Call centers thrive on a mix of individual talent and team effort. While recognizing personal achievements is important for employee engagement, fostering strong collaboration can lead to even better results and improved customer service.
Often, contact centers boost productivity by highlighting agents who excel in metrics, such as those who handle the most calls or the number of transactions completed, with top performers earning titles like “Agent of the Month.”
Even though rewarding individual performance can drive productivity, it can also have drawbacks. A highly competitive atmosphere can reduce collaboration, as employees may feel they need to outperform their colleagues to get recognized. Over time, this can hinder collaboration and make it difficult for employees to work together.
Creating a strong call center workforce requires more than just hiring skilled and top candidates. It also demands a strategic approach to team collaboration and support systems that foster a productive and supportive environment. Let’s explore how you can build a strong call center team through effective collaboration and support.
These strategies will help your agents work better together, leading to happier customers and a more successful call center.
Better Customer Service: The Power of Collaboration
A Stanford study found that employees who worked together were 50 percent more productive than those who worked alone.¹ For contact centers, this suggests that encouraging teamwork and collaboration can lead to better performance and results.
Here’s how you can build a strong call center team through effective collaboration and support.
Keep the conversation real and transparent.
In the fast-paced environment of a call center, having clear and open communication between team members is important. You can achieve this by:
- Holding regular team meetings where agents can discuss challenging calls or share successful techniques helps everyone learn and improve.
- Organizing team-building activities, like fun workshops or group outings, to strengthen the bond between agents.
- A transparent communication platform, such as a shared chat tool, allows agents to ask questions and stay connected.
When agents feel heard and valued, they’re more motivated to work together, which leads to exceptional customer service and a happier work environment.
Put collaborative tools to work.
Technology can make teamwork much easier and more effective. Collaboration tools like instant messaging platforms help agents communicate quickly, share updates, and ask for help when needed, even if they’re on different shifts or working remotely.
Shared documents also give everyone access to important information so agents can update or refer to resources in real-time. This ensures everyone is on the same page. Moreover, call management software helps track customer interactions, making it easier for agents to collaborate on solving issues and providing consistent support.
Empower team members with cross-training.
Cross-training team members means giving them a basic understanding of different roles within the call center, such as having a customer service agent understand technical support tasks. For example, if a customer service agent is trained in technical issues, they can step in and handle tech-related calls when the volume is high or when the tech support team is short-staffed.
It also means that if an agent is out sick or on vacation, another team member can quickly fill in, keeping the service consistent. When agents know what their colleagues do, they can better assist and work together more smoothly.
Read More: Refresher Tips for Your Call Center to Perform at Its Best
Celebrate wins and achievements.
Recognizing and rewarding team members for their hard work can boost morale and inspire others to excel. You could introduce a “Team Success Spotlight” program during monthly meetings. This could showcase teams that have worked together to solve complex issues or achieve important goals. The featured team could receive a group reward, like a team lunch or extra break time.
You can also create a “Collaboration Wall of Fame” where examples of great teamwork are displayed. This could include stories of how team members supported each other during busy periods or found creative solutions together. Celebrate these successes with team rewards such as a group outing or a pizza party to make everyone in the contact center feel appreciated and motivated.
This kind of recognition helps set a positive example and creates an environment where collaboration and high performance are consistently encouraged and celebrated.
Advocate for a balanced work-life routine.
A healthy work-life balance is important for maintaining a motivated and engaged workforce, especially in customer service teams, where the environment can be particularly stressful due to pressure to resolve issues.
You can schedule regular, short breaks throughout the day where customer support agents can relax and refresh. You could also offer a wellness program with virtual yoga classes or stress management workshops.
Another example is a contact center that allows agents to work from home part-time, giving them more flexibility to manage their personal lives and reduce commute stress. You can also implement a program where agents can use mental health days as needed, beyond their regular vacation days, to recharge when feeling overwhelmed.
Providing access to online counseling services or workshops on managing work stress can also be part of this support.
If you want to build a strong customer service workforce, focusing on initiatives that support a good work-life balance will make your team more productive, engaged, and capable of delivering high-quality customer service, thereby strengthening the overall effectiveness of your customer support team.
Read More: Empowering Workforce Well-being: 5 Strategies to Align Company Culture with Employee Mental Health
Work together on brainstorming.
Even if your contact center team is located worldwide, they don’t have to work in isolation. A hosted phone system allows agents anywhere to brainstorm and collaborate as a team. This helps your call center run more smoothly and leverages ideas from staff globally.
Conference calling is one way to bring your team together to share ideas and improve customer service, all without additional costs. It also helps remote workers feel connected and valued, boosting their performance and reducing feelings of isolation.
With conference calling, you can hire staff from different locations and benefit from their local knowledge. Also, when your phone system integrates with your CRM system, agents can add detailed notes about customer interactions and discuss issues with each other.
This teamwork ensures that customers get personalized service every time they call and allows your marketing team to create more relevant and targeted communications.
Equip your agents with necessary access and information.
Even though calls have become more complicated, agents still handle many simple, everyday queries, such as billing questions, basic tech help, and upgrade requests. Agents can solve problems on their own for these issues, but they need the right tools and information to do so.
Agents must easily access billing details if customers need help with their bills. So it’s important that agents have updated information from across your organization, not just basic contact center tools. This means having secure connections to your CRM and other systems, like open APIs.
With these tools, agents can quickly find the information they need without transferring calls or asking for help from others. This makes them feel more capable and engaged, and it improves their productivity. Additionally, customers will have a better experience because they’ll be dealing with one knowledgeable agent instead of being passed around.
Read More: 9 Steps to Transform Workplace Dynamics for Managers and Contact Center Agents
Let’s Build a Strong Call Center Workforce That Can Handle Any Challenge with Salem Solutions
Call center agents are great warriors known for handling any kind of challenge. With Salem Solutions, we can help you create a team of customer service champions who will address problems with resilience, exceed expectations, and encourage collaboration within your organization.
Drop us a call today so we can help you build a strong support system that enhances your team’s effectiveness and customer experience.
Reference
1. Miller, Derek. “The Importance of Collaboration in the Workplace.” Simpplr, 25 Sept. 2023, www.simpplr.com/blog/2019/importance-of-collaboration-in-the-workplace/.
