Gamifying your contact center may be one of the best decisions you’ll make in 2020. It may be a bit challenging to implement contact center gamification software, and there are a few steps you will find difficult, one of them being incentive programs.
Creating an incentive program for your agents has to be done meticulously, in order to make it work. Lots of you probably think about your budget and how you can’t afford it, but there are many ways that don’t require much money. Quite the opposite – think of it as an investment.
It’s proven that incentives improve employee and customer retention, boost employee motivation, engagement, and therefore their performance.
In this post we bring you some ideas you can use to create an incentive program, even for low-budget contact centers.
Create an incentive program worth getting excited about
The first step when incentivizing your contact center, is to get to know your agents. You must know what they find valuable and get excited about. They will laugh at a T-shirt or a mug. Give them something they’ll find worth their efforts.
Conduct a survey to find what your agents like and would want, before creating the program. Once you get the answers, choose several of them, as prizes will constantly have to be changed so your agents don’t get bored.
An extra day off, shorter hours for a day, longer vacation, a theater/movie/concert/ticket, a discount card at their favorite store, or dinner in a restaurant – are just some of the ideas.
Once you know what rewards your agents would like, there are a few other things to consider.
Choosing criteria
You must have well-defined goals. What behavior do you want to encourage and improve? What do you want to achieve with that behavior? When you have everything well-defined, you can think about the ways that will help you motivate your agents, and drive the desired behavior.
Make sure to explain to your agents why that behavior is important, and of its impact on the bottom line.
Set achievable goals
There is nothing more demotivating and discouraging when it seems impossible to reach the goal, or agents struggle to achieve it.
If the same agents keep on winning, while others fall behind, incentives won’t give the desired results. Make sure to create goals for everyone. If one agent doesn’t thrive in one contest, maybe he/she will excel at another one.
Analyze your incentive program regularly
This step will help you track changes after every incentive implementation, and check if it works. Managers will also have a better insight into each agent’s performance, and help those who need to improve their skills so they can eventually, after learning and training, improve their performance.
Learn more about call center gamification here
