Providing a comfortable work environment for staff involves adjusting the environment to ensure safety. It also involves supplying employees with essential resources that promote their health and well-being.
Based on 2017 turnover rates, your company could incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee replacement costs each year, undermining your ability to generate a profit. You can improve employee retention by enhancing your workspace. Let’s look at how you can improve employee comfort in your call center and some of the benefits of making your workspace more comfortable.
How can you improve comfort in your call center?
Call centers include inbound call centers and outbound call centers. Inbound call center staff answer communications from consumers. They may take orders for goods, help clients resolve a technical issue with a product, or address consumer complaints. Outbound call centers employ sales teams who contact potential clients to sell goods or services.
Increase employee comfort by supplying your employees with the best call center software available. Today’s cloud based call center solutions enable you to decentralize operations. Customer service representatives connect to the software online and access customer data, allowing employees to work from any location. You can increase call center comfort by providing employees with individual offices or using smaller rooms with fewer representatives. Your team can work remotely some or all of the time. Rotating remote work schedules reduces the number of people in the office, making it less likely a sick employee will infect your entire team. You may also reduce coworker conflicts by reducing the number of staff reporting to your call center.
Using omnichannel call center software also improves operations because employees can easily switch between different communication platforms. Customer service representatives can process inbound calls, emails, text messages, or social media messages, enabling them to increase customer satisfaction rates by addressing customer needs via the client’s preferred communication platform.
You can increase employee comfort at on-site call centers by offering both sitting and standing desks. Employees can improve their health by using a standing desk. Sitting for extended periods can cause back and neck pain. People who sit for extended periods also have a higher risk of developing diabetes or suffering from high blood pressure and heart disease.
Although standing may alleviate the risk of some health issues, it can cause foot pain. Provide employees using standing desks with the best arch support insoles available. Let employees choose suitable inserts to address health issues such as flat feet, fallen arches, plantar fasciitis, knee pain, and heel spurs. Employees can also select insoles suitable for dress shoes or casual shoes based on their footwear preferences.
Invest in quality headsets with cushioned ear cuffs. Since call center employees wear headsets for several hours each day, they need comfortable headsets that won’t cause discomfort.
How can your company benefit from making employees more comfortable?
When employees are uncomfortable, they may be distracted, making it harder to provide optimal customer service. Comfortable staff members focus on their work tasks, increasing their productivity rates.
Investing in employee comfort reduces callouts. When employees struggle with heel spurs, chronic back pain, or other ailments, they’re more likely to take time off work for medical treatment. While your employees must receive appropriate medical care, frequent callouts can affect your company’s ability to provide prompt customer service, undermining your operations.
Investing in your employees’ comfort can reduce health care costs. Maintaining your building’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system can improve comfort for everyone in your building. Replacing the filter and removing mold and other toxins from the unit prevents your system from spreading toxins and allergens throughout your workspaces. Since airborne pollutants can cause respiratory illnesses, eliminating these toxins can reduce staff illnesses and help employees stay healthy.
Making your employees more comfortable can increase their productivity and prevent employee absences. You can also reduce employee turnover by providing a safe, comfortable working environment.