Many contact center managers say, “Our senior
management just doesn’t get it.” You won’t hear such a
complaint from any managers (or anyone else) at Blinds.com – not with someone like Chief Operations Officer Steve Riddell in the boardroom. Few people are as passionate about and committed to the customer experience and a positive contact center culture as Steve is. And few people are as proud of what the Blinds.com team has been able to accomplish in terms of performance, customer loyalty and agent engagement.
I had the honor of interviewing Steve recently to learn more about what drives Blinds.com’s tremendous customer care success. Following are the questions I posed to him – and the insightful responses he provided.
Q: You’ve said that what sets Blinds.com’s contact center apart from much of the competition is its focus on “competence over compliance”. Can you please elaborate?
Most contact centers operate with a heavy focus on QA. What then happens is that success is defined by a score. But if you ask the average contact center, “Is it possible to get a great score and have it be a bad call?” most centers will say yes. And if you ask the converse, “Is it possible to get a bad score but be a great call?” they’ll say yes again.
So I ask, “Am I the only one in the room that thinks that’s wrong?” You’re not measuring the right thing. Score rarely measures skill – most folks in a contact center will exhibit aberrant behavior to change the score to increase their pay.
Scores rarely manifest great skill. Teach your team the skills that are important to you, the business, and you get greater compliance through improved skill. When you chase the right things, you start seeing double-digit performance improvement.
When skills get better, the customer experience gets better. That’s the value of competence over compliance.
Q: How do your center’s quality monitoring and performance management practices support your “competence over compliance” mantra?
After about a year of discovery, we were able to identify 10 skill sets that need to be exhibited during a customer interaction. By identifying such specific skills, our coaches can come in and help make agents and interactions better. We take QA and remove the ambiguity and judgment. A person can listen to a customer service call and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on whether particular skills were demonstrated.
Actions speak louder than words. We practice daily coaching to build skill and compensate our team based on the presence of those skills – even customer service! Again, you need to chase the right things.
Q: I’ve heard you speak of the three components of the “Blinds.com Experience” for customers. Can you list them and elaborate a little on each?
Certainly, but let me start off by pointing out it’s the definition of the customer experience that defines the role of an employee, not a job title or script. If you ask the average contact center employee, “What’s your job?” they’ll say something like, “To answer calls”, or “To help our customers”, or “To assist customers in making a good purchasing decision.” Those are all great things, but that’s not it.
We at Blinds.com have spent a lot of time discerning what we want the customer experience to be, and have focused on that. When customers love the experience of doing business with you, they come back. People buy from people they like and trust.
Do customers really want their name said three times in a conversation? Wouldn’t they still buy from you if they truly liked you? Yes. Like me, trust me, buy from me. You must have the definition around that incredible customer experience that your employees can rally around.
Now, all that said, the three components of the Blinds.com customer experience are:
Customer solutions – A customer service rep’s job is to deliver solutions for everyone that talks to them. If they don’t, they haven’t done their job. Not only do you need to give a customer what they ask for, but also think ahead of what they might need next. Buying a blind? You’ll need a way to clean it. There’s a big difference between a commodity provider and a customer solution provider.
Make it easy – If it’s hard to work with you, customers won’t want to do business with you. Regardless of how challenging your job is or how hard your product is to sell, the customer simply doesn’t care what you have to go through. The easier you make it on them, the more they’ll want to return – and they’ll tell their friends.
Extraordinary service – When a person hangs up after a call with my team, their first reaction ought to be “WOW! That was great!” All businesses provide customer experiences, but I’d be hard pressed to say they are all good ones, or even average ones. We let employees know that providing extraordinary service is their job, and they know what really defines their job. All of our employee training revolves around how to deliver amazing experiences. Define your customer experience, make it easy to do business with you and you’ll see happier customers and happier contact center employees.
Q: What are some of the customer service and contact center related awards Blinds.com has received in recent years?
- Contact Center of the Year Award (10th Annual Call Center Week)
- Gold and Silver ‘Stevie Awards’ for Service, Innovation and Leadership
- ‘50 Most Engaged Workplaces in America’ ranking
- ‘Houston’s Best Place to Work’ (multiple years, presented by the Houston Business Journal)
- ‘Houston Top Workplaces’ (multiple years, presented by the Houston Chronicle)
- Internet Retailer Top 500 Companies
- AMA Marketer of the Year
- Houston’s Best and Brightest Company to Work for
It’s an interesting exercise to review what kinds of awards your business is winning – they tell a story about your brand. The awards we are most excited about are typically the ‘best workplaces’ awards – they are a testimony to how we pay attention to the internal workings of the company. When culture is thriving inside, it goes a long way toward great customer service.
Q: Great customer service and experiences don’t happen without great agents in place. What does Blinds.com look for when selecting new agents for the contact center?
Getting hired at Blinds.com is admittedly a lengthy process. We actually have a 7-stage interview process:
- General skill tests – can you type and navigate through a website?
