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Using call centre incentives to tackle the post-Christmas blues.
It’s the time of the year that many of us look forward to all year round, it’s also a time many of us anticipate with sheer hatred. No matter how you feel about Christmas, it’s usually a time that’s hard to adjust to afterward – for whatever reason.
Some of us are still floating around with an emotional high from a nice break, seeing the family and receiving some lovely gifts – trying not to let go of the Christmas spirit.
Others are full of cheese, wine, chocolate and regret. After binging on Christmas treats, some of us are treating our entry into the new year as an opportunity to undo some of the damage by hitting the gym or making a few healthy resolutions.
There are also others, who might not have had a good Christmas for a number of reasons – although they might be glad the festive period is over, they are often left feeling exhausted and down.
The majority of winter also falls just after the new year, so no matter which of the above categories we may fall into, the post-Christmas blues never fails to take its toll on the mood and productivity of those in the contact centre.
So what’s the fix?
It’s the job of contact centre leaders to inspire all staff to maximise engagement and performance during this time.
The problem is that rewards are a lot like gifts, not everyone likes exactly the same things. This creates a challenge as it’s counterproductive to tailor a reward scheme that suits every individual, especially if you have a contact centre with hundreds of seats. But how do you find a way to provide call centre incentives that address this?
The trick is to cater to everyone’s needs but ensure everyone is striving toward the same objective.
This might sound near-impossible, but with a solution that offers gamification designed specifically for the contact centre, it becomes possible to automate fun and engaging game-mechanics to drive performance amongst your teams.
Contrary to popular belief, material rewards aren’t the most effective way to recognise performance. By discussing with your agents on what they can improve this year, it becomes possible to set clear long-term goals.
Gamification for the contact centre enables you to easily set individual goals, and gives agents insight into how they’re performing against those targets in real time – and how their colleagues are performing too.
There’s little else more rewarding than being rewarded with recognition from peers and management when you’ve done a great job.
If you’re still keen on the gifts and prizes, gamification means agents can cash in their hard-earned points for a range of rewards that they can choose.
If you’d like to learn more about incentives, reward and recognition as we enter the new year, download our handbook to ‘The Most Overlooked Ways to Reward Contact Centre Staff’.
January presents us with a lot of challenges, but with Spring in sight, it also gives us all an opportunity to strive for self-improvement, and the promise of a more engaging contact centre – make sure you maximise the effectiveness of your reward and recognition schemes to take advantage of a new start.
By Tom Palmer
Tom is EvaluAgent’s Head of Digital and takes the lead on developing and implementing our digital and content management strategies which results in creating a compelling, digital-first customer marketing experience.
