Not that long ago, the contact centre industry faced a real challenge in retaining the best staff and ensuring they were motivated enough to stay within an organisation.
But while technological advances have changed many industries over the last few years, the explosion of an ever connected online and mobile world has transformed our sector beyond recognition.
Now, contact centres are able to provide a truly personalised customer service offering to customers on behalf of brands across multiple channels. This joined up and unified approach has hugely positive effects on the motivation and retention of our ambitious and highly-skilled staff. However, despite this rise in channels, there is no room for complacency.
The number of communication channels that we as contact centres now deal with mean that there is a huge variety in the job that was perhaps lacking a few years ago. Whereas in the past we would have just been dealing with telephone calls or letters, we now have enquiries coming in through intelligent systems prioritising and tracking voice, email, online web chat, SMS and social platforms.
Given the increase in email as well as web chat and SMS enquiries, the standard of the written word has to be higher than ever before. The bar has been raised on the personal development we need to instil, coach and train on. The requirement for people to be cross-skilled offers a stretch and progression and this also helps keep motivation high.
Additionally, there is a tremendous sense of purpose that is now felt by many contact centre staff when it comes to tracking and resolving an end-to-end customer enquiry. Employees have never been so empowered and this helps them to feel a real sense of purpose in their work, and helps with motivation on a daily basis. With post-call or customer satisfaction scores driving instant feedback, the satisfaction of knowing a job has been done well has never been felt so readily as it is now for contact centre staff.
One drawback to all of the technology is that it’s easy for supervisors and managers in the contact centre environment to spend too much time remotely managing their people and this should be avoided. Of course, no matter the dynamic environment and job variation on offer in the modern contact centre, there will still coasters or people with a poor attitude to deal with.
It is therefore imperative that a true policy exists for contact centre supervisors to be employee-facing where the drive to heighten employee feelings results in a heightened customer interaction.
So, when it comes to our industry, we’ve certainly come on leaps and bounds in the last few years as technology has opened up new frontiers that we didn’t think would be possible before. This has led to new skills and personal development that have helped us to keep our best staff satisfied and motivated. But to underpin all of this positive change, there is a real need for strong management, the best that the business can afford, to help motivate all staff and ensure that we don’t just rely on the job itself to keep our best assets.
Nick Mylum is business operations director at Eclipse
