Employee Engagement - Call Centre Solution

Employee Engagement - Call Centre Solution

Senior management focus on ensuring the company strategy will give them the competitive edge. But for that strategy to be successful, the workforce must be aligned and engaged. Recent research conducted by Towers Perrin (Global Workforce Study 2007) indicated that employees are aligned but not engaged. They understand what they should be doing, but don't do it with any enthusiasm or energy.In the UK, only 14% of the workforce is engaged - imagine the impact on your business if 86% of your workforce is disengaged. Research clearly shows the link between engagement and the bottom line. Over a 12 month period companies taking part in the research performed as follows: Those with engaged staff saw an average of 19.2% increase in operating income Those with disengaged staff saw a 32.7% fall in operating incomeSo, if there is such a strong link between employee engagement and a profitable organization, what can be done to increase engagement?The secret to greater profits and improved performance is to actively promote the call centre staff to engage with the customer. By understanding how our employees are engaged enables us to directly effect how the customer feels about our products and services. The more highly engaged the call centre agent is, the more likely that the customers stay with you.Better employee engagement would see a drop in staff attrition and absenteeism. As all HR Managers and call centre Managers are aware this is not just extremely costly in terms of training and recruitment but also that agents may not become profitable until they have been working for at least six months. What if the agents leave shortly before or after this point? The result is more money being spent on the next trainees, most of who will leave if not properly engaged. Added to this bad news is the effect on the customers who are on the receiving end of even more poor service."Ownership" of work is a major concern for call centre Managers and to improve this would be a great indicator towards how the employee engagement is developing. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see call centre teams taking it upon themselves to drive the improvements needed to hit their targets. Escalation rates would drop and Managers would be able to lead their teams instead of dragging them kicking and screaming.Today's market place is constantly changing and as a result the call centre environment is busier than ever. Managers don't have time to sit back and over analyse or re-engineer the teams and their operating procedures. So whatever process that is needed to measure staff and customer engagement must be simple and quick to use. Time is money and the process or system must deliver noticeable results within a few weeks. This discounts many complex systems as they are too time consuming and often difficult to understand.What about better training? Many managers report that training doesn't maintain any momentum in engagement or performance improvement. Once the "feel-good factor" has gone, the old culture creeps back in and targets start being missed.But what if teams have a simple feedback tool which is used on a weekly cycle and addresses both the employee and customer engagement together? If the feedback tool is used consistently and we allow Team Leaders and team members to make the necessary changes to improve engagement and performance without having to escalate any issues to senior management, this helps develop better "ownership". It also shows the team members that their opinions and hard work really do matter and they can help change the company for the better.The results of following this approach have enabled companies such as National Australia Group Europe to win the coveted Contact Centre World - Best Call Centre 2006 and the Call Centre Association "People and Innovation" award. Winning the hearts and minds of the employees has a huge impact after all.

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