- Screening phone call
- Initial in-person interview
- Sales/service manager interview
- Group interview with three members of the agent team – employee approval is important to us!
- Then you meet me – I’m looking for areas of trainability and how well you perform under pressure. This interview isn’t one of the fun ones.
- And finally you meet our CEO, Jay Steinfeld – he’s looking primarily for cultural fit and values. His questions are higher level and really insightful.
Culture is everything to us, and we are very protective of it. Just because an applicant is competent doesn’t mean they’ll be a good cultural fit. We take great pains to try to smoke out candidates that are not a good fit. We hire only about one out of every 50 applicants we meet.
So yes, our hiring process is very long, but our retention rate is unheard of – less than a 4% turnover rate annually. Agents don’t get on floor if they don’t hit the metrics during training (we call it ‘Academy Bay’). We just don’t let the bad ones in, and we have a great and exciting structure in place to keep the good ones with us for years and years.
Q: What kinds of practices and programs are in place to keep agent performance, engagement and retention high?
We don’t spend a lot of time on contests, awards and tricks. (We do occasionally employ these, but very selectively and only if I want an added push or extra benefit.) The best motivators around are a fun and positive work environment, a focus on personal development, great paychecks and opportunities to grow your career. Our employees legitimately love coming to work every day. It’s a fantastic environment and our customers hear that in our voices.
Our team gets unusually high conversion rates (approaching 50%) and a great Average Order Value. People here aspire to do a good job – always better than the day before. We are creators of opportunity, and when you have a company that’s growing and has opportunity inside, it’s a huge motivating factor.
Q: Can you provide a quote from a couple of agents regarding what it’s like working at Blinds.com?
“I feel more like an owner/operator of my own business than a design consultant in a call center here at Blinds.com. As a team, we are an important part of deciding what goals the company should meet, and are expected to voice ways for us to reach those goals. It really is a privilege to call myself a member of the Blinds.com family!” –Christian Quinn
“Working at Blinds.com is like being next to your best friends all day. We learn, get frustrated, find solutions, grow and celebrate together. The support to be the best person I can be is the greatest thing about working here!” –Rachel Bills
Blinds.com – The Big Picture
Contact center location(s): Houston, Texas
Hours of operation: M-F 7am-9pm CST; Sat & Sun 9am-5pm CST
Number of agents employed: 140 agents (with 180+ employees total)
Channels handled: Phone, email, chat, web self-service, and social media
What’s so great about them: Their focus is on ‘competence over compliance’. Internal scores don’t drive the business – it’s all about agent development and the customer experience, NOT mindless metrics. A very positive culture!
A couple of months ago while on LinkedIn perusing an active group discussion on “call center culture”, I read a post that piqued my interest. It was written by Richard Hall, Director of Revenue Operations for Shopify – a hot e-commerce company that provides everything its customers need to create an online store. Richard wrote about how different the culture in Shopify’s contact center is from most other organizations’ centers, and provided a few examples of how empowered and valued his frontline employees are.
Me being a big proponent of agent engagement and empowerment, I reached out to Richard to learn a little more and to see if he might be interested in having me feature Shopify in my "Contact Centerfold" column. As you no doubt have already figured out, Richard was indeed interested, and was kind enough to share his insights and the secrets of his center’s success with me – and now with you.
I’ve heard that Shopify has a very unique contact center culture. Please elaborate on what makes your center stand out.
For a contact center, Shopify really isn't like many others. What sets us apart is that the ‘Gurus’ [which is what we call our agents] are in a really interesting and advantageous hybrid role of support and education. And because of the immense amount of data at each Guru’s fingertips, they're able to be much more proactive in the support that they provide, as opposed to the reactive support that you'll find typical of the industry. E-commerce is a really complex industry, and bringing Shopify to the masses makes shop owner education a priority.
I understand your agents – sorry, ‘Gurus’ – are highly empowered to take initiative and to continually improve operations and the customer experience. How do they make their improvement ideas and recommendations known?
Being a Shopify Guru really comes to 'acting like an owner' – it's one of the pillars of Shopify in general. When a Guru comes across an issue or problem, it's expected that they're going to act on it. And to back that up, we've made all of the resources and support they need available to make that happen.
Shopify is a very data-driven organization. When we come across a customer pain-point or feature request, we want to know how many people have issue ‘A’, or feature request ‘B’. We have an internal issue-tracker, where we'll log those pain-points and feature requests, and when a Guru is invested in a particular one, we'll usually have a meeting amongst a portion of our team and brainstorm possible solutions and a course of action. We'll log those in our internal tracker, and meet with our developers, designers and product managers to hammer out the details. Shopify moves at a ridiculously fast pace, so there's no single correct way to get things done, but this is a good representation of the norm.
Take me through the empowerment process. How does a Guru get his/her idea or recommendation accepted, and, once it is accepted, what steps occur in getting the idea/recommendation implemented? What roles do Gurus play in bringing their ideas to fruition?
