Category Archives: Call Center

May 04

Voice of the Customer as a Leadership Resource

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Thanks for visiting my site! Contact me or visit my company website to start a free trial of our hosted CDM software. CDM allows your customers to help coach and improve your employee's performance. Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com to find out how!

Do you currently have a VOC (Voice of the Customer) program in your organization? Are you or your marketing department conducting surveys on a regular basis? If you are, what kind of data are you receiving? Customer Satisfaction Scores? Net Promoter? Brand Awareness? Product Satisfaction?

All great data, but too often contact center leaders overlook the value a VOC program can bring to leaders. In fact, it can be one of the most powerful tools to help improve employee performance, improve morale, improve turnover, and increase manager efficiencies.

First lets review the 3 basic employee segments you have in your organization.

1. Top Performers. Your rockstar agents!
2. Average Performers. They do good work everyday.
3. Poor Performers: These are the people you wish you could give back to the community!

Here is a typical snapshot of how these employees are allocated across a team or organization.

 

Now lets review how a front-line manager spends their time with employees.

So you see the problem. Leaders often spend 80% of their time with a small percentage of employees – not to mention it’s their worst performers!

And here is the rub… Your top performers are more than likely wired that way. They are motivated to excel, regardless of how much time you spend with them. Don’t misunderstand, top performers need a coach to challenge them or they get burnt out.  A great way to reward top performers is to give them a problem to solve or teach them new things.

The real challenge is that the largest employee segment, average employees, is your largest segment and often most ignored… and  yet they do require attention to improve. They rely on encouragement and acknowledgment, yet simply go unnoticed.

And then we have the problem employees. The folks that have us wrapped up in paperwork and action plans until we start to go insane.

So here is how customer surveying can help. Customers spend time with all of your employees every day. So if you start surveying customers, they can help you encourage and motivate you staff. Especially the average employee segment. The key is to ask questions about the agent they interacted with and then share the data with your employees. The closer you can get to real-time feedback delivery to agents, the more powerful the results.  Ask how the agent did. How was their energy level? Did they seem to care? Did they take initiative? Certainly use some quantitative questions, but don’t lose sight of the fact that employees respond to “words” much better than any number. Don’t be afraid of text response questions simply because they are difficult to quantify.

Think about this: Which would be more meaningful to an agent?

Category: Empathy
Score: 3.87

Or this?

“Julie did help me process the order, but I was so upset about our car being stolen I couldn’t keep from crying. Julie didn’t seem to notice. It made me feel awkward…”

Which will impact Julie more? Which helps Julie “buy in” to the fact that should could be more empathetic?

So if your budget is tight, and your plate is full, consider putting customers to work coaching, motivating and improving your employees. After all, customers show up every day…hopefully…

That’s all for now. I’d love to hear your thoughts about numbers!

Are you customer driven? Do you leverage the voice of the customer in improving your employees? Are your customers working for you to reduce operational costs while improving employee performance?

Take the free Customer Driven challenge and put your customers to work today. Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com to find out how!

Scott O. Thomas
Senior Partner @ TPC
Customers @ Your Service!
twitter: http://twitter.com/scottothomas | linkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/scottothomas

Dec 14

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas in the Call Center 2011

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I can’t believe it’s December 2011 and as I post this, it’s only 10 days, 9 hours, and 55 minutes until Christmas! I thought I would share some holiday cheer in the form of a poem I wrote a few years back…


 

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the center

Not a creature was stirring, not even a printer;

The headsets were hung by the cubicles with care,

In hopes that not too many calls would be there.

 

Each manager was nestled all snug in their chair,

While visions of call volume made them each stare;

And I was alone, with a 10 page report,

With too many columns for my poor brain to sort!

 

When up on the reader board there displayed such a sight,

I sprang from my office with all of my might.

Away to the display I flew like a flash,

Tripped over a phone cord, and made a loud crash!

 

And that’s when I saw it, those numbers so high

I looked at that reader board and started to cry,

And finally I shouted, “What’s going on here?”

