Tips for Fostering an Inclusive, Engaging Call Center Culture

The issue of engagement is a pressing one in the call center, and it usually centers around customer service engagement. Customers are increasingly demanding experiences and interactions on their own terms, through the method of communication they feel most comfortable with. And they want to feel engaged and understood by call center agents. But how can those agents engage with their customers when they don’t feel engaged themselves?

Engaging employees and keeping them happy and motivated is the backbone of any good workforce management strategy. And perhaps even more so in the call center, an industry plagued by high rates of churn and turnover. One of the most common complaints among call center agents is feeling a lack of engagement, motivation and challenge on the job, causing them to seek greener pastures in a new corporate climate. By employing some simple workforce management strategies, call center managers can prevent this from happening, and create a corporate culture where workers feel engaged, challenged and rewarded for their efforts.

We recently discussed the importance of using social media and branding to foster a positive work culture and promote engagement within the call center. This is a great way to attract the best and brightest agents and middle managers to a call center and keep them engaged and content. Social media can play a major role in promoting fun companywide activities while fostering a climate of camaraderie and caring among workers.

Beyond providing a fun corporate culture, call center managers can foster engagement through team building and leadership activities. While these types of targeted groups and committees might not be as frivolous as a party planning group organizing doughnut and pajama days, they are just as important when it comes to boosting worker engagement. Targeted committees and groups give agents and workers a voice in how day-to-day tasks are being scheduled and handled, allowing them to provide input and feedback in an effort to improve operations and foster increased engagement. Those “on the floor” sometimes understand best what is and isn’t working, and giving those workers an outlet to provide suggestions and improvements can go a long way toward providing a more positive and engaging corporate culture.

Workforce management technology and software can provide call center managers with data on call rates, churn and other important metrics. But workers themselves can offer the details about why certain practices may or may not be working. They can also offer feedback on where additional training and coaching may come in handy, as well as suggestions about specific rewards and motivation strategies like bonus and incentive programs. The end result will be a more engaged call center staff and managers may also enjoy productivity and efficiency boosts as a result.

Very simply, call center agents and staff need to be engaged on the job in order to engage customers. And this type of engagement may be fostered through a corporate culture that values and includes its workers in key decision making processes and gives them a voice in how the call center is operating. Failure to create an engaging work climate will only result in the churn and turnover the call center industry has been plagued with for decades, along with a failure to engage customers – the bread and butter of any call center.

Edited by Maurice Nagle

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