A guide to creating a contact centre culture with engagement at its core

The Six Golden Rules of Agent Engagement

It’s pretty simple - if you’re engaged at work, you will enjoy what you do and will do it well.

It’s the job of contact centre leaders to ensure they instil and support a culture where engagement is king - an engaged workforce is a productive one.

If you want to improve the relationships between agents, team leaders and managers in the contact centre, these six golden rules will help you to achieve exactly that.

Introduction

Everyone needs to be given recognition when they’ve done well, and agents are no different.

Being praised for a job well done leaves agents with a sense of pride that will last the whole day, and they won’t stop there - they’ll keep up the good work in return for that feel-good factor.

Agents that receive regular recognition and praise are far more likely to increase their productivity, stay with the company, and deliver a better customer experience.

Rule One: Recognise hard work with praise

Being given praise for doing something right is affirming, but what’s more important is getting feedback when things aren’t going so well.

Agents shouldn’t have to wait until an annual performance review to hear what they can do to improve, and especially not when the feedback is mostly broken and one-sided.

With clear, concise and consistent feedback, agents will have a firm idea of exactly what they need to do to master their trade.

Rule Two: Give constructive feedback

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As someone’s boss, it can often be difficult to bridge the gap between personal and professional lives, but it’s absolutely essential that you ensure your agents are happy, both inside and outside the walls of the contact centre.

Speak to your agents on a daily basis, ask them how they’re doing or how they spent their weekend. Feeling valued as an individual allows agents to really become invested in the work they do for you.

You don’t need to directly intervene with agent’s personal lives, but just being there for a chat adds immeasurable value to engagement.

Rule Three: Ensure agents are recognised as individuals

Leading contact centres are the ones who use their company values in their decision making processes, and how they engage their staff.

Ensure every goal and expectation set for your agents is completely aligned with the goals the company has - this way you’ll see a real top-down cascade of engagement, and everyone will feel directly connected to the company.

If these values or company circumstances ever change then make sure agents are aware of this and how it will affect them.

Rule Four: Align action with company values

Almost everyone has had a bad boss at some point in their life, and no one wants to be that person.

Savvy contact centres place value in their agents, and the key here is empathy - imagine what your agents are going through and approach each of their situations with respect and consideration.

You don’t need to make everyone in your team your new BFF but take the time to develop a real relationship, and keep your approach consistent. Engagement will follow.

Rule Five: Be the boss you needed when you were an agent

Contact centre staff with active social lives in the workplace tend to be more likely to feel praised, encouraged, committed, and of course, engaged.

As a contact centre leader it’s your job to set an example, and encourage agents to develop relationships and support networks of their own.

The contact centre can be a tricky enough place to work in without office politics and drama, be yourself, others will follow - and what follows is a culture of engagement and

Rule Six: Be the colleague others want to work with

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It’s very simple. Agents need to be engaged in order to perform to the best of their ability, and if leaders are empathetic and human, they deliver the best results.

Learn how to engage and motivate the entire contact centre frontline with our full guide to The Six Golden Rules to Agent Engagement.

We all really do work harder and more effectively when we are valued – and your people management strategy should achieve just that.

Find out more: Download the full guide