5 Ways to Help Your Contact Center Employees Relieve Stress

Written by KOVA Corp

The general public doesn’t often think of contact center work as particularly stressful.

However, customer service can be an extremely stressful profession. Contact center employees have to deal with any number of possible stressors, from angry customers, to ineffective training, to staying on top of new policies or procedures that may have just been put into place.

Add to that the focus on meeting quotas and ever-evolving technology and training, and it’s easy to see why your employees might need to blow off some steam. But how can you relieve your employees’ tension while making sure they remain focused on their work?

Here are a few tips for helping your contact center workers deal with on-the-job stress.

Effective evaluation

Feedback and conversation are essential for the health of any staff, but in a contact center situation, they might be even more vital.

Talk to your employees to gauge the stress-level among them. Take a look around the center to see if you can pick up any signs of what might be causing frustration or burnout among the employees.

The first step in solving any problem is understanding it, and speaking to or observing your workers can help create that understanding. And speaking of understanding…

Figure out where the stress is coming from

Are there confusing policies or procedures that are causing headaches for your staff? Are they spread too thin? Is there an issue with the workspace itself or with specific employees towards each other? Is your schedule too taxing, or are your quotas unrealistic?

Often, the biggest cause of stress can cause more stress in other areas. Figuring out what your main problems are and creating a plan to fix, or at least modify, those factors depends on diagnosing the problem correctly.

Making your plan

A plan, even in a rough draft form, is a concrete way to begin relieving stress on your employees. Even if it takes revision or time to implement, the fact that you’re attempting to make changes will likely resonate strongly with the people working for you.

Goals and expectations

Do you have specific outcomes in mind for the various phases of your stress-relief plan? The more a workforce knows about where you’re headed, the more comfortable they will be with the process.

Are you looking at less turnover or higher job satisfaction? They aren’t always the same thing; burnout is a lot more severe than irritation, so make sure your goals are related to your most severe employee-stress problems.

Encourage support and social interaction

What can you do outside of the call center to foster a friendlier atmosphere inside of it? Do you need more employee events, or holiday parties, or a less formal feel around the workplace?

As we mentioned before, you’re not always going to be able to eliminate the most stressful parts of an employee’s job, so it might benefit you to look at increasing morale in different ways. It’s not just about a great incentive plan; it’s about creating an atmosphere that makes people want to come to work every day.

Planning fun events or social gatherings outside the office might be good way to do that.

It’s important to remember that despite the increasing role of workforce optimization technology, your employees are still the most important factor in your call center’s success. The happier they are, the longer you’ll be able to keep them around, and that will make your center running efficiently.

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