From Transactions to Interactions

The drive to provide great customer service is nothing new. Organizations have been striving to improve customer service for years. However, the drive for outstanding service has taken on a whole new urgency in this decade as customer service stories – both good and bad – go viral. One customer’s heartwarming story about “above and beyond” service can provide the kind of marketing that money can’t buy when that customer decides to post it on Facebook or tweet about it to hundreds of friends and associates. Likewise, one service stumble can cause immeasurable damage as word spreads at Internet speed.

It’s no wonder that organizations are busy plotting social media strategies to maximize good exposure and minimize damages when a bad story surfaces. However, many organizations are missing an important part of the strategy. They are focusing on the ramifications of the story after the fact, rather than devoting effort up front to creating great customer experiences in the first place.

Efforts devoted to creating outstanding customer interactions have tremendous payback. The first and most obvious benefit of these memorable experiences is customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. It’s been said it costs four times more to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one, so focusing on satisfaction and retention strategies have immense payoff. And of course, the other reason to focus on improving customer interactions is today’s immediate public relations opportunities (or threats).

As someone who does call center training and consulting, I’m always on the lookout for service success stories. For me, most service experiences fall into the middle of the bell curve, where the interaction was satisfactory, but not exactly worthy of a tweet or a blog mention. However, I’ve had a few “wow” experiences recently where I was really blown away by the service I received from a single individual. A few of these were memorable, loyalty-generating experiences that not only solidified my relationship with the company, but become customer service stories I tell to hundreds of people at a time.

When I do have a great service experience, I often question what contributed to the make-up and training of that individual that made him or her decide to go that extra mile for the customer, because the majority of customer service reps decide not to go down that path. There was a study called the Report on Restoring America’s Competitive Vitality that showed 44% of employees do what is required, but exert no extra effort. Only 23% reported that they performed to their full potential.So how do we get that 23% number higher and have more employees willing to give not just good, but fabulous service?

In this series of articles, we’re going to explore five important components (and a total of 25 ideas) of getting employees to give that “wow” brand of customer service:

1. Hire the right people for the job.
2. Train staff for the “interaction” as well as the “transaction” part of the customer contact.
3. Coach regularly to fine-tune performance and reinforce desired behaviors.
4. Develop individualized motivation programs that encourage each employee to excel.
5. Assemble a system of quantitative and qualitative measures to ensure you’re getting the behaviors you want.

This issue’s article addresses the first item and subsequent article(s) will discuss the remaining points.

Making the Match: Hiring the Right Staff

If you’re been searching for one single thing you can do to improve training success, staff retention, call quality, and overall performance of your staff, there is a single solution that will significantly improve all these other areas. Simply make the right hiring decisions on the front end and everything else is impacted in a positive way.

Here are five strategies associated with hiring the right staff to maximize customer interactions:

1. Define all components of the job.

It’s important to outline all the roles, responsibilities, and job tasks associated with the open positions. Be careful that you don’t just copy a generic job description and use this to guide your search. Nobody likes writing job descriptions, but it’s worth some effort to think through the job tasks and work breakdown to realistically describe the job to others.

In addition to job tasks, you’ll want to outline the competencies required for the job, either at the point of hiring or within a certain period after training and job experience. Note that some of these competencies will be more about personality characteristics and less about specific knowledge and skills in a certain area. For example, sitting in one’s seat for extended periods of time and doing routine, repetitive tasks describes one aspect of the job and suggests a certain personality type that is suited for this kind of work.

2. Cast a big net to maximize your applicant pool.

One of the keys to successful hiring starts with maximizing your applicant pool. You want as many qualified and interested people as possible from which to choose as you build your call center workforce. For many companies, the starting pool is way too small and in order to fill seats, positions are filled with less than ideal candidates.

Increasing the applicant pool begins with how call center positions are advertised. Many centers are still relying on traditional classified ads to list the position and attract job prospects. The problem with this approach is that most people that have a job already aren’t searching these job listings. Only the unemployed or those unhappy with current work are going to see these listings and let’s face it—availability is not a skill set.

You’ll want to cast a bigger net when fishing for call center job prospects. Advertise the position where a broader base of people will learn about the opening, even if it means spending a bit more money on radio or television ads. You might advertise the position on signs on your building, on local billboards, or via flyers at local events. Just getting the word out in the local area near your center can attract candidates that are nearby and interested in learning more about the position.

3. Create a comprehensive employee referral program.

One of the most effective means of advertising for new staff is to have your existing staff serve as recruiters for you. There’s nobody that knows the job any better and they can be effective at finding friends and family members that they think will also be a fit. They’re not likely to bring in people they know would be unhappy in the job or might embarrass them later with poor job performance.

It’s important to provide enough incentive for existing staff to encourage them to bring in new people. You’ll want to have clear hiring protocols in place so it’s clear why someone did not get hired and you should communicate this clearly to candidates that didn’t make the cut so there are no hard feelings with your recommending employees. Call centers that utilize this methodology pay a “finders fee” typically once the hiring has proven to be a success – usually after 60 or 90 successful days on the job.

4. Test for personality more than knowledge or skills.

Another big factor in hiring success is the screening for personality characteristics that are a fit for your type of call center work. While many centers focus on skill testing, time and money is perhaps better spent on psychometric testing. If people have the right personality for the job, you can teach them most of the needed skills, but you can’t teach or shape someone’s personality to be a fit for your center’s culture.

This psychometric testing can help you assess important characteristics that predict job success in various areas. For example, there are certainly personality aspects that are highly correlated with sales aptitude or success in being able to provide support and trouble-shooting in a highly technical environment. Not only does this type of testing show a range of personality characteristics that will predict performance in a specific area, but will also predict how well the candidate will actually like the job and find fulfillment in doing it.

While behavior-based interview questions can get at some of these traits and characteristics, the interview process is simply not as reliable. Some managers and supervisors are not effective interviewers. Likewise, there are many candidates that are good at the interview process but not well-suited to the job. Interviews alone can result in a poor hiring match and the process is substantially improved by a more scientific testing process.

5. Have a realistic expectation exchange before hiring.

Finally, once you’ve decided which candidates you would like to hire, it pays to have a realistic expectation exchange with them before you both agree to move forward. Many of these expectations should be communicated early in the screening process so that candidates can remove themselves early in the process when they hear and see the true nature of the job.

A full expectation exchange at the time of the job offer should outline all the job requirements and performance expectations. You’ll want to provide information about the candidate’s likely work schedule and how long it might take to get a better one. Outline all attendance and schedule adherence expectations and the consequences for not meeting them. Let them know what will be measured in terms of schedule adherence, quality scores, efficiency and productivity measures, etc. and how this information will be used in evaluating their performance. There are some candidates who will opt out at this point given the close scrutiny they’ll be under, but it’s better to have them removed from the job before they start rather than after you’ve devoted weeks of training and coaching efforts only to find it’s not going to work.

Giving more attention to these five areas—job/labor pool definitions, creative and broader advertising, job referral programs, psychometric testing for personality fit, and realistic disclosure about call center work life—will ensure a better match of workforce to the work at hand of creating great customer experiences.

Stay tuned to upcoming issues of The Connection for the remaining ideas for ensuring your conversations are effective interactions.

Penny Reynolds was Co-Founder of The Call Center School and is a popular speaker and writer in the area of call center operations. Recently retired, she serves as an Educational Advisor to QATC, continuing to provide thought leadership and training to the contact center community. She can be reached at pennyreynolds00@gmail.com or at 615-812-8410.