offers face-to-face communication and makes it easy to build highly involved remote teams.
Give incentives
To keep work-from-home agents highly motivated, you need to get creative with rewards and incentives. With this culture, contact center reps will have reasons to put in their best, learn faster and be productive. Beyond off days and gift cards, you can personalize rewards for agents and make it fun.
You can customize gift items with their names, or the company logo to make them feel recognized and a part of the team. You can also attach rewards to their daily tasks to make work feel less tedious. In all, make sure you understand the team and make work memorable for them. All of this will make agents feel valued and build their loyalty towards the company.
Instill company culture
Company culture is a must-have for companies whether they manage on-site or remote teams. This will help remote call agents to be more connected to their work and the company’s goals. It’s your duty to show agents the role they play in actualizing the goals and aspirations of the brand.
It’s not enough to only say it. Ensure it shows in how you acknowledge and reward their loyalty. Company culture is highly important and can make a huge difference in engagement, performance, and efficiency.
Collect feedback from your remote agents
Collecting feedback is a way to measure satisfaction and improve redundant processes. To grow as a company, customer feedback must be as important as feedback from your remote call center agents. Always give remote agents the opportunity to discuss policies, processes and every aspect of their daily workload. The more you make hard conversations easier for your agents, the better for your company. This will help you to improve training styles, meetings, policies, and overall collaboration.
Remote agents are an asset if they can be managed properly. They offer a low-cost option to deliver quality customer service in real-time. Ensure you pay attention to their needs, suggestions and make work fun.
Conclusion
Managing a remote call center team can be a challenge. Agents can be distracted, less-motivated, and dissatisfied without your knowledge. However, implementing the tips and recommendations in this article can help you overcome these challenges.
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