Tag Archives: employees

May 18

Rewarding Contact Center Employees When the Budget is Tight

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Sometimes reward and recognition programs take a hit in a downturn economy. We make the assumption that movie tickets or other chachkies are the only viable options for rewarding our employees.

Here are 5 employee reward and recognition ideas that are budget friendly!

1. Serve in the Community – What better way to promote a service driven culture than to allow your employees to serve in the community and represent your organization. Your organization may already have existing relationships with charities in your area. Allowing an employee to build a house with Habitat for Humanity, or serve in a hospital or food pantry organization, are amazing ways to recognize an employee while supporting your local communities.

2. Cross Training – Allowing an employee to learn a new skill while meeting new coworkers in other departments, is a great reward and recognition option. This career development  idea is not only easy on the budget, but also helps improve employee morale – preventing burnout or potential turnover.

3. Solve a Problem – Employees that are due recognition are typically great employees. They are talented and have a drive that can’t be overlooked. A great way to reward a great employee, is allowing them to solve a problem. Look at your to “do list” for ideas, or maybe the departmental goals for the quarter. Move something off of your plate by turning into a reward for one of your employees.

4. Manage a Project – Similar to the 3rd idea above, allowing an employee to manage a project or serve on a business committee is another great recognition tool. (And it helps get great things done for your organization!)

5. Service Ambassadors  – Are there opportunities for employees to attend a meeting or event with an executive from your organization? Maybe a charity event or a new store opening? Enabling employees to represent the contact center organization by serving as a “Service Ambassador” is a great recognition tool – and promotes the importance of service delivery throughout your organization!

Hopefully these help. I’d love to know what reward and recognition ideas you’ve adopted. Send me a note!

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 12

Quality Monitoring – What’s Missing?

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Call Centers typically implement Quality Monitoring to monitor the customer experience, improve employee performance, and ultimately improve the customer experience. Granted there are others reasons including compliance, security, etc.

Now, consider how this accomplished and tell me if something is missing.

We pay one group of employees, to listen to the employees that we pay to help our customers.

or

We pay an outsourcer, to listen to the employees that we pay to help our customers.

What’s missing? The Customer!

This creates a situation of subjectivity, debate, inconsistencies, etc.
Why not leverage the voice of the customer in your quality process? Engaging the customer in your QM process allows you to calibrate managers, employees and customers. Customers drive performance on all levels. They help to reduce cost, increase accuracy, increase experience measurement, increase encouragement and often increase their loyalty to your organization. Their time invested helps them to become more loyal to the very company they are helping. Everyone wins!

Here are some reasons why you should leverage your customers in QM.
Customers are Accurate
Who better to tell you what they think and feel about the services you are providing them? Who better to tell you the unique attributes about your employees? Who better to help you teach key skills to your employees? Customers have a front row seat to all of your transactions. They understand uniquely their intent and expectations. There is no more accurate resource to provide direction and feedback.

Customers are Passionate
One of the key components of finding partners to help you grow your business is their level of passion. Have you fielded a complaint from a customer lately? They are passionate about how you treat them, your accuracy, your professionalism, and better ways to serve them. All you have to do is ask.

Customers are Credible
Whom would you believe? A peer who listens to Quality Monitoring calls all day long day-in and day-out, or the actual customer? Customers provide instant credibility for feedback and direction on how to improve. Not everyone will be perfect. A very few will have an agenda. The vast majority will provide credible feedback.

Customers are Affordable
Customers provide us feedback at little or no cost. Yes, we must gather the data but we do not pay benefits, sick time or FMLA. Customer feedback and direction is eminently affordable and attainable in your center.

Customers are Reliable
Customer show up, every day, to make contact and touch your organization. Their absentee and turnover rates are often better than your employees are! If you build it, they will come.

Customers are Almost Infinite
There are millions of customer transactions, all the time. In our busy times, slow times, night times, new products, old products, test products, happy, sad, fair, and unfair, customers are there. We don’t have to use the same customers for feedback. Customers usually have a lower turnover rate than our own employees!

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

May 12

Ten Ways to Cure Boredom in Your Contact Center

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Working in a contact center can sometimes become a boring or tedious job. Often times I’m asked about ideas to make the job less monotonous while engaging employees. Here is an updated list of ideas from my book “Contact Center Ideas” which you can buy here. Enjoy!

10. Accurate Staffing and Forecasting.
Boredom in the call center may be a direct result of an inaccurate forecast and schedule. Over staffing can lead to high “available” time causing the agent to face very large “gaps” between calls. This may also have a negative effect on the agents who may be understaffed during other shifts, resulting in burnout or turnover. Workforce management tools can help you manage the “art” of effective forecasting and scheduling.

9. Continuous Training.
Typically an agent receives initial training at the beginning of their career, with an organization that prepares them for the “basics” of their job. Offering continuous training allows an employee to acquire additional sales, technical, and customer service skills. With the advent of web-based training, you can now deliver training to the agent’s desktop during slow times. You can also schedule on-line training as part of your normal scheduling process.

8. Cross-Training/Career Pathing.
Employees often think the grass is greener on the other side. And, sometimes it is! If you have multiple departments within your organization, organize a career pathing or cross-training program to allow your employees an opportunity to discover other jobs within the company. Let them rotate through sales, customer service, collections and technical support. Creating “manager in training” is also a great idea for reducing boredom, identifying future managers for your centers and improving employee retention.

7. Schedule and Conduct Regular Meetings.
Whether its impromptu or scheduled, individual or group, employee meetings are a necessity in the fast pace world of call centers. Consistent meetings will allow you to help the employees understand the company’s mission and vision. Scheduling time to discuss the agent’s needs, life events and career goals is also a “must do”!

6. Implement a Contest.
All work and no play make any environment a boring place to work. So, why not add a little excitement, plus an added boost in performance, by implementing a contest in your call center? Create goals for individuals or teams that are aligned with your business objectives. Survey your staff for ideas and create a theme for the contest (Olympics, sports, adventure…the sky, and your staff’s creativity, is the limit!) In most cases the increased productivity or sales that result in a contest will justify really cool prizes for the winners.

5. Do Something Silly!
Give out ice cream. Dress up like a clown. Run around with a video camera interviewing your agents. Do something silly with the dress code such as ugly sweatshirt day, ugly shoes day or silly hat day. Put on your creative cap and stamp out boredom!

4. Ask Your Agents
If you want to improve something for your employees, ask them for suggestions. Tell them you want to create a fun work environment and see what suggestions may arise. You may have some of the best boredom busters created during those brainstorming sessions. Consider creating a committee of employees that will focus on specific agent issues. Make sure the group is representative of your “good” agents and your “need to improve” agents.

3. Create an Internal Newsletter.
Being informed can also help eliminate boredom in a job. If people know “why?” – they are more willing to support the mission, vision, and values of their company. A newsletter can be a great way to accomplish this. Ask for volunteers to contribute to the writing of the newsletter. Combine work issues and concerns as well as silly commentary to just add laughter to the center. This can be a great source for training, management interviews, spotlights on other departments, and employee recognition.

2. Special Projects
Find ways to allow people to do other things to help the call center. It can be as simple as creating decorations for the call center during holidays or special occasions, or as complex as piloting a new customer service training class.

1. Interact with Staff
MBWA is not a new concept but –“Managing By Walking Around” is very effective! Take the opportunity to sit with your staff whenever possible. Do side by side observations and maybe even take a few calls yourself. If you aren’t interacting with your team, you may never know if the work environment is boring.

I’d love to hear your ideas. Send me a note!

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!

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!