You’ve had a week to work on Appreciating your contact center agents.  Remember we all do routine and preventative maintenance on our communication systems, on our PCs, and on our servers, but we also need to have “well oiled machines” (agents) working for our business too.   The second part of this series concentrates on Motivation.

• Have a board that shows compliments from customers recognizing the achievements of the agents.  If a customer feels that they went above the call of duty, shouldn’t we as well?
• Ask the agents what motivates them, everyone is motivated differently.  Just because something motivates me, doesn’t mean that it motivates everyone.
• As a manager or supervisor, reward and motivate yourself so you can motivate and reward your agents.    Some of my favorite websites are http://callcentercafe.com or http://www.icmi.com

Stop what you’re doing, and take a minute to look around you.  When was the last time you took the opportunity to motivate, congratulate or compliment someone working in your Contact Center?  Don’t forget how appreciation can go a long way. Do your homework and remember, happy employees are productive employees.  What are you doing to motivate your agents or employees?

Do you listen to their needs?  We’ll address that next week in the 3rd part of the blog series: Listening.