Name: Rachel Miller

Email:

Web Site: http://about.me/rachellouisemiller

Bio: Rachel Miller has 10 years of e-commerce & e-marketing experience with a passion for social media and all things velcro. A dedicated customer service advocate Rachel believes that every job is a customer service job.

Posts by Rachel Miller:

The Role of First-Call-Resolution in Customer Satisfaction

May 4th, 2012

There is an obvi­ous and unde­ni­able cor­re­la­tion between First-Call-Resolution (FCR) and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. When one goes up – the other fol­lows. Unfor­tu­nately the oppo­site is also true. When one per­cent­age goes down so does the other. Suc­cess­ful call cen­ter man­agers closely mon­i­tor FCR and are quick to make adjust­ments when the met­ric starts to decline.

12% of cus­tomers leave if it takes 2 or more calls to resolve their issue. icmi.com

Listed below are 5 com­pelling rea­sons why FCR is impor­tant to your center’s success.

1. Increased Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion. When cus­tomer issues are resolved quickly and cor­rectly the first time, cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion increases. When cus­tomers are happy with a prod­uct or ser­vice they share the news with friends and family.
2. Reduced Oper­at­ing Costs. Increas­ing FCR reduces call cen­ter oper­at­ing costs by decreas­ing the num­ber of cus­tomers that need to call back because their issue was not resolved the first time.
3. Reduced Employee Turnover.  It is very stress­ful to han­dle a sec­ond or third call from a cus­tomer whose issue was not resolved the first time. Employ­ees who are able to resolve a cus­tomer issue the first time feel good about them­selves and the com­pany. Increas­ing FCR boosts employee con­fi­dence and low­ers employee turnover which decreases oper­at­ing costs.
4. Increased Cross-Sell & Upsell Oppor­tu­ni­ties. Cus­tomers who expe­ri­ence FCR are open to hear­ing about addi­tional prod­ucts or ser­vices that may ben­e­fit them. Encour­age agents to cap­i­tal­ize on this oppor­tu­nity and sug­gest prod­ucts or ser­vices to com­pli­ment the customer’s prior pur­chases.
   

For every 1% improve­ment in FCR, you get a 1% improve­ment in cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. sqmgroup.com

Improv­ing your center’s first-call-resolution per­for­mance will pro­vide many short term and long term ben­e­fits. To read more on this topic please select one of the below links:

• FCR and Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion: A Match Made in Heaven
• The Busi­ness Case for First Call Resolution
• Alti­tude Soft­ware Flies High With First Call Resolution
•  Track­ing Customer-Focused Metrics

Inspired to make changes? Smart man­agers know the key to sus­tained first-call-resolution improve­ments is to invest in train­ing their employ­ees to achieve first call res­o­lu­tion. Skilled employ­ees who have acquired exten­sive prod­uct and ser­vice knowl­edge as well as supe­rior com­mu­ni­ca­tions skills will increase FCR and dif­fer­en­ti­ate your com­pany from com­peti­tors. To learn more about our com­pre­hen­sive train­ing pro­grams fol­low the below links:

Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing for Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Technicians

Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing for Con­tact Cen­ter Agents

Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing for Field Ser­vice Engineers

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Focus on Employee Engagement

April 10th, 2012

Fact: Engaged employ­ees pro­vide bet­ter cus­tomer ser­vice. Tap into your center’s great­est resource – the employ­ees – and reap the rewards! Engaged team mem­bers go above and beyond to solve cus­tomer issues and con­sis­tently pro­vide supe­rior cus­tomer experiences.

Engaged Employ­ees Take the Time to Build Rapport

Before you start to worry about your cen­ter met­rics, I sug­gest you take a moment to think about this sce­nario: A slight increase in average-handle-time results in a sig­nif­i­cant increase in first-call-resolution. Cus­tomer per­cep­tion is real­ity. Cus­tomers who have their issues resolved cor­rectly the first time are much hap­pier than cus­tomers who have a shorter call dura­tion but end up hav­ing to call back again. Encour­age agents to take the time to engage with cus­tomers. Agents who con­nect with cus­tomers are likely to receive more detailed and hon­est responses which expe­dites the res­o­lu­tion process.

