7 Popular Metrics To Improve & Measure Your Call Centre Performance

7 Popular Metrics to Improve & Measure Your Call Centre Performance

When managing a call centre, you need to know the most effective ways to measure your agent’s performance, productivity and how well they’re satisfying your customers.  Metrics provide a reliable method of tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and will aid in steering your agents to achieve a common goal for the business. There are many metrics you can use to measure your call centre’s performance, however, some are more important and provide more informative data for you to interpret and implement change accordingly. Here are the top 7 metrics you should consider using to measure your call centre performance. Related Article: Performance Management – 8 Tips To Boost Your Call Centre

The 7 Most Popular Call Centre Metrics to Measure Call Centre Performance are:

  1. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
  2. First Call Resolution (FCR)
  3. Average Handle Time (AHT)
  4. Average Speed of Answer (ASA)
  5. Shrinkage
  6. Employee Attrition (Turnover)
  7. Abandonment Rate

1. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

This is one of the most important measures of performance in your call centre. You want to provide the best customer experience possible otherwise it’s likely your customers may look elsewhere and buy from your competitor instead of you!

One method to measure Customer Satisfaction in your call centre:

After-call customer surveys – A post-call survey or follow-up email survey asks customers to rate their recent interaction with your call centre.  The advantages of using this form of satisfaction rating is that they are relatively easy to get up and running, it is low cost and it requires no extra data from the customer.  However, there are a couple of disadvantages which may make you rethink whether after-call customer surveys are the best option. The cons are that surveys:

  • Usually, get a low response rate;
  • Low volumes of qualitative data is recorded since usually a score rating between 1-5 is taken;
  • Poor ability to use the qualitative data;
  • Operators at times can choose who to supply a survey to leading to incorrect data;
  • Limited ability to tag feedback;
  • Inability to track other than telephone touchpoints;
  • Limited or no ability to initiate Service Recovery contact

Using Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) metrics to measure customer satisfaction will be highly beneficial to ensure your customer receives a good experience and your call centre is likely to become more efficient and profitable.  

2. First-Call Resolution Rate

As mentioned above, First-Call Resolution (FCR) is a popular and widely used KPI that influences the customer’s experience.  FCR measures agent productivity and effectiveness by calculating the percentage of incoming calls that are resolved entirely on the first instance.  If a customer has to call back numerous times or is handled by too many agents, it will decrease your FCR and customer satisfaction rates. 

You should look at methods to decrease your FCR rate, ensure you:

  • Provide proper training to your agents – If your agents do not have to find out the answer from anyone else and have a solid understanding of the product or service they will be more likely to resolve the issue on the first call.
  • Don’t have strict adherence targets as this can cause agents to rush through their calls before breaks and other off phone activities, which causes the agent to not be as thorough.
  • Empower your agents – Create a culture that your employees want to be a part of. By empowering your agents to do their job well, they will perform better and resolve calls on the first instance more often.

Additional benefits to decreasing your FCR rate include:

  • Decreasing costs – reducing the number of callbacks and time spent on each customer will increase the company’s bottom line.
  • Increase employee engagement – if your agents are well-trained and feel confident with the product or service, they are more likely to be a more engaged employee.

Related Article: 13 Methods for Increasing Employee Engagement Using First-Call Resolution (FCR) to measure how well your call centre is performing  will be beneficial to the bottom line as well as ensuring your employees are engaged.  

3. Average Handle Time (AHT)

Average handle time or AHT is another one of the most important metrics used to measure your call centres’ performance and productivity.  AHT is the average time spent on the phone call from when the agent picks up to when the agent disconnects the call with the customer.  Call centre managers take careful consideration and aim to decrease the AHT due to direct link this metric has to decreasing costs and increasing profitability.  It is important to measure not just how long the agent spent with the customer but also how short the call may be. If the call is too short it may mean the customer has not received enough assistance about the product or service.  Monitoring the call quality is how you can discover whether your agents are delivering the right amount of assistance to your customers. 

