It’s not always true that motivational exercises in the BPO have to do something with money. It cannot be denied that money is a prime motivator for call center agents. But not all call centers have the same kind of budget that is necessary to fund expensive motivational exercises. There are other ways of keeping your telemarketing agents interested in the work that they are doing. An ideal way to do it is to keep coaching and training them. Very few would like to miss an opportunity to pick up more skill sets. Agents would feel a strong sense of belonging to the call center they work in when the management tries to improve them as professionals.
The attitude of the BPO management is of paramount importance. It’s important to treat the employees in a dignified, proper way. You will have to adopt the practice of praising in public and criticizing in private. When the managers and team leaders want to criticize the work of the agents, they must be constructive and impartial. Nothing registers in the mind of the agent when you go on a fault-finding mission and pin your employees to the wall. Make the agents feel more responsible towards their role in telemarketing services. You will soon build up a strongly motivated team.
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In the modern BPO world, small and medium scale companies have little hopes of survival. They have to either merge with larger call center firms or have business partnerships with them. There is a growing need for call center services that are on the cutting edge of technology. The aim of the clients and business firms hiring them is to get telemarketing projects done before stipulated and time-tested cycles. To make that happen, you need technology and innovation. In other words, you need capital and investments. Small and medium scale companies cannot afford that kind of money. They will need the back-up of larger units.
The days of dedicated manpower service is over. You may have the most skilled telemarketing agents on the job, but you will falter to deliver if you don’t have the equipment and the gadgets. Clients will shy away from hiring call centers that don’t have state-of-the-art technology. BPO companies will lose out on their marketing pitches for projects when they find out that they don’t work in certain ways. That is why Fusion BPO Services has always concentrated on technological investments. You can grab the A-list projects only when you are fully equipped and that is something that has been an advantage for us.
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Mobile applications are the new ways of connecting with your consumer base. Clients and business networks want to keep the customer service experience pleasurable and effective at the same time. BPO companies are always been asked to cut down on call handle times. But this must not be done at the cost of affecting the caller’s experience of talking to the inbound call center team. Business firms hiring call centers are also more sensitive about the demands they make. They want everything to fall in place, including the cost effectiveness. That is where mobile applications come in.
However, developing mobile applications isn’t a cup of tea for call center units. There is a lot of superior technology and expenses involved. The BPO has to hire technical experts to create the content and designing. The expenditure must be justified. The call centers must perform way better than usual. Getting these tools on board and not exploiting them to the best of their ability is not a wise idea. You have to blend this technology with call center services. The burden on the telemarketing agents should also go down when you are using mobile applications. You can transfer the authentication and other verification issues on the basis of mobile applications.
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There is something about belonging to the organization that makes employees give it an extra bit of effort. In the BPO, the same holds true. But there are some telemarketing agents that are hired for short term plans. These are contractual employees that will stay onboard for a short time only. That is why call centers often treat them with some amount of indifference and refuse to make them feel part of the telemarketing services team. This brings about a sort of apathy in the employees as well. They feel that they are in it only for the money and that’s what they care for. They don’t feel a sense of belonging for the call center that they are working for.
Somewhere down the line, this affects their performance. They are not willing to push themselves in telemarketing services. Targets are everything that they care about. To avoid such an unhealthy atmosphere at the BPO, the management should make sure that they are treating them as equals. It may not be so in terms of payment or facilities, but in terms of importance, you must give them some weight. You may have some really experienced telemarketing agents in this team. Unless you reach out and tap them, you cannot have them come up to you with suggestions.
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