People are your Biggest Cost and Biggest Asset in your Call Center - How to Hire Better

By Colin Taylor People are the key to any successful business and this is especially so in call centers. The sales and customer service staff in the call center are the face of the organization. Each time a customer speaks with the call center the person they speak with is the company. The customers’ opinion of the company and the brand improves or erodes based upon an interaction with the center. A Purdue University study that found that 92% of customers based their opinion or an organization based upon their interaction with the company’s’ call center. Too many organizations fail to invest the proper effort and attention in selecting new staff. This is manifest in: vague job descriptions, no defined skills,competencies, no skills testing, weak or absent background and reference checks. It is not surprising to me that the staff selected may not be well suited for the role. With the cost for a new hire ranging from $7,000 to $10,000 the company is making a significant investment. This level of investment warrants attention, especially in an industry with chronic turnover issues. So what are the best practices, that any contact center can implement? Here is quick reference list that will help you to improve your selection and retention in your center. Make sure your job descriptions relevant to the role. Describe the role accurately, surface details related the task activities, systems interactions, level of activity etc. State required skills (keyboarding, math, typing etc.). Identify the background checks that will be completed; i.e. references, background checks, personality profile, credit check, criminal check, drug test etc. - there is no point bringing anyone into the office who knows they can't pass one, or more of these tests. Be sure to follow through on all the background checks you have committed to. Employ role play tests and/or listen to real call problems and ask the candidate how they would respond. Remember we can't expect them to have the correct answer, but we want to see their listening skills, attitude and approach to problem solving. In our next post we will examine how to align your hiring and recruiting process with your training and on- boarding process.

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By Colin Taylor I read an interesting article by Jennifer J Deal at strategy+business looking at five myths we hold about Millennials. For the past number of years we have all heard horror stories about organizations that gave away iPads, spot bonuses, socially conscious and social responsible activities, but still had staff leave for greener pastures. This point has been used time and again to characterize the lack of loyalty that Millennials are supposed to posses, which makes hiring and retaining them difficult. Call centers I know of have changed their mobile phone policies to allow millennials to have the phones on and with them at their desks and they are free to check facebook or twitter between calls. These same centers often speak of millennials feeling entitled to the fast track to easy street, their lack of interest in their work and difficultly managing them. This all fits well with our stereotypes and our expectations around millennials, but it may be all wrong. The article cites research involving thousands of respondents and dashs five of the major millennial myths completely. Conventional wisdom would have it that Millennials don't want to be told what to do or follow direction. The research (Center for Creative Leadership) however shows that Millennials are more likely to follow direction than are Gen Xers or Baby Boomers. 41% of Millennials agreed with a statement that Employees should do what their Manager tells them, versus only 30% for each the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. If you think about this the results really are not too surprising, Millennials know that following direction from authority figures often ends well (at least it has done so often for most of us a children). This perspective on Millennials also creates an opportunity to engage with these individuals by ensuring they understand and appreciate the organizations culture, values and expectations. Myths also surround Millennial loyalty or perceived lack there of, but the research shows that Millennials have a similar level of loyalty and commitment as Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. It is a fact that younger workers tend to change jobs more frequently, even the Baby Boomers were guilty of this. This 'young age = job hopping' was even true when jobs were often perceived to be for life. Similarly Millennials are just as motivated as their Gen X and Baby Boomer predecessors were by work. As with job hopping above the lower you are in the hierarchy regardless of your generation the less motivated you will be. There is no link between your generation and you motivation by perks and high pay. Everyone loves perks and who wouldn't want high pay, but neither of these attributes is unique to Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers display the same behavior and there is no evidence in the research to show these perks improve loyalty regardless of age. So what does this mean to you in managing your call center? Well first of all I think you can lose the generational labels. Increasingly Millennials look just the same as you and I, only younger. Second forget trying to attract them with the perceived hot-buttons around perks, toys and special treatment. Nothing the research shows that these tactics work. the ability to take direct is one area where Millennials perform better than Gen X or Baby Boomer workers and this provides you with a great opportunity to share what your company is about and to show them how they make a difference. Be specific with how they will be judged and assessed and what you expect of them. Transparency is also valued by workers of every generation and Millennials are no different. So be open, transparent and specific about what they are to do and what you expect them to achieve and you can be well on your way to a successful working relationship.

Why Most Call Center Customer Service is So Bad?