Top tips to decrease Average Handle Time (AHT):

  • Automate as many customer interactions as possible (across all media types: email, chat and calls)
  • Ensure your company website has easy to find FAQs to minimise call volumes
  • Cut down after-call work by spending more of the time with the customer
  • Aim to resolve customer queries on the first point of contact
  • Reassess your scripts and cut out any unnecessary information
  • Create cheat sheets to streamline calls with repetitive questions
  • Train your agents by letting them listen to examples of the correct AHT duration

Using AHT to measure how well your agents are providing assistance to your customers is a crucial metric when assessing your call centres performance.  

4. Average Speed of Answer (ASA)

When measuring the productivity of your call centre, one of the best metrics to measure the performance of your agents is the average speed of answer or ASA.  ASA is calculated by dividing Total Wait Time for all Answered Calls by Total Number of Answered Calls.  The lower the ASA, the less time customers spend waiting for their calls to be answered. It is crucial to have a lower ASA because it also lowers the occurrence of the Abandonment Rate and increases the CSAT scores.  

How to decrease Average Speed of Answer (ASA):

  • Better manage your agents by revising your scheduling against forecasts
  • Ensure to utilise the benefits of economies of scale with blending agents where possible
  • Make use of technology by using advanced call routing call centre software
  • Optimise agent training
  • Use queue callback technology
  • Increase opportunities for the customers to self serve to reduce the overall inbound demand

  Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is an essential call centre metric because it fundamentally is about getting a customer’s issues resolved as quickly as possible. Your ASA target should be aligned to your operational and strategic goals. Are your targets working towards achieving these goals or are they unaligned?  

5. Shrinkage

Shinkage is a commonly used metric to measure the time an agent is not contributing towards workload. Shrinkage impacts the overall efficiency of a call centre and needs to be continually monitored and measured to ensure shrinkage can be reduced where possible. Shrinkage can be calculated by summing the total paid time in an activity not contributing towards workload divided by the total paid time.  

Shrinkage calculation includes these factors in time the agents are not available:

  • Training or coaching
  • Meetings
  • Planned leave such as holidays/vacation
  • Unplanned leave such as sick leave
  • Agents running late for work
  • Agent leaving early from work
  • Scheduled paid breaks
  • After-call work

How to reduce shrinkage in your call centre:

  • Use workforce management software (WFM), such as Aspect, to help automate the forecasting process and scheduling by tracking all planned and unplanned shrinkage
  • Utilise call centre software so agents can log when they are on break, taking leave etc
  • Monitor and address absenteeism
  • Introduce an incentive program to motivate employees to reduce shrinkage
  • Ensure shrinkage management in an ongoing process

Related Article: 13 Methods for Increasing Employee Engagement  Because call centre shrinkage directly impacts the productivity of your call centre it is imperative to monitor the rate on a regular basis so that the call centre can reach the business goals of the company.  

6. Employee Attrition Rate (Turnover)

Employee Attrition Rate or Turnover is a commonly used measure that tracks the number of people that leave your contact centre.  There are two types of turnover: staff choosing to leave and staff being asked to leave. 

A high turnover rate has severe impacts on your call centre:

  • Direct impact on revenue and profitability (it’s expensive to hire and train new employees!)
  • Decreased workplace morale
  • Long term effects on company culture
  • Decreased product and/or service quality delivery (productivity)

Reasons for a high turnover rate include:

  • Agents are overworked
  • Unfairness between team members or being mistreated
  • Low salary
  • Minimal outlook for a salary raise in current role
  • Toxic company culture
  • Poor management
  • Minimal career development opportunities
  • Lack of recognition for hard work
  • No work-life balance
  • The role did not meet expectations
  • Bad hiring practices

High turnover is fairly common in the call centre industry however there are ways to help mitigate some of the issues surrounding why an employee leaves a job.  

You can lower your turnover rate by:

  • Ensuring you hire the right people for the job
  • Let people go that aren’t the right fit
  • Recognise and reward your employees
  • Offer flexibility for a better work-life balance
  • Be transparent about employee engagement 
  • Create opportunities for career development
  • Ensure you stick to scheduled performance reviews
  • Create a company culture to be proud of

Your employee attrition rate directly impacts the profitability of your call centre because it is expensive to hire and train new employees. Understanding why your turnover rate is high or low is an important metric when managing any call centre.   

