{"id":396853,"date":"2021-09-08T01:33:31","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T08:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.genesys.com\/blog\/post\/7-ways-to-improve-employee-engagement-for-home-workers"},"modified":"2021-09-08T03:07:02","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T10:07:02","slug":"7-ways-to-improve-employee-engagement-for-home-workers","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.genesys.com\/en-gb\/blog\/post\/7-ways-to-improve-employee-engagement-for-home-workers","title":{"rendered":"7 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement for Home Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_section full_width=”stretch_row”][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Guest Blog by Maarten Copini, <\/em><\/strong>Senior Principal Practice Solutions Specialist CX and Intelligent Business for Europe at NTT Germany Holdings GmbH.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

One effect COVID-19 had on the contact centre is the shift to working from home. And that change is likely here to stay.<\/p>\n

Surveys with contact centre leaders tell us that initial challenges of the work-from-home adjustment \u2014 mainly IT and network-related problems \u2014 have been solved. Organisations that deployed Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) solutions managed to quickly get their contact centre agents up and running at home. But now that many organisations have large portions of their call centre employees working from home, contact centre leaders face new challenges \u2014 keeping those employees engaged and making certain they deliver the best customer experience.<\/p>\n

Work-From-Home Challenges<\/strong><\/h4>\n

According to contact centre managers we\u2019ve interviewed, agent productivity wasn\u2019t affected in the first months of working from home. But now we\u2019re seeing the long-term effects of this new reality \u2014 and the challenges it brings.<\/p>\n

Engagement: <\/strong>Aristotle the Greek philosopher said, \u201cMan is by nature a social animal.\u201d This is even more true for contact centre agents. In interviews conducted with contact centre employees, the main things they miss while working from home are interactions with coworkers and being able to stay connected with their teams and companies.<\/p>\n

Management: <\/strong>Contact centre managers and team leaders face the other side of this challenge: remaining connected with remote agents<\/a> and keeping them engaged while successfully managing productivity as well as customer and employee satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Tools<\/strong>: To deliver the best customer service, employees need the right tools and information. Motivated, well-equipped, trained, and informed employees positively affect productivity and customer satisfaction. But it\u2019s tricky to organise all of these things when the majority of your agents are working from home.<\/p>\n

Boost Employee Engagement and Performance <\/strong><\/h4>\n

Learn the seven ways to improve contact centre employee engagement and performance<\/a> for at-home workers.<\/p>\n

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  1. \n
    Gamification<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Gamification<\/a> is gaining renewed interest for keeping agents motivated and in touch with their own performance \u2014 as well as their teams. Adding some friendly competition and the chance to earn rewards keeps employees motivated and engaged. And this is especially the case for millennials, who grew up with video games and will soon make up the vast majority of your workforce. A best practice is to integrate gamification with your contact center tools so your goals link in real-time to your contact centre KPI performance.<\/p>\n

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    1. \n
      Agent assistance<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Raising their hands at home won\u2019t get call centre agents answers to complex customer questions. Contact centers are implementing new ways to organise agent support with chat, messaging or chatbots<\/a> as well as artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI)-infused knowledge management solutions.<\/p>\n

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      1. \n
        Knowledge management<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Asking the person sitting next to you at the kitchen table a question about a customer query likely won\u2019t get you the answer you need. A good knowledge management tool offers home workers quick access to the right answers to customers\u2019 questions. Industry leaders integrate speech analytics and AI into tools to recognise the customer\u2019s question or intent. Handing these instances over to the AI-infused knowledge base automatically finds the right answer to the customer\u2019s question \u2014 and frees up the agent to answer other questions.<\/p>\n

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        1. \n
          Remote coaching and eLearning<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          With classroom training and face-to-face coaching inaccessible, organisations need digital alternatives. By leveraging data from automated quality management, speech analytics,<\/u> and gamification, organisations can give agents just-in-time eLearning and coaching with bull\u2019s eye precision based on performance statistics.<\/p>\n

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          1. \n
            Performance dashboards<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Call centre managers, supervisors, and agents already used real-time and intraday KPI dashboards to make the right decisions. Now, contact centres are giving agents working from home access to performance dashboards<\/a> with omnichannel queue-based information and team statistics as well as their individual performance. You can even augment these dashboards with gamification elements to further engage and motivate employees in real-time.<\/p>\n

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            1. \n
              Workforce management<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              Work-life balance is important, especially with employees working from home. Keeping employees productive, motivated, and healthy requires intelligent planning\u00a0and scheduling. Best practices involve shift trading and bidding as well as agent preference scheduling.<\/p>\n

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              1. \n
                Quality management<\/h6>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                Recording call and screen interactions for coaching and compliance is even more important in the work-from-home world. By using a combination of AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) for speech and text analytics, organisations can automate large portions of the work involved in compliance control and scoring interactions. This gives coaches and agents more time to focus on improving the customer experience.<\/p>\n

                To implement these best practices, you need a leading workforce engagement management solution<\/a> that combines data from your contact center routing platform as well as quality management and workforce management tools.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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