Engaged Employ­ees Add Value to Prod­ucts and Services

Engaged employ­ees are excited about edu­cat­ing customers.

One word answers could be reduc­ing your rev­enues. Mil­lions of dol­lars are lost each year by sales and ser­vice peo­ple who “answer” ques­tions cor­rectly but not effec­tively, from a busi­ness stand­point. If you want to have a suc­cess­ful and prof­itable busi­ness, you need to have wel­com­ers on the front lines. Richard Shapiro – The Wel­comer Edge

No one can add value to your prod­uct or ser­vice bet­ter than front-line per­son­nel. Front-line employ­ees who posi­tion them­selves as experts and take the time to answer cus­tomer queries not only cor­rectly, but with details, ensures increased first-call-resolution since fully informed cus­tomer don’t need to call back. Engaged employ­ees nat­u­rally exert extra ini­tia­tive and use past expe­ri­ence and avail­able resources to pro­vide cus­tomers with the most com­pre­hen­sive solutions.

 3 Easy Ways to Increase Employee Engagement

1. Say Thank You. Grat­i­tude starts with you. Show your staff that you value them by thank­ing them for a job well done. Employ­ees who have fre­quent pos­i­tive inter­ac­tions with man­age­ment feel a stronger con­nec­tion to the com­pany and are more likely to pro­vide con­sis­tent world-class cus­tomer service.
2. Acknowl­edge Achieve­ments. Employ­ees who are rec­og­nized for per­form­ing well are more likely to con­tinue the desir­able behav­ior and encour­age oth­ers to do the same.
3.  Invest in Your Employ­ees. Invest­ing in com­mu­ni­ca­tions skills train­ing and prod­uct and ser­vice train­ing for your employ­ees demon­strates that you care not only for the suc­cess of the com­pany but also their per­sonal suc­cess. Agents who receive reg­u­lar train­ing and are prop­erly coached and men­tored by man­age­ment staff are more likely to stay long term. Invest­ing in employ­ees increases engage­ment and reduces employee turnover.

As a con­tact cen­ter man­ager you have a heavy work load. Tak­ing time to engage and empower your employ­ees will lessen the load and dra­mat­i­cally improve your met­rics. Con­tact cen­ters that increase their employee engage­ment lower over­head costs and increase agent per­for­mance. To learn more about how you can increase employee engage­ment today check out our call cen­ter coach­ing train­ing course Mak­ing It Happen™.

Are your employ­ees happy? Find out today! Down­load the Employee Sat­is­fac­tion Sur­vey and learn what you need do to cre­ate a team of engaged, pro­duc­tive, loyal employees.

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The Role of Consistency in Professional Support — Part 3: Communication Skills

March 6th, 2012

One of the most impor­tant com­po­nents of supe­rior cus­tomer sup­port is hav­ing a team of tech­ni­cians with con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. All tech­ni­cians must be skilled at deter­min­ing a customer’s rea­son for call­ing, con­trol­ling the call with open and closed ques­tions, and effi­ciently trou­bleshoot­ing and solv­ing prob­lems. Hav­ing a com­mon approach to cus­tomer ser­vice, and tech­ni­cians with out­stand­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, will enable a cen­ter to pro­vide con­sis­tent, world-class cus­tomer service.



Costs of Incon­sis­tent Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Skills

Indi­vid­ual tech­ni­cians with incon­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are detri­men­tal to sup­port cen­ter suc­cess. And teams and depart­ments com­prised of skilled and unskilled tech­ni­cians will pro­vide incon­sis­tent ser­vice that affects all mea­sur­able ele­ments of sup­port. The costs of incon­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills are:

• Increased time-to-resolution
• Decreased cus­tomer satisfaction
• Decreased cus­tomer retention
• Increased employee turnover

A suc­cess­ful com­pany must have employ­ees who com­mu­ni­cate with cus­tomers in a con­sis­tent man­ner. Cus­tomers may not remem­ber the steps a tech­ni­cian took to resolve their issue, but they’ll cer­tainly remem­ber how the tech­ni­cian made them feel. Con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills will ensure that all tech­ni­cians con­vey an atti­tude of will­ing­ness and professionalism.

The impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not sur­pris­ing when you con­sider the stag­ger­ing amount of time peo­ple spend com­mu­ni­cat­ing on the job. One study, pub­lished in Busi­ness Out­look, based on responses from over 1000 employ­ers at For­tune 1000 com­pa­nies found that work­ers send and receive an aver­age of 1798 mes­sages each day via tele­phone, email, faxes, papers, and face-to-face com­mu­ni­ca­tions.  - The Impor­tance of Strong Busi­ness Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Skills, Uni­ver­sity of Washington

Keep­ing the above excerpt in mind, think about how many cus­tomers your employ­ees com­mu­ni­cate with every day. How would you rate the com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills of your employees?

Ele­ments of Con­sis­tent Service

A sup­port tech­ni­cian with exem­plary com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills will con­trol the call and expertly guide the cus­tomer to a happy res­o­lu­tion. The three skills which follow—Question, Lis­ten, and Con­firm Your Understanding–will pro­vide tech­ni­cians with a con­sis­tent approach to resolv­ing cus­tomer prob­lems quickly. Share these tips with your team.

1. Ques­tion to deter­mine cus­tomer needs.

• Suc­cess­ful trou­bleshoot­ing or prob­lem solv­ing depends on the strate­gic use of open and closed questions.
  • Open ques­tions aim to get cus­tomers speak­ing freely and are use­ful to acquire gen­eral information.
  • Closed ques­tions are use­ful when a "yes" or "no" response is desired or when spe­cific infor­ma­tion is needed.
• Begin with an open ques­tion to get cus­tomers speak­ing freely, then help them nar­row down the issue by ask­ing a series of closed questions.

2. Lis­ten to the customer.

• Care­ful, active lis­ten­ing, enables tech­ni­cians to iden­tify key facts and feel­ings about each customer’s situation.
• In order to effec­tively serve cus­tomers, tech­ni­cians must give their full atten­tion from the start of the call to the end.
• Some cus­tomers will give far more infor­ma­tion than needed; it's the technician’s job to deter­mine what's impor­tant, and take note of key facts.
• In addi­tion to key facts, tech­ni­cians must deter­mine the state of mind (atti­tude) skill level (apti­tude) of the cus­tomer. To iden­tify atti­tude and apti­tude, lis­ten care­fully to the customer's words and to the tone, pitch, rate, and vol­ume of their speech.

3. Con­firm understanding.

• After ques­tion­ing and lis­ten­ing, tech­ni­cians should con­firm their under­stand­ing by ver­bally sum­ma­riz­ing the customer's issue with a prob­lem state­ment, and ask­ing if the state­ment is correct.
• Con­firm­ing builds cus­tomers' con­fi­dence by show­ing them that they have been lis­tened to and under­stood, and that accu­racy is very impor­tant to your com­pany. It also ensures that tech­ni­cians are work­ing on the cor­rect issue.

 Cre­ate a Com­mon Approach to Service

Cre­at­ing a com­mon approach to ser­vice will not only expe­dite issue res­o­lu­tion, but it will also stream­line inter­nal processes. Com­pa­nies that focus on con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills nat­u­rally adopt a com­mon ser­vice lan­guage which enables tech­ni­cians to flu­idly inter­act with other employ­ees and depart­ments. Using com­mon phrases and pro­ce­dures sets a prece­dent for suc­cess. Con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills—both inter­nally and with customers–must be empha­sized to achieve world class cus­tomer ser­vice in your center.

This post is part three in The Role of Con­sis­tency in Pro­fes­sional Sup­port series.

