Avoid these Legal Mistakes Call Center Owners Commit — A Checklist of Essential Call Center Policies and Procedures
Setting up a Call Center and running them successfully requires a certain set of guidelines to be followed by everyone in the workplace including higher authorities. Abiding by the policies will ensure a smooth workflow and hence help improve overall performance and maintain decorum in and around the center.
Make sure that agreement for the set of policies has been generated and agreed upon by the employees, this can help eradicate differences of opinions by any individual in the future. If not any individual in the workplace can file a case against the center saying without no consent from their side the particular activity has conducted here is an example: recording audio and video in the center which is one of the important policies mentioned below. Setting up policies and procedures is extremely important in any firm to work peacefully and hassle-free.
Following are essential policies and procedures that must be followed by every Call Center:
Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
Background Checks on Employees
Consent for Recording Audio and Video
Work Ethics: Attendance Policy, Work Hours, Service Terms
Work Culture: Dress Code, Drugs and Alcohol
Quality Assurance & Safety Norms: Track All Agents with Unique Access ID
Electronic Devices Privacy & Licensing Policy
Service Excellence: What to Say to Customers and What to Avoid?
Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
Every individual has to sign up for this particular agreement, where the prime concept revolves around confidentiality of technical system (techniques, software, patent number), client information (background, personal details), and business details (marketing strategies, projects in progress). Understanding the importance and upholding the confidential part of the call center would be highly effective.
Background Checks on Employees
By ensuring background checks can help eliminate undeserving candidates or who can cause damage to the company’s reputation. The background check involves education qualification, job records, and any possibility of indulging in criminal activities. Background checks for the candidates before hiring them must be an essential part of deciding potential candidates who can gradually contribute to the progress of the company’s performance.
Consent for Recording Audio and Video
Call recording is the basic procedure to ensure the quality of workflow and helps in future training for the freshers. Some call centers even set up both audiovisual recorder for better performance and in case of any legal issues from the clients, this feature can help settle in the future.
So, make sure every employee records their consent towards audio-video recording during their work.
Work Ethics: Attendance Policy, Work Hours, Service Terms
The work shift or the duration must be mentioned while signing up, so that salary will be paid accordingly. In exceptional cases like medical leave or other emergencies, a certificate must be produced to the employer to validate the leave. Employees must stick to the duration and avoid late entries as this may even affect customer reviews on the company if they were left unattended, eventually leads to losing potential customers of the company.
Work Culture: Dress Code, Drugs and Alcohol
If you want your employees to follow up on certain dress codes it can be mentioned in the policies and procedures agreement. How they should present themselves in the work area, and even small details can also be mentioned (no loud colors, avoiding strong perfumes). This can help to maintain certain discipline in the workplace hence increasing the company’s reputation among the customers.
Drugs and alcohol are to be strictly prohibited in the work area in case any employee is found consuming alcohol or drugs this can eventually create potential damage to the company’s reputation. Engage with your attorney and make sure the consequences of these policies are mentioned which can even lead to termination of the individual.
Quality Assurance & Safety Norms: Track All Agents with Unique Access ID
Biometrics (using a person’s unique physical and other traits for identification and security) here mostly fingerprints are recorded, which ensures check-in and check-out time that can make difference in calculating the salaries unambiguously. The next step is to make sure you have mentioned details about what if the ID is missed or if the individual resigns from the job (deactivating the id).
Electronic Devices Privacy & Licensing Policy
Mobile phones and other personal electronic devices like wearables should be avoided in the work area, as nowadays people are more likely to get distracted within few minutes from concentrating on a single activity, so it is highly recommended to any workplace to avoid using phones during their customer encounters. In case of emergency, the policies can be relaxed accordingly, and such points must be mentioned in the agreement.
Service Excellence: What to Say to Customers and What to Avoid?
There must be at least 2 or 3 customers in a day who cannot tolerate or be patient for a while so when the agent runs into such type of customers, this is when the agent’s tolerance level is spotted. It’s highly important how your agents appropriately handle them instead of getting intense with the argument. So there must be certain ways an agent should not talk even they are getting triggered, the sentences can be scripted with different sets of situation, so the agents can be trained beforehand on how to handle them in certain ways. Those scripts can be attached to the agreement sheet comprising policies and agreements
These essential policies and procedures have to be signed up by the employees during the hiring period with their consent and agreement towards each of the points mentioned above and have to be notified that if the policies are violated the induvial might face serious consequences like losing a job or even blacklisted among companies which eventually affects the future and end up losing opportunities.
So, the company needs to ensure that every employee has signed up for the agreement and with all their consent. If not, there is a high chance for the company to get a case filed.
Best wishes for your Call Center Success.
Originally published at https://www.vibtree.com
Talk to a Call center Consultant before you get started. Learn from Industry experts what all you need to be cautious about.
We at Vibtree Technologies help Call Centers with a free audit of the contact center infrastructure and consult on the best practices to boost your top-line revenue and process efficiency.
You can get a no-obligation free consulting call at Contact — Vibtree Technologies