To have a recommendation accepted is all about painting a picture of need, while considering all of the effects of the change – both in terms of development and support. The brainstorming sessions where we think of potential solutions also serves as an opportunity to poke holes in the thesis – e.g., “Do the majority of our customers really need this?” or “Would this be better served as a workflow change?”
The empowerment itself really takes place in leading our newest Gurus to sources of information. For instance, helping them learn which developer knows the most about ‘X’, which designer is working on ‘Y’. When a recommendation is seen as a global benefit, the Guru really becomes a project manager of sorts, as their insight is regarded as valuable and developers and designers will look to them for feedback as the project progresses.
Can you please provide a couple of examples of notable programs or improvements that have come about as the result of a Guru’s idea or recommendation?
Gurus have been instrumental in improving Shopify's streamlined sign-up process by providing valuable data and insight, which allowed our team to cut down on the amount of duplicate or accidental stores created by 92%.
Another that we're currently working on is the workflow around domains. How an existing domain is added to a shop vs. the purchase of a new domain through Shopify. While we don't know the full effect yet, we've worked with our Marketing team to reduce the cost-to-customer of the domain from $25 to $9 in an effort to incite more purchases within Shopify. A win-win for everyone: reduced support cost; better customer experience; no frustration, confusion, time-wasted during set up – we do this all for them.
I’ve heard that Shopify supplies employees with food, games and even some alcohol. Do your Gurus ever overindulge?
The folks at Shopify work extremely hard, and it's a labor of love, I think. If you like to pair your tacos with a fresh pour of beer, so be it. And while we know how to party, it tends to be after hours (whenever they happen to be). Otherwise, it's all about the customer experience.
Are there other notably innovative practices and tactics that help to define your contact center’s culture?
We really get all of the fixings at Shopify. The flexibility to work from home, from cafes, from a friend's house, wherever there's wifi. Mind you, with the allure of a breakfast bar and lunches and suppers [at our facility], it's tough to stay at home all day. Some of our Gurus will work from home for the first part of their shift and then migrate to the office to catch up on meetings, and to be in that energetic team environment. We also get a gym membership to an awesome facility in the Byward Market [here in Ottawa], and a yearly "Sportify Fund" of $250 to spend on anything that will benefit your health. That's not to mention a spending account for educational purposes, the in-house cleaning service, or ownership in the company via share options – among other nice benefits.
What are the main performance metrics Gurus are measured on?
We have a general expectation of what we call interactions. To stay on top of things, everyone is expected to complete a defined number of daily interactions with customers, whether through phone, email or live chat. The other main metrics are focused on the quality of interactions. Going back to Shopify as a data-driven company, we have a ton of data that speaks to those interactions – e.g, the time it took to respond to an email, the length of a live chat, how long it took to pick up a call, wrap-up time, etc. These are all regarded as metrics that empower our Gurus, as they can identify time-sinks and work to improve them.
With that, we've built up a culture that doesn't require a singular focus on metrics. Another thing which is kind of a hybrid of culture and metrics is our internal reward system called Unicorn – it's a system of peer-based recognition, where employees can nominate fellow employees with a Unicorn post, and where others can dedicate votes and the receivers of the votes will actually get cold hard cash. So if a Guru works on a day off writing a killer support tutorial, we'll recognize his or her efforts in front of the team.
What impact has the center’s highly employee-centric culture had on Guru engagement and retention?
Our CEO was quoted as saying we’ve lost only like two employees in the last couple of years. And this [high level of retention] is true for our support team. We're all really stoked to be working on amazing projects at Shopify, which has really helped with our rapid growth. We can recruit, hire and grow without having to worry about re-filling the brainpower. The amount of product knowledge and support intelligence that a Guru has after a year is immense and invaluable. For a position that's been around for a little over two years, only two colleagues have moved onto other opportunities.
Can you provide some quotes from a couple of Gurus on what it’s like working in the Shopify contact center?
Rather than cite a few quotes, here's a short video [less than 3 minutes] featuring several of our Gurus talking about their experience working at Shopify:
Is there anything else you would like to add?
The first Shopify store was our own. Now we help people all over the world sell online. Our Guru E-Commerce team is an industry leader in e-commerce customer consultation. They provide world class service and support to world-class customers.
Shopfiy – the Big Picture
Contact center location(s): Ottawa, Ontario (Canada)
Hours of operation: 24/7/365
Number of agents employed: Lots
Products/services supported/provided: Shopify Core product, Themes and Apps, General SEO, Marketing Techniques and Strategies – Full Customer Success Consultation.
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, chat, web self-service and social media.
What’s so great about them? Ask just about anybody who works in their contact center, and leave enough time to hear all the reasons.
This month’s Contact Centerfold features an interview with renowned contact center expert Tim Montgomery, Managing Partner of the uniquely though aptly named contact center outsourcing firm Culture.Service.Growth (CSG). Tim shares what sets CSG apart from other customer care organizations, and why agents, customers and corporate clients keep smiling and sticking around.
