Work in a call centre? manage a team in one? Esp Telecommunications?

Question

Hi Im looking for help ideas from telecommuncation call centre workers

what sort of incentives make you want to perform better?

what sort of incentives do you offer as a manager?

how do you make your team perform well without being pushy or too much of a pushover?

i have a team of 13-14 people too

Answer 1

Make targets reasonable and do a weekly or monthly prize. Change the prize so it will attract different team members.

Some people might like a bottle of wine, others wont, so change the incentive. I used to find an hour off work on a friday worked well! or at this time of year, an extra hour for lunch so they can go xmas shopping.

I used to do the following as targets..

80% of their calls to last under a certain amount of time.

90% of calls resolved first time

Telephone sign-on times (dont know if you monitor how long people are actually open to calls, but we used to monitor how long they were available during the day, add it up and whoever was available the most, won)

I dont know how big your team is, I used to manage 8, I used to divide them into 2 teams and the team who handled the most calls won.

For sillier ideas, the first person to speak to a customer with a Z in their name, the first person to speak to someone in a certain profession, ie a doctor, farmer, bricklayer etc.

the first person to use a certain word for the day, you chose a word each day to use (something not really related to the job) and whoever manages to use the word of the day in conversation with a customer the most by the end of the month wins.

Keep them up to date with their progress, its no use slaving away for a prize if you dont know how its going. Keeps them motivated.

I had a board with all their names and a chart showing who was in what place in the leaderboard.

I changed the incentives weekly usually, points were awarded for winning the weekly/daily task and whoever had the most points at the end of the month wins.

Hope some of these ideas help, it really depends of the kind of call centre work you do and how you monitor calls or computer use, but im sure you can find some way of doing it and keeping it fun.

I really found that keeping it fun helped, people want a bit of light relief from hitting targets continually, so some of the silly ideas worked really well.

Answer 2

even if its the company who is screwing you geese yes OK haven't worked in call centre but have been at receiving end but have worked in retail..
if that counts ...
first of all acknowledge that you poor underpaid workers are underpaid ,,
train them to acknowledge that the people they will call have the same problems that they have ....have a T break at tea times 4pm-6.30 pm
talk in the same language for a start British people do resent that jobs and that their personal details are being sent to a foreign country for a start ...any call centres that I have been on to ...quickness of response 2Min's max ...accent 30secs ...sorry but......helpfulness ...very important .......friendliness not over the top ...respect ..its their Money one way or another ....try to save them or us some money .....even if you don't mean it ....better to lose with a smile than not ..nice to know someone tried .. then take them to the ..........?

Answer 3

Best incentive is money based on performance.
Problem when someone of quality leaves without prior notice.