7. Abandonment Rate

Abandonment Rate is the number of customer calls that hang-up before they get connected to an agent.  The Abandonment Rate is calculated by dividing Abandoned Calls by Total Offered Calls. A lower abandon rate indicates a faster rate of answering the call. Abandonment Rate is linked to ASA.

There are several ways to reduce your call centre’s Abandonment Rate:

  • Use a mix of different media types for your customers to contact your call centre (Email, Chat and Call)
  • Inform customers of their estimated wait time
  • Offer virtual queuing so customers can receive a callback when the agent is available
  • Offer self-service over the phone, on the website or via email
  • Play engaging announcements to inform and educate whilst the customer is waiting
  • Use wallboards and team broadcasts to encourage efficiency
  • Reallocate hours so you have enough agents on for busy periods and less agents on for more quiet periods
  • Divert calls to overflow if customers have been waiting too long

 

About Datagamz Datagamz provides a gamification and analytics platform to help you to track performance and KPIs. It offers a method of incentivising your employees through rewards, quizzes and challenges.  You can make use of technology in a way that it offers the best benefits to your employees whilst also managing performance goals.

Let’s get to work

Finally get the results you’re after, and build the high-performing culture you’ve been waiting for today.

Performance Management – 8 Tips To Boost Your Call Centre

Performance Management – 8 Tips to Boost Your Call Centre

What is call centre performance management?

Productivity is the key focus of any business and a call centre is no different. The more productive an agent is at a call centre, the more they contribute towards the performance management goals of the organisation. For call centres, as they are a service-centric business, it is very important to assess the performance of the employees to ensure that you are best utilising their talent. Performance Management broadly means how well you can maintain the talent in your organisation and what processes you follow and practices you adopt to get the best performance from agents. The more you are able to strike a balance between the skills you have and the roles of the agents, the more productive your business becomes.  Call centre performance management, however, cannot be achieved overnight. It is a continuous process that brings efficacy to the organisation and ensures optimum utilisation of resources. 

If you want to manage your call centre effectively, here are 8 tips to boost your call centre performance management:

1. Eliminate ambiguity by setting expectations

When you ask an agent at your call centre about their job description, are they able to offer an answer without hesitation? In most cases, agents have ambiguity about their expected role. When the agent does not know what is expected of them, how can they perform at par with expectations? 

  • Offer clear expectations – Before you do anything, make sure that your agents know what you are expecting from them. This can be done by offering them a more detailed and clearer job description and supplying them with clear performance expectations from the get-go. Setting your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should be a priority in the induction process with a new employee.
  • Involve your agent in the process – When setting performance targets, sit down and involve your agent in developing a performance plan by getting their input. Engaging the agent as part of the target setting process ensures any ambiguity is eradicated from the root.

2. Pay attention to individuality and empower your agents

Just like no two jobs are the same, no two agents have the same skill set. It is very important that you place importance on individuality and follow different approaches while dealing with different agents.  While you might already have set the KPIs and the benchmarks to be achieved, in your call centre, you cannot expect two individuals to reach there in the same way. Agents may act differently in situations due to their level of experience and their aspects of their personality.

Agents may differ in these key areas:

  • Speed they complete work 
  • Methods of handling situations
  • Personal attitudes
  • Levels of empathy
  • Ability to muilti-task
  • Communication skills
  • Organisation skills
  • Ability to work as a team
  • Ability to work independently
  • Ability to recall information
  • Confidence
  • Technology literacy

Besides setting a strategy for the team performance, it is important to have a customised approach for each and every agent because of the many different levels of ability in the key areas mentioned.

3. Provide regular, targeted feedback sessions to employees

  • Don’t skip feedback sessions – When you do not know where you went wrong, you won’t be able to do the thing right the next time. Most call centres know the importance of offering feedback to the employees, but there can be times when the managers get too busy and the feedback process takes the back seat.
  • Provide feedback more regularly – In times like these, when the employee is working harder to achieve the results, it becomes more important to provide the feedback. Instead of reaching out to the employee with a quarterly or annual assessment sheet, it is better to offer feedback daily or weekly.
  • Provide targeted feedback – Just like it is important to set short term goals, it is equally important to offer feedback at short intervals. Take the time to listen to your employees, especially when they ask for your advice, and provide constructive feedback that is actionable. 