High call volume for Christmas could be something to fear!

 

Then I heard a strange noise that made me turn quick,

And there right before me was Jolly St. Nick!

He said, “Worry not! I brought help for these calls!

And still we’ll have time to deck all the halls!”

 

And he whistled, and shouted, and rolled up his sleeves

I was rubbing my eyes, I just could not believe

Then he opened his bag, which seemed rather full

And out ran a phone rep towards each cubicle.

 

“Now, Courtesy! Now, Patience! Show Sales Skills don’t wait!

Just some of the things that improve your close rate!

To the end of the aisle! To the top of the wall!

Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

 

As each rep signed in, I saw the reader board frown,

And then the huge call volume finally went down,

I went back to my office, and looked at the screen,

At all of those calls blinking from red to green.

 

So that’s why the “Big Guy” had dropped by that eve,

It was just so amazing and hard to believe,

For the gifts he delivered had no whistles or bells

Improved margins per hour and margins per sale!

 

And this gift creates new gifts to give out each day

In the actions they take, and the things that they say

And our customer’s love them, it’s what brings them back

Wonderful reps keep sales and service on track!

 

And then Santa waved, and he gave us a wink,

As only green lights were left on to blink.

But I heard him exclaim, as he walked out of sight,

“MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!”

 

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and an amazing 2012! I’d love to hear what your call center Christmas list has on it! Or maybe your contact center New Year’s resolutions!



scott o. thomas
senior partner @ tamer partners corporation

http://www.tamerpartners.com

Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com

Oct 10

How Does Your Contact Center Garden Grow?

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How Does Your Contact Center Garden Grow? Hopefully with an Employee Engagement Plan!

I have the opportunity to speak with one of my clients this week (Amas Tenumah – Teleflora, VP, Operations) at Call Center Demo & Conference is produced by ICMI. You can find more details here : Session details.

We wrote a brief article about our session and I thought I would share it with you here…

Close your eyes and think for a moment about the employees in your organization that speak to hundreds of customers each day. These frontline sales and service professionals will probably speak to more customers in a day than most executives will in a year. Are there some employees in this diverse workgroup that you hope speak to more customers than others? Maybe a few that you hope get the “easy” calls, while others you’d prefer having handle the more complex interactions? It’s been said that contact centers are like gardens, and your employees fall into three distinct categories of flowers. Roses are star employees, daisies are average performers, and weeds are hopefully improved (but sometimes removed) – and to ensure your garden grows, these employees require an employee engagement plan. Let’s take a moment to dive deeper into the characteristics of roses, daisies and weeds. Sometimes it its important to just stop and “smell” the service!

Roses are your star employees. These are the folks that when you think about implementing some sort of contest or recognition program in your center, you immediately imagine they will probably win it. We are fortunate they work for us, and they can really make the difference between success and failure. Like an actual rose, they require plenty of work and special handling.

Our second group of employees is our daisies. This is by far the largest group that we have in our organizations. We all know daisies. They are beautiful flowers, but in most gardens they don’t require a lot of upkeep or get a lot of attention. If you think about your average employees they aren’t much trouble. They show up and do their job. No hassles, no problems, they just simply do their jobs. Often the majority of employees throughout a company tend to fit into the daisy category. Our challenge as leaders is to avoid the tendency to ignore this group. In order to have an amazing garden, we must do something different with this group. Instead of ignoring them, we need to acknowledge and engage them.

That leaves us with the weeds. In most contact center gardens, only a small percentage of employees are weeds, yet often this is the group that leaders spend the most time with. You know who they are, and they know who they are. Unfortunately, this means an inordinate amount of leadership’s gardening time is spent with the people who bring the least value to your customers’ service experience. Now that we know what’s growing in our garden, we must create a strategy that allows are gardeners to let their roses bloom, empowers the daisies to transform, and encourages the weeds to diminish. Employee engagement is the key, and talented gardeners are part of the solution. The challenge is how many individual flowers are growing in your garden, and how much time a gardeners can spend with each of them.

