Call center work is hard work. Representatives on the phone can take a ton of abuse from customers and sometime from supervisors themselves!
Our job is to make the customers we talk to have a world class experience. We cannot do this if we have reps that are lethargic, have bad attitudes and do not want to be at work. One way we can help them is by making the call center THE fun place to work.
I believe that the call center can be a place where you can do things that you cannot do in any other department. You can yell out loud, high five, cheer each other on! You can't do that in accounting! Show me a quiet call center and I will show you one with high turnover, low quality and more importantly it will reflect that the reps are not enjoying themselves.
If we can get our reps to have fun at their job it takes their mind off of all the negative things that hamper great call center work. All call centers have reps that seem to always come in with their days troubles on their sleeve. All call centers have reps that leave "sick" every day because they are just plain bored. If we can take their attention off these things and channel it into something positive, then we have taken a huge step in improving our center.
It does not matter if you are running a center with an insurance, banking, pure customer care or sales vertical. You can, and in my opinion, must make the environment enjoyable.
DECOR:
Take a look at your center. Most of you are probably at work right now looking at this so take a second to look at your center... I'll wait... lol
Does it have energy, or is it just plain and boring? If you were a rep would you like coming to work in this room every day?
I'm not saying you need to overhaul your center if it's not where it should be. There are a couple basic things you can do. Also I would love to get some of your ideas on this as well.
GAMES:
I have a TON of games that can be played in a call center. I just wanted to add a couple that are easy to do and you need basically no money to pull off. This hopefully will to give you some ideas. These are games that can be played daily on each team. You can do team vs. team or rep vs. rep.
BINGO- Set up a board that includes some KPIs that can be measured during the day. Each time your rep hits on of the goals they mark it off the sheet. Once they get enough BINGO gets yelled out and you have a winner.
POKER- Each time a rep hits a KPI they get a card. Best poker hand wins at the end of shift.
CHAIR GAME- I don't know about you but in my center the supervisors have different chairs that the reps love. We play pass the chair. Each time a rep gets a sale or hits a KPI, they get the chair until it get "stolen" by the next person.
PASS THE... - Like the chair we will pass an object for each Sale or KPI hit. If its summer I will go get some beach ball and we will pass or hit around a beach ball, winter maybe a stuffed Santa. You can award the owner of the ball each hour or just once at the end of shift.
OFF THE CLOCK- Reps love to be off the phones, its human nature. Set up some games like having a putting green on the floor, little nerf basketball hoop or some darts up in your center. Again however you have it set up, great sale, great monitoring score, KPI hit, the rep gets to get out of the booth and go play the game for a small prize. The real prize though is the 5 minutes off the phone!
HANGMAN- Pretty self-explanatory. Supervisor set up a board and the word/phrase and the reps get rewarded with chances at guessing a letter and the word or phrase.
Those are all just a very small sample of games a supervisor should be playing at all times on his/her team. Remember is in addition to a center wide motivation that maybe runs for a week or a month.
PRIZES:
What should the prizes be? Well I can tell you they do not have to be big to have the reps fighting over them. Candy, lottery tickets, a new pencil or pen, cup, homemade cookies, a free soda are all things that work. It's funny it really depends on how your supervisor sells it. I had a supervisor give away a 5 cent pencil eraser. Sounds boring right? But the way she sold it to her reps made it should like the greatest thing every. They died to try to win it.
It's very important that your middle management buys into all off this. I will have more later on expectations and training for your supervision.
I hope you guys enjoyed this, brought back some great memories of some of the fun I have had on the call center floor. I hope it gets you to realize how important your role is in the overall "fun" culture of your center
Our job is to make the customers we talk to have a world class experience. We cannot do this if we have reps that are lethargic, have bad attitudes and do not want to be at work. One way we can help them is by making the call center THE fun place to work.
I believe that the call center can be a place where you can do things that you cannot do in any other department. You can yell out loud, high five, cheer each other on! You can't do that in accounting! Show me a quiet call center and I will show you one with high turnover, low quality and more importantly it will reflect that the reps are not enjoying themselves.
