3 Ways to De-Stress Employees

Embrace analytics to boost your wellbeing strategy. That’s the message from Ross Daniels at Calabrio. Here, he takes a closer look and gives 3 reasons why you can’t afford to ignore the latest advancements in technologies designed for modern workforce optimization and engagement.

In our last blog, we asked the question ‘what does wellbeing really mean?’ and came to the conclusion that the major barrier to wellbeing – stress – affects everyone in the contact centre and beyond.

The major stress triggers of hybrid working practices, increased customer demand and a fast-changing competitive landscape are taking their toll as people adapt to a new world of work. We shared several coping strategies and introduced the importance of data in promoting wellbeing across the whole organization.

In this second blog of the series, we explore why technologies that humanize experiences through the likes of AI-infused analytics and intelligent automation, such as modern Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solutions, are the next step towards developing a robust wellbeing strategy

3 Ways to De-Stress the Workforce

Today’s WEM solutions offer the perfect de-stressing tool for agents, operational supervisors and senior managers. Use them to enhance staff engagement, optimize contact centre performance and boost profitability:

1. Your Day, Your Way

Agent stress is a powder keg just waiting to explode. Agents cite managing their work/life balance as the biggest stress factor (41%), followed closely by ‘complex customer issues’ (36%) and ‘too many calls’ (34%).

When agents take control of their working environment, their mood lifts, they feel energized and stress levels fall.

Bring calm to chaos by introducing self-scheduling tools so your agents can move lunches, catch-up with colleagues and make time for new learning as customer demands or domestic events occur throughout the day.

Equally, give them the chance to add extra working time to their coming week if they need to earn overtime. Self-scheduling gives agents independence and access to instant changes, yet approvals can be automated based on staffing-need parameters.

Why not add personalized dashboards to the mix so your agents can track their own performance to remain focused and motivated? This is a particular bonus when the majority of people are working remotely.

2. Superstar Managers With a Listening Ear

Being a supervisor today is hard work. They are expected to excel operationally and be excellent people managers but often lack the data and tools to manage the fast-changing dynamics of their contact centre effectively.

While many organizations are busy leveraging analytics to uncover the voice of the customer, the same cannot be said when it comes to truly understanding agents.

Roughly half (48%) of contact centre managers report they are not doing enough to focus analytics tools on their teams and cite training opportunities (37%), employee satisfaction (33%) and productivity (33%) as the top missing insights.

Using analytics for personalized performance coaching has been made easier by the introduction of AI enabled recording and tracking of 100% interactions and agent performance metrics.

This data can facilitate coaching conversations, while identifying individual or team skill gaps to allow managers to provide better training and support to agents who need it most.

Data-driven performance coaching increases agent confidence, satisfaction and productivity while easing operations and a manager’s path to achieve these results.

3. Reap the Rewards of a Connected Enterprise

To grow, organizations need a 360-degree view of their data. Yet, according to Harvard Business Review, while 83% of companies stress the importance of turning data into actionable insight, only 22% of senior executives feel their company is successful at doing this.

How can business leaders possibly make informed decisions and improve profits if they have no clear visibility of what is happening across their organization?

Successful leaders recognize the importance of connectedness in every sense of the word – IT systems, information, ways of working and thinking.

It’s an approach that overcomes the harmful silos that often get in the way of becoming a connected enterprise, where all parts of the organization work together to deliver exceptional customer experiences.

The foundation of a successful customer-centric organization lies with positioning the contact centre at the heart of the business intelligence platform.

Sharing valuable data on the real thoughts and feelings of customers depends on seamless integration with other departments using technology. Organizations benefit from becoming more connected to their customers and their employees, and pervading stress just melts away.

In our next blog, we delve deeper into the concept of wellbeing and how it can be used to drive personal and organizational growth.

For more ideas and inspiration on identifying stress triggers, process improvement checklists and tech buyer guides for managing wellbeing across the entire workforce download Calabrio’s Workforce Wellbeing Recovery Toolkit.

For more information about Calabrio - visit the Calabrio Website

Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.