The Contact Center Blog

What Makes a Contact Center Agent Unique

Would your hiring requirements be the same for an agent in a sales queue, versus a customer care queue?  No, and it doesn’t make sense to have the same criteria for an agent who will be in a call center answering phones, as one that will be engaging customers in online chat.  

Beyond the obvious requirements of a contact center (chat) agent to have a certain typing speed and superior knowledge of the written word.  There is a need for these agents to have a particular acumen for reading between the lines in a chat conversation in order to determine the tone, demeanor, and current disposition of the person being engaged in the chat.

For example, the ever-prominent ellipsis in online conversations... what does it mean?  As I just used it, the ellipsis is a textual means into a further point or question. But more often than not in an online chat, it means an uncertainty by the person using it.  If a customer, for example says “okay….” It most likely means he/she requires a little more reassurance or guidance in making their purchase or trouble-shooting their problem, and it is the agent’s responsibility to recognize this in order to meet that customer’s needs.

Then there’s endless short-forms used in chat, and while an agent shouldn’t be employing the use of these short forms, he/she must possess a secure knowledge of their meanings, at risk of otherwise being unable to understand the customer’s meaning. IDK why so many ppl need short forms, but FYI many do use them, AKA as acronyms.  B4 you LOL at me for pointing this out, plz visit any chat room for proof and an “OIC” moment.  Did you get that? 

These are just a couple things that new chat agents should be trained for before going live.  What are others that are trained in your contact center?  What do you train your contact center agents for?

Finding and Fostering Contact Center Agent Stars

With sales plateauing and margins shrinking, online retailers must optimize the use of their contact center, whether in-house or outsourced. One way to do this is to make sure that your agent staff is the best it can be.  At the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Boson this past June, Greg Fettes from 24-7 INtouch and client Leslie Agerland from ShopNBC.com discussed how to select, identify, and motivate agent stars to ensure program goals are being met. Here are some of the main tips from their presentation that are somewhat simple in nature, and yet sometimes the first to be overlooked.

Establish a Culture of Excellence - Expect excellence throughout your organization. Lay out clear goals and tie them into your overall contact center culture. Empower your employees to add value at all levels, and accountability will come naturally.

Communicate & Share Information - Communicate what is happening within your company.  Communicate program goals and where each person is doing well or needs improvement. Allow for networking to build a close culture.

Be Flexible - Contact centers have a bad reputation for being rigid in scheduling. Flexibility will result in higher retention and increased productivity in the long run.

Recognize. Recognize. Recognize - Everyone likes a pat on the back for a job well done. This is especially true for the typical younger demographic that works in the contact center. Remember to be creative – it’s not only about money! Have other incentives and perks that tie into your program goals.

Use Mentors to Build Teams - Your own employees are usually the best knowledge experts to help develop lower performing agents. Foster a mentorship atmosphere to develop tomorrow’s leaders and maintain your culture of excellence.

Don’t Forget to Have Fun - Improve morale by providing recreational facilities and break areas where employees at all levels of the company can socialize.  Invite top-performing agents to company functions such as awards dinners and by reward them with perks.

Incorporate these tips into your recognition and reward strategy. The value-added ROI will be a more motivated workforce, enhanced brand, empowered agent group and higher retention of your top subject matter experts.

Offshore Call Center Agent Stress Rising

With every job comes a little bit of stress. The call center environment is so dynamic and fast paced, stress levels can be on the high side. Agents especially are the front line staff that must deal on daily basis with irate customers who just usually pick up the phone to vent to someone who has to listen.

A recent article published by Multichannel Merchant, examines the higher stress levels in an offshore center. India in particular is experiencing a rise in health related issues for people employed in call centers. The article states, "The 1.6 million people who work in India's thriving call-center industry, mostly in their 20s, have reported health woes such as heart attacks, ulcers, and insomnia, according to research. These afflictions stem from the stress of dealing with irate customers."

Every North American consumer knows when they are reaching an offshore agent, despite efforts to accent neutralize and adopt cultural assimilation techniques. They are already upset about something before they call, then feel even worse when they know they are talking to someone thousands of miles away. It's no wonder these agents face the brunt of many angry calls. Yet, India is recognizing this and is acting. The article states that "the situation is serious enough that India’s Health Minister plans to introduce a policy specifically for the call center industry."

Any comments on what your call center is doing to reduce stress levels of your agents?