If we can get our reps to have fun at their job it takes their mind off of all the negative things that hamper great call center work. All call centers have reps that seem to always come in with their days troubles on their sleeve. All call centers have reps that leave "sick" every day because they are just plain bored. If we can take their attention off these things and channel it into something positive, then we have taken a huge step in improving our center.
It does not matter if you are running a center with an insurance, banking, pure customer care or sales vertical. You can, and in my opinion, must make the environment enjoyable.
DECOR:
Take a look at your center. Most of you are probably at work right now looking at this so take a second to look at your center... I'll wait... lol
Does it have energy, or is it just plain and boring? If you were a rep would you like coming to work in this room every day?
I'm not saying you need to overhaul your center if it's not where it should be. There are a couple basic things you can do. Also I would love to get some of your ideas on this as well.
- Balloons can add a ton to a room. Just some company balloons or a "great job" balloons go a long way. As basic as that sounds, if you give a balloon to each team's top producer daily based on your specific KPI, it goes a long way for moral and adds to the fun look of the center.
- Team Crests/logos/mascot pics can really brighten up the room and add to great team spirit. Just having each team decide a team logo can be a lot of fun for the team members. You can even make a game out of it where each sale/great call/cross sell gets to add a name for consideration and the top producer get to pick the name. Use your imagination!
- Posters. I really like to put up great sayings that my reps used on a call. It's a reward for them to have a poster "named" after them and the phrase will get more uses because an actual rep used it. Having generic posters in a room is OK but tends to just get ignored a bit.
GAMES:
I have a TON of games that can be played in a call center. I just wanted to add a couple that are easy to do and you need basically no money to pull off. This hopefully will to give you some ideas. These are games that can be played daily on each team. You can do team vs. team or rep vs. rep.
BINGO- Set up a board that includes some KPIs that can be measured during the day. Each time your rep hits on of the goals they mark it off the sheet. Once they get enough BINGO gets yelled out and you have a winner.
POKER- Each time a rep hits a KPI they get a card. Best poker hand wins at the end of shift.
CHAIR GAME- I don't know about you but in my center the supervisors have different chairs that the reps love. We play pass the chair. Each time a rep gets a sale or hits a KPI, they get the chair until it get "stolen" by the next person.
PASS THE... - Like the chair we will pass an object for each Sale or KPI hit. If its summer I will go get some beach ball and we will pass or hit around a beach ball, winter maybe a stuffed Santa. You can award the owner of the ball each hour or just once at the end of shift.
OFF THE CLOCK- Reps love to be off the phones, its human nature. Set up some games like having a putting green on the floor, little nerf basketball hoop or some darts up in your center. Again however you have it set up, great sale, great monitoring score, KPI hit, the rep gets to get out of the booth and go play the game for a small prize. The real prize though is the 5 minutes off the phone!
HANGMAN- Pretty self-explanatory. Supervisor set up a board and the word/phrase and the reps get rewarded with chances at guessing a letter and the word or phrase.
Those are all just a very small sample of games a supervisor should be playing at all times on his/her team. Remember is in addition to a center wide motivation that maybe runs for a week or a month.
PRIZES:
What should the prizes be? Well I can tell you they do not have to be big to have the reps fighting over them. Candy, lottery tickets, a new pencil or pen, cup, homemade cookies, a free soda are all things that work. It's funny it really depends on how your supervisor sells it. I had a supervisor give away a 5 cent pencil eraser. Sounds boring right? But the way she sold it to her reps made it should like the greatest thing every. They died to try to win it.
It's very important that your middle management buys into all off this. I will have more later on expectations and training for your supervision.
I hope you guys enjoyed this, brought back some great memories of some of the fun I have had on the call center floor. I hope it gets you to realize how important your role is in the overall "fun" culture of your center
To see this culture in place take some time to visit http://www.expivia.net
Contact me at tlaird@expivia.net
We are reshaping customer interactions. This is EXPIVIA
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