• Part 1: The Role of Con­sis­tency in Pro­fes­sional Sup­port: Employee Coach­ing.
• Part 2: The Role of Con­sis­tency in Pro­fes­sional Sup­port: Trou­bleshoot­ing Skills.

 

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The Role of Consistency in Professional Support – Part 2: Troubleshooting Skills

March 2nd, 2012

Con­sis­tent trou­bleshoot­ing skills are inte­gral to pro­vid­ing world class cus­tomer ser­vice in sup­port cen­ters. Cus­tomers want timely, pro­fes­sional, and con­sis­tent issue res­o­lu­tion – every time.

Ben­e­fits of Con­sis­tent Trou­bleshoot­ing Skills

Ulti­mately, com­pa­nies desire to keep cus­tomers happy. Pro­vid­ing sound res­o­lu­tions, deliv­ered as fast as pos­si­ble, is the num­ber one way to main­tain cus­tomer loy­alty. Here are four rea­sons sup­port tech­ni­cians must pos­sess effi­cient trou­bleshoot­ing skills:

1. Increased Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion:  Resolv­ing cus­tomer issues quickly decreases the incon­ve­nience for the cus­tomer and increases sat­is­fac­tion. There is a direct rela­tion­ship between res­o­lu­tion time and cus­tomer satisfaction.
2. Reduced Oper­a­tional Costs: Reduc­ing time to res­o­lu­tion increases effi­ciency, reduces the labor require­ment, and the total cost per call.
3. Improved Inter­nal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion: Hav­ing a com­mon lan­guage and process for solv­ing prob­lems improves com­mu­ni­ca­tion between depart­ments and dif­fer­ent lev­els of sup­port. Improved com­mu­ni­ca­tion not only expe­dites issue res­o­lu­tion, but also reduces employee stress.
4. Improved Employee Sat­is­fac­tion: Tech­ni­cians who are bet­ter skilled are more adept at resolv­ing cus­tomer issues. This increases their con­fi­dence and moti­va­tion to per­form well on the job.

Can Train­ing Help?

When cus­tomers have issues, soft skills train­ing teaches tech­ni­cians to open the call in a way that quickly builds rap­port, dif­fuses cus­tomer anx­i­ety, and focuses the cus­tomer on the process of find­ing a solu­tion. But can train­ing improve diag­nos­tic trou­bleshoot­ing skills for IT pro­fes­sion­als? Yes! It is impor­tant to set cus­tomers’ at ease, but it’s equally impor­tant to con­sis­tently iden­tify and solve issues cor­rectly – the first time. Diag­nos­tic trou­bleshoot­ing train­ing will stream­line processes and ensure all tech­ni­cians are approach­ing com­mon issues the same way.

Steps for Con­sis­tent Troubleshooting

Tech­ni­cal sup­port pro­fes­sion­als must pos­sess good deci­sion mak­ing skills and the abil­ity to quickly antic­i­pate and devise solu­tions to a seem­ingly unend­ing list of poten­tial prod­uct or ser­vice issues.

Good deci­sion mak­ing requires clear, log­i­cal, and sys­tem­atic think­ing habits as well as the apti­tude for con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing, ana­lyz­ing, and eval­u­at­ing infor­ma­tion rapidly. Deduc­tive rea­son­ing –deter­min­ing a con­clu­sion based on pre­vi­ously known facts–will come read­ily for more sea­soned agents. Hav­ing a stan­dard­ized process for known issues col­lected in a knowl­edge base or process guide book will assist new tech­ni­cians and shorten their the time to resolution.

To pro­vide con­sis­tent tech­ni­cal sup­port agents must have the diag­nos­tic trou­bleshoot­ing skills nec­es­sary to:


1. Ver­ify the problem
2. Define the problem
3. Iso­late the problem
4. Iden­tify the problem
5. Jus­tify the solution
6. Resolve the problem

 

Diag­nos­tic Trou­bleshoot­ing Process:



Hav­ing a stan­dard­ized process for open­ing, iden­ti­fy­ing, resolv­ing, and clos­ing issue-related calls will assist agents in pro­vid­ing con­sis­tent ser­vice. Using a com­mon process for dif­fi­cult calls will also calm the tech­ni­cian and allow him or her to more read­ily engage with cus­tomers’ and quickly assess their needs. A knowl­edge base or process guide book is no doubt use­ful, but the tech­ni­cian must also pos­sess crit­i­cal think­ing skills to effec­tively pro­vide con­sis­tent support.