So who are your gardeners? Team Leads? Supervisors? Managers and Trainers? Those are absolutely critical resources to improve employee engagement. How about your customers! Who better to encourage, critique, and motivate employees than the customers they interact with every day. You may have heard that award-winning gardeners admit to talking to their flowers. Our customers do that every day. A direct comment from a customer means infinitely more to an employee than direct criticism from a manager. Join our session  to learn more!

Session 201: It’s a Garden! Tried and True Tips for Growing an Engaged Team

Time: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM

Aug 24

The Four Steps to Changing Employee Behavior

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One of the primary goals of any leader is to continually develop their staff. Improving employee performance typically requires some sort of sustainable change in behavior. If someone lacks empathy with their customers, they have to purposefully change their actions and statements to successfully close this performance gap. I’ve outlined four key steps to changing employee behavior.

Step 1: Individual Discovery
The first step is Individual Discovery. Every employee has a unique set of strengths, and areas that need improvement. When assessing a team of sales and service employees, quantifiable data is key to identifying individual performance gaps. Typically an assessment can be accomplished in 30 days through observation, or collaborative observations, to identify consistent patterns of employee behavior. This allows you to see the areas where an employee truly shines, their comfort zones, and also the gaps in performance. Time is one of the largest barriers to successfully completing this step. In most cases a manager lacks time to invest in Individual Discovery for one employee, let alone their entire team. One of the most underutilized resources to help in this area is the voice of the customer. Leveraging the thousands of customers that interact with each of your employees every week to help observe during this phase provides the manager with virtually unlimited resources that are not only qualified, but are possibly the most credible experts to participate in this process.

Step 2: “Buy In”
Once Individual Discovery is completed, an employee must “Buy In” to the assessment before any real change can occur. The voice of the customer increases “Buy In” and reduces the amount of time it would normally take to complete this step. When employees are assessed by their customers, they more readily accept the assessment, reducing subjectivity or perceptions that may arise in traditional observations or quality monitoring. The reality is that a customer has more credibility at assessing performance than any internal personal in an organization. Think about it. We pay employees to observe employees, and then we have them talk to each other about what the customer experienced. What’s missing from this process? The customer! So not only can the customers help save time and improve the efficiency of the Individual Discovery step, they are equally valuable at gaining “Buy In” from your staff.

Step 3: Targeted Observation
This step is critical in achieving long term behavior change and employee improvement. Now that an employee has “Buy In” and begins to make appropriate changes when interacting with customers, Targeted Observation must occur to watch for any indications of improvement, while identifying any old habits that might resurface. Once again (do you see a pattern here?) the voice of the customer can provide tremendous value. Customer driven organizations can leverage the voice of the customer in a very targeted manner, allowing customers to observe specific performance opportunities for the individual employees they interact with. This approach allows employee A’s customers to help by observing them as they work on their empathy, while employee B engages their customers to observe them on active listening, and so on for every specific performance area of every unique employee.

Step 4: Targeted Feedback
As an employee begins making changes towards improvement, Targeted Feedback is critical to having long-term results. Typically an employee makes positive changes, and in some cases their manager will notice it, especially if it occurs shortly after the “Buy In” step. The manager will affirm the behavior by encouraging and acknowledging the successful steps toward improvement. The employee might also slip into old habits, and a manger may step in to correct them and get them back on track. The challenge is that over time, or even within a few days, it becomes more challenging for a manager to catch someone doing something right. When the manager fails to notice anymore, an employee may slip a bit and slowly settle in to just being “good enough”. Without successful, ongoing Targeted Feedback, you run the risk of the employee just settling in where nobody notices them. Once again, a customer driven organization leverages the voice of the customer in this final and critical step of changing behavior. The customers show up every day (hopefully) and when permitted, can deliver amazing bits of Targeted Feedback in virtually real time to employees. This creates a momentum where employees are noticed and encouraged every day as they continue to improve over time. Once a performance gap is resolved, customer driven employees then leverage their customers to identify the next challenge they can work on together.