(In the Q&A session below, “GL” is yours truly and “TM” is the one and only Tim Montgomery.)
GL: CSG prides itself on “managing people rather than efficiency”. Could you please briefly explain what that means and why it’s important?
TM: Prior to starting CSG, we worked with hundreds of contact centers to help them improve service and efficiency. In most of the companies we advised, the real opportunity was to refocus the leadership team from managing by the metrics to managing to agent behaviors.
This is a lot more difficult than it sounds, as the leaders have to spend time understanding the drivers behind metrics in order to have an effective behavior-based conversation with agents. At CSG, we train all of our leaders to focus on the person first and understand the "why' behind the metrics.
The real difference is seen in the feedback we get back from our agents, who tell us how their experience in our contact center feels very different than their experience in other contact center environments they have been in.
GL: Could you please provide a few specific examples that clearly illustrate CSG’s progressive management style?
TM: Sure. Our philosophy is simple – treat every agent as an adult and assume everyone wants to do their best every day. We limit the amount of formal policies we have in place and focus more on the expected outcome. For example, we don't have a formal attendance policy other than we expect you to come to work on a regular basis. Same with quality – it's not about a score on a form. We focus on continuous improvement on every interaction. Our lack of formal policies expands to our dress code. We ask our reps to look in the mirror and if they'd go to dinner with their grandmother dressed like that, then they can come to work dressed like that. In two years, we've never had to send anyone home because of dress. We spend all our time focused on what agents do and no time on what they wear.
GL: How do agents feel about the contact center’s unique approach? What are engagement and retention levels like?
TM: We believe a strong indicator of employee engagement is the percent of new employees that come from internal referrals. About 60% of our current staff was hired as a result of another employee referring them to this ‘great place to work’, with many being family members and close friends of existing agents.
GL: To succeed as an outsourcer and get clients to trust you with their customers, you obviously need to have a highly experienced management team. Can you talk a little about the collective experience of your leaders?
TM: Quite simply, we know contact centers and world-class service better than anyone. Our owners and leaders have more than 100 years of experience running contact centers for USAA – the world's most celebrated contact center organization. Our core team members at CSG are experts in contact center leadership, operations and improvement. We are trusted advisors to some of the world's top brands. We've taken the lessons learned from decades of running and improving contact centers to create the core of what will become the new standard in contact center outsourcing relationships.
GL: I’ve heard you mention – and seen you write about – something you call ‘Service 1st’. Please tell us what that is in a nutshell.
TM: ‘Service 1st’ is based on a call reduction philosophy that generates improved customer experiences. Driving improvement from the frontline is the foundation of a world-class organization. This frontline-driven approach allows us to provide continuous feedback to our clients to adjust areas of their organization that may be generating unnecessary customer contacts. Such an approach not only saves money; it directly impacts the customer’s perception of the organization. One of our driving principles at CSG is to help clients continually reduce operational defects, and we do this one call at a time.
GL: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
TM: Our value is based on the fact that we don't see a call as merely a transaction or a number. We see every contact as an opportunity to gather intelligence. From day one, our agents are taught to think of their role as ‘process engineers’ and to look for ways to help the company they're supporting get more out of every contact. By focusing on the total cost of ownership, clients incur lower support costs (fewer calls) and improved customer loyalty (fewer defects).
CSG – the Big Picture
Contact center location(s): Two locations in San Antonio, Texas.
Hours of operation: 24/7
Number of agents employed: 250
Products/services supported/provided: Outsourced contact center support for a wide variety of industries and client types.
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, chat, web self-service and social media
What’s so great about them? They pride themselves on a unique contact center culture where efficiency never comes at the expense of quality, and where people are viewed as more important than metrics.
(Reprinted with permission from 1to1Media.)
Organizations serious about making the best decisions for their customers are often challenged with ensuring that everybody within the company, from decision-makers to frontline employees, is fully aware of the needs of their customers. In order to do this, customer-centric organizations are trying to eliminate any disconnect between the C-Suite and their end customers.
Canadian telecommunications company Telus wanted to make sure its senior leaders were sensitive to customer needs. The organization was happy with the products and services it was providing, but recognized that delivering an outstanding customer experience was the main differentiator in the competitive telecom sector. Thus, it decided to embark on a journey to dramatically improve its customer experience. As Carol Borghesi, senior vice president of Telus' Customers First Culture, explains, the organization essentially turned its attention to putting customers at the heart of everything it does.
As part of its overall strategy of understanding the customer experience and putting the customer first, Telus embarked in 2010 on what Borghesi describes as a "lifestyle change." This company-wide initiative brought together decision-makers with frontline employees to map the customer journey and identify problems – small and large – which could be addressed to improve the ultimate experience.
The journey started by pairing the company's most senior executives with a frontline employee from a different department for an entire shift.. "We told them to clear their calendars so that they weren't disturbed and could sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the frontline employee," Borghesi explains.
