Boost Morale Of Your Call Center Employees With An Incentive Program

Frontline customer care call center executives can often be exhausted. According to a recent report – 13% to 16% of the call center workforce is disengaged, with nearly 70% still not classified as busy at work. This is a growing concern for several companies and industries. Additionally, call centers have a high turnover rate, which makes these withdrawal statistics even more concerning.

So, What Exactly is Employee Engagement?

It is not purely employee satisfaction. Instead, it is the emotional commitment that the employee has towards the business and its goals. Engaged call center employees don’t just focus on salary but work productively towards the company’s goals because they want to see it succeed.

Organizational leaders know that recognizing and rewarding top performance is critical, but many of them don’t have a lucrative incentive program in place. Many businesses face the challenges of budgeting or effectively measuring performance.

The mere idea of rewarding employees with customer service incentives is spotting agents who provide top-notch service. There is no “right” way to distribute rewards. You simply need to figure out the best approach that works best for your customer service team.

How Essential are Call Center Incentive Ideas?

Customer service incentives ideas are key to improving performance, especially in call centers. Let us look at some facts here:

90% of call centers have a formal award and recognition program.

70% of these organizations offer 3 to 6 different incentive-based programs. Individual employee incentive programs increase performance by 27%.

69% of employees felt that if their efforts were appreciated, they could deliver better.

Incentive programs are all about making employees feel valued and encouraged to work harder.

The Need for Effective Customer Service Incentive Ideas

They Make Employees Happier

Employees feel recognized and appreciated and will feel good about their actions. It has been researched that human happiness has a broad effect on productivity, and it can effectively stimulate people.

Creating Call Center Rewards And Recognition Ideas Is Quite Easy

Improvements are needed when sales decline. When an incentive program is established, the program objectives are designed accordingly that help in promoting agent productivity and eventually help meet organizational goals.

It is quite easy to determine key metrics on which agents work and establish an incentive program for some essential metrics that lead to higher productivity.

Customer Service Incentives Build Trust and Appreciation

Encouraging call center employees with credible incentive offers can build their trust in the brand and will promote them to work productively, cohesively, and successfully towards its goals. This leads to higher turnover, less stress, and better morale in the workplace.

Create Growth Opportunities

A dead end for a customer care representative can demoralize him and lead him to look for a better opportunity elsewhere. By scheduling regular training and curating an encouraging incentive plan for them, they can advance within the company by following a well-defined path if they decide to grow within the organization. It will motivate them to take on more responsibilities.

Reduce The Volatility and Attrition Rate

Onboarding new employees is time-consuming and expensive. Studies show that hiring estimates can cost up to $3,500 for recruiting and approximately $1,200 annually for continuing education. Taken together, this shows that a new hire could cost $4,129 and approximately 42 days of lost or impaired productivity.

And here is the kicker, according to a report from the United States. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, many employees leave their jobs because they feel disrespected and lack autonomy. Launching a powerful incentive scheme can avoid this situation and help retain the high performers.

Encourage Team Building

Fostering team-building customer service incentives encourages a work culture where agents can rely and trust other agents, allowing them to solve problems or achieve common goals.

Call Center Employee Incentives Provide 360° Recognition

Whether your call center handles customer service or sales, recognition from customers, managers, and peers is an important aspect of motivating and retaining your employees.

Receiving formal acknowledgment from people is key to making employees feel important and needed. This helps to boost employee satisfaction to take call center performance to a new level.

How to Design a Call Center Incentive Program

Set SMART goals for your call center incentive plan

These smart goals should be:

• Specific with a clear objective.
• Measurable goals that allow managers and employees to track their progress with clear deadlines and goals.
• Achievable within a realistic framework.
• Relevant, making sure they are important to employees and align with their other goals and responsibilities.
• Time-bound with a deadline to prioritize and regain control of what can be a very fast-paced and result in stressful daily workflow.

In a Gallup poll, 28% of employees said the most memorable recognition came from their manager; 24% of employees cited CEO recognition. Properly stimulated employees work harder and stay longer in their current job with the right kind of customer service incentive programs.

Some companies may think that “good enough” is an acceptable attitude on the part of a call center agent. But, it’s definitely not.

Types of customer service incentive ideas you can start

• Monthly award for the best customer care executive in terms of metrics like customer satisfaction scores, lowest AHT, highest Resolution Rate, etc
• Personalized Call Center Rewards And Recognition Ideas For Callers
• A Hall of Fame for consistent and top-performing employees

How to Create a (Motivating) Call Center Incentive Program

Companies must identify the factors that impact the bottom line and then implement the right call center incentive program. Here are some tips to get you started:

Focus on Business Performance

Before formulating a lucrative call center incentive program for employees, you must focus on key elements like time spent per call, first-call resolution, maximum productivity, etc.

Establish a Connection Between Metrics and Business Goals

If you are formulating customer service incentivesfor measuring and/or determining the number of calls per hour, you should be able to explain why it matters and how it affects your bottom line. So, create call center incentives that have a direct impact on meeting the organizational objectives.

Don’t Lure Them to Make Errors

A call center incentive program based on the lowest handling time can also lead to agents disconnecting calls or ending calls sooner without providing the right resolution. Companies should not instill greed to achieve customer service incentives among employees at the cost of meeting customer goals. There should be proper quality and compliance monitoring of such incentive schemes.

Don’t Justify Call Center Incentives By Being Unrealistic

Customer service incentive programs based on customer compliments are not justified and measurable. Instead, focus on the behavior you want to encourage. Sometimes an agent goes to great lengths to make a customer happy, but they do so by dodging the rules.

Make Sure Agent Bonuses aren’t Condescending

This can be harmful to the organization, and agents will not appreciate such programs. For example, creating an incentive program to deliver smiley stickers on hands, and giving candies away, is more like child’s play and is not fit to be part of a professional organization.

The Incentive Plan Must Complement the Productivity of the Customer Care Employee

You can offer call center incentive ideas like a ticket to a jazz concert or a dinner for two at a fancy restaurant. But do you think such customer service incentive programs will entice people who are not fond of jazz or have families and would appreciate having a meal alone without kids?

So, it’s better to create call center employee incentives that can resonate with all kinds of agents. Choose call center incentives that are valuable to the recipient, not incentives that would be helpful to you.

Regularly Analyze and Revise Your Call Center Incentive Program

Finally, it is worth mentioning the key figures of the call center incentive program. The key to any QA program is tracking changes after re-implementation. Analyzing the macro and micro-level metrics is a way to successfully knowing if your call center incentive program is working and can be modified at any time to ensure desired results for the call center.

Conclusion

A call center incentive program is an influential motivator for your employees. It’s a solution for low morale and declining performance and can lead to enhanced agent engagement and improved overall service quality. Consider combining your call center rewards and recognition ideas with other initiatives, including micro-customer-focused coaching, customer service training, and quality assurance reviews, to help your agents grow with the business and elevate your brand in the marketplace.

Identifying employee behaviors that support your goals while discouraging unwanted behaviors is important. Create a trusting and supportive environment that inspires employees to do their best.