5 Tips to Increase Your Call Center Productivity

Running a call center is a multifaceted endeavor. There are personalities to manage, processes to optimize, and metrics to interpret. That’s how call center productivity is usually approached: with a heavy focus on internal influences. However, external factors are also an essential piece of the puzzle. Internal policies might feel more controllable — and to a point, they are (as we will cover). But a brand’s reputation shouldn’t be shrugged off as “it is what it is.” By tapping into robocall mitigation solutions, for instance, enterprises can gain ground in the battle to control their credibility when they come ringing. With that in mind, here are five tips to increase your call center productivity.

In this article, we cover:

• Why it’s important to train experts instead of script readers.
• Which KPIs to incentivize for high performance.
• How to make sure your calls get answered by protecting your brand reputation.

1. Effective Training
   No one wants to bear the torture of being stuck on the phone with support for hours, days, even weeks trying to solve a nagging problem. Not only for customer sanity but also efficiency’s sake, first call resolution is the goal. But a call center will never get there without first training its staff to be experts, not just script readers. All call campaigns should be preceded with a thorough training session that covers all aspects of the subject matter at hand and all possible outcomes. The result is higher customer confidence; a nice side-effect is better net promoter scores (NPS) as well. Identify your best performers and managers and put them in a position to lead and excel.
2. Incentivize Staff Performance
   Agents have a job to do and their paycheck is their reward. Totally valid. But if you hope to cultivate white-glove service that goes above and beyond, rewards that go above and beyond the base pay can hold a lot of motivation. This goes beyond goal setting; equip your employees with the resources they need to perform at their highest potential. Set up a reward system that not only reinforces short-term successes, but also a track record of sustained excellence. The bottom line is agent happiness and productivity. Through experimentation, figure out what motivates your particular staff, and hit the accelerator when you find their sweet spot.

3. Establish Clear KPIs
   You can’t properly motivate your call center staff if the goals aren’t clear. Average queue time, average handle time, occupancy rate, and average talk time are some of the more common key performance indicators call centers use. But don’t lose the forest for the trees; call outcomes should be your guiding light, including customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value, and first call resolution should all be taken into consideration as well. Continuously monitor your KPIs, set up your goals and incentives around them, and make everything accessible to your team.

4. Give Feedback Often
   Even high-performing agents are fallible. Be sure to avoid frustration and burnout by furnishing your team with all the information it needs to see results and make adjustments on the fly. If your agents’ goals and incentives feel opaque and unattainable, they will become demotivated, a far worse outcome than mediocrity. Set up systems that pull all the necessary data and make it easy to access to foster a healthy goal-hitting environment.

5. Brand Reputation Management
   Now about those external factors — imagine that you’ve trained your agents to be experts, placed the right incentives within reach, aligned everything with your KPIs, and have made it all easily accessible. You’re done, right? Well, you’re off to a great start, but your problems aren’t completely solved. When your customer’s phone rings, who’s to say he or she will even pick up?
   
   Just because your name shows up on the caller ID doesn’t mean customers feel confident it’s you. Even though you’ve done your due diligence to engender a pick-up, fraudulent robocallers can undo all of your hard work by running brand imposter campaigns. They impersonate your brand, push false pretenses, and frustrate your customers into a gag reflex anytime your brand appears on the caller ID. Good news: You are not helpless to prevent this.
   
   Robocall mitigation saves brand reputation. A band impersonation solution — such as YouMail Protective Services — can detect and deter attacks on a business’ reputation to prevent the undermining of your customer relationship management (CRM). We recommend call centers find a managed detection and response solution that works with communication service providers and US authorities to shut down campaigns and take away network access from bad actors.
   
   Choking off this form of fraud activity by instituting a service that provides detailed intelligence on campaign types, frequency, and sources, you can protect your brand reputation, stop imposters, and improve your CRM efforts.
   
   The result? Your calls will get answered every time and a major potential chokepoint in running a productive call center will be liberated.

To see how YouMail Protective Services helps detect brand impersonation over communication channels, schedule a demo today.