5 Great Ways to Increase Agent Motivation

Nicola Fitchett of Spearline explains how to increase agent motivation, sharing her five favourite methods.

With any job, it can be difficult to remain motivated and focused at all times. The role of your agents is of particular importance as they are on the ground dealing with customers, providing excellent customer service and representing your company.

Therefore, it is an essential part of your role as a manager to keep your agents motivated, trained and well looked after. They are the backbone of the company, after all.

1. Enhance Your Agents’ Day

Agents appreciate the simple pleasures that make their workday more enjoyable and manageable. These can include:

•  Freedom in the workplace to take breaks that suit each individual member of staff; e.g. Spearline offers a 1-hour lunch break that can be taken any time between 12.30pm and 2.30 pm.
• The freedom to get up from their desk whenever they need, to make coffee, talk to a colleague or use the facilities such as the kitchen and bathroom, and so on.

2. Provide Better Work–Life Balance for Your Agents

The happier your agents are at work, the more motivated and productive they will be. Providing flexible working conditions is a surefire way to help your agents achieve a better work–life balance. This could be accomplished by:

• Offering them the ability to work from home, where suitable.
• Giving them the option to work part-time or full-time. This may be especially appealing to agents with young children/families.
• Providing sought-after work benefits, such as offering paid maternity, paternity and adoptive leave.
• Basing your company in a small/local town allows agents more time at home as they can avoid the traffic and congestion involved in commuting to offices in the city centre.

3. Ensure Your Agents Have Excellent Call Quality

Agents can be demotivated if they are experiencing poor call quality when trying to provide the best customer care. It can be frustrating, as they are doing their best, yet an area out of their control is compromising their performance.

This can be solved by monitoring and testing numbers for call quality, thus ensuring your agents remain motivated and unfrustrated.

4. Celebrate Your Staff

Staff desire appreciation for their work so every workplace should take the time to appreciate their agents. This could be achieved through supervision meetings where they can receive critical feedback.

It could also be incorporated with a pioneer programme whereby one staff member every day is complimented for their work achievements or a job well done.

“Employee of the month” is also a tried and tested model that works well for companies.

It boosts healthy competition among agents as they strive to do better in order to attract the attention/praise of their manager, and work production increases in order to aim towards obtaining the employee of the month reward.

5. Promote the Health and Well-Being of Your Agents

Ensuring your agents are well looked after is important, and it is equally important that agents learn to look after themselves as it prevents burnout and high staff turnover.

Incentives such as a “Healthy Bunny Award” can be a motivating factor for agents.

This award celebrates staff who have taken two or fewer sick days in the previous calendar year. They receive extra annual leave hours, a certificate and a €100 voucher. Another great way to keep your agents fit, healthy and motivated is for companies to hold fitness classes during lunch breaks.

Conclusion

Keeping your agents motivated is an area in business that should not be overlooked. Motivated agents are less likely to call in sick, are more punctual and have better work performance.

They also tend to appreciate your company more, and your company maintains a happier workforce for longer, with fewer burnout rates and lower staff turnover.

For further information about Spearline, visit www.spearline.com