 Related Blog – 13 Effective Methods To Increase Employee Engagement

4. Positive feedback is the key

While feedback is a tool that you can utilise, it is important that you balance it well. You must notify the agent about their performance and development in a stipulated time, but ensure that your feedback encourages a positive outcome. 

  • Use the coaching feedback model – The coaching feedback model applies positive feedback and ‘learning feedback’ instead of providing negative feedback. This is helpful to get agents to understand goals and how they will achieve them. When you are asking questions about an action, project or behaviour, start a dialogue by asking an employee to reflect on their personal performance. Ask open questions similar to these:
  • What would you like to get out of this conversation? (if you have a scheduled feedback session/meeting)
  • What have you noticed about your performance?
  • What do you like about what you have achieved? 
  • If you could do it again, what would you do differently?
  • Can I make a suggestion? This is an opportunity to offer advice and deliver ‘learning’ feedback to your agent
  • Do not focus feedback on what an agent has done wrong –  You want to continue to develop performance and not to break the employee morale. As mentioned, instead of pointing out what the agents did wrong, make the feedback a mix of positive and ‘learning’ or constructive feedback.
  • One example could be instead of identifying an agent that has been performing at a low level, you could support them by partnering them with someone they can inspire from or offering them positive feedback for how they can develop. 

5. Demonstrate leadership and build relationships with your team 

If you want a great team of performing agents, you must prove yourself as a good leader first. By ensuring that you support your agents in their development, you can expect great outcomes in return.  If you do not engage in the right behaviour, you cannot expect your associates to perform. Always remember that your associates will follow what you do. It is recommended that you follow what you preach and set examples of good behaviour and performance for the team to follow.  Similarly, strong relationships with your team can give a manager more influence and therefore more power to drive performance. Together, a great leader with good relationships with their team is much more likely to achieve objectives, reduce attrition and increase customer service.  As a great leader, you must focus on:

  • Identifying issues 
  • Finding a solution 
  • Effectively implementing it

Emphasise developing the key skills of each agent and utilise it as a strength for the call centre. Being supportive of each agent’s personal goals offers an opportunity of a positive career path with your organisation and will help to ensure your top performing agents stay with your organisation. 

6. Introduce a company-wide performance management strategy

Irrespective of the department type, size, and nature, you must ensure that the performance management process is the same for everyone. Obviously, the KPIs would be different for various roles, but all employees must know there is a standard performance management process to follow. One example is a scheduled performance review every three months for every employee. How will it help you? Well, with the same performance management process, the employees will stay abreast of the ongoing changes and expectations from them. This way, irrespective of the team they are transferred to, they will be able to deliver results and stay on track with performance targets. Another advantage of uniformity is that if the team remains the same, but the team leader is changed, the agents won’t find it tough to align with the new goals set as the performance management processes would remain the same.

7. Incentivise performance

Call centres often set Sales targets as a KPI, and agents chasing the targets can overlook the quality they deliver to the customer. This is not the best practice for a good performance management process.  Instead of focusing on sales, the call centres must prioritise the feedback an agent receives from the customers and set them as a KPI.

An incentive program to boost the performance of an agent could instead be designed around these metrics:

  • Customer satisfaction scores/levels
  • Average handling time per agent
  • Number of calls handled per day
  • Number of calls in cue 
  • Resolved cases per agent – over a given time period

For each type of goal, there are more specific customer service metrics you can use to monitor progress. For example:

  • Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Indicator of customer happiness
  • Average handling time (AHT) – The average amount of time taken to resolve a customer’s issue
  • Customer Effort Score (CES) – Indication of how much effort is required from customers
  • First response time (FRT) – How long it took before customers received initial responses
  • First contact resolution rate (FCR) – The percentage of issues resolved within the first contact

Whilst it is important to recognise your top performers, there needs to be a process to recognise positive gains for any underperformers too.  Examples of incentives that can motivate your call centre team:

  • Preferential work schedules
  • Team Awards
  • Personalised gifts
  • Gift cards
  • Entry into a raffle
  • Friday barbeque or drinks
  • Additional time off
  • Using gamification tools such as Datagamz

A key goal of setting incentives is to help the agents develop. If you aren’t getting the right outcome, it is better to invest in a better developmental activity, such as additional training, rather than handing out incentives. 

