When you're talking to someone on the phone, it's easy to decipher their mood. Subtle cues in their tone of voice reveal whether they're perky, frustrated or bored.
As such, boosting team morale is an important consideration for those who want to run a successful contact centre. Should you follow suit of the tech giants, and invest in ping pong tables? Maybe you're thinking of giving everyone free chocolate biscuits, to perk up their tea breaks? Or how about regular social events, with free flowing beer?
Before forking out the budget for any of these superficial tricks, try using these three principles from behavioural science to improve team morale in contact centres.
1] Change the script for call intros
We tend to trust people in authoritative positions such as doctors or celebrities, therefore we place more importance on their opinions and guidance, and this is known as authority bias. When your customer service representative picks up the phone, they probably says something like this: "Hello, you're through to Tony at The Bank, how can I help you today?" Ask them to try introducing themselves in a different way to make the most of authority bias: "Hi, you're through to Tony, and I'm a Customer Support Specialist at The Bank. How may I help you today?" In addition to increasing their sense of authority, this will make Tony seem more trustworthy and boost his pride in his work.
2] Manage time expectations on the phone
People have a preference for risks that are associated with known probabilities than uncertainties with unknown probabilities, and this is know as ambiguity aversion. This means that we are more likely to complete a process if our expectations are managed appropriately.
Use this bias to improve contact centre morale by guiding your customer service representatives to manage their customer's expectations of time during a call. For example, instead of periods of silence whilst they look up some information on the computer system, ask them to say "I'm going to go silent for a minute whilst I look into that for you, is that okay?" This reduces ambiguity for the customer, increases their trust in their customer service representative, and improves their rapport. In addition to helping make conversations more enjoyable, this may increase morale.
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3] Use the customer's name in conversation
Your brain responds in a unique way to hearing the sound of your own name, and makes you pay special attention. You might be familiar with the cocktail party effect, where even in a noisy room your ears prick up at the sound of your name. By using a customer's name during their phone conversation, service representatives can structure a more engaged and empathic conversation. In turn, this helps to build personal relationships, and makes their work feel more rewarding and worthwhile.
By building features like these into phone conversations, your customer service representatives will start to feel empowered, engaged, and rewarded. Using principles from behavioural science such as these, we helped Aegon to transform their contact centre conversations and led to a 63% reduction in staff attrition.
At Cowry, we've got a proven track record of boosting morale in contact centres. Are you inspired to try embedding behavioural science within your team's conversations?