Workforce Management Giving You a Headache? We've Got the Cure

Knowledge is power, as the old saying goes, and that’s certainly true when it comes to workforce management and employee engagement. You probably already use a few tools to manage the human assets in your business; still, you might have questions about how consolidating your workforce management tools can save you a headache — and money!

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5 Employee Engagement Tools You Should Be Using in Your Call Center

1. REAL-TIME DATA FEEDBACK

I already use workforce management software to track hours and performance quality. Why do I need anything else?

It’s not enough to control current and future staffing requirements or to comply with labor law requirements. You need your management software to tell you how successful your training modules are and how well your coaches prepare your employees. You need software that analyzes hard data and graphically demonstrates performance improvement. You need a software that uses analytical data to show improvement in both employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

Call center agents also need to see their performance rating in real-time. When employees are part of the interface, they see where they need to improve while they have time to fix performance issues. That’s better than being blind-sided during a quarterly or annual review.

2. SOCIAL COLLABORATION:

One of our biggest frustrations has been our inability to improve communication between team leaders and employees. Management software doesn’t address that:

Management software that includes a team communications component can help your employees and team leaders connect with each other. Employees feel engaged when plugged into the system. For example, when communication is a two-way street between team leaders and call center agents, agents feel empowered. An open communication channel fosters improved efficiency. Immediate feedback leads to enhanced performances which leads to elevated customer satisfaction.

3. INTERACTIVE TRAINING:

Improving our employee training programs has been a real challenge. It’s time consuming, our employees hate to attend training sessions, and it’s hard to see how workforce management software can help with that problem:

That’s an easy one for the right platform. Automating training modules (rather than traditional face-to-face classroom training or handouts) makes distributing training content to all members of the team fast. It also can help you create courses complete with quizzes and feedback in minutes. It’s important that the training feature make learning fun and a social activity. Strive for collaborative learning and your staff will engage and enjoy the experience, rather than dreading it.

4. COACHING SYSTEM:

We wanted to branch out into using our team leaders as coaches in addition to our basic training modules, but we don’t want to hire a coaching firm to show us how to do that. Does your workforce management platform turns us into coaches too?

Yes it does. Our coaching segment of the platform lets you target specific skills that you identify for professional development of your team. You can make sure they are up-to-date with the latest in your industry. The coaching segment allows you to provide coaching forms and specific goals directly to the agents on your team. You can even design survey forms to help your executive staff get feedback from your agents on the need for system improvements as viewed from their vantage point.

Coaching forms are often seen by employees in a negative light but that’s because they do not see where the company uses their answers to improve their working lives. If you use your coaching and survey forms to improve employee lives on the front line, they will happily give you feedback and feel empowered.

5. REWARDS/RECOGNITION:

We have experienced staff losses to other customer service employers that provide bigger monetary rewards. I don’t see how workforce management software would help us retain good people.

What a great point. People work for various reasons but most of us work for some kind of reward. And, surprisingly, not always monetary. Employees want to feel appreciated. They want some kind of acknowledgment that they are doing a good job and that the organization knows how important they are to the organization’s success and recognition for their hard work. If your business can’t reward in a big monetary way, you can still accomplish a similar “job well done” concept with a workforce management system that contains a reward and recognition feature. Our system provides digital badges and a social community wall to help you motivate your team leaders and your agents with peer-to-peer recognition, not just gift cards. You can create bonus points and badges that signify to everyone on the team: “We appreciate you and your efforts.”

Workforce optimization is a priority. It is more than tracking hours, staffing and performance; it includes managing operations, customer expectations and improving customer experience. The concept incorporates employee training, but also coaching team leaders to become great. WFO also includes reward and recognition components to retain those motivated and happy employees. You want them to stay with you to satisfy your customers.

To read more about workforce management, please visit Lisa Dissellkamp’s article entitled “Workforce Management: It Takes Time and Effort.”

To talk more about workforce optimization management, or to inquire about Playvox’s employee engagement platform for call centers, please contact us. We will happily show you how Playvox packages quality, performance, training, coaching, rewards and team communication together in one, consolidated place.