By: Colin Taylor We have all had the experience, we phone our cable company, wireless provider or our utility and Bang! The pain and suffering begins: “Your call is important us, Please hold”. Well if my call was really important I would have thought you would have answered it. Of course some hold messages can be even more frightening: “We are experiencing higher call volumes and you should expect a longer than average hold time”. No I don’t make it a habit to phone my wireless provider often enough to know what their average hold time is, but I am scared nonetheless. Perhaps the standard greeting announcement should be replaced by “Abandon All Hope Yea Who Enter”, a little dramatic, but perhaps more accurate. Then when I finally reach an agent can they help me? Am I able to get done what I want to get done? The answers to these questions often depend upon the organization and the complexity of the question I asked. In some cases the center is quite helpful and able to provide me with the information I seek quickly, effectively, completely and professionally, with other centers it is more like phoning the call center in those old Capital One ads that featured David Spade. None the less research has repeatedly shown that while the quality of mercy is not strained the quality of customer service call center often is strained. The expectation of poor service has become engrained in our society. Comedians quip, television ads for Capital One and CarMax entertain us with bad service experiences and the twitterverse is alive with hundreds of thousands of people complaining about their call center or customer service experiences- hashtags #custserv, #callcenter and #cctr. Why do so many organizations deliver poor service? Research Proves Service is Bad I would like to propose some highly intelligent and provocative explanation, but unfortunately I feel the truth is much simpler. Companies and organizations don’t care. It’s not that they necessarily want to not care it is just that they don’t. There are too many other priorities and ‘more important fish to fry’. The research on this topic backs me up: 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience, according to Harris Interactive. That figure is closer to 73% said Gartner. American Express found that Customer Service Experiences generally….’ •Exceed Expectations – 2% •Meet Expectations – 62% •Miss Expectations – 32% •4% weren’t sure! In fact 90% of executives see Customer Service as crucial to their future business success. In the same study more than 70% of senior call center executives revealed that their companies fail to meet their customers’ expectations, according to Bain. So we have a strange dichotomy. Organizations know that good customer service is essential to their future success; they understand that there is a real tangible cost and risk of dissatisfied customers defecting and yet these same organizations seem incapable of affecting change. They say that the first step to dealing with a problem is to first to admit you have a problem. Well we as the customers of these organizations we may see the problem, as call center and customer professionals we may recognize the problem, but the organizations in question do not seem to recognize this. Why is that, businesses are full of bright, knowledgeable and skilled professionals. Is it as Dave Farrell suggests in his recent article Why Do Companies Give Bad Customer Service? “We have a Contrary Point of view. A point of view is simply how you view, judge or appraise things. How you see things determines how you act. How you act determines your results. In the world of Customer Service it would look something like this; a customer calls in and has an issue. Let’s say that I see customers as people who will lie through their teeth to get what they want. My point of view of the customer will determine how I act toward them. I am much more likely to be defensive and argumentative. The customer then will deal with me however they deal with defensive argumentative people. The result won't be pretty.” Or perhaps as Grant Nieddu pointed out in a Linked In post “Companies give bad customer service because they see that it is far cheaper to pay for a corporate rally and "mission review" teams than to over-haul their tactical processes. Rewording personnel reviews, restructuring the training process, and, gasp, revisiting incentive programs is far more costly and takes more time. You can learn, execute and train a culture of quality customer relationships, as long as you are willing to invest the time and money to do so. Companies that give bad customer service simply do not believe in the investment.” Both of these experts raise good points, we can certainly project our feelings and perception to others and define the service process from this perspective and as Grant said we certainly can’t discount the fact that some organizations are just cheap, but I think that the single biggest factor contributing to bad customer service or as my kids would say Customer Service that Sucks, is… drum roll please…..wait for it… neglect. Sorry to let you down after the big build up but let me explain. There are a number of types and forms of neglect that can lead to poor service. Neglect Equals Bad Service The first one I will deal with is complete neglect. This is most common in SMB’s with small call centers where the center is not really considered as a major part of the enterprise. They are neglected, their costs and budgets roll up into other much larger budgets like Operations, IT or Sales and senior managers and executives do not any visibility into what is really going on in the call center nor, likely do they really care. It is neglected. Of course this can change dramatically once the call center reaches that special threshold, whose level varies by organization, but it is when the call center actually appears as a line item on the monthly P&L. The first time this happens you can almost hear the screams of astonishment from the executive suite, “We are spending what on the call center!” In centers receiving this form of neglect they will generally be underfunded- trying to do more with less, significantly lack appropriate technologies to serve customers and be struggling to meet their service performance and targets. The operation of the center is usually in a vacuum, they are disconnected from the organization and only dimly aware of the company’s goals and aspirations. With insufficient staff, poor processes and technology and no vision these centers struggle day in and day out not to deliver lousy service, but they do not often succeed. This is not good service. The second form of neglect is neglecting to understand that a call center is a primary communications channel between the organization and its customers. In fact for many organizations it is the primary communications channel and the only meaningful one that facilitates a two way discussion, a dialogue. Failing to recognize this fact leads organizations to undervalue the contribution the call center and broader customer service and technical support plays in sustaining the business. Not only can a call center generate revenue through orders, up-sell and extensions, but the call center also protects revenue already promised through solving issues and fixing problems, many of which were not caused or created by the call center. As my colleague John Cockerill is wont to say “There are only two kinds of calls; Value, where we gain revenue and Fault, where we fix a problem someone else created”. By neglecting to understand the role played by the call center in maximizing lifetime value and customer retention these organizations treat the call center as an after- thought. The call center discovers new campaigns