And then act!
There are better, more effective ways for call center leaders to engage employees than ranking employees. Centers where agents are ranked do not accomplish as much for customers as agents who are not ranked. Why? Ranking creates an environment of inward focused employees that should be outward focused towards the employees.
The impacts of ranking are obvious to an impartial person.
- Each employee becomes focused on his rank in the group. A highly ranked agent may want to protect his status and not share techniques and ideas that may benefit the organization.
- Lower ranked employees may become discouraged and feel that efforts for improvement are slow and not producing results quickly enough (the learning curve for new agents can be long in many environments). Discouragement may lead to disengagement.
- Changes to policies and procedures are met with heavy resistance because it may shake up the established rankings.
- Agents do not work well together.
- The focus of discussions with supervisors shifts from learning and development to one of ranking and positioning.
- The desire for engaged, enthusiastic service to customers gets lost.
Sure, share with an agent what her call statistics are. Let her know what the normal range is for each different statistic but never compare her with other employees. When she requests advice on how to improve, discuss specific skills and knowledge and avoid statements like, “Reduce your after call work time”.