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Why Are Contests Important in Call Center Work?
Let’s face it: call center work is rarely the most exciting or engaging. It’s easy to become frustrated while on the job, and the employee turnover rate from this career is no laughing matter.
This is why it’s absolutely vital that you’re able to make call center work as interesting and—dare we say—as fun for your agents as possible. And yes, it’s truly possible!
Gamification, or the application of traditional game components to non-game activities, is key to achieving this. If you can hack a gamification strategy for your office, you’ll boost retention rates, maximize employee performance and, most importantly, turn the chore of the job into fun.
Contests are a form of gamification with particular relevance to the contemporary call center. Contests tap into your call center agents’ competitive spirit and incentivize their work through the promise of reward.
Rewards can include a bottle of wine, gift cards to restaurants or the movies, special privileges at the office, or any other exciting prize you can think of. Add an extra dimension of competition by tracking your agents’ performance on live dashboards, so they can see their numbers—and feel the heat of their competition!—in real time.
With that out of the way, let’s delve into seven contest ideas to gamify your call center’s daily workflow.
1. Customer Satisfaction Challenge
Who doesn’t love satisfied customers, especially as satisfied customers love you? Encouraging customer success is a surefire way to boost your own. Crucially, it’s also a key metric in ascertaining your agents’ performance.
In the Customer Satisfaction Challenge, use NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) to track agent performance and customer success over a set period. Agents with the highest customer satisfaction can win fun prizes such as gift cards, paid time off, or recognition from management (such as an “Employee of the Month” award).
2. First Call Resolution (FCR) Contest
This one is all about keeping your Escalation Rate as low as possible. Being able to solve customer issues on the first call is a strong testament to both your agents’ prowess, and your customers’ potential to remain loyal and satisfied in the future.
To carry out this contest challenge, track the number of calls resolved without follow-ups. The first agent to reach a successful resolution sans follow-up, or the agent who accomplishes the most FCRs in a set period, can win a fun prize—a bonus, a free lunch, company merch, or a tech gadget.
3. Team Bingo
Bring the popular party favorite to your office with a call center-themed bingo challenge! This contest can be applicable to both individuals and teams. Create a large bingo card and fill it with different relevant accomplishments—for example, “handled a difficult customer,” “sold an upsell,” “received a compliment.”
Hang the card up in an easy-to-see location—and let your agents go at it! The first agent or team to fill a row wins a prize, and the first to fill the whole card wins an even larger prize—for example, a pizza party. The variety of tasks in Team Bingo promotes a well-rounded approach to sales, testing the numerous components that make up a successful sales agent.
4. Speed and Accuracy Competition
A true test of agility and skill, a speed and accuracy competition will evaluate your agents on the basis of their all-around competence. Agents who manage to combine a high quality of calls alongside a fast response speed are truly the gold standard of call center service.
Track your agents over the course of a month with call metrics such as Average Handle Time (AHDT) and Quality Assurance (QA). The agent with the highest average of both scores over the time period wins—tickets to a local event or cinema, for example, and definitely some office-wide recognition!
5. Call Center Olympics
Plecto customer If Erhvervsforsikring—Scandinavia’s biggest insurance firm—actually created their own version of Call Center Olympics, when they adopted Plecto and needed to introduce it to their employees.
If’s contest consisted of agents drawn from different departments, all working together in five teams. When a sales agent won a sale or obtained additional information about a customer, the team would win five points, for example. The first team to cross the finish line of eight million (!) points won the Olympics—and free ice cream for the rest of the summer.
You too can adapt this Olympic contest to your own office. You can create multiple mini-competitions or award points for activities such as fastest call resolution, best customer feedback, and most calls answered per day.
Run the contest over a week or month, or until a team reaches a predetermined points goal. Encourage collaboration, competition, and teamwork by promising a fantastic prize to the winner…including but not limited to ice cream!
6. Social Media Mentions
While not directly related to your call center’s operations, a social media mentions contest allows your agents to engage with and promote your company’s latest news—whether that’s a new product launch, an exciting new initiative, or the work that other employees have been up to.
For example, at the Plecto head office in Aarhus, Denmark, the social media competition occurs on a monthly basis. Employees post Plecto-related content on social media—whether on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook—and individual scores are conveniently displayed on TVs around the office. At the end of the month, the employee who created the most posts wins a piece of fantastic Plecto merch.
7. Team vs. Team Contest
Last but not least, a simple classic—Team vs. Team Contests. Similar to Call Center Olympics, this type of contest occurs only within the sales department. Divide your department into two or more teams, and see who can win the most sales over a given period.
Besides spurring on friendly competition, Team vs. Team contests will mix up usual friendships and day-to-day patterns, and will help ensure everyone has a chance to contribute to a team’s winning efforts—especially important if there’s one or two agents that tend to win individual contests.
Plecto: The Perfect Call Center Contest Tool
With these seven contest ideas, you’ll be able to enliven your call center office culture in no time. Plecto’s contest features are the perfect tool for running call center competitions—and with dashboards to help you out too, you’ll be able to build employee engagement, smash your KPIs, bring in more revenue, all while having a lot of fun along the way.
So what are you waiting for? Get started on creating some contests with Plecto today!
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Q&As
How does "Team Bingo" provide a more comprehensive view of agent performance than a traditional sales leaderboard?
While a standard leaderboard often focuses on a single metric (like revenue), Team Bingo encourages a well-rounded approach. By filling bingo squares with diverse accomplishments—such as "handled a difficult customer," "sold an upsell," or "received a compliment"—agents are motivated to focus on both the soft skills and the hard numbers that make a successful representative. This variety ensures that the competition tests numerous components of the job, making it more engaging for a wider range of employees.
Why is First Call Resolution (FCR) considered a critical contest metric for both agent prowess and customer loyalty?
FCR measures the percentage of customer issues resolved without the need for a follow-up. Success in this area is a strong indicator of an agent's problem-solving skills and product knowledge. From a business perspective, high FCR leads to lower Escalation Rates and costs. For the customer, a quick, one-and-done resolution is a major driver of satisfaction and potential long-term loyalty, as it minimizes effort and frustration.
How did a Plecto customer use the "Call Center Olympics" to align different departments?
The Scandinavia-based insurance firm If used the Call Center Olympics to introduce Plecto to their team. By grouping agents from various departments into five teams, they turned performance tracking into a collaborative effort. Teams earned points for a variety of tasks—such as fastest resolution or obtaining customer info—working together until a team reached a massive goal of eight million points. This format used Plecto's real-time visibility to encourage healthy competition and teamwork, ultimately rewarding the winners with ice cream for the rest of the summer.
JAMES NIILER
Content Specialist
An in-house content writer and specialist at Plecto, James brings an academic touch and journalistic flair to his marketing copy. Having worked and studied on both sides of the Atlantic, James is a great believer in the importance of communicating across cultures and industries. Catch his work here on the Plecto blog, or as a guest contributor on other B2B websites.
