Customer Management is an industry with an ethereal product. The offerings are quantifiable, but the product is not something one can hold in one’s hand. Customer Management offers a simple service based on the fundamental concept: a company solely devoted to customer service can do a much better job than the customer relations division of the client company. Customer Management claims that, by focusing on the need of the customer and providing excellence in people skills, the customer service product is worth purchasing.
The Customer Management is a recent and developing industry. It is also an industry in crisis.
According to studies, 47% of call centres experience an external agent turnover rate exceeding 20%, with 13% having a rate of over 50% during one year. 46% of newly hired employees will fail within 18 months. 45% of companies estimate the cost of replacing an agent to be between $2500 and $10,000. The cost of constant recruiting and training is escalating, and attrition rates have been increasing over the past several years. This expenditure not only represents a major financial loss for the company, but also serious decline in service quality, productivity, employee morale, and an increase in stress. Attrition results in newer and less skilled agents interacting with customers. Poor morale and high stress, which themselves drive attrition, are also increased by attrition. This results in a toxic environment on the production floor; one which employees are keen to escape.
Well, we all know that customer service is a tough job, and no everyone is cut out for it, but isn’t all of this just the nature of the beast? Isn’t the additional expenses just the cost of doing business?
Not when one examines the employee perspective. 40% of today's employees feel disconnected from their employers, and 25 percent show up at work “just for the paycheck;”and workers at the bottom of the pay scale (lower paid and lower skilled) are more likely to be detached than workers at the top. This is a large percentage of your staff who have no loyalty to your comany, and, hence, no real need to stay. This is why the top drivers for agent departure are better opportunities elsewhere and low pay.
For that matter, nearly half (45.6%) of call centers do not even measure agent satisfaction. As an industry, we mostly don’t care about our staff. We don’t even talk to them: 67% of employees surveyed are dissatisfied with how their employers currently engage them. 31% say employers do not communicate enough; 36% would like more engaging and interactive communications. 48% of employees say they have not been told how their work relates to the companies business. Agents are stressed, unhappy, feel that their work is not important, don’t feel adequately trained, and feel ignored by management. Not only are they quitting, employees are getting very ill. Assurance giant MetLife found that call centre agents account for 60% of a company’s short-term disability claims and family and medical leave absences.
We sell customer service. We promise our clients that we will deliver the best support to their customers. Not only will we be better than our competition, we will be better than the clients own staff. We will be more knowledgeable, have better interactions, and handle more call volume. We will be the best of the best. Our current operational model is not working. In fact, the model itself is not only driving up attrition rates, it is destroying our product.
In most industries, entry-level workers are employed to perform simple tasks relating to the end product: press-operators stamping out parts, line workers packing the product, labourers who carry material or clean the work space. Entry workers are often viewed by other staff as being easily replaceable. Right or wrong, they are usually disregarded as providing minor skills and contributing little to the overall funtion of the company. This attitude similiarly permeates the Customer Management business; new hires and frontline agents are viewed as unskilled labour who will not be with the company long enough to contribute. Longtime employees, certain supervisors, and occasionally management, hold the belief that agents need to progress out of the frontlines in order to have any real value. This fosters a dismissive attitude towards the work of the frontline agent; meaning that the bulk of Customer Management’s employees feel un-appreciated, devalued, and disposable. Agents themselves adopt that attitude and scramble to get away from the phones. MetLife found that the lowest turnover rates exist when the agents have minimal customer interaction (offline work) or when they possess full control over the interaction (senior agent/supervisor).
But the frontline agent is not really an employee, not really staff. For the Customer Management industry, agents are our product. They are what we are selling to our clients. We contract the services of our agents. This is why the current model is failing. New hires are not “entry level workers”; they are assets in development. Experienced agents are not “valued employees” or “senoir staff”, they are key assets. Strangely, this simple fact seems to elude many companies: only 41% of employees said their company views employees as its most important asset, and just 55% said their company treats employees well. Shall we examine the importance of the frontline agent to our business? Consider the following:
- All managers are attending a sensitivity training workshop on the same day. What is the business impact of having a day with no managers in the building?
- Due to a bad potato salad on Supervisor Appreciation Day, all team leaders are out sick. How much money is lost due to the absense of the supervisors?
