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Building Team Spirit in Call Centres and Telesales
Chapter 18 of the Call Centre Motivation Workbook
True team spirit can really help motivation in a call centre.
But what is it that makes one group of people gel into a cohesive team while another group remains a band of individuals? There many factors, but recruiting well and leading from the front are great ways to build team spirit.
Create And Brand Your Team
The real starting point is for your telephone staff to know that they are part of a team.
It is worth telling them this, as some people may not have worked it out for themselves! That is why it is so valuable to give your team an identity. In many call centres, each small team has its own name and this is a starting point for "getting people behind the flag."
By branding your team, you can give people a sense of belonging.
Set Clear Goals
Your team will gel more firmly if you give them clear goals to achieve.
You will find the greatest effect will come from setting goals both for the individuals and for the team collectively, as this encourages people to help each other.
The goals don't just have to be the obvious ones such as call durations or telesales outcomes. You can give your team a special project outside of the confines of the job to encourage them to work together. When you first do this, you'll find certain team members tend to dominate. That's OK for now, as we see the team begin to pull together to achieve its goal.
The next time we allocate a team project, we may specifically slant it so that some of the quieter members have to take a larger role.
Take for example, a scenario where we need extra sales. Clearly the sales drivers will take the lead.
So next time, we may ask the team to work on a systems project, where the more technically minded team members will have to take the lead.
We must be careful in structuring the project so that everyone is involved while ensuring that the goal of team building is achieved.
Your Knowledge Of Individuals
You need to get to know your team members as individuals so that you can find out what makes each one tick.
In this way you'll get an idea of who is brave, who is analytical and so on, so that you can decide how to develop each person.
You can also buddy people up who have complementary skills so that the whole team is stronger. Getting to know everyone is also your opportunity to learn who will get behind you and who is likely to be less loyal.
This knowledge helps you to blend the team.
Building Knowledge Of Each Other
If you create opportunities for socialisation between call centre team members, they will get to know each other and may even become friends. This will build strength in the team.
It is valuable to arrange nights out so that the team can socialise. You can often make such a night out conditional on the team achieving some kind of target, so it becomes an incentive, too. Of course not everyone will be able to make every social event, so don't forget to include them in the stories back at work the next day.
Outside of social evenings, teambuilding events run by specialist organisations can have great value in helping the team to gel.
Properly run team building events enable each member to understand that everyone has strengths as well as weaknesses.