8. Utilise technology to track performance

A business has access to a range of performance management tools and it is expected from them to make the best use of it.  From organising employee engagement games to offering the employees access to the performance management software to keep track of their developmental progress, there is a range of tools that call centres can use to manage employee performance.  Datagamz provides a gamification and analytics platform to help you to track performance and KPIs. It offers a method of incentivising your employees through rewards, quizzes and challenges.  You can make use of technology in a way that it offers the best benefits to your employees whilst also managing performance goals. Performance management is crucial for an organisation and the leader is a key part of the entire process. By working closely with the agents, helping them identify the goals and offering feedback when required, a manager can ensure that the best performance is delivered by the team.  This will not only ensure that the organisation performs well but also ensure that the agents have connectivity with the call centre and associate themselves with having longevity within the business.

Let’s get to work

Finally get the results you’re after, and build the high-performing culture you’ve been waiting for today.

13 Effective Methods To Increase Employee Engagement

13 Effective Methods to Increase Employee Engagement

What is employee engagement?

Point blank – employee engagement is the most important aspect you should be looking to improve because if you’re not looking after your employees, your organisation will not thrive. Organisations rely, more than ever, on their employee’s motivation and performance to reach their business goals and to be successful. (I want to skip straight to the steps for increasing employment engagement!) This finding by Gallup suggests that more highly engaged employees resulted in a 21% increase in profitability. An organisation with high employee engagement is more likely to increase:

  • Productivity 
  • Retention rates
  • Financial performance
  • Customer satisfaction

Organisations that have a high percentage of employee engagement gain an edge over their competition. Shrm outlines the key differences between engaged and disengaged employees.  Engaged employees are optimistic, team orientated, solution-orientated, selfless, show a willingness to learn and accept blame while passing on credit.  Overall an engaged employee is more likely to have better:

  • Attitudes
  • Behaviours
  • Performance
  • Mental and physical well-being

Disengaged employees display a pessimistic attitude, can be self-centred, are often absent, have a negative attitude, do not show passion for learning and accept credit but pass along blame.  Employee engagement is an approach which is based on a two-way commitment between the organisation and the employee. The aim is to provide an employee with the right role, responsibilities, environment and culture so they are well equipped to perform their best at work.

Here are some steps to increase your organisation’s employee engagement:

1. Place employees in the right role

When companies place employees in the wrong role, due to reasons such as growth and unexpected employee losses, it can lead to rushed hiring decisions and therefore a selection of the wrong person for the role. An employee can feel under-utilised or conversely over-worked if placed in a role that is not suitable for their experience level and personal preference. Plus hiring the wrong person for the role could cost your organisation over $200,000!

A poor hiring choice can:

  • Bring the whole teams performance down
  • Create bad habits and behaviours
  • Create resentment from team members performing well and taking the slack
  • Impact company culture in the long term

When selecting the right person for a role ensure you:

  • Get another opinion – by conducting several interviews or inviting other team members to sit in on the interview
  • Check their references! –  This is a free resource to gather more information about a candidate before they get started
  • Conduct an interview that gets them involved – For example, create a hypothetical work situation and ask them what steps they would take to achieve an outcome
  • Set clear expectations early – If they are not meeting the expectations, there will be no surprises for them when they are told so. This is important for measuring the performance of your employees too
  • Trust your instincts – It’s likely you know which employee will be the best fit, go with your gut.

2. Provide quality training from Day 1

There’s nothing worse than starting a new job and not being provided with up to date training and information required to get started Those first few weeks for a new employee are crucial in making them feel like they made the right choice in deciding to work for your organisation. 

