Archives for November 2015

In this series we will look at some useful tips for contact centre management, as seen by our work in the Australian contact centre industry. They are not presented in any particular order.

This article is the third of nine articles in the series.

Recruit the Right People

In an effort to keep costs down, contact centres often recruit reactively – they wait for staff to leave before recruiting new staff, by which time it is urgent to get staff on board because customer service is suffering. All too often the focus is quantity, not quality – just get the ‘cheeks on seats’.

This approach usually adds to the attrition problem – the wrong people are put in the wrong job and finish up leaving after a relatively short time. Rushed, or inadequate training will also worsen the problem.

Another approach is to forecast attrition and recruit staff before a vacancy actually exists. This is more expensive in real dollar terms because you are often over-staffed, however it saves the hidden costs that are not always considered. Some examples of hidden costs are:

• The impact to customer service from the time the original staff member resigns to the time they actually leave – they are at work but are effectively “checked out” and not performing to optimum.
• The impact to customer service after the original staff member leaves but before the new staff member is ready to service customers – this includes the recruitment and training period. Remember – you will be down one full staff member during this period.
• The impact to customer service from the time the new staff member starts servicing customers until they are fully productive – they will be constantly learning and becoming more productive during this period.
• The damage to company reputation resulting from these reduced levels of customer service.

Make absolutely no mistake – contact centre work is not easy; despite public opinion it is certainly not ’entry level’. Contact centre staff have to know more about the organisation, its people, products and services than anyone else in the organisation – which is why so many contact centre staff are “poached” into other areas of the business. In addition to this, they need to have the right attitude and approach – they have to get excited about helping people. People ring contact centres because they have a problem – I have never heard anyone ring a contact centre to wish the agent a nice day! Doctors have the same issue – people only go to the doctor when they are sick, but doctors are excited about helping people. It is critical that contact centre staff are genuinely excited about helping people and meeting customers’ needs.

Many contact centres do undertake aptitude tests and psychometric tests of new employees, as well as putting all new staff through “assessment centres” as part of the recruitment process. I also recommend using appropriate testing to define a desirable personality profile based on the traits of your best staff, and testing new staff against these traits to ensure they have the right personality and attitudes (not aptitude) for contact centre work.

Spend more time in the recruitment process, select the right staff, use aptitude testing together with personality profiling and your staff turnover will drop significantly – and so will your costs.

For more information please email spels@ccaction.com.au or call +61 3 8648 6577.

All previous articles are available on our web site – www.ccaction.com.au

Next article – Focus On The Right Metrics.

In this series we will look at some useful tips for contact centre management, as seen by our work in the Australian contact centre industry. They are not presented in any particular order.

This article is the second of nine articles in the series.

Provide Appropriate Training

Training is often focused on induction training – staff are recruited, put into a classroom and/or on the phones with a ‘buddy’ and crammed with as much product and service knowledge as possible. The new staff member is unable to remember everything they have been taught, and are not confident when they are put onto the phones. This results in stress and can contribute to poor staff morale and high turnover.

A better approach is to only teach new staff what they need to know to get on the phones quickly, and allow them to reinforce their learning while they gain experience. Where possible, this should be a single product, a single function or simple tasks – and use the capabilities of the technology to only feed them calls they can handle. As their confidence grows, teach additional products and skills and include those calls in their capabilities. This aids confidence with a corresponding improvement in morale and customer service.

Training doesn’t stop after induction – it is ongoing forever. As new technology (including new phones and CRMs), new products, new services or new processes are introduced or updated, thorough training should be provided to all staff to ensure they are appropriately equipped and confident to handle customer queries.

Staged training as advocated in this article should be complimented by:

• A quality assurance and evaluation program
• A reward and recognition program
• Multiple levels of staff skill to allow recognition and promotion of staff as they achieve a higher skill level
• Frequent feedback and coaching.

Customers expect staff to already know the answers to their questions, not to have to look them up or go and ask someone. It is highly stressful for staff to have a customer on the phone and not know the answer to the question they are being asked.

For more information please email spels@ccaction.com.au or call +61 3 8648 6577.

All previous articles are available on our web site – www.ccaction.com.au \

Next article – Recruit The Right People.