How to Increase the Performance of a Contact Center Agent

If you are looking to improve your call center performance, and you’ve already moved it to the cloud and integrated it with unified communication, now it’s time to target good contact center agent performance. How do you do this? By […]

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If you are looking to improve your call center performance, and you’ve already moved it to the cloud and integrated it with unified communication, now it’s time to target good contact center agent performance. How do you do this? By combining motivational techniques, Workforce Management, and other omni-channel solutions, you get a recipe for success. 

How to Use Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivational Techniques to Improve Call Center Performance

The first ingredient for improving call center performance is to use a mix of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivational techniques to promote the desired outcomes from each agent.

Extrinsic Motivational Techniques

Extrinsic motivation produces desired behaviors by using rewards. These rewards can be praise and recognition, consequences and punishment, and physical or financial prizes. 

The advantage of extrinsic motivators is that they readily lead to positive behavior changes with little effort or preparation. The disadvantage is that they can distract agents from truly learning the skills required to actually help their customers. Also, extrinsic rewards tend to need escalation, otherwise they don’t work very well over the long term. Finally, extrinsic rewards may have a negative impact on intrinsic interest and motivation.

Intrinsic Motivational Techniques

Intrinsic motivation stems from a genuine interest and ambition. It assumes no reward other than one’s own satisfaction and enjoyment. An example of this type of behavior in a contact center environment can be when a contact center agent resolves a situation with a concerned customer, knows he did a job well done, feels good about it, and then answers the next call willing to do it again.

Keep these things in mind when brainstorming ways to cultivate intrinsic motivation in your contact center:

  • Don’t use fear of punishment as a motivator. Help your agents become more self-directed so that compliance is a result of their own genuine efforts.
  • Make your agents feel capable and add to their self-worth. Show them that their work will lead to powerful outcomes.
  • Aim for goals that are achievable, but require just enough work to keep agents engaged. 
  • Give accurate performance feedback and don’t make it personal. Encourage them to compete against themselves.

What Is Workforce Management In a Call Center?

The next ingredient for improving contact center performance is done with Workforce Management. Workforce Management (WFM) in a call center forecasts staffing needs from historical data and automatically schedules call center agents based on:

  • Skills
  • Interaction types
  • Availability
  • Any other factor you define

In short, the right agents with the right skills are helping customers as efficiently as possible. This helps to reduce operational costs, helps agents excel, and gives your customers a better experience. 

Workforce Management has four basic fundamentals that help to achieve its goal:

  1. Forecasts: Future workload is calculated and analyzed according to historical data sets, trends, patterns, and algorithms.
  2. Schedules: Once the forecasts are complete, the coverage required is determined. 
  3. Assigned Agents: Contact center agents with a distinct skill set, performance, tenure, and availability are given a specific schedule.
  4. Analytic-Driven Performance Management: In real-time, the service levels and metrics are analyzed to determine if the contact center needs to adjust its previous forecast. 

Keep in mind that a good contact center has its Workforce Management completely built-in and automatic to reduce administration workload and costs. 

Other Omni-Channel Solutions and How They Improve Contact Center Agent Performance

In addition to motivated agents and Workforce Management and Optimization, omnichannel solutions that combine voice, email, and chat communication in a unified environment will help your agents provide a seamless customer experience every time. 

Other solutions include:

  • Agent Presence and State Management that allows you to view the availability of each agent and whether or not they are idle or talking. 
  • ACD Predictive Analytics-Driven Routing that pairs each customer with an optimal agent who can best meet the specific need.
  • ACD Analytics enables you to analyze customer interaction data.
  • Quality Management engages agents through dashboards and gamification.

When these solutions are combined with Workforce Management, your contact center will be transformed into a strategic asset where customers are connected with the best agents, first-contact resolution times are reduced, and customer experience is enhanced. This gives you satisfied, engaged, and loyal customers, which is a formula for success.

If you find your contact center in dire need of a performance boost, let’s chat. Connect with a FirstDigital representative to experience world-class service and solutions!