Here are some key tips to include in your induction to make sure your employee is engaged from their first day: 

  • Supply a rough plan or calendar for your employee’s first week – this helps your new employee to know what to expect each day as they get to know the organisation and the team
  • Introduce them to to the company – this includes missions, values, goals and/or history
  • Complete those administrative must-do’s – this includes Workplace, Health and Safety, car parking and covering all key policies and procedures. Make this a resource your employee can access whenever they need it.
  • Who’s who in the zoo – provide your new employee with a company organisational structure diagram will be helpful for learning everyone’s names and roles. Avoid overwhelming a new staff member by only introducing them to specific team members on their first day, not the whole office! (they are likely to not remember names or roles)
  • Inform them of their reporting lines – knowing who to contact and which process to follow to achieve an outcome, from day 1, will benefit your employee immensely!
  • Set up one-on-one inductions – with team members they’ll be working closely with
  • Provide training – on how to use software, relevant IT tools or other processes
  • Organise a special welcome – this could be a team lunch or a coffee catch up. One organisation takes its employees to choose their own desk plant on their first day! 

3. Discuss goals with your employees

Ask your employees if they want to work on particular projects or tasks. Understanding how an employee fits with an organisation’s future is one of the key employee engagement drivers that has the biggest impact. If your employees see longevity within your organisation, they are more likely to have higher engagement and therefore remain in the organisation for longer.

Have a discussion with each employee regarding:

  • Short term goals
  • What would they like to achieve in the next 3 months? 
  • Which current projects interest or excite them?
  • Long term goals
  • Where would they like to see their career progress in the next 3-5 years? 
  • How can your organisation help them to reach their career goals?

Related Blog – Performance Management – 8 Tips To Boost Your Call Centre

4. Task employees with responsibility by delegating effectively

Managers need to know how to effectively assign responsibility, but with many never receiving proper training in delegation, this can be seen as a big downfall for an organisations’ employee engagement.  Asking “Who can do this task?” and then providing proper guidance and monitoring progress once the task is delegated is crucial to keeping employees on track and engaged. Shrm outlines a checklist to prepare for delegation to ensure that employees feel equipped to take on responsibility. Your delegation checklist should include:

  • A defined desired outcome
  • Choose the person with the experience and skills to take on the responsibility
  • Provide the deadline and progress reporting timelines
  • Provide training and guidance
  • Monitor progress
  • Provide feedback
  • Identify what lessons were learned
  • Evaluate employee performance

In contact centres, where much of the work is repetitive and sometimes mundane, keeping employees engaged is critical to reducing attrition and increasing quality of work. Gamification platforms such as Datagamz, allows managers and team leaders to delegate tasks to agents and makes tasks more interesting by turning employees into gamers. Productive behaviour is rewarded by earning points and a visual leaderboard promotes healthy competition among employees.

5. Be transparent when discussing employee engagement

Be loud and proud about wanting to improve employee engagement in the workplace. Send internal emails to employees outlining what steps you are taking to improve employee engagement.  Maintaining transparency means the team can help encourage fellow colleagues to work together to increase engagement.

Things you can do to promote transparency in the workplace:

  • Include transparency in the company policy
  • Communicate effectively and consistently
  • Involve people in decision-making processes
  • Ensure everyone is on the same page regarding expectations
  • Share both positive and negative news with your employees

Transparency can be achieved and is a very powerful enabler that can aid in increasing your employee’s engagement.

6. Allow remote and flexible working arrangements

The need to be a more flexible organisation with regards to working arrangements is ever increasing due to the increase in daily pressures, stressors and a change in people’s lifestyles. 

Employees are needing flexible working arrangements due to:

  • The demands of having a family 
  • Personal obligations such as caring for a parent or child
  • Life responsibilities
  • Injuries or disability
  • Other circumstances which make it difficult to commit to a regular work schedule

A flexible work arrangement for your employees is likely to boost engagement and performance due to the extra benefits your employees will receive.

