Is Longest Wait Killing Contact Centre Agent Morale and Impacting Profit? Stephen Pace CEO SJS Solutions
Figures show that failure to keep employees happy and engaged is costing the UK call centre industry as much as £2.3 billion every year.
The No.1 challenge facing contact centres today is: Employee Turnover.
At average 26% turnover rate a 100 agent contact centre spends £160,000 each year on recruitment and retraining.
It’s a huge number and a growing problem for contact centres.
What’s causing it?
Well, could your metrics be part of the problem?
OK so you have a wallboard or desktop solution to keep your agents informed of how well they are handling calls. The metrics are needed, important. But do the numbers you display have a hidden negative impact which is killing agent morale and costing you thousands.
Let’s look at ‘Longest Wait’ and what might that metric actually do to an agent’s morale.
Monday morning is your busiest time and you have a few people who turn up late for work and the call volume to inbound call ratio is all out of whack. Inevitably, a few callers end up waiting on the line. It’s not ideal but it happens.
The rest of the day goes well, agents pull together and your SLA is good and yet that ‘Longest Wait’ metric stays there on the screen reminding agents that the start of the day was a disaster.
Yes, it’s important, but it’s history.
Reminding your team for the whole day simply doesn’t help morale.
It’s kinda like constantly reminding your kids that they performed badly at school instead of providing them with the support and tools they need to better next time.
So how many call handling metrics do you need to display to get the all-important ‘callers waiting’ message across to your team?
Just one or two, something like SLA or Calls Waiting and Number of Agents Available is all agents need to see to make decisions.
I doubt any of your agents are unaware that part of their job is to answer calls quickly and deal with them as efficiently as possible, your training and induction took care of that.
Since their introduction some 20 years ago wallboards have always caused a negative response from contact centre agents, at SJS we believe it’s time to change that. Join SJS as we make agent disengagement a thing of the past, learn how to create the perfect agent environment, what makes agents happy and loyal and how to avoid the negativity and stress caused by traditional wallboards.
We are looking for contact centre superstars who challenge traditional technology and always put the needs of their agents first, if that sounds like you get in touch so we can pass on the secrets to gaining the respect of your agents.