Are you customer driven? Do you leverage the voice of the customer in improving your employees? Are your customers working for you to reduce operational costs while improving employee performance?

Take the free Customer Driven challenge and put your customers to work today. Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com to find out how!

Scott O. Thomas
Senior Partner @ TPC
Customers @ Your Service!
twitter: http://twitter.com/scottothomas | linkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/scottothomas

Jul 28

Looking for 3 to 4 contact centers to participate in a hosted software study that will leverage the voice of the customer to improve employee performance.

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You will get to test drive a hosted software application and provide feedback on some new employee improvement/development modules. This service will capture all key VOC measurements such as Customer Satisfaction, Net Promoter, Brand Awareness, etc. In addition, you will be testing modules where customers engage in the quality monitoring and coaching of your staff. We are looking for small to mid size centers that are interested in improving employee skills in one of these areas:
Empathy
Active Listening
Professionalism
Phone Etiquette
Soft Selling
Product Knowledge
Call Energy

This system will engage customers to help improve these areas.

There will be no cost to you. This is a hosted application requiring no software or hardware. If interested, send me a note.

Jul 15

One Step Beyond Listening to the Voice of the Customer (VOC)

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Why should we understand our customer’s needs and wants? Because thats the most cost effective way to run an organization. The formula is simple:
Customers Needs & Wants
+
Company Actions & Strategies
=
Highest Level of Services at the Lowest Cost Possible

Determining what you should STOP doing for your customers is sometimes the most profitable decision you can make.

My company helps create customer collaboration, and as a result we are able to involve the customers in many aspects of service delivery. We help you put your customers to work coaching and quality monitoring your employees. Who better to provide a QM score than the actual customer the person interacted with?

Our clients using our hosted application have their customers participating in employee performance appraisals, quality monitoring, recognition programs – all while improving individual employee performance.

Employees “buy in” much quicker when the feedback comes from their customers.
Customer loyalty increases because they are involved in the success of service delivery.
Our clients are happy because the customer is an incredibly passionate, reliable and affordable resource.

If interested, send me a note and I’ll share a case study with you or let you tour one of our client’s on-line. You can even test drive the application with your most challenging team.
So start asking your customers what they think, and then put them to work!

May 20

Call Center Bingo & Other Games for Your Contact Center

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Do you play games in your contact center? Handling customer contact can create stress so why not bring a little fun into your center that improves morale while increasing productivity?
What games do you play in your contact center? Sometimes a game of bingo can improve schedule adherence and attendance. Making mystery calls that randomly ask agents customer service trivia questions can improve skills or product knowledge. Playing games can create a team that works hard. I’ve had some people ask me for the details on adherence/attendance bingo, which is great to implement on Mondays or any other day prone to high absenteeism. Here are some tips for playing:

Print some bingo cards for your center. If you are feeling creative you can make them in PowerPoint or Word, or you can create your own custom bingo cards with customer service related words using this free on-line tool here.
It’s always fun to use call center and customer service words like:
ACD, IVR, Smile, Empathy, Greeting, Closing, Troubleshooting, CRM, Agent, CSR, and any other acronyms your company may have.

Once you have the cards made, distribute them and inform employees that you will be calling bingo words throughout the day, just like any other bingo game. The key is to randomly call words throughout the day utilizing screen pop messages, reader boards, phone displays, or any other place you can send a text message across your center. Email is also an option. Sometimes the company or department intranet page is great because it encourages people to use those tools.

And then play! People don’t want to miss the fun so they are more likely to show up. Also, mix it up from time to time. Play Monday one day and a Thursday some other time. Don’t forget 2nd and 3rd shifts either. What happens over time is that you develop a culture where people want to show up everyday just to see what might happen.

Prizes. Most any prize will do, but if you lack the budget for movie tickets or gift cards, don’t let that stop you. Here are some ideas for rewards that won’t take a bite out of your budget.

