Best practices in contact center agent motivation and retention

If I were to list every way that contact center professionals can motivate and engage agents, by the time you’d finish reading this chapter we would both be dead of old age, or at least old enough to be eating early-bird specials and complaining about these damn kids today with their long hair and their rock & roll music.

I would very much like to finish writing this book – or at least make it to Chapter 5 – thus here I will focus on the absolute best practices I have seen contact centers employ to generate and maintain high levels of enthusiasm, performance and commitment among the folks on the phone.

Note that I have already inadvertently covered several such practices in the chapters that precede this one. After all, things like choosing – and gauging agent performance based on – the right performance metrics (Chapter 1), selecting the right agents in the first place, (Chapter 2), and providing them with comprehensive training and support that sets them and the center up for continuous success (Chapter 3) are all instrumental in raising agent engagement and retention.

Now let’s move on to several other key strategies and tactics for keeping agents around and elevated for years.

Formal, frequent and meaningful rewards and recognition

In the best-run contact centers, agent rewards and recognition go far beyond helium balloons and pizza parties. While such traditional and trite items/activities won’t do any harm, they also won’t drive high performance nor do much to fend against high turnover. Agents, you see, don’t typically go the extra mile for noble gases nor mozzarella. Besides, inhaled helium is not conducive to effective phone communication, and may cause your customers to think they have called Miley Cyrus or Hilary Duff.

What agents do go the extra mile for are meaningful incentives that are tied to clear and agreed-upon performance objectives. Your staff wants to help the organization achieve success and win over customers, and they want to be rewarded and recognized well for such valuable achievements. Top contact centers answer that call and perpetuate lasting engagement by providing high-performing and dedicated agents/teams with things like:

• Increased autonomy and empowerment (e.g., opportunities to work on important projects)
• Pay increases and bonuses (pay-for-performance)
• Opportunities to attend industry conferences, seminars or workshops in areas of interest
• Themed activities that foster camaraderie, high morale and a sense of team
• Agent of the Week, Month and/or Year awards (based on clear, objective criteria and customer-centric/quality-centric metrics
• Company-wide recognition via e-newsletters, corporate intranet and announcements at key  meetings/events
• Nominations for external industry awards recognizing outstanding customer service/support
• Spirited celebrations during National Customer Service Week and/or company-sponsored employee-appreciation days/weeks
• Opportunities to humiliate superiors (e.g., sink executives sitting in a dunk tanks; shave the head of a senior manager for meeting/exceeding an ambitious goal)
• Free prescriptions to the meds that keep agents from harming themselves and others
• Bacon. Everybody loves bacon.    

To ensure that agents are being recognized and rewarded in ways that truly inspire them and make them feel valued, the best contact centers seek staff input on incentives. Some organizations even let a select group of agents head up the center’s “Incentive Committee” or “Morale Team” – which in itself is an empowering form of recognition and a great way to keep the finger on the pulse of what really motivates staff.

Top contact centers also aim to strike a relatively even balance between individual vs. team incentives (to ensure that all or most agents receive at least some meaningful reward/recognition), as well as an even balance between monetary vs. non-monetary incentives (to ensure that the company doesn’t go bankrupt).

Exciting and empowering off-phone projects and opportunities

In every contact center with high employee satisfaction and retention I’ve ever come across, agents do much more than merely sit at their workstations handling customer contacts. The frontline in these centers is a collective force to be reckoned with, where agents serve on key committees and task forces, work on important and intriguing projects, interact with other departments, and, in general, play an instrumental role in continuous process improvement.

Agents possess a wealth of skills and knowledge, assuming your hiring/training programs are strong and your center isn’t staffed with a bunch of numbskulls (e.g., former pugilists, hockey players, people who watch the Fox network). Acknowledging and tapping that skill and knowledge is one of the best ways to better the center while simultaneously making agents feel like they didn’t make a mistake by dropping out of graduate school.      
  
In addition to improving processes and employee morale and retention, empowering agents frees up overworked managers and supervisors so that they can spend more time talking to themselves in the mirror and napping in the server room.    

