I was speaking to a colleague the other day about their experience with engaging with executives in a contact center and the topic of confidence in making decisions came up.  So it got my brain and curiosity in motion about what types of confidence factors impact the performance of your contact center.  I put together a list of departmental groups in a contact center where you could measure the amount of confidence you have then measure the overall confidence in total contact center performance.  Here is my list

• Executive staff
• Equipment
• Agent performance
• Reports and customer scores

When you break each one of these down, what would you say your confidence level is that they are performing at an acceptable level and which ones have a strong impact on how well your contact center performs?

Let’s just take the agent performance.  What is your confidence level that 80% of your agents are performing at their top level?  A great deal of their performance also lies in their own confidence level.  In a post written by Karin Hurt, CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders  she outlines five areas to evaluate in how to build the confidence levels of your agents.  The true starting point for improving this confidence metric is creating a culture of trust and connection.

Dr. Jodie Monger, from Customer Relationship Manager states “when they (customers) have confidence in the answers given by your agents, there is a direct impact on operational cost.”  She also states that this trust is the primary emotion customers want to feel when interacting with an agent.

So maybe the first place to start in raising your confidence score is taking a deep look at how well your organization is building a culture of trust.  Rather than just provide lip service your action speak louder than words but your words can also convey whether or not someone can trust you.  In a study conducted by the University of Glasgow people can detect whether or not you are trustworthy by the sound of your voice. This study fascinates me and really makes one aware of how we influence other’s opinions of us just from the way our voice sounds.  But that’s an entirely different topic.

To sum this up, try to calculate your confidence levels of the four areas I outlined to see where your contact center stands and which one would score the lowest and then assess how improving the trust levels would change the confidence levels.