Contact centers can be costly to an organization if they aren't structured to operate effectively and efficiently. In addition to operational excellence, contact centers must also be able to retain good employees by providing a positive work environment that supports personal and professional growth.  To ensure that your contact center is functioning well on all these fronts, and is also a valuable contributor to your organization's bottom line, there are a few best practices to help you get there.

Draw a roadmap for achieving your goals

As a contact center manager, it's imperative to have a firm grasp on what the goals are for your operation so that it can be clearly communicated to those responsible for making it happen. These goals should represent your company's business objectives. How your call center supports these objectives can be determined by asking questions such as:

• How should the company be viewed by its target audiences?
• Is the goal to grow market share, increase retention rates, cut costs?
• Find out from the finance department what the lifetime value of a customer is? Based on this answer, does it make sense to hire less skilled workers or allow for longer hold times, and doing the opposite in cases were lifetime value of a customer is high.
• What's the cost of an average call? This will help you to understand how to assess the impact of hiring agents with varying skill levels.
• Find out from the service manager what the cost of a maintenance contract is? Evaluate how many contracts are lost when customers are not happy with the support they get from your company.
• Find out from the marketing department if they have campaigns coming down the pike. If so, how can the contact center support their work. If a customer calls about a special promotion than your agents should know about it, or at least be able to direct the call to the right department.

Having an understanding how the work carried out by your contact center impacts the entire organization is a best practice that will drive how and who you hire and the service standards you set.

Hiring, Training and Coaching

Attrition rates can be high in contact centers posing major challenges for managers in attracting and retaining good agents. To make better hiring decisions, you should first know the answers to questions like:

• Can a recent high school or college graduate do the job?
• Do you need highly-skilled engineers or medical professionals?
• Can you hire an agent with a good attitude and then train them?

Make a list of the qualities your best agents possess and work with HR to develop ways to screen for those qualities. Once you've hired the right person, you must train them to be able to carry out their duties. Investments in training will pay off if you make good hiring decisions.  Once you've provided training, coaching is the next step to make sure agents continually improve in their work. Consistent feedback, performance coaching and recognition for good work is key to making sure you get the most from your staff and that they will see your organization as a long-term career opportunity.

Morale Management

Another call center best practice is morale management. Your goal should be to create an atmosphere where employees consistently bring a willingness to help and a drive to reach business goals with them to work. When morale is low it can reverberate throughout the contact center creating discouraged, bored and irritated agents. Create a positive mood by:

• Being encouraging
• Not tolerating poor behavior
• Providing a comfortable, clean work environment
• Recognizing good work
• Having fun reaching goals