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Internal communication (IC) keeps the entire contact center workforce engaged through collaboration and the flow of information. No matter what size your contact/call center is, internal communication plays a major role in your organization’s success.
Communicating with employees is critical—as is how you communicate with them, especially in today’s world of remote and hybrid work. Having an effective internal communications strategy and plan can help prevent confusion and mistakes from happening in your contact center.
Although improving internal communication and team coordination may feel like an overwhelming task, there are some simple steps you can take to help employees feel connected—even if they engage in contact center work from home.
What Is Internal Communication?
Internal communications are much more than just keeping your employees “in the loop.” IC means you have a framework in place to keep your employees and company strategy aligned. IC happens through multiple channels and flows through your entire organization.
You might already implement some of these types of internal communications:
- Internal meetings, such as team video calls or one-on-one meetings between managers and team members
- Company-wide emails
- Town halls with executives
- Company intranet portal
- Employee surveys
Why Internal Communication Matters
Effective team communication can help your contact center employees feel more engaged in the workplace. Communication management is more important than ever before—especially as more and more team members go remote and work from home.
Only 24% of employees on a global scale report feeling engaged, and only 44% feel like they have clear direction from senior leaders. Contact centers aren’t immune to this disengagement crisis. Work environments continue to change and develop in a post-pandemic landscape–which means it’s going to take a bit more than a few additional employee meetings to keep your team engaged.
Highly engaged employees are five times less likely to quit their jobs, something all business leaders should keep in mind in wake of The Great Resignation. Engaged employees are more productive as well. And, employee engagement can trickle down to help create added customer loyalty through more positive call center-to-customer interactions.
7 Tips for Improving Employee Communication and Team Coordination
Your internal communication process will be ever-changing and evolving as your company grows. Business needs change and technologies evolve, so be prepared for a lot of cross-department collaboration. Here are 7 communication tips to start improving your team coordination.
Analyze Your Existing Employee Communication Plan
At this stage, it’s smart to collect employee feedback. You can do this via anonymous surveys where employees can share their honest thoughts and opinions about the processes currently in place.
Examine Your Internal Communications Tools
As you look at your existing communication plan, you should also see if the current tools you’re using are working for your team. You may have the basics, like a tool for instant messaging or sharing tasks internally.
But internal communication goes a lot deeper than quick updates. Internal communications covers how all of your information moves through your company, sometimes even starting from the C-suite and moving its way to all of your employees. Having a comprehensive software like C2Perform can help streamline your communications for easier flow.
Establish SMART Goals
Establishing realistic, attainable goals is critical for anything in your business. It’s no different with your employee communications. When you revamp your communication plans, everything won’t change overnight. So, setting S.M.A.R.T. goals can help keep everything on track and manage expectations.
- Specific: What exactly do you want to accomplish with your internal communications? Make sure it’s clear and concise for your team to understand.
- Measurable: What milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) will you evaluate?
- Attainable: Are these goals manageable and realistic for your team? Consider budget constraints, tools you’re using, and existing employee workload.
- Relevant: How do your internal communication goals align with your business?
- Time-Based: In what time frame do you want to implement all of your changes and achieve your team coordination goals?
Decide Which KPIs You’ll Use to Track Success
Since you’ll want to establish measurable goals, it’s important to set KPIs to track and measure your progress. Picking the right metrics and KPIs can help you see exactly where you can improve and what is working in your internal communications.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few common metrics used to track team coordination.
- Employee engagement rates and feedback
- Turnover rates
- Email open rates
- Intranet portal shares and read receipts
- App adoption and mobile use rates
Keep Your Audience in Mind
When building an employee communication plan, be sure to keep your audience in mind, just like you would with your clients. If your employees are primarily in the office, then your internal communications plan might look a bit different than if your team works mostly remotely. If your team is hybrid, then you can blend elements of communication styles together as it best makes sense for your organization.
Another thing to keep in mind is how widespread your distribution is. Do all of your employees need to receive every piece of internal communication? Look for ways you can personalize your internal communications so the right teams get information that is relevant to them.
Get Social!
Use company chats or newsfeeds to recognize outstanding performances by contact center employees. You can also use these platforms to send out reminders about work anniversaries, upcoming company events, or other time-based milestones.
Consider creating an informal company chat channel where leaders and employees alike can share stories, achievements, or congratulations with one another. This can hep to foster a sense of camaraderie and community among your employees. It also makes providing public recognition easier since there’s a single channel where employees can send and receive it.
Keep Things Simple and “Bite-Sized” when Possible
Contact center and customer support employees are usually incredibly busy—especially when they have aggressive goals to meet. So, it’s important to be considerate of their time.
One way to do this is to be how you want to get their attention and communicate important information with them. Try to be as efficient as possible while maintaining message clarity and coherence. Employees shouldn’t have to read a novel in every email, but important memos shouldn’t read like “caveman speak” either.
Social posts using graphics or video clips could be especially effective for keeping communications brief but clear.
Evaluate (or Establish) Your Approval Process
Do your internal communications require approval? Some communications may need sign off from executives or heads of specific departments. Even if you have an employee in charge of managing internal communications, team coordination falls on every single employee from the top down.
Having a standard operating procedure for your approval process will help prevent errors in your process. Some things to consider are:
- Who manages your internal communications?
- Who on your marketing team (if you have a marketing team) will write internal communications materials?
- What other teams might need to be involved in internal messaging? How will they contribute?
Optimize Based On Evaluations
Once your new internal communication plan is in place, the work doesn’t stop. Continue to collect employee feedback and evaluate your new process. Compare it to your initial evaluation to see if there are still any areas for improvement.
Open-ended questions that you should continue to ask your employees include:
- How can we improve on company communications?
- What is your preferred method of employee communication?
- Do you find our company goals and mission to be transparent? Why or why not?
- What roadblocks do you face when it comes to internal communication?
- Are there any tools you’d find beneficial for internal communications?
Plus, if you continue to implement employee feedback, they’ll feel more engaged and heard.
Get Started on Improving Employee Communications
Having the right tools can make or break your internal communications plan, even with a solid plan in place. C2Perform offers a full suite of tools for employee engagement and performance management, all in one software platform. Book a demo with our team today to see how C2Perform can help improve your employee communications and grow your business.