This initiative was meant to give the organization's decision-makers a glimpse into the problems that frontline employees were facing on a daily basis as well as provide face-time with customers. "It was a truly eye-opening experience and meant that people who wouldn't normally know what's going on in the frontline had the opportunity to [do so]," Borghesi says.
But Telus didn't want this to be solely a data-gathering exercise. The organization wanted to take action on the insights it gathered. Borghesi says at the end of the day each two-person team agreed to present one specific issue that the frontline worker was facing and which was preventing him from providing the best experience to customers. These issues were then discussed during four senior leadership forums across Canada and the organization outlined a number of recommendations generated from those meetings that could help improve customer experience. Borghesi says within two years about 70% of the list has been addressed.
Although the initiative started with pairing about 350 senior managers with frontline workers, it was so successful that the organization decided to extend the program. Today about 4,000 people – a tenth of Telus' staff – have gone through the experience. "We've included everyone, including network technologists and architects," Borghesi says, adding that the initiative has "ignited renewed vigor and passion around doing what's best for customers."
Borghesi explains that the second part of Telus' Customers First strategy included gathering and making sense of customer intelligence from a variety of different touchpoints, including emails, chat sessions, calls to the contact center, and escalations. Additionally, the organization wanted to determine its customers' likelihood to recommend Telus and wanted every employee to be privy to customer insights and "likelihood to recommend" results on its Intranet landing page. Further, Telus shares customer comments on the same page and encourages employees to read them.
Insights Lead to Results
Being closer to customers has helped Telus make remarkable improvements in its customers' likelihood to recommend the company. According to Borghesi, Telus has registered a 15% year-over-year improvement when compared to its competitors, something she described as a "huge result" when considering the effort needed to improve this key metric.
Borghesi also points toward an "enormous improvement" in employee engagement, specifically employees' likelihood to recommend the company. "We realized that [customer satisfaction and employee engagement] move together. As employee engagement improves, so does the customer experience. And as we work to improve customer experience, in turn we're improving employee engagement," Borghesi says.
Telus believes that it achieved these results because every employee is living and breathing the Customers First strategy. "We've turned up the volume in listening to customers and in doing so have focused on dissatisfaction, which is where customers were experiencing pain." For example, Telus was aware that the repair experience has been traditionally problematic for the wireless industry. "People are giving a lot of importance to their smartphones and if something goes wrong with their phones, they can barely live without them," Borghesi says. However, the organization didn't have a great track record in delivering a seamless repair experience. By drilling down into customer insights and recognizing the need to improve the repair experience, Telus has reduced overall dissatisfaction by 50% in less than two years. "We've taken listening to customers and paying attention to voice-of-the-customer to heart and are channeling our attention to what customers are telling us."
Prioritizing the Mobile Experience
The next step in Telus' Customers First strategy was to be mobile-savvy and integrate mobile service within the overall service strategy. Customers are increasingly interacting with companies over their smartphones and Telus knew that it needed to focus on giving its customers the ability to seamlessly interact via mobile. "If something goes awry when interacting with an account via smartphone, customers need a seamless way to access a contact center agent," says Borghesi.
The result of this goal was the Mobile First strategy, which focuses on facilitating customers' need to self-serve over their smartphones. According to Borghesi, Telus' mobile strategy has been a success. Not only has customer feedback been positive, but the organization has seen deflection in contact center calls. This win-win-win situation means that customers are happy because they're getting their issues resolved without having to contact Telus, the company is saving money, and employees are satisfied because they can focus on more complicated issues which require greater attention.
According to Borghesi this is the way forward for organizations which need to focus on making transactions simple so that customers can serve themselves. But first, business leaders need to put their ears to the ground and listen to what their customers are saying before taking action. Sometimes they will be surprised by what they learn.
This article was originally published in 1to1Magazine in July by 1to1Media, who has granted Off Center permission to use it here. The article, originally titled “Telus Focuses on Customer Experience”, was written by 1to1Media’s Senior Writer Cynthia Clark.
Salt River Project – one of Arizona’s largest utilities – has long engaged agents (and customers) with its positive and powerful culture of service. I recently had the honor of interviewing SRP’s Director of Residential Services, Yolanda France, who was gracious enough to share many of the practices and approaches that drive the contact center’s high employee satisfaction and performance.
(In the Q & A below, “GL” is me and “YF” is Yolanda France.)
GL: I hear that at SRP, rewarding & recognizing agents is a high priority. Please describe some of your rewards/recognition programs and practices, and the impact they have had on agent engagement.
YF: We value our representatives and know that they have a very challenging job – perhaps one of the most complex in our company! We want to let them know that being here and doing a good job assisting our customers is very important and that we really appreciate them.