Employees will:

  • Save money by decreasing fuel, parking and childcare expenses
  • Have more time to do other activities such as spend time with family and exercise more due to a decrease in commute time and getting ready for work
  • Decrease stress levels by eliminating or decreasing commute time
  • Feel more in control over their schedule 
  • Be able to work when it fits their energy cycle
  • Reduce burnout because they can take breaks when needed (without the boss watching!)
  • Be less likely to be absent from work due to burnout or sickness

However, you want to ensure your employees are continuing to work effectively in their flexible working arrangements.

Here are a few pointers for maintaining productivity for anyone with remote or flexible working arrangements:

  1. Set a regular schedule and stick to it – Some people might work more effectively in the morning and others may work better at night. Figure out what works best for you.
  2. Get organised – Writing a to-do list at the start of your day or week can help to stay on top of tasks. Online to-do list apps such as Microsoft to-do or Wunderlist are useful if you don’t want to use good old fashioned paper and pen.
  3. Use technology – Use tools and software to make your job more efficient and tasks more automated. Project management tools such as Asana, Monday.com and Trello offer an online platform to help manage teams. If you’re a contact centre, software tools such as Aspect’s cloud solution offers a way of operating your contact centre whilst your employees are working remotely.
  4. Stay connected – email, call or video your team members regularly. This ensures regular communication about work-related topics and also upholds your relationships with your colleagues and/or clients. Google Hangouts and Zoom are two popular tools you can use to stay connected online.

Having a flexible working schedule combined with the right tools can be very beneficial to increasing your organisation’s employee productivity as well as their engagement. 

7. Provide a nice working environment

One study showed that up to 70% of employees improve their physical surroundings in their working environment to increase healthy behaviours. 

Some aspects that can be improved to increase your employee’s physical surroundings, ensure each employee has:

  • An ergonomic workstation
  • Adequate lighting
  • A clean and comfortable workspace
  • Safety by following all workplace health and safety regulations
  • Training and access to all Workplace, Health and Safety policies and procedures

Encourage your employees to get creative and personalise their own desk space or workstation by:

  • Adding some greenery by bringing in a desk plant or two!
  • Get them to bring in their own mug
  • Adding framed family photos
  • Bring in motivational quote prints or artwork they like

8. Promote wellness initiatives to increase engagement

Organisations that care for their employees, which are their most valuable asset, are more likely to achieve success because their employees have a better work-life balance. Activities such as encouraging your employees to attend a weekly exercise class before or after their workday can inspire your employees to increase their healthy lifestyle behaviours.  Additionally, this is an excellent way to give your employees the opportunity to get to know their colleagues better. 

Introducing a wellness initiative can provide many benefits which can help to increase employee engagement, it can:

  • Boost healthy behaviours
  • Reduce health risks such as high blood pressure
  • Reduce personal health care or gym costs 
  • Improve productivity
  • Increase the rate of attendance and retention
  • Build team morale and improve work relationships

Some more examples of wellness initiatives that could work for your organisation:

  • Walking meetings
  • Midday fitness 
  • Wellness challenges
  • Meditation 
  • Free flu shots
  • Cooking classes
  • Massages
  • Offer standing desks
  • Order healthy lunches
  • Provide healthy snacks
  • Yoga classes
  • Encourage participation in a fun run
  • Gym discounts
  • Smoking cessation programs
  • Employee assistance programs for mental health

9. Encourage your employees to take breaks 

As part of your wellness initiative, encouraging your employees to take breaks is crucial to prevent burnout and decrease associated health issues. Regular breaks give your employee a rest from eye strain, if working on a computer, and muscle fatigue or strain. A 5-10 minute break can help restore concentration and it provides enough time for a stretch. 

There are many free tools you can use to help your employees remember to take breaks:

  • Eyeleo – is for workers that spend more than one hour looking at a screen, this tool provides alerts for short and long breaks and eye exercises
  • Flux – adapts the colour of your screen based on the time of day
  • Stretchly – is an open source app that reminds you to take both short and long breaks.

Encourage your employees to stretch regularly during their workday, these stretches are a good starting point but ensure they seek medical advice if they have injuries or are unsure of how to perform the stretch.

