Are you transparent with your agents? There's a good chance that many of them don't think so. After all, one fourth of employees in a survey by the American Psychological Association said they don't trust their employers, and only one half said they believe their employers are open and upfront with them.
Numerous studies affirm the importance of information sharing in empowering employees, so why is it so hard to do well? In the contact center, it can be challenging to give agents timely and insightful feedback about their interactions with customers when the quality management process, or a portion of it, is manual and resource intense. This leaves agents feeling disconnected from the quality process, including their performance reviews, coaching and ability to successfully learn and grow in their roles.
When used wisely, transparency is a powerful tool. It can improve a company's performance and the lives of its employees. Savvy contact center leaders are breaking down the information barrier using new, automated tools that allow agents to stay informed of not only their own performance but also that of the larger group. These solutions enable agents to visualize team priorities and where they stand in relation to targets, review interactions and assessments, and self-initiate learning. The cloud has made it easier for organizations of all sizes to not just access but also use these tools to realize three key benefits of transparency in the contact center.
Transparency can align employees behind a common goal.
You can't assume that your agents understand the role they play in achieving your organization's goals. Across industries, only 47 percent of workers say they can always make the connection between their work and the company's bottom line. By enabling transparency in your organization, agents can see the effect their day-to-day work has on company goals – a powerful motivating factor for improved performance. It can also have a significant impact by shifting how teams work together.
"Transparency is a powerful unifier….it forces a team to work smarter together," Glenn Llopis, a business strategy consultant, wrote in Forbes.
Transparency can help agents self-correct.
A coaching culture is highly correlated with business performance, employee engagement and overall retention. Yet a recent Gallup study found that only 27 percent of workers feel that the feedback they receive at work helps them improve. Evaluations and performance reviews have a vital role in the quality management process, but many contact centers are missing an opportunity to empower agent self-improvement by sharing performance reviews and providing opportunities for self-assessment.
Keeping employees informed through self-help tools, calibration and dashboards allows them to self-correct and align their quality goals with the organization's. Enabling agents to review performance, assessments and interaction data and complete self-initiated assessments empowers employees. With access to this data, employees can review areas of improvement and adjust on a day-to-day basis rather than waiting for a performance review.
Transparency can help spread best practices.
There's a clear benefit to giving agents access to contact center materials like knowledge bases and best practices: Most engagement research shows that learning opportunities and professional development are key drivers of employee satisfaction.
Until recently, however, the time required to build a dedicated library of professional development resources (and meet its technological requirements) put it out of reach for many contact centers. A key innovation can help quality managers achieve this highly desirable goal: the cloud. By implementing cloud-driven solutions, quality managers can easily centralize the information agents need to rapidly self-correct and align with their organization's goals on an as-needed basis.
Quality management automation in the cloud can help your organization create a transparent environment, effectively engaging your agents and empowering them to self-correct and improve customer service. By increasing the flow of information and providing access to performance reviews and knowledge base materials, quality managers can break down barriers to improved agent performance and help the team work together toward quality management goals.