There’s really no limit to the number of ways you can involve agents in process improvement and diversify their stressful and potentially mind-numbing days on the phone floor. Here are some of the best “side jobs” I have seen created for deserving agents: 

Training assistant. Whether serving as a peer mentor, a transition training “supervisor”, or as a straight-out trainer in a particular area, giving experienced agents the chance to share their knowledge and assist their peer is a huge boon to all involved. Veterans get to spread their wings and expand their role; developing agents receive helpful tips and support from one of their own who has “been there and done that”; supervisors are freed up to focus on coaching and other key tasks; and the center – and customers – benefit from having a highly motivated and continuously improving frontline.

Quality monitoring/coaching assistant. Most agents, while accepting of quality monitoring, still don’t exactly love having their every word and keystroke captured and evaluated. Adding skilled peer monitors to the process helps to reduce the stress and take the sting out of quality monitoring for agents. Feedback from a seasoned colleague is often more palatable than that from a manager, supervisor or QA specialist, as the colleague not only knows the job inside and out, but is also sensitive to the stress and emotions involved in monitoring and coaching. This is certainly not to say that agents should run the quality monitoring program, but the best centers have seen how adding a select number of top performers to the monitoring team can vastly improve quality as well as agent morale and retention.     

Interdepartmental liaison. There are few better ways to elevate agent engagement than to give them special job title that sounds like they are in the CIA. An increasing number of contact centers have recognized this, and not only create agent liaison opportunities to motivate and retain staff, but also to enhance working relationships with and support from other departments. Agent liaisons take time off the phones (when feasible) to interact with members of areas like Marketing, Sales, Product Development and IT and share key information about what the contact center is up to that impacts those areas. In addition, liaisons find out what’s happening in each of these other areas and shares that information with the contact center. The result: a better understanding of what each department is doing and needs from each other; a broader sense of team that extends enterprise-wide; and agents who are thrilled to have a cool French word incorporated into their job description.                 

Activity Committee member. Smart organizations strive to achieve an optimal work-fun balance for staff. Many top contact centers establishing an agent-led activity committee dedicated to planning social events and activities that bring co-workers together to bond and make fun of the IT guys. In most of these centers, interested agents take turns serving on the committee to ensure that everybody who wants to gets to participate in the activity planning, and that the activities themselves vary throughout the year.

Member of technology/workflow improvement task force. In centers that don’t work to continually improve call workflows, knowledge bases and other agent-assistive applications, it’s not uncommon for staff to ram their head through their PC monitors. This can be extremely dangerous, as the money needed to repair the monitors gets taken out the center’s pizza fund, which can leave supervisors and managers hungry. Realizing this very real risk, the best contact centers empower agents to not only whine and moan incessantly about slow/lacking systems and desktop tools, but to also come up with solutions to such technology problems.     

Employee wellness initiatives

In a recent study of employee health, fitness and emotional well-being representing 20 different industries, the contact center industry ranked 22nd.

Few other jobs are as inherently sedentary and challenging as that of customer care agent. Hours upon hours seated at a workstation handling call after call from demanding customers will take its physical and psychological toll on even the strongest, most well-adjusted person. Add to that the typical contact center custom of plying staff with pizza and other treats in an attempt to keep them alive and inspired, and it’s easy to see why so many agents have cholesterol scores triple their IQ and often take advantage of the company’s outpatient mental health benefits.

This is not to say that all agents suffer from health issues; just the ones who work in your contact center. Which is why you should seriously consider following the lead of many progressive, agent-centric organizations and implement a formal employee wellness initiative. Such initiatives go far beyond merely keeping the pepperoni off the overtime pizza or stocking the breakroom vending machine with baked instead of fried potato chips. Real wellness initiatives – the ones that high-performing centers with little to know agent heart attacks or nervous breakdowns have put in place – feature some or all of the following components:

• Onsite fitness facilities, or discounts on outside gym memberships
• Wellness courses/workshops (e.g., nutrition/weight loss, smoking cessation, stress reduction, etc.)
• Healthy food options onsite
• Free flu shots and health screening checks (e.g., blood pressure checks, cholesterol checks, mammograms, etc.
• Ergonomics training (a specialist demonstrates how agents should adjust their chair, keyboard, wrist rests, headset and PC monitor, and how to position their own body, to ensure the utmost comfort and performance over an entire shift.)

