Lower Your Agent Attrition With Proactive Management

Natalie Mackay at Five9 outlines how to lower your agent attrition with proactive contact centre management.

The role of a contact centre supervisor or manager is tough. Leaders must juggle several strategic initiatives while fostering a supportive environment for agents. Dealing with high agent attrition rates adds even more stress for managers.

When an agent leaves, the time spent recruiting and training them goes to waste. It can also cost your contact centre thousands considering the average cost to replace an agent in the U.S. is $8,780, according to TalentKeepers. 

Management plays a large role in creating the type of atmosphere and culture that keeps agents happy in their role. Here are some helpful, proactive ways you can drive higher agent engagement and, in turn, help to reduce attrition rates.

Create a Scoreboard to Celebrate Successes

Given many agents are working remotely, it’s easy for them to get distracted. Proactive managers will work to understand their team’s engagement and come up with creative ways to get them back on track. Managers utilizing Performance Dashboards can implement various tools to drive engagement.

Wallboards, personalized dashboards, and gamification provide agents instant recognition. As their achievements are broadcasted across the enterprise, agents are more motivated. These automated slideshows can display:

• Performance gauges & thermometers
• Employee birthdays & new hire spotlights
• YouTube videos
• Rankings, awards, & achievements
• Customized company messages

Individual dashboards can include any of the above features. This way, agents not only see highlights when they look up, but also on their own screens.

They’ll see rankings, rewards, company messages and more from their own screen as well as a large one in the office. Viewing performance from individual dashboards keeps agents connected to their team even in a remote environment. Creating a sense of team comradery increases the likelihood agents will stay at your company.

Communicate Often

The key to a good working relationship is communication. When agents feel in the loop within an organization, they will feel a part of something, which will increase their overall engagement. Managers and supervisors can create that transparency through communication.

Performance Dashboards offer communication tools through agent wallboards and dashboards. All messages can be communicated through this system and relayed to whomever the managers choose. Supervisors and managers can also send out surveys to gauge their teams’ employee satisfaction. Consistently reaching out to employees makes them feel noticed and heard. The more employees feel they’re included and their voices are heard, the more likely they’ll be happy in their role at your company.

Use Data to Make Decisions

Access to performance data is crucial for both agents and supervisors. For agents, it’s important to understand how they’re tracking against KPIs. With this data, they can see where they might be falling short and focus their efforts on improving in those specific areas. Real-time and historical data provided by a Performance Dashboard provides visibility for supervisors and managers into individual agent performance.

Supervisors have quick access to who is struggling and who is succeeding in the contact centre, and they are able to pinpoint specific areas for help or recognition. By doing this, they establish a genuine connection with an agent and create a safe place for them to come when they are struggling and have questions.

Managers can detect emerging issues early and take steps to resolve them before they grow out of control. Data-based decision making ensures that actions are focused where they have the most impact. This helps create a positive work environment that agents will want to continue to be a part of.

Accept Criticism

Hearing constructive feedback is never easy. A willingness by contact centre managers to accept criticism can be a powerful way to create trust with their teams. Managers who can accept and acknowledge points of weakness or changes recommended by their employees promote a great place to work.

Listening to criticisms and suggestions help managers address issues and incorporate helpful feedback before employees contemplate leaving the company. Accepting constructive feedback as a manager can save a lot of time, money, and energy for everyone involved. The trust that agents gain for their managers who took their criticism will translate into improved performance.

Establish Positive Incentives for Agents

Agents can be highly motivated by positive incentives when achieving their goals. Many contact centres rely on manual, labor-intensive, and difficult to sustain methods to provide incentives. A scalable, efficient gamification strategy doesn’t have to take a lot of time out of a manager’s day. It can be a worthwhile investment.

Once implemented, a gamification tool can automate games and provide a sustainable, dynamic way to reward agents. Managers have the ability to create games and send them out to different teams. Creating games and continually incentivizing agents motivates them to self-improve their performance. Managers will also be able to see which games work, and what prizes their team will strive to get. This information helps to continually motivate agents with rewards they actually want.

There’s no silver bullet to lowering agent attrition. However, when proactive managers implement these strategies, they’re likely to create a positive work environment with high agent engagement and satisfaction.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Five9 – View the Original Article

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About Five9

Five9 provides end-to-end solutions with omnichannel routing, analytics, WFO, and AI to increase agent productivity and deliver tangible business results.

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: Five9