While hybrid contact centers gained popularity during the pandemic, it’s clear they are here to stay. Hybrid contact centers offer many benefits both for businesses and their employees. However, some companies have struggled to keep team members cohesive when working remotely.
Read on to explore the benefits a hybrid contact center offers and consider these tips and tricks to help boost hybrid company culture and build bonds between your team members.
4 Benefits of Hybrid Contact Centers
Hybrid contact centers can provide benefits for your company and team members alike. Below, consider these top 4 benefits a hybrid contact center offers.
1. Enhanced Customer Experience
Keeping your agents happier helps promote the overall customer experience. Allowing agents greater flexibility at work helps yield better customer service interaction. As such, happier agents can lead to happier customers, improving the overall customer experience for your contact center. This simple tactic is one of the easiest ways to help enhance your customer service efforts.
2. Dynamic Scalability
Using hybrid agents allows your contact center to scale up or down staff members with your company’s needs. This means your contact center can be scaled during peak seasons, company promotions, and other times of high demand. This allows your contact center more flexibility to best meet the current phone call demand.
3. Reduced Employee Fatigue
Contact centers can be stressful environments due to their fast-paced nature. Using a hybrid contact center can help alleviate some stress on your agents by allowing them to control their work environment. In turn, this can help both employee and customer satisfaction.
4. Cost Advantages
Paying for a contact center workspace is a major expense. As such, contact centers can free up overhead costs for physical workspace by allowing agents to work remotely. While some agents may still need physical office space, allowing for hybrid agents helps reduce the amount of space needed.
Keeping Your Hybrid Teams Cohesive
While there are many benefits of hybrid contact centers, there are still some challenges to consider. The most common challenge faced with hybrid teams is managing them effectively. While hybrid teams can enhance your overall company culture in many ways, it’s also essential to be aware of the negative effects. Consider these ways to keep your hybrid teams cohesive and promote engagement.
Communication is Essential
Communication is an essential component of hybrid work environments. One way to enhance communication is to utilize a company-wide chat service such as Slack. Chat services allow members to share day-to-day information with each other with a simple message. Using a chat program to encourage communication helps employees stay connected with the latest company news and updates no matter where they are.
Emphasize Opportunities
Hybrid work environments can sometimes make employees feel overlooked. Contact centers can help combat this common problem by ensuring new opportunities are shared publically with all employees. Opportunities can be shared via email, meetings, or chat systems. By emphasizing opportunities, your contact center can keep hybrid agents engaged and motivated to work harder (when incentives are provided).
Prioritize Team Feedback
Employees in any setting need feedback to feel recognized and motivated to do their work. For contact centers with hybrid work environments, feedback is even more important to help connect the team. Contact centers must create a platform or process to allow employees to discuss their needs, wants, and future with the company. The feedback collected from hybrid agents can allow managers to adapt work environments, incentives, and opportunities for employees. In turn, this can go a long way in retaining employees over the long run.
Maintain Engagement
When working from a hybrid setting, it is common for employees to become disengaged. To combat this, keep your agents engaged in their work through gamification software, monthly work incentives, and creative offerings. It is important that you promote an environment that encourages employees to interact with each other, regardless of their physical work environment. Taking measures to build bonds between team members helps improve morale and employee satisfaction.
Recognize Work
When working remotely, managers must go above and beyond to ensure they recognize the work of each agent. It is vital that contact center agents know their work is valued and appreciated. Managers can take a variety of different approaches to ensure each agent feels noticed.
Incentivize Creativity
Incentives allow your agents to have a goal to strive towards. Managers can provide incentives to help ensure hybrid agents remain focused and motivated to think creatively. While many employees appreciate monetary incentives like bonuses or gift cards, managers can also ask their team what type of incentives they prefer. Some employees may prefer casual dress days, company outings, or other creative ideas.
Fun is FUNdemental
Team members who enjoy their environment are more likely to perform better. Managers can brainstorm creative ways to bring fun into the workspace for team members in the office or working remotely. Investing time into making the workplace fun will also help enhance the customer experience, as customers can tell when employees enjoy their work.
Creating a Thriving Hybrid Contact Center
Hybrid contact centers offer many advantages to support happier employees and customers. However, it’s important that managers take a variety of approaches to help ensure employees stay engaged and connected. Using these tips to keep teams cohesive, your contact center will thrive in no time!
Looking for more ways to create a thriving hybrid contact center? Call Tools offers top-notch call center solutions to help you optimize efficiency and improve customer service. Request a demo today to learn more about how CallTools can help you enhance your call center.