and initiatives only after they launch are criticized for failing to meet patently unattainable goals which they had no part in creating and generally receiving all of the perks and privileges bestowed upon it by ‘mushroom management’. It is in these centers where senior executives will ask if we really need all of those people or even if we really need to answer the phones at all. For the record I have heard that exact statement on two occasions in my consulting career. In centers suffering from this form of neglect they will be generally underfunded-trying to do more with less than none, they will often invest in technologies to reduce costs or create efficiencies regardless of the suitability to the purpose of the center or its potential impact on customers. The operation of the center can be characterized as a cost center, in a way that informs you that this is a very bad thing to be. There will be calls to transform the center to a profit center, to reduce costs and to increase productivity. Of course all of these activities can be positive however they are all but doomed to failure if they are not connected to the desired customer experience and the service quality the organization wishes to deliver. With insufficient staff, poor processes and technology focused on reducing volumes and/or reducing transaction times these centers make it difficult for their customers and when they get an answer they rush them off the phone. This is not good service. The third form of neglect is complicity in these organizations the call center is acknowledged to exist, its role appreciated and generally understood and there is an agreement on the value the center delivers to the organization. Senior executives look at their weekly dashboard reports and might comment on the change in service level or abandon rate. All may appear to be happy in ‘mudville’, but that is not necessarily so. The company having invested in people and technology to equip the center to do its job and recognizing its value reviews and scrutinizes the weekly reporting can feel that its job is done. You can almost hear them saying, “There now the call center is completed and we won’t have to worry about that again”. In the call center itself this stage can be the most frustrating as it begins with such promise; spending on headcount to match the demand, acquiring new technologies etc., but it soon grinds to halt coming face to face with the perception that ‘we did this (the call center) and now we are done’. The conversations go along the lines of “why do you need more people, you just hired 6 last quarter”, or “Last year we spent X million on your techno-goodies so you will have to make do”. All of the hallmarks are there of a professional call center engaged and integrated into the business, but it is not really so. The center likely struggles with scheduling and a disinterested and high turnover workforce, adequate technologies give them a fighting chance, but the absence of integration to the company vision and low level of agent experience condemns it to deliver inferior service. It is clear from the above that neglect can take many forms and that these various forms of neglect can handicap a call center and ensure that they deliver bad service…service that sucks. Success in delivering Good Customer Service lies in not neglecting your center but rather to paying attention to the center. Organizations have found success by elevating the call centers role within the organization and openly discussing the role the center plays in attracting and retaining customers. By defining the strategic plan for the call center and linking the call center plan to the company goals, mission and values brings everyone onto the same team and speaking from a perspective of alignment. By equipping the center with the appropriate tools to do the job the organization can begin to reap the rewards of this stewardship. Of course this should not be construed to suggest that the call center should be given a blank check. Quite the contrary each desired investment in people, or process or technology should be modeled, justified and be confirmed to be in line with the call center strategy and the broader goals and objectives of the business. Any requested investment that doesn’t make economic sense and/or fails to align and support the business goals must be discarded until a more suitable and appropriate solution can be found. There is no excuse for an organization to have poor service the cause can includes neglect, lack of funding or perhaps even projection. But if there is no excuse for bad service why hasn’t somebody done something about it? There are likely a million reasons that have been cited by other authors, experts and pundits, but I would suggest that the simplest reason is that companies don’t have too improve service. We expect poor or at least difficulty in resolving customer service issues Forrester Research found in some verticals such as computers and health insurance only 30% of consumers expected customer service to be easy. We often expect to have a fight on our hands. If this is the view of the customer, then is it any surprise that organizations steel themselves for the conflict with restrictive policies and penalties for changes. The Way Forward Of course at the same time this expectation of poor customer service creates an opportunity for those organizations able to rise above the din and actually deliver superior service. They could be motivated by a sincere and genuine wish to deliver better customer service to their customers or they may simply realize that happier customers stay customers longer and spend more money with you. But this can on the surface appear to be a risky strategy, to spend more money to improve the quality of service, staff, technology and processes and then to wait and hope it pays off. But maybe it is not so risky. Research from American Express found that 61% of Americans report that quality customer service is more important to them in today’s economic environment, and will spend an average of 9 percent more when they believe a company provides excellent service. A few organizations are bravely marching forward carrying the ‘Superior Customer Service’ banner. Some of these organizations have achieved fame and success others are just quietly reaping the financial benefits. Zappos has defined itself as a Customer Service organization that just happens to sell shoes and has created a cult of believers. F&C has been recognized as the best call center in the UK by exceeding all service parameters. And American Express, well it is their research cited above that tells us that customers will pay more for better service, it appears that they are walking the talk. American express derives their customer satisfaction scores directly from their customers and this CSAT score has replaced the internally generated quality score that they used to rely on. Satisfaction is in the eye of the customer, it is as simple as that. So we are not forever doomed to suffer through endless IVR call trees, hours on hold only to speak with an ill-tempered and poorly trained agent. We needn’t abandon all hope when we enter the customer service queue. We must simply choose to patronize organizations that deliver superior service. Voting with our feet and our wallets is the best way to encourage lagging organizations to cease their policies of neglect and embrace the new maxim of better service equals more and happier customers. Hopefully and not to far in the future companies will no longer be able to provide poor customer service because they can get away with it, customer service laggards are going to be punished by the market and forced to change their ways. At least that’s what my crystal ball says.

