Motivating and rewarding agents is a big part of a Call Center Manager’s workload. However, this can be tricky when you’re suddenly remote. High employee turnover, unhappy agents, and poor customer experience are major issues, and according to a recent study, 25% of virtual teams are underperforming.
How do you keep agents happy and call quality high in a world that’s completely digital? One approach is Gamification. In this blog, we’ll look at what it is, how it can be applied to a remote call center, plus some fun reward ideas to keep your team connected, motivated, and happy.
What is Gamification?
Gamification is the use of game-design elements and principles in non-game contexts. Games are fun (duh!) and in a call center, Gamification can be used to motivate agents, make work a little more enjoyable, and improve call quality and customer experience. Simply put, it’s a way of combining game mechanics and data to improve performance. Something else to have up your sleeve to make your life a little easier as a manager.
Agents like it too! In fact, a TalentLMS survey found that 89% of employees believe they’d be more productive if their tasks were gamified and 88% think they’d be happier at work. Sounds good, right?
What Gamification can do for a remote Call Center
Boost retention
In the US, the average call center agent only sticks it out for a few years. Turnover is high and hiring and training new staff is expensive. Gamification is a creative way to boost staff retention and hold on to your top performers.
Improve call quality
When you’ve got a lot on your plate, it’s easy to miss an agent who gives exceptional service on a call. Gamification is a way to recognize agents and reward great customer service, which might otherwise go unnoticed. That means happier employees and more satisfied customers. Win-win!
Increase engagement
It’s not rocket science, just common sense. If agents are motivated and engaged, they care more, give better service, and stay in their jobs longer (the research backs this up). This leads to happier customers, happier teams, and growing revenues.
Putting it into practice
At Leaptree, we’ve added Gamification to our dynamic QA scorecards with leaderboards, badges, and other game elements to keep employees engaged, happy, and motivated. Each agent gets a customizable dashboard, which ranks their progress, includes an overview of awards and achievements, and a leaderboard to tie it all back to the rest of the team. This gives agents an overview of their performance data without complicated spreadsheets–in an immediate and easy to consume way.
Fun reward ideas
Everyone likes to be recognized for a job well done and it’s important to offer rewards for reaching certain milestones. Here are a few creative ideas to reward remote workers.
- Bonus: An obvious one. Something extra in an agent’s paycheck at the end of the month.
- Treat delivery: Depending on their location, order a remote snack box, a party in a bucket, or these amazing cookies.
- House-cleaning at their home: A once-off or ongoing house cleaning service gets rid of a chore and rewards employees with something invaluable: more time.
- Accessories: High-quality headphones, speakers, or a smartwatch are always popular.
- Spotify Premium subscription: Because ad-free music is a wonderful thing!
- Plant delivery: Easy-care plants that don’t need much light are best for gifts (i.e.cacti or succulents).
Tight budget? No problem!
There are lots of ways to reward an agent with a limited budget. An extra hour for lunch or a half-day on Friday is always nice. Maybe a long snooze on Monday morning, that sounds good to pretty much everyone, right?
In Summary
Using performance data to boost morale and customer service is a game-changer for remote call centers. Without the visual cues and nonverbal communication of a typical office, Gamification helps keep agents engaged and motivated. They’re happier and have more pride in their work, so customer interactions go from inconsistent to unforgettable.
Want to know more? Schedule a demo to find out how Leaptree’s gamified QA scorecards could work for you.