Think you make work a great place for agents to be? Many managers are actually doing just the opposite, new research found.
Some contact center leaders unwittingly undermine the meaningfulness of work for staff, Harvard Business Review researchers found. When they surveyed hundreds of managers and studied logs of their daily interactions, they found many leaders are contradictory creatures.
So if you’re trying to inspire and motivate agents, watch out you aren’t doing any of this:
- Dismiss the importance of work and ideas. In a hurry and under stress, managers sometimes fail to get employee feedback – or ignore what they hear. Instead: Schedule time monthly to chat individually with direct reports to uncover concerns. Also, ask for and use their suggestions on changes that will affect them.
- Move employees before the job is done. Managers who need to juggle limited resources sometimes move employees off projects or regular tasks before the job is done. This destroys reps’ sense of ownership. Instead: Let agents finish what they started, even if they’ll fall short of the goal. They can learn from mistakes.
- Shift goals frequently. Agents will never feel accomplished if the goals they set or are told to reach change before they can succeed. Instead: Only change the focus when the outcome must be different than what was originally planned.
- Fail to update reps on changes to customer priorities. Service pros are there to make sure customers are happy. They can’t deliver if they don’t know when priorities have changed. Instead: Get employees involved in setting priorities.