1. Reward people by having managers/supervisors wash the winners car.
2. Have a manager/supervisor take calls for that person, and give them an extra break that day.
3. Let them learn something. Cross-training is a great reward!
4. See if they can attend a meeting with someone from the executive team. Maybe they can even be a customer service ambassador, depending on the kinds of meetings your executives might be attending.
5. Potluck dessert rewards. Food is always welcome in most contact centers!
6. Model the service culture by letting winners serve on behalf of your company at a charity event, soup kitchen, habitat for humanity, etc.
7. If they are capable, allow them to teach or speak to a new hire class or help with training in some capacity.

I bet you have some suggestions. Do you? Let me know! I’d love to hear from you…

Are you Customer Driven? Are your customers working for you to reduce operational costs while improving employee performance?

Take the free Customer Driven challenge and put your customers to work today. Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com to find out how!

Scott O. Thomas
Senior Partner @ TPC
Customers @ Your Service!
twitter: http://twitter.com/scottothomas | linkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/scottothomas

Feb 23

Maybe You Should Increase Your Talk Time

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Maybe you should consider increasing your talk time…

If you work in a call center, that’s probably the last thing you want to hear… But if you have a team of people who report to you, that rely on you for coaching, that you evaluate and make salary recommendations for… Maybe you should increase your talk time.

According to a new study by Leadership IQ, 66% of employees say that they have too little interaction with their boss. Most managers spend more time reading emails, working on reports, or simply staying in “crisis mode” that they have little time left over for their employees.

More than 70 percent want (73.9%) their manager to listen, understand, and respond. If you find yourself rarely spending time with your employees, you might want to rework your “to do” list and consider increasing your talk time.

Three Easy Things to Start Immediately to Increase Your Talk Time

1. Be a great greeter. Walk the aisles and say hello to your folks daily. Ask if there’s anything you can help them with. See if there are barriers to success you can help remove. See if there are any resources or tools they are lacking. Hang out in their world for a bit.

2. Implement Huddles. Huddles are quick, regular informal meetings. Let your team give 2 minute updates as you go around the huddle from person to person. Let them share a success, or ask for help on a challenge. When it gets back to you, give some updates on the company, share any important news or company information, then give some call outs to recognize people on their daily successes. End with a little celebration and everyone will gain a little energy before returning to work.

3. Schedule One on Ones. If they aren’t on your calendar, they won’t happen. Trust me, the effort is well worth it. You’ll get more out of your team than you every thought possible by simply meeting and discussing performance and life on a regular basis. Don’t let these become simple or causal. Discuss the tough stuff and acknowledge the positive things too. Make sure your folks get some sort of value from the meetings.

Let me know what you think. I’d be happy to invest some of my talk time with you!

Are you Customer Driven? Are your customers working for you to reduce operational costs while improving employee performance?

Take the free Customer Driven challenge and put your customers to work today. Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com to find out how!

Scott O. Thomas
Senior Partner @ TPC
Customers @ Your Service!

Jan 31

Contact Center Management Interview Questions

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Over the years I’ve conducted many contact center interviews to hire front-line agents, supervisors, managers, trainers, workforce managers, and directors. Contact centers are complex, and standard interview questions are not effective at identifying potential candidates. I thought I would share some of my favorite questions to ask.

Do you know our mission statement?
Great question to see if the candidate did any research about your organization. Most mission statements have a customer service element, so see if they took the time to find it. If not, show it to them and ask what they think. A great follow-up question is: How would you support our mission in this role?

What would you say to your manager if they are crazy about an idea but you think it stinks?
Allows insight to see how or if a person is capable of managing up. Are they going to say yes to anything, or will they tell you what they really think?

Tell me about the last time you were unable to satisfy a customer.
If you have worked in customer service for more than a week, you know there are customers that you simply can’t satisfy. It’s not that you aren’t trying, there’s just that small percentage of folks that have unrealistic expectations.

