Why Agent Motivation Is Vital For Lifting Contact Center Performance

Transcript

Hi guys, this is Blair from BravaTrak, helping contact centres to lift agent performance by 11% in 7 months, guaranteed.

I've been thinking about why agent motivation is so critical for driving better contact centre performance.

Let's set the scene. Your agents know what's expected of them, and they're aware of their performance goals. That's probably the situation you have right now. Yet, your agents will be delivering a range of performance across the metrics that are important to you, from inadequate to outstanding.

Why would that be? Well, we can explain this with a simple equation. 'Performance = Ability x Motivation'.

Now, of course, ability is comprised of several factors; recruitment, training, and experience. Let's take recruitment. For example, for an agent working in digital channels, that would be useful to employ someone with a high touch-typing speed, who can spell and is grammatically correct.

Of course, you provide training on your systems and your processes. And with regard to experience, the longer agents are on the job, the more they know, and the quicker and more accurately they can get things done.

So, agent ability is clearly critical. It's a necessary, but insufficient factor to maximise performance.

And that's because agent motivation is the other critical factor in performance. 'Performance = Ability x Motivation'. If you have addressed agent ability as best you can, then the extent to which individual agents are motivated to make an effort to perform - and to use the critical work behaviors that ensure success - determines their results.

Without strong motivation, your agents won't perform to their full potential. My experience is, as agent motivation increases, everything gets better. Productivity and customer experience go up, unplanned leave and attrition go down.

And lifting agent motivation is simpler than you might think. It's not easy, but it is simple.

Anyway, that's my take. What do you think?