Motivate Resources – Employee & Employer

A Happy Employee is the mirror of an Organization; Happy Work Force = Happy Customers   

Provide a great environment to work in and look after your employee the way you expect them to look after your customers.

Why should they be nice to customers if they are getting a raw deal at work themselves?

Below are certain ways to motivate the employees at call center, compiled, written and incorporated in this blog post consultation, real time study and some famous blog references.

Manager Feedback

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to make your people feel motivated and valued. Quite often a telephone call from a senior manager congratulating a team member on a ‘good week’ is equally as effective as an offer of a training course or gift voucher.

A positive attitude

It is vital that recruitment team managers realign their expectations and take into consideration the economic climate when setting targets and objectives. That being said, team leaders must encourage their staff at every step.

Keep things fresh

As obvious as it may sound, the key to motivation is to keep things fresh. Any job, however much you enjoy it, can become monotonous. This is even more true for the call center environment.

Small ‘quick fix’ prizes

Monthly bonuses and incentive schemes are always useful, but what will keep them motivated throughout the month is the small ‘quick fix’ stuff, the here and now, if you like. The little prizes they can take away with them as soon as they win them.

Training is always good, it keeps people up to date and focused on the job

Regular, effective and relevant training is massively important and a great motivator. Training is always good, it keeps people up to date and focused on the job at hand, and it will show them that management are concerned with how well they do their job. If they are given good quality training that covers the topics and issues they are faced with then they will respond and to a certain extent motivate themselves to stick with what they learn.

We all like to be rewarded or praised for doing it well

A good reward scheme is a great motivator, especially if your team are conducting outbound calls. Human nature is that no matter what job we do we all like to be rewarded or praised for doing it well.

What you have to do is have more than one activity running at any given point in time – immediate, daily, weekly, monthly – the key is to run an activity that suits all members of the team. Basically, the thing that might motivate the top performer won’t necessarily work with an average performer and vice-versa. So if you have different options then you should be able to give all of them something to aim for.

Rewards that come at the end of the period are too late to produce ongoing change. “Well done” at the end of the week has a short-term impact. Sustained change in behavior comes when agents are told right through their shift, every minute of the day. When they see the positive and immediate consequences of what they do, they do it even better and faster.

Motivation and reward schemes need to have a high satisfaction level and appeal. We are finding more and more that staff want rewards that they can share with their family and that give them a sense of well-being

A team huddle at the start of the shift

A bit of fun can go a long way towards motivating staff and helps to energize. At the start of shifts a quick ‘huddle’, not only to pass on bits of key information but to also share a topical joke or ‘vote’ on a true/false, can really wake people up! Far more effective than email bulletins that are rarely read!

Listening to your team

We have found that the simple yet very effective “secret” to motivating a call center team effectively comes through how one views motivation. We run with the premise that it is impossible to impose motivation upon people, you need to create an environment within which they can motivate themselves. This environment comes through really listening to your team, and understanding the call center from their perspective. You do not need to agree with everything they are thinking but you do need to understand why they feel this way. Understand what problems/worries they are encountering, what opportunities they see, what is important to them.

The best way to motivate call center staff is to ask for their direct input. A key area for consultation is the re-evaluation of the area where agents spend all of their time: the desktop. Agents frequently cite dissatisfaction with systems as being a major source of low morale.

Be careful promoting people into management roles – A Black-hole Situation

One of the most common mistakes is moving consistent. Well-performing call center staff promoted into management roles and away from the front line of customer service. Often when these top performers are being promoted to managing others, they are replaced by less talented individuals. Think on this critical aspect and you may want to reconsider your decisions a bit. Hiring of correct staff is one of solutions of this Black-hole situation.

This is very important to remove one sided favor to employees. This can be eliminated by identifying and checking the managers.

Employee Satisfaction Surveys

An annual employee satisfaction survey won’t even cost anything. To find out what makes staff ‘tick’ on an ongoing basis you need to measure employee attitude at ‘key moments of truth’ for each employee. The best way to do this is to use employee feedback software which can provide a regular opportunity for employees to ‘air their thoughts’ in a non-confrontational way. And to provide that information to team leaders so that they always have an up-to-date picture about how an employee feels

Regular review sessions

In every role people want to develop their skills to help them progress. All members of the team should have regular review sessions which help staff and employers to identify both areas of strength and skills gaps. At the end of each of these sessions, targets are set for the employee to work towards, helping them develop in their career.

Encourage staff to dress smartly

Even though customers rarely come face to face with call center staff, it is important for them to act and look professional at all times.Putting on smart clothes for work puts you in a professional mindset. This develops personality which can also boost your business confidence and motivation.

Introduce colour in the work space

Inspire your staff to work hard and strive for success. Call center can be bland, so you can create a more vibrant atmosphere by introducing colour in the work space, using motivational images and pictures to brighten the area. These little, low-cost improvements can make a significant impact on your workforce.

Sometimes the simplest of changes can make a significant impact on employees’ working culture and attitude.