Customer care: Retain the best employees

The main topic of today in customer care is self-service and virtual assistants. Nevertheless, in practice, customer service and support is still mainly people-led.

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According to an article on the bmmagazine.co.uk website, agent satisfaction and customer satisfaction are strongly linked.

Humanise the workplace. Of course, you need to digitise, but apply the technology in such a way that it complements the human touch. For complex queries, customers still prefer simply to talk to another human. Even today, machines can’t handle complicated matters and they have problems with a lack of empathy.

Therefore, in order to retain your top employees, you need to humanise the workplace. This involves the following:

  • Team building: Build a spirit of camaraderie, promote teamwork. Use friendly competition to boost morale and performance.
  • Empower: Rely on your employees to solve customers' problems. Let them also influence scheduling decisions, invite them to take part in making decisions regarding improvements in contact centre performance.
  • Self-driven career: Support your employees in managing their own career development. 
  • Culture: Promote a culture that values employee satisfaction. Enable a good work-life balance.
  • Personalise: When planning work schedules and staff training, try to respect the personal needs of employees whenever possible.
  • Reduce stress: Since there is often a lot of stress in a contact centre, strive to create a work environment without unnecessary stress.
  • Automation: Routine tasks should be diverted to self-service. That way, you will reduce stress as your staff will be kept away from mundane activities.

    -jk-
Article source Business Matters - website of a leading British magazine for small and medium sized companies
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