- MK

2008 MCM Awards for Catalogers

Multichannel Merchant has announced entries for The 2008 MCM Awards asking online retailers to submit their website and/or catalog by Jan.25th. This is a great award which represent the industry’s top honors for b-to-b and b-to-c multichannel marketers. Finalists will be announced in April, and presentation ceremonies will be held during their 2008 Annual Conference for Catalog, Internet and Multichannel Merchants (ACCM) . This year the conference will be held in Orlando, Florida in May.  Winners are also featured in Multichannel Merchant Magazine's Annual Awards issue in September 2008.

The awards are based on various criteria such as cover page, copy, design, merchandise, customer service and ordering, and navigation of website. Winners last year included Black Box Corp, Crutchfield Corp,  L.L. Bean, Harry & David, and more. Check out a full list of last year's winners.

The online entry form can be found here - multichannelmerchant.com/toolbox/awards/.

- MK

Targeted Recruitment Strategy- What does it mean in a Contact Centre?

Recruiting for employees in the contact centre industry can prove to be very challenging.  There is a limited pool of candidates, especially in markets that are saturated with inbound contact centres.  Quite often you are competing on a fairly level playing field, in terms of wages and benefits.  Employees will make a decision for employment based on several factors, the least of which appears to be wage.  Most outsource contact centres in the market are generally providing comparable pay and benefits.  Your key differentiator has to be flexibility, environment, and ease of access.  The other key factor in hiring and retaining employees is your targeted recruitment strategy.

What does targeted recruitment mean in a contact centre environment?  You hear the term used frequently, but it has a different meaning when recruiting for frontline staff for an outsource contact centre environment.  In an outsource environment, each client has a different set of needs, skill sets and abilities.  When developing a hiring profile and targeted recruitment strategy, the objective is to go where the people are.  An example is if you are hiring a technical support representative for a gaming site or company, you take a different approach than if you are hiring for a catalogue retailer.  Technical support representatives have a tendency to be more website based.  Your advertisement needs to be heavier in that area.  Success can also be found by advertising in gaming stores, gaming websites and groups.  You take the advertisement to where the skill set is.  It seems so straightforward but many companies use the same strategy for all recruitment. 

Using a targeted recruitment strategy has many benefits.  Your recruitment dollars are spent more wisely for one.  There is nothing more frustrating then spending a large sum of money on an ad, and yielding only a handful of viable candidates.  Your ROI is low, and the retention of those candidates tends to be poor.  What I have found is that by taking a moment and thinking like your audience, figure out where they frequent, where they will see an ad, and what appeals to them your spend to hire is vastly improved. The second benefit is that you have happy employees that are providing the types of services that they enjoy.  The third benefit is that your training dollars are better spent.  Your learning curve is decreased if the employees coming in the door already have the natural aptitude and experience you are looking for.  All of this seems obvious, but I am shocked at how many recruiters take the “drag net” approach to recruitment, rather than selecting the right “fishing hole”.

One market that seems to be hard to tap into are the people that work in retail stores.  I first started in the contact centre industry years ago, when I told myself I could not work another Christmas and Boxing day on my feet dealing with the crowds.  I found that my love of customer services, up sell ability and skills were directly transferrable to an inbound contact centre.  I loved working in an office environment, my feet didn’t ache at the end of the day, and I was paid better and received benefits.  The flexibility in schedule was perfect for attending University.  What I find though, is that those people working in retail don’t always see the similarities.  They appear to be fairly comfortable with the image of a retail store, and the biggest battle is to over come the negative stigma associated with a contact centre. It’s a huge resource that I would love to tap into, but the malls are very protective about allowing outside advertising and participation from outside companies in any of their in mall job fairs…

I would like to know if anyone has had success recruiting from the retail sector.  Besides the usual newspaper ad, how would you crack into that fortress that is the “mall”…?

Smiling Over Live Chat

The one tip I really stress to new Call Center agents here at 24-7 INtouch is to remember to “smile” over the phone. Of course, no one on the other end can actually see the agent smiling, but they really can hear it in the tone of voice.

Which brings us to Live Chat. Almost every perspective client inevitably questions the human touch aspect of it. They’re right to ask. The truth is it’s much harder to communicate effectively via a written medium than it is verbally. Professor Albert Mehrabian theorized that in a face-to-face conversation, only 7% of the actual communication happening comes from the words.

So how do your create the right tone over Live Chat? These are some tips I offer to agents:

• Convey warmth by being extra polite throughout. Add a “please” or “thank-you” wherever possible to create the proper a tone.
• Always try to personalize pre-written or “canned” answers to make them feel spontaneous and to make the customer feel like you are talking to them. Stating the customer's name a few times during the chat might help.
• Pay close attention to the customer’s questions, ensure that they are not having to repeat themselves as this gives a highly impersonal feel.
• Skim the text you are about to send and avoid using statements that may be misunderstood or interpreted more than one way. Expressions or one-liners that may work in person or over the phone often fall into this category.

