[Part 2] Data, Productivity, and Attrition in Call Centers

In my last post, I mentioned there are several key topics of conversation call center leaders should think through as they make the decision to invest in gamification for your contact center.

First things first, can we track / send the data we care about to a gamification platform? 

We find the key metrics for most contact centers live in 2-3 systems, typically focused around their telephony solution and call outcomes. 

So the key to answering this question is choosing the right gamification platform. 

Ambition’s open data framework turns this complexity into a major win for call center leaders and improved reporting and visibility. 

We work with data from dozens telephony vendors as well as homegrown systems today, including Five9, Cisco, Avaya, TalkDesk, and Broadsoft.

Ambition acts as the system of record in these environments, combining agent telephony data with metrics from upsells, NPS, or other key disposition data to provide management and reps an unprecedented view of team and individual performance in real time. 

Second, if we could improve productivity or effectiveness by 10-40% per agent, what would it mean for our business or our client’s businesses? 

To keep it simple, the answer is usually a massive win. Whether that be in retaining client business or driving additional revenue or improving client satisfaction. 

As Forbes recently highlighted, “When your service agents are empowered with the knowledge and data to meet their goals and exceed call center KPIs in real time, they are motivated to improve their performance and top the leaderboard.”

Focusing rep attention (and recognition) on the most important KPIs organically drives behavior change. When your reps are seeing TV screens highlighting successful teammates, the reps understand exactly what it takes to excel.

Better process accountability and metric success streamlines reporting and establishes clear procedures for reps. 

Using exciting TV screens, rep dashboards, live contests, and automated alerts with key achievements creates engagement that provides massive leverage to leadership. 

By creating visibility to the KPI data, contact center leadership can foster a culture of success. 

And finally, what does attrition cost us and do we believe better coaching, recognition, and manager reporting will improve our retention? 

Unfortunately, contact centers suffer from in some cases notorious attrition. The reality is the role is hard and without great culture and positive coaching, it can be difficult to keep reps. 

The cost of low rep retention is borne out in dramatically lower productivity (for reps onboarding), significant training costs, and all of the time and money associated with recruiting, interviewing, and starting new agents. 

In short, improving retention means major lift in productivity and decreased costs. 

McKinsey has published some fascinating research on contact center engagement and the importance of coaching and recognition on employees.

“Engaged and satisfied call-center employees are 8.5x more likely to stay than leave within a year… and 3.3x more likely to feel extremely empowered to resolve customer issues” - McKinsey

In addition to being more effective at solving customer challenges, engaged agents will have a significantly longer tenure. 

We know more engaged and better recognized employees stay and are more effective - but what does gamification mean for your contact center managers?

Forbes also tells us managers have a massive advantage by utilizing gamification in contact centers: “By introducing gamification techniques into the call center, managers gain a living document on agent performance. This can be used to help reward high performers as well as recognize low performers who may need more training.This allows managers to be able to leverage data in a real way and do more accurate performance reviews.”

To summarize: 

Gamification can deliver major ROI for the contact center. 

Whether the focus is on improving customer satisfaction, driving revenue, or increasing retention, Ambition has the tool-kit and the flexibility to deliver. 

The only question is, what are you waiting for?