Sup­port cen­ters are cru­cial touch points in cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment and some­times the only way for a com­pany to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from com­peti­tors. Com­pa­nies that imple­ment a stan­dard­ized process for ser­vice deliv­ery and invest in diag­nos­tic trou­bleshoot­ing skills train­ing will be known as lead­ers in con­sis­tently pro­vid­ing world class support.

This post is part two in The Role of Con­sis­tency in Pro­fes­sional Sup­port series.

• Part 1: The Role of Con­sis­tency in Pro­fes­sional Sup­port: Employee Coach­ing
• Part 3: The Role of Con­sis­tency in Pro­fes­sional Sup­port: Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Skills

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Invest in Your Front-line Supervisors

January 14th, 2012

If you’re at all like me, you’ve lost count of the times you’ve read that you should be invest­ing in your employ­ees. Invest in your employ­ees and they’ll stick around for­ever and become val­ued brand advo­cates. But which employ­ees? Surely not all of them? That could be incred­i­bly costly. With turnover rates at an all-time high, here is my advice to you: Fol­low this grow­ing trend and invest  in your front-line supervisors.

Peo­ple Leave Man­age­ment – Not Companies

There are many rea­sons a com­pany may have high turnover: poor work­ing con­di­tions, low pay, bad hours, and manda­tory over-time to name a few. But, sta­tis­tics show the num­ber one rea­son an employee leaves a job is bad man­age­ment. A bad super­vi­sor can quickly com­pro­mise an oth­er­wise well-performing team. The rip­ple effect of bad man­age­ment reaches all aspects of busi­ness and will quickly affect not only employee morale but also cus­tomer loyalty.

"Peo­ple leave man­agers not companies…in the end, turnover is mostly a man­ager issue," Gallup wrote in its sur­vey find­ings. The effect of poor man­age­ment is widely felt. Gallup also deter­mined that poorly man­aged work groups are on aver­age 50 per­cent less pro­duc­tive and 44 per­cent less prof­itable than well-managed groups. Com­puserve

Front-line super­vi­sors with excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coach­ing skills will trans­form a mediocre per­form­ing team into a good team and a good team into the envy of the entire cen­ter. Recently the Blue Cross Blue Shield Fed­eral Employee Pro­gram needed to improve their cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion scores from an out­sourced cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment. Not only did they train agents, but they also invested in train­ing super­vi­sors with the crit­i­cal skills needed to sus­tain agent train­ing and improve per­for­mance over time. The results of a Gallup poll showed impres­sive sur­vey results:

• 98% of cus­tomers said their call was treated in a pro­fes­sional manner.
• 91% said the CSR quickly under­stood why they called.
• 92% said the response they received was given in a clear and under­stand­able fashion.
• 91% said the response they received was accu­rate as far as they knew.
• 96% said the ser­vice they received was out­stand­ing, very good, or good.

Reduce Turnover with Great Management

Good front-line super­vi­sion is inte­gral to low­er­ing employee turnover. With the high costs of recruit­ing, hir­ing, and train­ing new agents con­tin­u­ally increas­ing, why not jump on the band­wagon and invest in exist­ing employ­ees and improve over­all com­pany oper­a­tions? Some man­agers and super­vi­sors nat­u­rally pos­sess exem­plary com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. Oth­ers need train­ing and expo­sure to the pos­i­tive effects of a learn-by doing-method of man­ag­ing and moti­vat­ing employees.