These are the ways we can “smile” over chat in the same way we “smile” on the phone. Well done Live Chat can be an extremely powerful tool in customer communications. It has emerged as what will probably be the future of website support and it has a number of advantages that a well organized contact center company could help you achieve.

-Jeff Fettes

Considering the Rising Canadian Dollar

Traditionally, the Canadian/US exchange rate has favored the American client. Recently this has changed due to the rising value of the Canadian dollar. Many people have asked me why U.S. clients are continuing to choose Canadian and other near-shore options for outsourcing? The answer is that Canada can still offer a few key advantages:

• Lower turnover. Comparing records on Statistics Canada and the U.S. Department of Labor sites, we can see that in spite of the healthy Canadian economy the U.S. still maintain an average lower unemployment rate then Canada, which leads to lower turnover of employees. This creates more stability of staff translating to better consistency in service quality.
• Better Education. When choosing an outsourcer, you are choosing their agents to speak with your contacts and represent your organizations. Canada statistically has a more highly educated workforce. According to a study done a few year ago by The Urban Institute, about 8% more of the Canadian workforce have obtained at least a high-school diploma.
• Pricing. Yes, that’s right, we’re still generally less expensive up here. How? According to jobfutures.ca it’s a generally higher standard of living at a lower wage. In the U.S. the national mean hourly wage for contact centers is $11.63, where as the average in Canada is only $10.60.

Outsourcing to near-shore centers has always worked well due to geographical proximities and cultural similarities. Canada has been the near-shore leader for over a decade now and there's more than one reason for that. If you’re considering outsourcing, I recommend calling on a few Canadian companies and let them give you their best shot.

I think you’ll be impressed.

-Jeff Fettes

Contact Center Best Practices Report

I received an email communication from the CCEOC promoting their best practices report. I thought it might be of interest to call center professionals out there.

This report brings up the discussion - what makes YOUR contact center a GREAT place to work? With high attrition rates in our industry and once great call center communities saturating, it is becoming increasingly important to create a culture that fits with your company brand and helps retain good employees.

Based on 24-7 INtouch's strategy, we keep our environment small and intimate enough to create a positive culture and supportive atmosphere for all employees, especially frontline staff. If Sally knows that she will let her team down by "calling in sick", she might think twice before doing so. We'd also want her to want to come into work because she enjoys who she works with, albeit the actual role is very challenging. Other things in my opinion that make a great call center environment are the little things like being heard and having support - again which can usually only take place within a smaller work community. Of course leadership must also foster this and encourage communication between all levels of the company.

I would like to open the discussion up to see what readers think makes a contact center a great place to work - comments anyone?

MK

Welcome to the Contact Center Blog!

Well folks, here it is, finally, at long last, the contact center blog has arrived.  What is the contact center blog you ask?  The general idea was to create a blog where people who are stakeholders in contact center outsourcing companies, whether it be clients, suppliers, partners, or even outsourcers themselves can have open discussions on all things contact center.   Whether it be topics like operations, new technology, driving volumes, workforce, human resources or whatever, we want to encourage open and honest communication in our industry.

I'm sure your next question is "who the heck is this guy?"  Well, my name is Greg Fettes, and I am the President and CEO of 24-7 INtouch, a contact center outsourcer based in Canada.  You can check out my LinkedIN profile or visit the about us area on the 24-7 INtouch website.  At the risk of sounding too "salesy" (a big no-no on this blog from here on!), we have been recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in Canada two years in a row and pride ourselves in being a true leader in innovation for technology, process, and management in contact centers.  In fact, that is the underlying reason this blog got started.  It was a way to create a community that will push the industry in a new direction.  In the coming months you will see guest authors from inside and outside the contact center world make posts on different issues concerning contact centers.  But here's the trick; we are depending on you, the readers, to make comments and push discussions forward.  Maybe you agree, maybe you disagree, or maybe you have experiences that you can share that will bring the conversation in a new direction.  We will not be censoring posts or comments for any reason (except vulgarity of course!) so you will be free to absolutely speak your mind.   Anyways, enough background already, lets get on to the blog!

My plan for posting comments on the contact center blog will be to follow a somewhat similar format each week.  I am hoping to post regularly once per week on Mondays and have a few random posts throughout the week.  Please feel free to give feedback on the blog in general as my goal is to make it as useful and informative as possible.

Thanks and happy blogging!

GF