Trends in Contact Centre Initiatives

We asked our audience ‘What Initiatives Do You Currently Have in the Contact Centre?’ Read on to find out the most and least common contact centre initiatives.

The results, taken from our survey report “What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now 2021 Edition”, outline which initiatives contact centres have, want, and don’t have.

Contact Centre Initiatives	Have	On Wish List	Don’t Have
Multiskilling Agents	87.6%	9.2%	3.2%
Unpaid leave	71.8%	2.4%	25.8%
Knowledge Empowerment	63.3%	24.6%	12.1%
Buddying Advisors	62.9%	12.4%	24.7%
Flexible Shifts	56.3%	16.0%	27.7%
Advisor Empowerment	51.4%	27.8%	20.8%
Social Events	47.0%	22.1%	30.9%
Annualised / Banked Hours	40.9%	11.0%	48.1%
Personalised Call Routing	32.8%	29.1%	38.1%
Self-Help Customer Videos	32.1%	24.5%	43.4%
Spot Prizes	32.1%	24.4%	43.5%
Sales Commission	23.9%	12.5%	63.6%
Motivational Games	23.6%	35.8%	40.6%

The split shows an interesting snapshot into what initiatives contact centres are focusing on.

From this information we can draw several key observations about contact centre initiatives.

Contact Centres Put the Brakes on Prizes and Games

Since our records began, the use of spot prizes and motivational games has been tumbling. This year, it reached an all-time low.

Just 32.1% of contact centres now award prizes and only 23.6% play motivational games. In 2015, these figures stood at 52.8% and 47.1% respectively.

While the pandemic certainly played its part in making it more difficult to run these activities, the year-on-year trend suggests that contact centres are undergoing a fundamental shift in how they inspire performance improvements.

Work–Life Balance Becomes a Key Priority

In the interest of improving employee engagement, contact centres seem to be shifting their approach to providing advisors with a better work–life balance.

In the past 12 months alone, the use of annualized hours increased by 2.5%, flexible shifts jumped up by 5% and unpaid leave also grew by 5%.

All this perhaps highlights the growing recognition of the link between workforce management and employee engagement.

The Rebirth of Multiskilling

Multiskilling advisors is an activity that fewer and fewer contact centres were willing to run. This downward trend has been evident ever since 2015. Until now.

This year, the percentage of contact centres multiskilling advisors rose dramatically from 81.7% to 87.6%.

Previously, we’ve speculated that the increasing complexity of contact reasons – thanks to self-service and automation – has resulted in contact centres training advisors that specialize in one area. So this growth is somewhat of a surprise.

Yet the efficiency benefits in having advisors cover more bases – during such a frantic time for contact centres – could well be at play.

Latest Survey Report

These findings come from the survey report “What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now 2021 Edition”, featuring over 40 insights into contact centre operations. Download the latest survey report to get more great insights.

The results of the survey were collected in July and August 2021, and we are delighted to publish this report in partnership with Akixi, NICE, Nuance, Odigo, Poly and ProcedureFlow.

Source: Call Centre Helper Survey: What Contact Centres Are Doing Right Now (2021 Edition) Sample size – 224 Date: August 2021