How to Improve Engagement Rates for Customer Service Employees

In customer service teams, attrition rates are often two or three times higher than other industries. Overall attrition averages in call centers are generally believed to be in the region of 30 and 45 percent, yet average turnover rates for US companies in all industries stood at just 22 percent in 2018.

These attrition rates erode customer satisfaction and increase operating costs, and, in all likelihood, stem from unengaged customer service agents. 

This isn’t good for your business, especially when taking into consideration the fact that engaged customer service representatives result in better customer experiences. According to a study from Gallup, businesses who perform best in employee engagement realize substantially better customer engagement, higher productivity, better retention, fewer accidents and 21 percent higher profitability. 

It’s for this reason why Advantage Communications gets great results and builds fantastic customer experiences for our clients. We are pleased to say that we maintain an employee attrition rate well below the industry average. 

In fact, roughly 90 percent of our team are in permanent full-time positions, and 30 percent have been working with us for between two and five years. That’s almost twice the industry average. 

Based on our experience, here’s some tried and true tips that will help your organization strategically improve customer service employee engagement.

Before we get into that, however, let’s first take a look at why engaged customer service employees are so important for your company’s customer experience. 

Why is it important to improve customer service employee engagement?

Traditionally, customer service teams are unengaged. The result is a team of workers who are frustrated, unproductive, unsupported by their managers, and more likely to actively seek other work opportunities and leave. 

By identifying the signs of, and taken action to transform unengaged employees, your organization can transform its entire customer service strategy. By improving engagement metrics among your customer service team, you will be creating passionate agents who build better relationships with customers, provide superior service and continue to progress.

According to a study from McKinsey, engaged and satisfied call center employees are:

• 8.5 times more likely to stay than leave within a year.
• 4 times more likely to stay than dissatisfied colleagues.
• 16 times more likely to refer friends to their company.
• 3.3 times more likely to feel extremely empowered to resolve customer issues.

There is a strong connection between the employee experience and the customer experience. When your company focuses on aligning both employee and customer experiences, your brand will be able to deliver superior customer service to its customers. 

Want to learn more about merging the employee experience with CX? Check our blog ‘How to Seamlessly Merge Employee Experience and Customer Experience’. 

3 ways to drive customer service employee engagement

Thankfully, there are a range of key engagement drivers that will increase the retention, loyalty and work quality of your organization’s customer service team, empowering you to build seamless customer experiences that delight your clients. We’ve listed the top four here: 

#1 - Build a superior customer culture

Company culture is created from the combination of every aspect of your company. That includes your brand values, company mission, ethics, employee expectations, how your employees interact with each other and the perks that you offer staff members for good work.

Building a great company culture is essential if you want highly-engaged employees. That’s because superior company culture makes employees feel valued. The result? They are more engaged, happier in their job and less likely to leave your organization for another company.

#2 - Maintain clear and actionable KPIs

To build a truly engaged customer service team, your business simply must celebrate high performance, employee improvement and other milestones. Your team members want to feel valued by your organization - but you can’t do this without setting clear and actionable key performance indicators (KPIs) for your team to achieve. 

Take some of the metrics from our blog ‘7 Metrics to Track When Outsourcing Your Customer service to a Call Center’, such as average handle time and first-call resolution, and hold your customer service agents to a standard that’s achievable. 

#3 - Use technology that gives employees real-time feedback 

On the note of technology, there’s no better way to improve the performance levels and engagement of your employees by giving them real-time feedback that enhances performance and gives them the knowledge they need to consistently improve.

Operational intelligence, for example, offers your customer service team real-time and visual feedback that improves their in-the-moment decision making. When agents have the tools and technologies they need to keep improving and delivering world-class customer experiences, they will see the value in their job.

Want more tips to improve engagement levels in your customer service team, or simply want to learn about Advantage Communications innovative outsourced contact center services? Contact our team of customer experience experts today. We would love to help.