A comprehensive and well-managed wellness initiative doesn't just enhance agent health, well-being, performance while decreasing health-related costs. The very fact that the company has such a program in place shows agents that the company cares, which, by itself, goes a long way toward fostering agent engagement, enthusiasm and retention. 

Of course, just because a contact center has a wellness initiative in place doesn’t mean that every agent is going to take advantage of the amenities and resources offered. Effective wellness program require motivation on the part of the agent, and often agents who are most in need of improving their health and fitness are the ones least inspired to actively participate in the program. Thus, many forward-thinking organizations offer incentives to employees who actively participate in wellness programs. According to a study by the American Medical Association (AMA), 43% percent of companies with wellness initiatives in place use incentives to spark participation, with 26 percent of these organizations using cash as the incentive.

Another, more affordable, way that contact centers foster strong agent support of and participation in wellness programs is by soliciting agent input and feedback regarding what the initiative entails. Other centers have increased agent participation by promising free ice cream and pie to participants, though oddly enough most of these centers report little improvement in employee health.

Opportunities to use special talents on the job

Aside from handling customer contacts, every one of your agents is good at something – and every one of them wants everybody else to know that. That’s why top contact center managers go out of their way to uncover agents’ hidden talents, and empower them to use them on the job in ways that improve the operation and make the manager look brilliant. 

Agents with strong writing skills can be invited to contribute to – or create – the departmental e-newsletter, or even contribute to a larger internal publication, like the company’s quarterly newsletter or report. 

Agents with an artistic bent may be asked to paint a mural to bring color to the contact center and inspire their peers, or perhaps they can create decorations for the next contest or event in the contact center.

And if you happen to have a member of your staff with CIA and/or special forces training, why not let them abduct the company CEO in an effort to get more funding for the contact center, or at least an espresso machine for the break room.

Home agent initiatives

Take it from a guy who has been a telecommuter since 1994, there is nothing as inspiring as having the freedom to work all day in just your underwear. (Actually, my habit of working in just my underwear started even before I started telecommuting, which is why the company I was employed by at the time sent me home to work in the first place.)

Giving deserving agents the opportunity to handle customer contacts from home is like giving them a whole new life: No more soul-crushing commutes during rush hour; better work-life balance and more time with family/friends; cost-savings associated with not having to buy clothes, shampoo, shaving cream or deodorant; and the highly empowering feeling that the company values and trusts them enough to work so autonomously. Home agent programs not only inspire and engage employees who are actually working from home; they inspire and engage the rest of the staff, who will typically work very hard in the contact center to earn the opportunity to work outside of it. 

And it’s not like agents are the only party that benefits from a work-at-home arrangement. Contact centers that take the time to select the right home agents and carefully implement sound telecommuting processes and policies typically reap big rewards from a business standpoint: Higher retention of the best agents; better recruiting results (due to employee demand for home-based work, as well as the ability of the center to expand recruiting reach outside the immediate region); higher productivity and quality; better attendance; increased staffing flexibility; and decreased facility expenses.

We will go into much more detail on home agent programs – including how best to implement and manage one – in Chapter 5; however, if I were you, I wouldn’t wait until then to start thinking seriously about launching at least a home agent pilot, if you haven’t done so already. Quite simply, home agents represent the future of customer care – no other trend stands to have as huge a positive impact on contact center performance and employee satisfaction -- except for perhaps agent cloning, which has yet to be perfected and requires expensive lab equipment that can make it cost-prohibitive. 

Formal career and skill paths

Nobody wants their high school principal’s prediction that they aren’t going to go very far in this world to come true. The best contact centers do their part to help employees prove their principal wrong by offering ample opportunities for advancement within the center, as well as outside of it.

Formal skills- and performance-based pay programs are a great way to motivate staff to continue learning new tricks of the customer care trade, thus bolstering not only their wallets but the contact center’s performance, as well. The most effective programs involve clearly communicating and documenting the varying stages of skill/pay advancement so that agents know opportunities are available and what to strive for. Focused training is then provided in each advanced skill area (e.g., sales, chat-handling/web collaboration; social media monitoring, etc.), after which formal written tests and performance assessments are conducted to ensure that the agents has indeed acquired the new skill(s) and earned the associated pay increase.