Self Service - Of Cents and Sensibility Part 2

Self Service of Cents and Sensibility Part 2

By: Colin Taylor

In part 1 of this three part series we looked at the history of service service, the challenges organizations and customer face when trying to interact via self service, the most popular and preferred self service channels, costs and effectiveness and declining success rates. In this part we examine Customer perceptions regarding self service, best practices for ebilling and IVR and Self Service and the Call Center.

Customer Perceptions
What if we could peek inside the head of our customers and see what they really think about self service, what would we discover? Research completed by Paul Hudson found that customer perception is that self-service is associated with speed, convenience, simplicity……and technology – but not associated with offering support, being caring, or personalized. However, the words ‘customer service’ is associated with care, support, personalized, but less associated with being fast and convenient.

Two out of three U.S. consumers surveyed want self-service options when shopping. Nearly half of U.S. shoppers surveyed under the age of 45 want stores to offer self-checkout. Almost 46 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed want stores to offer more self-service options, like self-checkout or kiosks, to improve their shopping experience.

In looking at customer perceptions we have to realize that – 1-perceptions are not static, they can change over time –People who refused to pump their own gas or use an ATM when these SS technologies were introduced happily do so today. And 2-That perceptions are shaped by the customers environment and by their self interest and specifically is something is: A) Easier, B) Faster, C) Less Expensive

Self Service and the Call Center
According to ICMI, 79.5 of centres offer Self Service. Reasons for Implementation where headed up by : operating cost reductions (83.4%) and meeting customer demand for service options (74.3%). Over half (64%) of respondents don’t know if or when a customer has tried to self-serve but then opted for a live representative.

Among the tools contact centers use to support Web self-service channels, in particular, leaders emerged: issue tracking (53%), knowledge management (44.6%) and service management tools (42.3%).
A troubling 43.6%, almost half of respondents, don’t measure customer feedback on their centers’ self-service channels.

Regardless of the self service channels employed in the call center, each center still has to determine what to do with:
 The 13% that opt out of the IVR?
 The 40% who are still on your website?
 The 2/3 that have already tried to find the answer?
 Silo distance between call centre and ‘owners’ of the web?

