Employee Engagement in the Contact Centre

The Challenge of Engagement

Keeping every employee fully engaged all the time is challenging — especially in the contact-centre environment, where pressure is high, targets are demanding, and remuneration is often commission-based. Employee engagement is a core pillar of any Human Capital strategy, but how do you make it practical?

The Contact-Centre Reality

Large contact centres can easily see agents become disengaged. Success in this space requires agents to be:

• Tough negotiators
• Sympathetic listeners
• Skilled problem-solvers
• Proficient in complex telephony and operations systems

And they must do all of this while sharing an open office with hundreds of colleagues — each one striving to outperform the next.

What Drives Engagement?

Many factors contribute: reward and recognition, well-designed incentive strategies, positive relationships with managers and peers, flexibility, leadership, and timely feedback. Yet the most thought-provoking area is learning and development. Each employee has a unique learning style. Agents must stay up-to-date with regulations, product knowledge, new system features, and soft-skills training — while business priorities shift constantly.

Technology as a Catalyst

At Nimble, technology is key to maintaining engagement. Using voice analytics, 100 % of calls can be monitored and analysed rapidly. Team Managers receive near-instant feedback to coach agents before those challenging calls fade from memory. It also allows real-time recognition of well-handled calls and turns them into learning opportunities for others.

Real-Time Performance Tracking

Nimble has developed an agent-specific performance tracker, which measures each agent’s performance against their team using data from multiple sources, including voice analytics. Team Managers can coach based on individual metrics while identifying agents who excel in certain areas.

Continuous Learning Culture

We create micro-learning opportunities through quick stand-up meetings — short, focused sessions that share bite-sized information and feedback from agents themselves. These sessions are particularly valuable when introducing new processes or technology.

Building the Learning Path

A strong learning and development framework, supported by clear learner pathways, is essential for sustaining engagement. However, it must be continuously refined — employee engagement is not a one-time initiative but an ongoing discipline requiring constant attention and reinvention.

The Takeaway

Engaged employees create great organisations.

Written by Nico Nel – Human Capital Executive