In many larger contact centers, skills-based pay programs are accompanied by legitimate internal and external career paths, where frontline employees not only have the opportunity to advance to higher agent levels, but also into team leader, supervisor and managerial roles. Such programs require plenty of planning, training and testing to be successful, as well as actual room to advance. Agents who put in the time and training to become a supervisor or a manager in the contact center or other department won’t be happy and won’t stick around if they see that new positions rarely or never become available.        

Strong managerial leadership and communication skills

Agent engagement isn’t going to be strong in contact centers where leadership is weak.
According to a study by employee retention firm The Herman Group, employees want to work for leaders who are highly competent, accessible, communicative and sensitive to internal and external factors influencing success.

In the best contact centers, managers and directors treat all employees with respect and fairness, and inspire them to excel in their jobs. Agents light up around them, rather than cower and hide. To keep the frontline troops motivated and committed to customers, true leaders go far beyond corporate platitudes, dull mission statements or a poster with the caption “Succeed!” beneath a picture of a man scaling Mt. Everst.

In addition, successful leaders strive to ensure that there is no shortage of humor and fun in the contact center. I’ve seen managers don ridiculous costumes to bring comic relief; cite favorite quotes and quips to motivate and entertain; host parties or ceremonies where personalized gag awards are given out to each agent; and empower agents to make music videos that capture the value of the contact center while adding a dose of levity to everyone’s job.      

The best leaders also know when not to kid around. They are expert at gathering all hands on deck and getting them to focus during call deluges and crises. In addition, they take the time to get to know each agent – their aspirations, their concerns, their problems – and step in to help them through challenges periods in their professional and, where appropriate, personal life. 

Formal employee satisfaction/engagement surveys

My oldest brother used to tell me, “If I wanted your opinion, I’d beat it out of you.” Hopefully you don’t take the same attitude with your agents. I can tell you from experience, such an aggressive feeback-gathering technique does not elicit the most honest responses. It’s the main reason why I recently founded PATBOATGAGESR – People Against The Beating Of Agents To Get A Good Employee Satisfaction Rating.

Instead of flogging staff – or worse (unless you are an agent), ignoring their input entirely – the best contact centers continuously keep their pulse on agent wants, needs, expectations and concerns via regular employee satisfaction surveys. While some contact centers create and administer these surveys themselves, most centers I have seen contract with a third-party surveying firm that specializes in survey design and capturing/anaylizing the data and feedback provided by agents.

Experts recommend administering a comprehensive agent satisfaction survey once a year at least; though every six to eight months is ideal. To ensure a high response rate and honest answers/feedback, it’s essential to explain to agents that all responses are anonymous, and that the survey process is intended to help bring about improvements to the contact center and the agents’ job.      

Of course, none of this means squat if the organization doesn’t carefully evaluate and act on the results of their employee satisfaction survey. While it is true that agents will appreciate the mere fact that the company bothers to gauge their opinion and collect their input, true agent engagement and retention won’t result unless staff sees at least some of their practical recommendations for job and process improvement promptly put into place.

Related to employee satisfaction surveys are surveys conducted during exit interviews. Those who think that feedback gathered during from agents who have already decided to leave the organization are a waste of time are completely missing the point. Yes, the exiting agent may not be saved, but the frank and honest reasons for leaving that they provide may be reflective of how many other agents in the contact center feel though are afraid to express. Sometimes only an agent who is already leaving will have the hutzba to communicate that his supervisor’s chronic halitosis is unbearable. The supervisor can then be informed of such feedback and begin a daily regimen of flossing, brushing and gargling. Not only will this help to end the needless suffering and possible exodus of many more of the center’s agents, it may save the supervisor from a lifetime of incurable and expensive gingivitis.

The point is, uncovering – and tracking – negative opinions and serious concerns during exit interviews is instrumental in stemming the tide of discontent that could end up devastating your contact center. World-class organizations incorporate exit interviews – and good oral hygiene – into their employee satisfaction measurement