Greater staff engagement in the contact centre that flows through your whole business.
Greater staff engagement in the contact centre that flows through your whole business.
Imagine you’re really, really good at basketball. Good enough to shoot a 3 pointer in the dying seconds of a match to win the game for your team. What a feeling, knowing you’ve won the game. But imagine if you knew that with that shot, you just put your team into the finals, something that hadn’t been achieved in 30 years. Winning feels good. But knowing you’ve helped your team take a major step forward in their objective of winning a flag, makes it all the sweeter. It gives you a sense of purpose knowing that this one event has helped you achieve something meaningful. Purpose is a powerful thing when it comes to staff engagement, too. Understanding what the business is trying to achieve, and how your role and achievements help the business move where they want to go, is incredibly motivating.
Your contact centre staff need to be inspired
For most businesses contact centre staff are in the trenches. They cop it from angry customers, sometimes for most of their shifts. This kind of role isn’t for the sensitive or the faint-heartened, but even the most robust and self-assured agent can start to feel pretty trodden on after enough difficult, negative conversations. It’s important to give your agents a sense of their role in a higher purpose, in order to ensure staff engagement stays high.
When they’re dealing with Linda for the fourth time this week, who is banging on about how much she hates the business and is going to cancel her contract, they will know that how this conversation goes matters to the business, as customer experience is a key priority for everyone.
Staff engagement starts with a purpose
Why does your business exist? What do you hope you achieve, specifically – in 12 months, 2 years? Not just financially, but what do you want to mean to your customers? What does the world look like in which your business is successful? No employee will have a sense of purpose until the business understands why it exists. This doesn’t come in the form of catchy slogans or generic mission statements, it’s about developing and communicating an authentic purpose, and embedding this purpose into the day to day activities of every employee.
A good example of staff engagement through purpose is Seventh Generation, a household goods company. These guys manufacture pretty non-exciting products – soap, nappies and washing powder. But this company is a top employer of millennials Why? Studies show millennials are the first generation to be really invested in environmentally products, and they are attracted by the company’s purpose: to inspire a consumer revolution that nurtures the health of the next seven generations. Their products reflect this purpose and their staff are engaged and motivated by the sense that their work is truly making a difference to a cause they care about.
Instilling purpose in the call centre
If you have engaged, motivated call centre agents, you create a service experience that will have customers feeling good about your company. The call centre is the most immediate way you have to impact your customer’s feelings. If your agents believe in your company purpose, it will have them show up to work every day (not just physically arrive), and deal with every customer in a way that reflects the company’s DNA.
Share your company’s purpose when you’re interviewing candidates. Try to identify if you are speaking with a kindred spirit, someone who cares about the same things the business does (like millennials and the environment). Embed your purpose into the company’s DNA.
This means, if you’re a software company that develops platforms to allow employees to work anywhere, then ensure your employees have the same opportunities. Every time they speak to clients or potential clients they should be genuinely passionate about the benefits of flexible working because they benefit from it themselves.
A business without purpose is focused on the bottom line. That’s important, obviously, but it’s not going to get your staff to care about the work they do. Staff who don’t care aren’t going to do a particularly good job – at best they will just meet expectations.
But if you connect your staff with an authentic purpose for your business and embed this purpose into the day to day activities of your staff, you might find you unleash the kind of genuine passion that really drives performance.