- Because of an ill-conceived and threatening “Attendence Motivation” announcement, all agents decide to stay home in protest. What is the total result of having no agents?
Agents are not merely assets, they are the primary product. Yet, we permit them to work in unhealthy environments, with minimal training, and little support. We ignore them, berate them over stats, and treat even the skilled ones like serfs. Would our clients sign up if they really knew what they were getting? No thoroughbred racehorses here. Just a bunch of tired, mangy bits of flybait, waiting to be carted off to a glue plant.
But what if we change things? What if we turn that pyramid over? The top row, the biggest, is now the frontline agents; those people you promised would be the cream of the crop. Next level down, a massive support structure designed to assist every single agent in becoming the customer service specialist you said they would be. Next tiers are supervisors, supported by manager, supported by operations, and so on, with every rank having a single overriding purpose: supporting the agent. Now, agents are the most important employees: the ones who bring home the bacon. Rather than doing something trivial and almost-shameful, agents are doing the most important work and will be proud of their skills.
After all, Customer Service is our business. In order to do that business, we must have agents to provide that service. This means that the agent is our product, our asset, and having excellent agents is paramount. We cannot achieve excellent agents in an atmostphere where they are scorned for being the very thing we profit from. Excellent agents are not trained, they are forged through good education, vast experience, and major support: three things they are not currently receiving. We cannot have experienced agents if they all quit withint the first year and a half. It is impossible to maintain quality employees when we don’t tell them what is expected from them or, worse, we give them a goal but none of the tools necessary to do the job. But not adressing the issues of poor morale and insufficient support, we are fostering the toxic atmosphere which is driving staff away.
Such a change is critical, but easy to forment. It is not a fiscal adjustment, but attitudinal change with is required. Already, recruiting and training departments view new hires as important - they should, new agents are their jobs. It is on the production floor where agent depreciation begins. To correct this, it must be made clear to all levels of the production team that the agent is the product. All support, supervisors, and managers must know that their job is to improve that product. Agents should be employed in cohesive units where they can form relationships and support each other. Support staff and supervisors must be available to provide help and support, whether it be technical knowledge or dealing with a difficult customer. Managers need to closely monitor morale on the floor and be able to locate the source of problems and work to correct them. Managers also need to ensure the focus remains on improving the agent product, and not permit situations where agents lose support because other ranks are bogged down in process. For example, what good would it be to have supervisor slaving over call monitors when all agent coaching is suspended do to high call volume? If the agents will never receive the feedback, engaging supervisors to create that feedback is a ridiculous waste of resources. Managers also need to assess the impact of process change on the agent pool. When things need to be adjusted, acceptable reasons should be provided. If the agents know that a new product launch may increase evening volume, they will be more understanding of their schedule change. However, if their schedule change is annouced and their explanation is “client needs,” then morale goes into the ground.
Agents should know, minute by minute, how their work is going. This means providing access to real-time metrix for the individual and for the project. Agents should be aware of their contributions to customer satisfaction, issue resolution as well as base statistics such as call handle time and number of calls waiting. A study of 350 US call centers showed that centres which focus on quality over meeting stats saw a 50% reduction in attrition rates. It is demoralizing to receive only negative feedback, yet this is the way many agents are coached; they only get feedback when there is a problem. In this case, feedback loses its meaning as “information and developement” and becomes closer to its industrial meaning: “an irritating sound”. Agents should always be coached to the positive, not the negative: here’s what was good, here’s where you can improve.
Above all, agents should never be treated like an exploitable, renewable resource - something to be used up and replaced. Agents are expensive to acquire and quality agents are how we built our customer base. Constant turnover places limits on the quality of the agent pool: longtime agents become rare on the floor and recruitment becomes more difficult as the companies reputation degrades. People don’t want a job where they will be unappreciated and devalued. Agents should always be viewed as what they are: highly trained specialists in their field, people who ensure obligations are met and contracts are renewed. All staff should rush to improve our investment. Agents encouraged for doing good work and given help will get better. This is a vast difference from current tends of ignoring agents as “just doing their job” and condemning errors. We don’t need to fight to retain agents. We just need to stop depreciating our assets.
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