Tell me about a time you had to convince a group to make a change you felt necessary.
With the follow-up questions:
What was the change? How did you convince them?
Great question to see how they seek and obtain “buy-in” from a team… Or do they simply think people should respect their title and do anything they ask?

Tell me about your “To Do List”. What is always at the top, and what is always at the bottom?
See where their priorities are. Do they place a higher priority on their people? Technology? Process? Good to know based on what you’re hiring them for.

Tell me about procrastinating about a decision in the last 6 months. Why did you do it?
Will they tell you? Do they want to hide all the imperfections? None of us are perfect. See how transparent they are willing to be.

Tell me about your job search strategy. What actions have you taken?
How long have they been looking. Do they have a strategy? Are they experiencing some success? Is this an indicator of how they will manage your projects?

How do you use humor at work?
Let’s face it. A sense of humor is a must in any customer facing job. See what they say. Ask for an example. Make them be specific. Will your customers get a kick out of them?

What would you say if I told you this interview wasn’t going very well.
Ok. HR may shoot down this one, but it has always yielded interesting results. I can’t tell you how many times it has validated all the previous answers the candidate gave regarding conflict, active listening, negotiations, etc. I also could share many situations where the mask came off and they showed their true approach to dealing with conflict. Let me know what you think.

Also let me know if you have a great question. I’d love to hear from you!

Are you Customer Driven? Are your customers working for you to reduce operational costs while improving employee performance?

Take the free Customer Driven challenge and put your customers to work today. Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com to find out how!

Scott O. Thomas
Senior Partner @ TPC
Customers @ Your Service!

Jan 06

When the Goal Becomes More Important Than Its Purpose

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Call centers have lots of numbers. Tons of metrics. If you like to measure or monitor things, you’ll love call centers! What other department do you know of in an organization that captures and audits employee activities nearly every second of their shift? I mean can you imagine telling an IT Specialist or Marketing Analyst that they are out of adherence? Or that they need to wait 6 more minutes to take a break? Or reminding them that they only have 9 minutes of “discretionary time” each day?

Ok, I  know numbers are important. I realize that in the call center world seconds can easily equate to a significant amount of cost, and in no way am I suggesting we shouldn’t monitor and measure things in a call center. What I am suggesting is that we should be careful to not let the goals become more important than the reason we set them.

Lets think about some goals. I’ll list the first one that comes to mind…

Service Level – % of calls answered in X seconds.

A very important goal. How often do you hear someone asking “What’s our service level?” in a call center? I wonder if there is a goal for how often that should be asked!

Well here’s my question. How often do you review your service level objective to access the value of it? I mean it is an important number for budgeting headcount and creating schedules. It’s supposed to help ensure most customers have a decent experience when waiting for a person to help them. But is it working for you? I can’t tell you how many startup call centers set this at 80/20 because that is the “industry standard”. Well there is no industry standard for service level. Should a tech support call center share the same service level as a reservation or appointment setting center?

And then we can also ask is your service level goal for every hour? Every day? The week or month even? So how does that help the customer experience during the “gap” times of the goal? Especially in centers where its a monthly goal…

I recently worked with a company that had a 50 seat center 2 years ago and 1 product they supported. Now they have 200 agents and 11 different products. They were missing service level objectives and tried adjusting schedules and increasing headcount to hit the goal.

We decided to do a little discovery before they hired more people and found they could actually hit a 70/30 goal without increasing headcount. We did a lot of CDM related research and determined this had little impact to the customer experience. Saved the company the additional cost of headcount and allowed them to keep pricing low for their customers and remain competitive in the marketplace.

So I encourage you to take a look at your goals. Want an easy litmus test to see if a goal has become more important than its purpose in your organizational? Tell your manager you’re thing about changing your service level goal!

Are you Customer Driven? Are your customers working for you to reduce operational costs while improving employee performance?

Take the free Customer Driven challenge and put your customers to work today. Visit the Tamer Partners Corporation website at www.tamerpartners.com to find out how!

Scott O. Thomas
Senior Partner @ TPC
Customers @ Your Service!