We have an award given monthly for the best call for a specific topic. An example of a specific type is a high bill call. The winning call is chosen by a committee of fellow phone reps who listen to the call and decide if their peer was able to help out the customer. Prizes include movie tickets, lunch with a supervisor, the rep’s preferred schedule for one week, and an extra-long lunch hour.
All of our reps can also qualify for the “Perfect Attendance” award. Being tardy or absent disqualifies a rep for that award, which is given out on a monthly basis – we randomly choose three winners among those who qualify each month. So, it pays to come to work, literally!
Here’s what a couple of our contact center supervisors have to say about our employee rewards and recognition practices:
Gene Gerhart, Supervisor: “We hear all the time that reps like to be recognized. The opportunities and rewards we provide them motivate them – and a happy employee stays.”
Frank Garshak, Supervisor: “We want to let our reps know that we appreciate their effort because without them we would not be able to have a world-class organization.”
GL: How do you balance individual awards and team awards to ensure that not only the “stars” get recognized? Do you do any “recognition for recognition’s sake” types of things to keep center-wide morale up?
YF: We like to recognize people for their strengths. They don’t have to be the star, but we really concentrate on finding out what they do well and maximizing that talent. For example, if we have a person who is technically inclined, we may have them help with testing of new functionalities of our customer relationship management system. We also have a whole team devoted to doing fun events. They are called the “SWAT” (Spirit Work Activities Team). They plan events for various occasions throughout the year for holidays and Customer Service Week. The team also coordinates things like pot-lucks, games, parties and salsa challenges as well as holiday food drives, Adopt-A-Family volunteering, and many other activities that support SRP’s community involvement. You say you’re having a "lack-o-fun" emergency? Call in the SWAT!
GL: Do agents have a say in the types of incentives and awards that are provided? Do you seek their feedback to ensure that the various rewards & recognition programs are effective?
YF: Absolutely! In fact, many of our current awards programs come directly from feedback given by reps. Call Center management meets monthly with reps to update them on various projects throughout SRP. These meetings also serve as a forum for reps to provide feedback on what is and what isn’t working in the Call Center. We have sessions with the Senior Director of Customer Services, Renee Castillo, known as “Rappin’ with Renee.” And myself, the Director of Residential Customer Service, have meetings called “Yappin’ with Yolanda.” See a pattern here?
GL: I understand that agents have ample opportunities for cross-training and other development initiatives to add diversity to their core job function. Please provide some examples.
YF: Reps are often selected by their supervisors for opportunities to cross-train in other functional work areas within Customer Services, such as Billing, Accounting, Research & Communications Services, and Field Services, just to name a few. Reps can also participate in a variety of special projects and teams. As I mentioned, they participate as user acceptance testers for new software releases and upgrades to our customer relationship management system. They are the primary users and know when things work and when they don’t. These activities do not come with pay raises but build a knowledge foundation and provide networking opportunities when our reps feel they are ready to become Lead Customer Service Reps or move on to other departments within SRP.
GL: Is there a clear career path in the contact center (i.e., various agent levels, team lead/supervisory opportunities, management training, etc.)?
YF: Many of our reps are promoted up the Call Center ladder, so to speak. The traditional progression is to start as a rep, then progress to a Lead Customer Service Rep, and then possibly to Call Center Supervisor or Call Center Analyst, and then to Manager. As an interesting tidbit, 14 of the 19 members of the Call Center management team (Supervisors, Managers and Director) were SRP reps at one point in their careers.
GL: Your agents seem to stick around for a long time. Surely your hiring practices help set the stage for such high retention... can you share how you hire and select reps?
YF: Certainly. We have a pretty comprehensive hiring process. We ask candidates to take an assessment test. Those who pass the assessment are then invited to call for a quick phone interview. Those who pass the phone interview are invited to participate in a “speed interview.” Managers and supervisors throughout Customer Services along with members of our Training Development and Customer Interaction group interview the candidates. Each candidate gets two minutes to answer a question and then moves to another seat where another interviewer asks another question. We’ve found that candidates tend to be less nervous, and get to meet people with whom they would be working. In turn, managers, supervisors, and our Training group get to meet potential reps and, collectively, select the best of the best.
GL: Is there anything else you would like to add?
YF: I’d like to share some comments from a couple of members of my esteemed team. I think what they have to say pretty much sums up our contact center environment:
Di Witt, Supervisor: “We really feel that having a balance of fun and professionalism is important so that employees come to work and know that we want them to be happy coming to work. If they are happy, our customers will be happy too.”
Seth Bingham, Rep: “I’ve worked in customer services for over 10 years with five different companies. SRP is the best by far! The caliber of the people who work here is amazing. [Management] makes everyone feel welcome and like they are family. Work has never been so enjoyable until I started working here!”
SRP – the Big Picture
Contact center locations: Two (Arizona) locations: one in Tempe, and one in Queen Creek
Hours of operation: 24/7
Number of agents employed: 230
Products/services supported/provided: Electric utility service
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, web self-service and social media
What’s so great about them? The center prides itself on its excellent rewards & recognition practices, as well as its strong focus on agent development and empowerment.
