Everybody in the call center needs motivation. Here are a couple of ways you can encourage, entice, motivate and inspire your agents to bigger and better things. I love to inspire the mind but sometimes it works to start by giving gifts.
First of all: Change your mind from the thought that “You are getting paid so you don’t need motivation.” Yes, they do and why? because sitting at the same job station and doing a repetitive job causes more turnover than anything else. Negativity doesn’t work. Positive Coaching Works and good ideas work.
Try these two things:
Games and inspirations that cost little and create a lot: www.motivatedincentives.com This company is devoted to you and your call center. (817) 912-1072 The WEBSITE will let you sample things for FREE. See if this will work for you.
For Customer gifts and things: Contact: Sherri Flibsen, a funny name but a wonderful person. sherrip@nadel.com www.nadel.com
Here is a way to handle a problem in customer service.
Never make the customer feel wrong or stupid.
Don’t fight against the policy of the customer with your own policy.
You only succeed in causing irritation.
All under the guise of following the company rules.
This doesn’t work. It never has worked but why do companies continue to teach their agents about it? It is a mystery to me. It seems the company would rather be “right” than solve the problem.
If you have an issue with different policies, you must come from a place of support for the customer and the company not either or.
Here is one way to handle it. You can tell everyone you learned it here! Try this at HOME, Try this at WORK. It really opens the door to a conversation instead of slamming it shut!
Clicking With Inspiration
This is the sixth and final article on Tips for Trainers, and I would like to close out the series in the same way I close every training session, which is with a short motivational and inspirational message. Training programs should be designed to deliver solid useful materials and skills that trainees can readily use to enhance their performance coupled with the motivation and inspiration necessary to make the trainees want to excel. So, let’s click with inspiration!
Let’s begin with a quote from Faith Popcorn and Lys Marigold’s wonderful book, Clicking:
“The very word, the very sound of fingers snapping —- wakes people up, shakes people up. A light goes on, the puzzle pieces tumble into place and suddenly you’re newly aware and alert to the chance for a brave new future.” The dictionary defines “click” as “to fit together, to become suddenly clear or intelligible. The colloquial definition is “to succeed, make a hit,” such as when former Boston Celtics player Robert Parish recalled the days he and teammate Larry Bird “played absolutely effortlessly and clicked on the court.” At the computer, clicking makes you all powerful: single clicks, double clicks, sending commands, moving icons. Click and you’re on the Internet and linked to the world. Click and an image flares into life. Click again and you can trash it —- gone forever.”
“Some have described their personal clicking experience as a thunderbolt, a surge. There’s a wonderful seismic word, tsunami, meaning a gigantic ocean wave caused by an earthquake or volcano. That’s a terrific way of capturing the feeling of a real click —- a powerful wave that’s capable of changing your world, your life.”
Let’s put clicking as it applies to the trainer and inspiration together.
Give your trainees a vision of the future. Plan the end of every training session to be inspiring.
Inspiration will breed self motivation. Click.
Trainees want life-lessons as well as work lessons. Collect stories describing successes of individuals who persisted and achieved lofty goals in spite of hardships, setbacks, lack of talent or physical attributes. Stories can be readily found in biographies of scientists, athletes, inventors, adventurers or campaigners for human rights. Select quotes that move and inspire you. Click!
Personal stories work best. If you have had a life / death experience or a particularly life changing experience, tell it to your trainees. You will endear yourself to them and inspire them to take what you learned and make it their own. Click!
Throughout my twenty years working as a trainer and consultant, I have experienced many rewards, but the most fulfilling and precious memories I have come from seeing my trainee’s faces light up when they seize a concept, idea or skill they are anxious to put to work. The act of teaching someone and watching them expand their horizons is an absolutely priceless experience. Click!
There is an old Samurai adage in the Hagakure, which says: “The way is in the training.” This means there is only one training, the one in which you train yourself. Click! If that’s true, you who are developing others have a great purpose in life. Train yourself first, and keep your own saw sharpened. Most of all, believe your trainees want to learn, grow and become successful. If you believe in them, give them a vision, the tools and your total support, they will someday outshine the trainer. That’s what you want isn’t it? Click!
The mission of our company is to provide high quality professional training programs that yield measurable results at affordable cost.
Four ways to de-tox and get rid of the Blahs, the Blues and the Stresses in the Contact Center.
Everything seems to depend on time in the call center. No time to eat, no time to talk to your neighbor in the next cubicle, no time for a break outside by the back door, no time to be friendly. That is because time is only used to crunch numbers, check ratios from call to sale or shorten call time and lower the abandonment rate. This sounds like no fun at all. So, let’s see if we can open that door of opportunity even if the knocking you hear is the person in the next cube banging their head against the wall.
1 Minute
If you have only one minute to spare, you can:
Subscribe to Comics on the Internet and read 2-3 of them – laugh – laugh – laugh!
Spritz some Citrus Scent around you and breathe in calmly for one full minute.
Move your shoulders up and down in a vertical motion to release tension on neck and back
Check posture, sit up straight. Your back deserves a break, too.
Drink a glass of water for your voice. Your body is a sponge and needs hydration.
Make a secret list of two things that really make you mad – tear it up and throw it away.
Billy Joel said: “she never gives in, she never gives up, she just changes her mind.” You can too, take a moment and “Lighten Up!” That’s what enlightenment is all about.
8 Minutes
If you have two or three or four minutes – really eight minutes – Listen to a CD of calming music, no rap or angry stuff. OR, put a recording on your i-pod of soothing affirmations or positive sounds, relax and you will handle the stress better. You can buy these kinds of CDs. (Call me.) It’s very inexpensive and they work. You go back to work cheerful and energized. Why doesn’t everybody do this?
Go outside and sit on a bench and just BE….no talking, no thinking, just SIT and BE.
4 Minutes
Ask someone for direction. Ask people what you should do with your life and Listen.
If you are angry, sad, lonely, or depressed, Put on a Happy Face and pay it forward.
Buy a candy bar and give it to someone else.
Call a friend and say: “I miss you.” Remember you only have 4 minutes but that’s all it takes.
If you are worried, sit in a chair and try very hard to worry, for 4 minutes…bet you can’t do it!
