Successful Operations Require Intentional Effort
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
Most everyone who works in off-site customer service knows the importance of having a strong call center team. This is, perhaps, nowhere more important than in the healthcare industry, where a call center sometimes faces the life and death situations of its patients.
Though a strong call center team is the outcome everyone desires, the path to get there is not always clear.
Here are five common-sense ideas to build a strong call center team.
1. Make a Professional Environment
It may come as a surprise, but building a strong call center team starts with the facility. If your operations room is dated, rundown, or has broken tools, you’ll end up fighting an uphill battle until you first resolve these things.
Though people who work in a call center every day are used to seeing its deficiencies, these are readily apparent to a visitor. Invite a trusted friend to tour your facility with a critical eye.
Have them make a list of what needs to be taken care of. Fix what’s broken. Replace what’s obsolete. Make your operation room an attractive place to work.
2. Establish a Positive Atmosphere
With your environment updated, you’ve established the first step in building a strong call center team. Now look at the intangibles. This means the overall atmosphere of your operation. Some might call it the vibe.
What vibe does your operation give off? If it’s positive, expect positive results. If it’s negative, brace for negative outcomes.
Turning a negative workplace into a positive place starts at the top. The director or operations manager must model positivity. Even when negative issues arise, address them with a positive attitude, all the while expecting improvement.
Encourage your middle management staff to do the same. You may have to politely correct negative attitudes, expressions, or expectations, but your management staff will eventually realize that you don’t permit negativity.
Now repeat this with your front-line staff.
Though it will take time to turn a negative atmosphere into a positive one, you can do it. Start today.
3. Celebrate Success
Whenever success occurs for your call center, celebrate it. For big wins, consider throwing a party. For smaller wins, find a way to appropriately applaud it. These celebrations will encourage future successes.
In doing so, focus on group success, and only address individual accomplishments if the entire staff can receive it as a positive development. Otherwise, you’re elevating one person at the expense of all others. Don’t do that.
4. Encourage Staff Initiative
With a professional environment and a positive atmosphere that celebrates success, now it’s time to empower your staff to make decisions in your callers’ best interest. This is the next step in building a strong call center team.
Yes, occasionally your staff will overreach, and you’ll need to offer gentle correction. But never reprimand agents who do what they thought was the right thing for your clientele.
Most of the time, however, their initiatives will be both well received by the caller and beneficial to your organization. That’s the goal.
5. Provide Growth Potential
By the nature of their configuration, call centers offer very little growth opportunity for employees. Nevertheless, look for every way possible to offer your staff opportunities. If you don’t, your best employees will leave, while your marginal ones will stay.
The first thought to most managers is to think of promotions. While this is a sought-after outcome for many employees, it’s not the only thing they desire.
Other ideas include the chance to learn new skills, take on additional responsibilities, and share their strengths with others, be it as a trainer, through a webinar, or by a lunch-and-learn scenario.
Build a Strong Call Center Team Conclusion
To build a strong call center team is possible. It just takes intentional work and focused effort. But you can get there.
It starts with making a professional environment and establishing a positive atmosphere. Then celebrate success, encourage staff initiative, and provide growth potential.
When you persist in doing these things, you continually move your operation forward to build an increasingly strong call center team.
Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s Healthcare Call Center Essentials, available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.