7 Call Center Contest Ideas for Boosting Morale and Quality

As a call center manager, you face one of the most challenging jobs. How do you motivate your team despite heavy call volume, disgruntled customers, and extreme pressure to deliver good customer service? By implementing these call center contest ideas, you can provide your contact center agents with direct incentives to perform at their best.

While your team members must understand their responsibilities, it’s even more vital that they are eager to fulfill them. One way to achieve this is with gamification.

Gamification in the workplace encourages healthy competition by offering call center incentives and rewards to increase interest and commitment to your chosen goals. You can gamify your call center using these engaging call center contest ideas:

1. Daily Perks

Daily perks are one of the most straightforward call center contest ideas. Choose one of the key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to improve in this contest. Then, give a special prize to the person who performed best on that metric. The KPI you choose needs to be one you can measure quickly so the winner can claim their reward at the end of their shift or as soon as they come in the next day. Quality assurance software that automatically tracks agents’ performance makes this easy. The daily perks include anything from a gourmet coffee drink, lottery tickets, a gift card, funny socks, or an extra break.

2.Penny Wars

One great way to increase cooperation among your agents is to have them work toward a common goal, such as donating to a charity. Choose teams for this game. Every team, usually composed of two to three departments, has a bucket. Teams can place coins in their own or other team’s buckets. Pennies are worth one point, while silver coins are worth negative points based on the coin’s value. For example, a nickel is worth -5 points. At the war’s end, the team with the most points wins. Call center team contest ideas like Penny Wars significantly increase cooperation while encouraging healthy competition.  

3. Call Center Olympics 

If your team needs to catch up and you want to boost all your metrics, consider organizing a comprehensive call center contest like Call Center Olympics. This game is excellent for recognizing individual agents and boosting their performance. 

Choose several metrics to compete in and set the game’s time period. Tie the contest to meaningful metrics for your organization, such as objectives around customer service or relevant campaigns. Each KPI is considered a sport, and the person with the best KPI score for that “sport” wins a medal or ribbon. To conclude your Call Center Olympics, consider having a party to celebrate the winners’ success. One idea is to incorporate an awards ceremony and recognize the top three highest performers. 

4. Call Center Mania Throw-Down 

Another call center contest idea to reward overall good performance is called Call Center Mania Throw-Down. The object of this game is to get the highest overall performance score.

When you plan this challenge, imagine what it would be like if your agents were wrestlers vying to be champions. Use all the flash and glitter of wrestling events to pump up the excitement before the contest begins. Do this contest in a tournament style so that the top performers keep advancing as the contest goes on. Then, the focus should be on increasing overall performance metrics.

At the end of the competition, compute scores and declare the top prize winner. The grand prize should have meaningful value above and beyond just winning the contest. Examples might be a home appliance or a gift card for an upscale restaurant.

5. Beach Party Bingo

Are you looking for outrageously fun call center contest ideas? Beach Party Bingo is a contest that starts with the right atmosphere and ends in a big win for your agents, your company, and you as the call center manager.  

Set up a beach area where you put a couple of outdoor chairs and a sun umbrella. Add a barrel or tub full of tennis balls, each labeled with a number and the name of a bingo prize. Make up a bingo card for each agent. As an added bonus, let agents dress in Hawaiian attire to add to the beachy atmosphere.

Each time an agent completes a goal associated with the contest, like booking a demo or making a sale, they get to choose a bingo ball from the barrel. The agent who completes the specified goal receives a small prize written on the ball immediately. They also get to mark off the number written on the ball on their bingo sheet. The bingo winner receives a more significant prize or perk.

6. Race Day

Race Day is one of the most straightforward call center contest ideas. It can boost any metric that requires quick work in real time. Choose three or more teams and set up the requirements. For example, give points to the person who picks up calls the fastest. At the end of race day, total each team’s points and award a prize.

7. Mystery Prize

Spice up your work environment with a Mystery Prize contest! Choose an exciting mystery prize to reward your team with and hide it or a photo of it somewhere in the call center. For example, the mystery prize could be concert tickets, a restaurant gift card, an adventurous zipline tour, or an educational experience such as a local history or art museum event.

Each day, the team member who performs best on the specified metric gets a clue. The clue can be about the mystery prize or where it’s located. The more clues they get, the closer they get to finding the prize. The first person to identify it wins it.

Tap Into Your Team’s Competitive Spirit For Big Rewards

Work can feel monotonous and stressful when every day is the same. You strive daily to change that. Engaging in contests and friendly competition can transform your work into play for your agents and yourself. What’s more, you can use these challenges to build a great team day by day.

As a call center manager, you can considerably improve your team’s performance and make their work life more enjoyable. That translates to better agent performance.

Engaging your agents through exciting call center games puts the entire team in a good mood. Your team becomes interested, involved, and motivated to help your call center succeed. When your call center agents succeed, your customer experience succeeds.

Looking for an easy way to gamify your call center? Playvox’s quality assurance software lets agents accumulate points based on their actions on the platform, which they can later claim for prizes of their choosing.