In contact centers, AHT is an acronym for a common (some would say too common) productivity metric: Average Handle Time. At Israeli outsourcing agency Call Yachol, AHT could very well stand for Average Hug Time.
Agents openly embracing one another is a common occurrence in Call Yachol’s contact center, whose “culture of warmth and caring” drives the center’s success both internally and externally. Whether interacting with one another, with management or with customers, Call Yachol’s agents’ words and deeds are guided by a strong sense of kinship, compassion and mutual respect.
Such camaraderie among peers is all the more impressive when you consider the fact that the center’s frontline is comprised of two distinct factions who have historically had their differences.
“We have 220 religious Muslims and Jews working together in harmony,” says Dr. Gil Winch, Founder of Call Yachol and CEO of the consulting firm Tandem.
While it’s nice to see everybody getting along, what’s even more notable about the people at Call Yachol is that the vast majority of them have some form of disability. That said, it’s hard to consider them “disabled” – they’re the very reason the organization is going so strong.
“Our call center representatives are all highly motivated, willing to work for many years, and exceptionally loyal to the task and the client,” says Dr. Winch. “Due to the higher than average level of job stability, we are able to reduce the costs of personnel turnover for the client and offer a high level of professionalism, thus contributing to providing excellent service.”
“Able to Do Anything”
After listening to Dr. Winch describe his staff – and seeing them in action – it becomes evident why he named the company Call Yachol. “Yachol” in Hebrew means “able to do anything”.
Few of the centers agents had been given the opportunity to show their abilities prior to being hired by Call Yachol. People with disabilities are often overlooked or outright discriminated against by hiring managers – not just in Israel but the world over. Dr Winch, however, fully understands how capable such individuals are and how valuable they can be.
“There is no reason for these employees' mental or physical limitations to keep them from excelling on the job. But most have suffered from being shunned by mainstream employers, and lack self-confidence in their potential.”
This is where the hugging comes in. To help qualified agents regain their confidence, Winch implemented a parent-based management model where employees are given affection and have scheduled time for team fun. The unusual approach has been very effective – and has garnered interest from organizations in several countries looking to replicate it.
Hugs aren’t the only thing Call Yachol does well. The company’s CEO, Amir Bar-Natan, has 12 years’ experience managing service and sales centers. He and his management team work closely with clients to select, develop and manage staff.
“We recruit employees according to our customer's needs, train them to meet the demands of the job, and take care of whatever administrative and technological needs they require – such as special software for the visually-impaired – so as to create an ideal work environment,” says Bar-Natan.
But you don’t have to take his or Dr. Winch’s word for it. Plenty of praise has come from the one-of-a-kind outsourcer’s corporate clients.
“Call Yachol meets all our needs and we receive numerous 'thank you' letters from satisfied customers,” says Danny Zur, V.P. of Human Resources for Israeli cellular phone provider Pelephone, which uses approximately 130 Call Yachol agents in various areas of telephone service and sales. Zur points out that companies shouldn’t consider using Call Yachol merely because it makes sense from a social responsibility standpoint, but rather because it’s a smart business move. “From our point of view this is a pure business consideration – this is not a favor nor is it philanthropy.”
Nurit Kantor, VP of Service at telecom giant Bezeq International, will never regret exploring the untapped workforce that Call Yachol offers. “The representatives prove that nothing stands in the way of what you really want,” says Kantor. “They are optimistic, fiercely motivated, and have an excellent awareness of service. We are proud to have trained them to join our ranks.”
A Proud and Fearless Front Line
Glowing reviews from clients certainly speak volumes, but perhaps the best way to grasp the power of what Call Yachol has accomplished is to hear directly from its agents.
“After four years of unemployment, hundreds of résumés, and many interviews without result, I arrived at Call Yachol,” says agent Yossi Zeidovitz. “Much has already been said and written about the family atmosphere at Call Yachol, but for me, Call Yachol has provided many things beyond work. First and foremost, I can hold my head up high and have pride in my disability.”
Another agent, Limor Gotlib, credits Call Yachol with restoring her confidence and a sense of normalcy after she suffered an eye injury that severely impaired her vision and forced her to leave her previous job eight years ago. “The Call Yachol call center is a business in every respect – it does not give its employees any extra privileges because of their disabilities. This gives the feeling of being in a regular workplace, one that has given me the opportunity to realize my talents. I recommend other people, no matter what their disability, to join our family and not to be afraid of joining the workforce.”
There may soon be plenty more openings for such individuals. According to Dr. Winch, Call Yachol plans to open centers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the near future.
“We are already the largest employer of people with disabilities in the open market in Israel. Our vision is to employ thousands of people with disabilities in a countrywide distribution of call centers, leading a much-needed and important revolution.”
Call Yachol – the Big Picture:
Location: Rishon LeZion, Israel
Hours of operation: 7:30 am-10 pm
Number of agents: Approximately 220
Products/services provided/supported: Outsourced contact center/customer care services for a variety of corporate clients.