  • Shoulder shrugs
  • Stretch arms overhead
  • Torso twist
  • Hip flexor stretches

10. Ensure you check in with employees often

Whether the check-ins are casual or scheduled, don’t forget to have regular check-ins to see how your employees are tracking.  One study showed that when an employee feels like their voice is heard, they are 4.6 times more likely to perform better work. This is why it is important to have an open conversation about their progress and career goals. 

What you should check in on your employees about:

  • Are they meeting expectations?
  • Are they reaching their goals?
  • Would they like to undertake any extra training or professional development?
  • Are there any barriers for them at the moment?
  • How do they feel about the extra measures for increasing employee engagement in your organisation?
  • Any other topics they wish to discuss with you?

Make sure you end the meeting on a positive note, try to make your employee feel optimistic going forward, even if the chat was focused on some not-so-good news.

11. Be open to asking and receiving feedback (also ask about your new employee engagement initiatives!)

Regularly asking your team how they think you’re going as a manager can promote a great working relationship and develop your managerial skills. Feedback can be anonymous or an open discussion. Because you’re being transparent about employee engagement, ask your employees how you think the new initiatives are going! One study found that 89% of HR leaders agreed that ongoing feedback and check-ins are crucial for success.

Here are some ways to get honest employee feedback that will help you boost employee engagement:

  • Create a culture of open and honest communication by showing genuine interest in your employees’ work and their lives
  • Make note of non-verbal communication – body language can sometimes provide more information than speaking!
  • Tell your employees that you have an open-door policy – meaning they are welcome to chat with you about anything they need to, whenever you are available
  • Implement a suggestion box – anonymity will be preserved too!
  • Schedule a one-on-one catch up to check in on how they think you are tracking as a manager
  • Avoid becoming defensive – ensure you realise that not everyone has the same perspective and information as you, so think carefully before responding when receiving feedback 
  • Be genuine and build trust by owning your mistakes

12. Increase employee engagement by providing recognition

When an employee does a good job, ensure you let them know! A thoughtful reward for an employee can boost productivity and engagement.  Recognition makes people feel good about themselves and their work, so ensuring you provide positive reinforcements is crucial to increasing your employees’ motivation. 

Here are some suggestions on how you can provide recognition to boost engagement:

  • Handwritten note
  • Certificate of achievement
  • Team lunch
  • Company branded apparel
  • Lunch with the boss
  • VIP parking
  • Casual dress day
  • Time-off or extra leave
  • Work from home day
  • Free coffee
  • Trophy
  • Tickets to events
  • Movie tickets
  • Bring your pet to work
  • End of year party with awards
  • Bottle of wine
  • Thank you video
  • Gym membership
  • Spa voucher
  • Badges/gems or sending kudos through online gamification software

A gamification platform such as Datagamz can be a useful tool to reward

employees that work in contact centres and back-office environments. Learn more about how Datagamz could help to boost your employee engagement.

13. Encourage employees to get social to increase engagement

Boost team morale and increase workplace culture by having a regular social catch up or activity.  Whether it be Friday drinks, lunches or a sport, providing the team with time to bond over something that is not work-related will be beneficial for increasing your employee engagement.

Ideas for social activities so you can start boosting your team’s engagement:

  • Monthly lunches or drinks
  • Friday afternoon drinks
  • Weekly draws
  • Workplace awards
  • Themed dress days
  • Daily fun routine – for example, a joke or riddle
  • Celebration of milestones – for example, a 1 year anniversary
  • Fitness classes
  • Trivia night
  • Karaoke night
  • Cooking class
  • Kayaking
  • Painting class
  • Attend networking events – for example, a motivational speaker or thought leader

Our at Datagamz mission is to radically improve the engagement and capability of contact centre teams by helping them connect better with each other and with customers. Understanding what motivates and engages individual team members and provides a sense of accomplishment and pride is critical to improving each individuals performance and the overall customer experience. Datagamz Gamification platform translates behaviours that will improve productivity into badges, quests and challenges for individuals and teams. Datagamz Analytics offers four new powerful techniques to help uncover and leverage insights into productivity and performance.

Let’s get to work

Finally get the results you’re after, and build the high-performing culture you’ve been waiting for today.