Frequently Asked Questions or FAQ’s are often one of the first self service tools adopted. If questions can be self contained and completely answer the question they are well suited for web service. 80% of questions can generally be answered by FAQ’s . Yet FAQ’s are near the bottom of the self service tools employed by customers
1. Shopping carts (for products/services)
2. Order confirmation
3. Order tracking
4. Appointment setting/rescheduling
5. Bill pay and funds transfer
6. Personal account access, set up and management
7. Site search
8. FAQ’s
9. Opening and checking tickets

So how do we implement and drive self service adoption? The graphic below illustrates the considerations that need to be addressed and aligned.


Consumer must be ready, they must understand their role (89% of employees are confused by new products or services) and what is expected of them, they must be motivated; either by themselves or someone else and they must have the Ability- skills, competency, knowledge or pre-requisite technology (i.e. internet).

The product must have appeal, be compatible with the target audience, provide a tangible advantage over previous methods etc. In addition the product must overcome inertia, technology anxiety etc.

Drilling down to look at eBilling this chart illustrates a logical process to implement eBilling.






The following best practice tips can significantly improve the speed of implementation as well as the success achieved;

1. Sign up all new customers for your ebill program. Do it automatically and with no action required from the customer.
2. Use an e-mail matching service append up to 20 percent of your customer database with customer’s email addresses at very low cost.
3. Initiate an automated welcome e-mail telling the customer what to expect.
4. Then just begin delivering the bill electronically. A small percentage will opt-out, but the vast majority will accept it. Adoption therefore becomes equal to the number of email addresses you have available.
5. Offer simple bill presentment via secure email as the first step. It’s not necessary to try and ‘pull’ the customer to your website to achieve successful ebill presentment.
6. Take it one step at a time. Achieve bill presentment and paper truncation first. Then drive payment as the next step.
7. Replicate your paper bill truly in a digital format – familiarity drives acceptance. You can add additional functionality later.
8. Use opt-out rather than opt-in strategies. Customers expect you to bill them.
9. Automatic paper truncation with the ability to revert to the paper option. When your customers are familiar with the ebill, turn off the paper automatically – you will be surprised how few requests you will get to re-institute their paper bill (on average, less than three percent).

On the topic of best practices lets look at some related to the use of IVR’s
1. Menu options no more than 4
2. No more than 4 layers
3. Zero Out option at any time
4. Allow corrections at each menu level (consider routing to live agent after 1)
5. Allow to back up or re start at each menu level (consider routing to live agent after 1)
6. No Jargon
7. Make sure the customer can actually do things they want to do:
1. Account balance
2. Report a payment
3. Open a Ticket
4. Track a shipment
8. Test Speech Recognition and Virtual agents before you deploy.
9. Use IVR for outbound calls -
1. Outage notifications,
2. Pre-collection,
3. Planned Maintenance/Outages

Share knowledge across multiple channels to make it available when and where needed:
Knowledge base for web, can be employed by live agents for calls, chats, email
FAQ’s- make sure they are the same ones regardless of the channel they are viewed
Blog- If you have one promote it and link it to your website and help pages if it offers service and self service tips.
Video/YouTube channel- This can be a great resource for showing ‘How to’ and,’ where to find’ information.
You must measure all users who employ self service…those that enter and those who leave early. Only by understanding what calls, contacts you are actually deflecting successfully can you determine the ROI. And only by knowing where customers are ‘jumping out’ of self service can you identify where you need to improve.


A Caveat to the trend to self-service has been raised by William J. McEwen, Ph.D., the author of Married to the Brand. Bill cited industries that have trended towards commodity status have of often been strong proponents of Self Service…such as the gasoline retail business. 40 years ago when each retailer tried to show the superiority of their product, but by 2007 only 9% of consumers surveyed by Gallup believed there was any difference between brands.

McEwen feels that a key to maintaining a strong brand is maintaining contact and interaction with customers. Organizations like the JetBlue, Southwest and Ritz Carleton have long since identified that their staff are the key to a success and positive guest experience. Similarly we can all think of positive service experiences where it was the individual that we interacted with that made the experience so great.

So from McEwens’ perspective if we eliminate personal service interactions we are driving our organization towards commoditization. If we take McEwen at face value a move toward cost reduction through self service is less personal, less connected and less likely to create raving fans or similarly happy customers.

But more personal service costs more. Is their no way of improving service quality without increasing the costs?