What’s so great about them? A truly unique and successful customer care organization staffed with a culturally diverse team of agents – all of whom have some form of disability – working harmoniously in an open and caring environment.
For more information on Call Yachol, visit their website at: www.callyachol.co.il (click the “English” tab in the upper-left corner to convert the site from Hebrew to English.)
Also, be sure to check out this short video on Call Yachol’s unique operation:
http://goo.gl/XW4bP
When the economy went south a few years back, many organizations started focusing on employee layoffs. At Comerica Bank’s call center, the focus was more on employee engagement and empowerment.
Comerica realized that great customer service is never as important as it is during volatile times, and that such service isn’t possible unless the call center’s agents feel respected and valued. Today the folks on the frontline at Comerica’s centers in Dallas and Detroit are viewed less as customer service agents and more as customer service consultants.
“We wanted to get agents more involved and concerned with the day-to-day operations of our company,” explains Patrick O’Shea, Senior VP of Comerica’s Customer Contact Center. “Agents are the workhorses and the engine that keep every contact center running, yet they are often viewed as expendable. We did not want that culture in our center, so we partnered with the very people who could tell us best how to achieve more – our own agents.”
The overall result? A lot of Comerica customers and employees who have no plans of leaving the company anytime soon.
“Once we started working with our agents as consultants, we moved more quickly toward customer satisfaction and engagement,” O’Shea says. “This metamorphosis has led to agents becoming more engaged, as they’re now empowered to advise us on how to better operate.”
Giving Agents the Gavel
One way Comerica empowers the frontline is via the use of an “Agent Council.” The council is made up of one peer-elected delegate from each team in the call center. These delegates meet with one another and O’Shea once a month to discuss issues of interest or concern and come up with solutions that are good for agents and the business.
“The Agent Council is our ‘congress’, if you will,” O’Shea explains. “We review whatever is important to the agents, and then what is important to leadership. For instance, we may spend 25 minutes discussing dress code for the agents, followed by a 25-minute discussion on goal attainment. The benefit of the council is that we collaborate together as we forge what is best for the company, the customer and our culture.”
The council isn’t the only way that Comerica actively involves agents in continuously improving processes and the customer experience. Agent also participate in focus groups, where they are asked to provide comprehensive and candid feedback on key topics presented by management. “The focus groups are specific agenda-lead meetings for the sole purpose of information-gathering on a particular topic,” says O’Shea. “Often, results of a focus group are brought to an Agent Council meeting for review and to determine next steps.”
The council and focus groups aren’t in place just to make agents feel like they have a say; rather, real results are achieved – and the call center’s culture is strengthened, says O’Shea.
“I think we – leadership and the frontline – now have a much better understanding and appreciation for each others' duties and workload due to the council and groups. We have re-written such things as attendance policies, dress codes and escalation processes. Each rewritten policy and procedure not only serves the company and the culture better, it always results in improved customer engagement.”
And agents certainly don’t seem to mind the extra responsibility.
“I love the Agent Council,” says one Comerica agent, Michelle. “I’ve never worked somewhere where I actually create the rules and have the ability to vote on how we run the call center.”
An Ever-Expanding Library of Service Excellence
Adding to Comerica’s culture of empowerment and continuous improvement is an innovative “exemplary call” initiative that is driven by the center’s agents. Any time an agent completes what they feel was an excellent call in which they provided great service and truly connected with the customer, the agent can send an email containing the call time and date to their supervisor. The supervisor locates the recording of the call in question, listens to it and, in many cases, “adds it to the ‘superstar great call’ library, which can be accessed by the entire contact center,” O’Shea explains. He points out that such calls have helped to enhance agent training and development throughout the center. “These calls can be played during training as well as team meetings and town hall events.”
The calls also lead to rewards and accolades for the agents who “star” in them. “Agents can receive prizes as well as recognition in the form of certificates to be placed on their cubicles,” says O’Shea.
The recognition that agents receive for their top calls doesn’t come only from their supervisors. Occasionally, members of senior management who have listened to an exemplary call will send a praise-filled email to the agent involved.
While the emails sent by senior management are highly coveted by recipients in the call center, the folks on the frontline are hardly blown away by such personal attention from Comerica execs. Agents are, after all, pretty used to a high level of senior management support and involvement.
“A great culture starts at the top,” say O’Shea. “Our senior management team visits our contact centers, they meet our people and they celebrate victories with them. Contact centers are a full engagement sport.”
Comerica – the Big Picture:
Location: Dallas, TX; Detroit, MI
Hours of operation: 8 am-10 pm CT
Number of agents: 285
Products/services provided/supported: The sales and servicing of all Comerica financial products.
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, online banking (web self-service)
What’s so great about them? Their dedication to agent engagement and empowerment has led to notable increases in employee retention and performance, not to mention customer loyalty.
|