August 17, 2012
The Art of Fun: Happy Customers Start with Happy Workers
By TMCnet Special Guest
Paul D. Shockey, Director of Call Center Operations, NIIT Media Technologies
In most call centers across the world, customer service representatives are busy on calls, supporting customers,
helping them with their issues or concerns and finding solutions or trying to sell a service or product to prospective
clients. The reps’ primary job, apart from satisfying the customer, is getting calls out of the queue.
A call center job is repetitive and most reps are engaged on the phone all day, leaving little room for creativity and
fun. But what if a call center was in fact a fun place to work?
Creating a fun and creative environment at a call center is the most effective tactic to achieving the ultimate customer
satisfaction. Satisfied call center representatives serve customers better.
Cultivating this kind of environment takes effort and dedication on the part of senior management. It needs to happen
from the top down. Here are some ideas that can be implemented by call center managers very easily:
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During (sometimes boring) staff meetings, get your management team to talk about interesting things and
share this with everyone at the call center.
Theme days or weeks are always popular and can center on school pride or sports teams to name a few.
Different games can be played to help make the environment more fun (andsales if used properly) with
games such as Team Monopoly, a Putting Green to putt for prizes when certain sales are met, or even a
bean bag toss.
The secret is to keep the level of energy upbeat and have that energy constantly spread through the call
center. You’ll see sales increase when you add the element of friendly competition to it.
Call center managers must truly believe in the benefits of creating this environment and what it brings to the call
center must be embraced by everybody. So much so, that when addressing new employees during
new hire orientation, you should let them know that there is an expectation to have fun and that it is part of your call
center’s culture and its secret to success.
Here are some of benefits we have seen at our call center as a result of creating a fun environment:
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Drop in attrition rate (currently 18 percent)
SLA’s were met 97 out of the past 98 months (Our yearly inbound call volume is 1.4 million calls) and
include:
o 96.5 percent first call resolution rate
o Outbound retention revenue goals were always met (resulting in $3.4 million in revenue)
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Average call wait time: 28
Average abandonment level for 2011: 2.68 percent
Usually, working in a call center is a short term job for representatives in order to help them pay their bills and/or meet
their expenses. But at the NMT call center, a large number of representatives are pursuing a college degree. But
even after graduation, our representatives do not resign and instead choose to stay on.
We believe the environment we have created is responsible for this success.
Another great way to make call center representatives happy is to recognize their accomplishments. Handing out
awards for making the highest number of sales or for perfect attendance and zero errors are also very effective
tactics in creating a good environment at a call center. Call center managers also need to be aware of major
milestones in your representatives’ lives – graduations, wedding and births are all events that should be recognized.
If you have common monitors at the call center, utilize them from time to time with PowerPoint presentations
showcasing the above. Everybody likes to be recognized for their achievements.
But of course not everything can be fun and games. On certain days, there will be technical problems, delivery delays
and a rash of upset customers storming your phone lines. Do not let these dark clouds settle upon your team. Even
on days when it’s an “all hands on deck” emergency, hand out bite size candies or drinks or just walk around the
center and speak words of encouragement.
If you are able to keep your employees satisfied, then the end result will lead to better customer service and overall
improvement of your CSAT scores. Here are some simple ways to achieve this goal:
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Be friendly and courteous to your employees and they in turn will do the same with your customers.
Let them see you having fun and they will try their best to emulate you.
Always take part in the awards ceremonies, it really does mean a lot to the person receiving the award if the
“big boss” is there to give it to them.
Maintain an open door for your staff. If it is important enough for them to come to you to talk about it, then it
is important enough for you to stop what you are doing and listen to them.
Embrace the fun and do what it takes to make your team look forward to coming to work. Your bottom line will thank
you.