“Whether you are push­ing your ready-now tal­ent to do some­thing new or help­ing your ready-soon play­ers ele­vate their game, learn­ing and career devel­op­ment is an essen­tial ingre­di­ent in retain­ing employ­ees and cre­at­ing a moti­vated work­force; one that dra­mat­i­cally improves orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture, align­ment, exe­cu­tion and per­for­mance results.” Lisa Roh­land, direc­tor of learn­ing and devel­op­ment, Glax­o­SmithK­line North Amer­ica. (as quoted in Chief Learn­ing Offi­cer, Novem­ber 2011.

The next time you review your train­ing sched­ule, be sure to include time for your front-line super­vi­sors. Improv­ing their skills with call cen­ter coach­ing train­ing will reduce employee turnover and  increase cus­tomer satisfaction.

Post #5 in the Top Ten Cus­tomer Ser­vice and Sup­port Trends for 2012 series.

Reduce employee turnover by improv­ing super­vi­sory skills. Down­load this free white paper or paste this link into your browser: http://info.impactlearning.com/EmployeeSupervisionWPRegister.html




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Is There an App for That? Tailoring Customer Service for Mobile Devices

January 10th, 2012

Did you hear? You can get what­ever you want, when­ever you want it – wher­ever you are! The ever increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity of smart phones and tablets is putting increas­ing pres­sure on ser­vice and sup­port cen­ters to respond in real-time to cus­tomer requests. The con­cept of busi­ness hours and wait­ing peri­ods has been kicked to the curb by the new gen­er­a­tion of fast-paced, always-connected consumers.

What’s Your App?

Cus­tomers are get­ting very famil­iar with using mobile appli­ca­tions as a cus­tomer ser­vice chan­nel. For the con­sumer there are next to no down­sides. A “brand-in-hand” appli­ca­tion offers imme­di­ate access to account infor­ma­tion, cus­tomer sup­port and prod­uct and ser­vice options.

Mobil­ity com­put­ing is where the access to IT capa­bil­i­ties no longer occurs through tra­di­tional desk­top machines that are loaded with pro­cess­ing power, mem­ory, stor­age, and are teth­ered to the cor­po­rate net­work. Instead, users expect to access IT capa­bil­i­ties from any loca­tion and from a myr­iad of devices, large and small. TSIA part­ner PWC has observed that com­pa­nies need to migrate from “email cul­tures” to “app cul­tures.”  If you stop to think about that sim­ple con­cept, the ram­i­fi­ca­tions are immense.  The explo­sion of smart mobile devices and “apps” is forc­ing tech­nol­ogy solu­tion providers to rethink every­thing from solu­tion design to secu­rity to price points for solu­tions. Tom Lah, Tech­nol­ogy Ser­vices Indus­try Association

Indus­try experts are pre­dict­ing a dra­matic increase in mobile appli­ca­tion use in 2012 for cus­tomer ser­vice and sup­port. To increase and main­tain cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion lev­els com­pa­nies will need to be proac­tive in assist­ing cus­tomers via their cho­sen mode of communication.

“Resolv­ing cus­tomer com­plaints and con­cerns is crit­i­cal to cus­tomer reten­tion and engage­ment,” said Janet Eden-Harris, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer for Mar­ket Force Infor­ma­tion. “Happy cus­tomers pro­duce the gift that keeps on giv­ing. They buy more. They tell their friends. They return more fre­quently. But, a few unhappy cus­tomers can undo all of your great work.”  Marketforce.com

In many aspects, pro­vid­ing world-class cus­tomer ser­vice is the only dif­fer­en­tia­tor a com­pany may have from its com­peti­tors. The use of mobile devices and smart phones will only con­tinue to increase and will advance the speed at which com­pa­nies need to adopt new processes and procedures.

The chal­lenge is to pre­pare front-line staff for these changes. Arm them with prod­uct and ser­vice knowl­edge and tech­ni­cal and soft skills train­ing. Mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tion will lower the cost per inter­ac­tion and will enable agents to deliver more timely and more per­son­al­ized ser­vice to customers.

