The contact center is an important front-line interface between your brand and your customers. Each contact is a make or break moment to build customer loyalty, generate revenue and shore up the foundation of your business. But anyone who’s worked in a contact center knows it’s a high-pressure environment with demanding customers and repetitive tasks that can make it challenging to maintain call center agent morale and performance.

Incentives are one important way to keep your agents motivated. But it’s not all about cash rewards, shiny objects and pizza parties. Those perks certainly can be fun and we’re not saying they shouldn’t be part of your incentive program. But the following are a few ways to motivate a call center agent in a more lasting way over the long term.

Consider Experiences Over Cash

While performance bonuses for exceeding KPIs, sales commissions, and spot bonuses might be a valuable component of your incentive program, some studies show that the positive psychological impact of cash rewards is not nearly as powerful as that of experiences.

The reason is that when our brains process experiences by looking forward to something exciting like a trip or a concert, the brain releases more of the feel-good chemical dopamine. Dopamine continues to build during the time leading up to the activity and peaks during and shortly after the activity. It will even continue to remain high in the days after the activity. Experiences engage our senses, committing them firmly to our long-term memory in a way that that a one-hundred-dollar spot bonus never will.

When experiences are shared with a call center agent, the positive effects can magnify. The emotional impact of a unique experience helps build a deeper connection among your team members. Plus, shared experiences like team-building activities or group outings, can strengthen social connections among employees. When co-workers bond over a memorable experience they enjoyed together, it boosts their sense of community and can lead to increased employee loyalty.

For a call center agent in nearshore or offshore countries, consider the unique aspect of that particular culture. For example, one contact center in Asia realized that many of their employees felt it was inappropriate to “brag” to family and friends about how well they were doing at work and to talk about their achievements. So for high performing employees, the company decided to treat the employee and their family to a night out at a high-end restaurant that would not typically be accessible to them. These dinners out with family, in addition to the feel-good dopamine release, offered the added advantage that the call center agent was able to explain the reason for the dinner and talk about their accomplishments at work.  

One final thought. When cash rewards are frequent, a call center agent can come to expect them and factor them into what they consider to be their overall compensation. This means that when the cash rewards stop or become lower or less frequent than expected, the call center agent can actually become angry and demotivated.

Have More Conversations About Career Paths

Communication is key when it comes to keeping your best employees happy and motivated. Don’t take your high performers for granted and remember to express your appreciation. Similarly for lower performers, be generous in your assessment of how hard they may be trying. And when they do exhibit positive behavior, be effusive in your praise.

Over communicate whenever possible, particularly when it comes to career goals. You may be concerned about overpromising future promotions that you’re not sure you can deliver. But keep in mind, you don’t need to make promises. Just having a conversation with a call center agent about where they want to go within the company over the next 12 months may spark ideas for how you can support their ambitions. You might be able to help by facilitating internal training or funding external courses they want to take. If a high-performing call center agent expresses a desire to move into a quality assurance role, for example, you could arrange for the agent to job shadow one of your QA managers for a day to help them get a better sense of whether or not that potential future role is right for them. You may be surprised how much more engaged they will be with your company and how much more motivated they will be to perform when the possibility of a higher paying, more interesting job is within reach.

Tap Into Intrinsic Motivation

Arguably the most powerful motivators are those that come from within. As leaders, we can help facilitate intrinsic motivation in a few ways. First, we can support a call center agent in helping them understand the bigger picture including the larger goals of the company and why their job is important. The more effectively we can communicate the problems that the company faces and the benefits that everyone will enjoy by solving them, the more motivated your front-line workers will be. Remember that mindless repetition is a natural killer of intrinsic motivation. So challenge your employees to think differently about their day-to-day tasks. Encourage them to ask why certain processes are being followed and how they can do things differently or experiment by proposing alternative process flows.

Encourage Team Work

Teamwork is the lifeblood of the contact center. Without a more experienced call center agent taking the time to mentor new hires, the business simply doesn’t work. While some contact center environments are highly competitive, this approach may not be the way to get the most out of your employees. Instead, consider fostering a collaborative environment. One way to do this is by encouraging small teams to come together to work on process improvement projects. Or, if you already use a points or credits accumulation system to reward high performance, consider giving each employee a certain number of credits per month that they must reassign to those coworkers who were most helpful during the course of the month. This is a great signal that collaboration and helping one another is a value important to the organization.

The Long-Term Impact of Incentives

A well-designed incentive program can transform a contact center into a high-performing, motivated, and engaged workplace. Beyond immediate performance improvements, these programs contribute to a positive company culture where employees feel valued and empowered to succeed.

By investing in incentives that resonate with your workforce, you’re not just boosting individual performance—you’re enhancing the overall customer experience, driving business success, and creating a workplace where people want to stay and grow.

For more information about how Advensus incentivizes contact center agents, contact us for a free consultation.