Hi everyone.

One thing that strikes me whenever I visit a call centre is the attitude that agents (as a whole) have towards the jobs and responsibilities they have. This isn't always a negative thing, of course.

I'm a regular visitor to a large corporate's call centre and the latest thing is 'I'm an agent, get me out of here' - plastered on every spare bit of wall space. However, talking to agents and their supervisors I do get the general impression that people are upbeat and quite enjoy their job, though at the same time they find it frustrating and the management pressure to achieve so many sales within each hour and the emphasis on statistical measures is regarded as somewhat dictatorial to those agents.

We've had talks on other topics regarding reports of suicides in Indian call centres, and of course every call centre worker probably has a degree of uncertainty that their job is insecure (with so many financial sector centres in particular outsourcing to places like India, threatening so many jobs at least here in the UK).

All of these things obviously filter down to the 'guys 'n gals' on the phones - these people are the lifeblood of the call centre as we know it and I think it's important to really try to understand their attitudes to their jobs and their motivations. Are they happy, and how can their jobs be made more fulfilling? These are the questions that need to be asked in order to motivate our troops, as without them our call centres wouldn't be very effective.

What do you think? Are the agents (and the supervisors) in your contact centre positive, neutral or negative. What are their concerns, and what are you doing to address them? Let's talk about how we can keep the troops happy!

John