Smart phones, tablets, and call cen­ter appli­ca­tions will all improve. With the intro­duc­tion of the iPhone, Apple changed the way busi­ness hap­pens by cre­at­ing soft­ware devel­op­ment kits and use­ful Web browsers for smart phones and tablets. This allows busi­nesses to cre­ate mobile appli­ca­tions for call cen­ters. These appli­ca­tions can be cloud-based appli­ca­tions so agents can access and update their CRM solu­tions or cus­tomer records from any com­puter with Inter­net access. Angie Reed, Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ager, Digium

Get App Happy

Which option sounds bet­ter to you? Wait­ing in a lengthy IVR queue or press­ing a but­ton on your smart phone to send a quick mes­sage? I know which option I’m choos­ing. Cus­tomer ser­vice and sup­port is evolv­ing – make sure you and your com­pany are not left in the dark ages.

Post #7 in the Top Ten Cus­tomer Ser­vice and Sup­port Trends for 2012 series.


 

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Employee Retention: Engage. Optimize. Retain.

December 20th, 2011

Engage. Opti­mize. Retain. This is your new mantra. Start­ing today you are an employee engage­ment cham­pion. Read on to fill your prover­bial tool belt with use­ful tips to moti­vate and retain your employees.

The call cen­ter indus­try has tra­di­tion­ally had higher than aver­age turnover rates and in these tough eco­nomic times a greater focus has been put on hir­ing and retain­ing skilled agents. The need for employee reten­tion strate­gies has never been greater.

ENGAGE.

Why engage? Many employ­ees leave jobs they like because of neg­a­tive inter­ac­tions with their direct super­vi­sors or upper man­age­ment. Employ­ees who have fre­quent, pos­i­tive inter­ac­tions with man­age­ment feel “in the loop” and have a greater sense of com­pany pride. Make sure your man­age­r­ial staff has the skills to effec­tively pro­vide feed­back to employ­ees. Rein­forc­ing good behav­ior and cor­rect­ing bad behav­ior must be done on a daily basis to keep agents per­form­ing at opti­mal levels.

OPTIMIZE.

Why opti­mize? Opti­miz­ing employee per­for­mance ensures that you and your com­pany are mak­ing the most out of each indi­vid­ual employee’s strengths. The most effec­tive way to max­i­mize employee per­for­mance is to pro­vide con­struc­tive feed­back. Employ­ees who receive feed­back feel they have more con­trol over their work which increases job sat­is­fac­tion and the qual­ity of their work.

Pos­i­tive feed­back is the eas­i­est way to boost employee con­fi­dence and increase job sat­is­fac­tion. There are many effec­tive ways to praise but I believe the below exer­cise is most effective.

B = Behav­ior. Iden­tify pre­ferred behav­ior so employee can con­tinue doing it.

E = Effect. Explain how the behav­ior con­tributed to the customer’s pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, com­pany bot­tom line or any­thing else that details why the behav­ior is desired.

T = Thanks. Always thank the employee. This shows appre­ci­a­tion and rein­forces that the employee did a good thing and encour­ages them to con­tinue doing it.

RETAIN.

Why retain? Increas­ing employee reten­tion is a smart and nec­es­sary way to increase prof­its. Happy employ­ees are long term employ­ees. Retain­ing skilled agents reduces your over­head and increases cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. Human Resource pro­fes­sion­als were asked which employee reten­tion strate­gies best worked for them and the three top responses were:

• Tuition reim­burse­ment
• Com­pet­i­tive vaca­tion and hol­i­day benefits
• Com­pet­i­tive salaries

Invest­ing in your employee’s future will guar­an­tee long term com­pany suc­cess. Employ­ees would rather receive addi­tional job skills train­ing than higher salaries. Many exec­u­tives make the mis­take of offer­ing more money to encour­age employ­ees to stay. But you know bet­ter. To suc­cess­fully engage, opti­mize and retain, you and your staff need to pos­i­tively inter­act with employees.

Do you want to reduce employee turnover and improve engage­ment? Find out how by down­load­ing this free white paper or paste this link into your browser: http://info.impactlearning.com/TurnoverWPRegister.html

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