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EMPLOYER OF CHOICE: AN OLD IDEA TAKING NEW ROOT IN THE CONTACT CENTER

Jeff Doran
President, Contact Center Employer of Choice

Every year, some of the world's top organizations compete for a spot on Fortune Magazine's ranking of "100 best companies to work for," a list of companies that rate high with employees. Now a similar concept is taking root in the contact center, thanks to a new program called Contact Center Employer of Choice© (CCEOC). And the concept is catching on - contact centers from companies like FedEx and CIBA Vision (both NICE customers), have signed on and received their CCEOC certification.

Jeff Doran, the program's founder, came up with the idea four years ago while working as an executive for a human capital organization. "I took a look at some of the key challenges that contact center managers faced, and they were things like turnover issues, attracting great people to the operation, and keeping them motivated and enthusiastic about their work," Doran explained. "These are the things that just kept coming up time and time again." Doran predicts these issues will become even more pressing over the next decade as the baby boomer retirement bubble bursts and the workforce pool shrinks.

It became very clear to Doran that in order to be profitable and effective, contact centers needed to focus on the human side of their operations. "The reality is that if they're not looking at the people side of their business, they may run into trouble down the road. Contact centers really get this. They understand that if they can't retain good people, there's a big cost to the organization."

In fact, typical turnover in the industry is between thirty and fifty percent, and Doran's own studies reveal that the turnover cost for just one mid-level front line representative can be around $10,000. Multiply that by hundreds of reps and many centers, year after year, and it's easy to see the exorbitant cost of high turnover. And this doesn't even include other less apparent indirect costs to the organization.

Still, Doran says, the Contact Center Employer of Choice© (CCEOC) program isn't primarily about reducing turnover; it's about promoting cultural transformation in contact centers. "People are looking at this program not only as a way to address turnover, but also as a way to make their contact centers better work environments," he noted. "Companies that typically do well in this are already doing a lot of great things. They already have some good programs in place. They're supporting their staff, and they have pretty good morale. But they want to be better. They want to build on that success."

And, Doran contends, when contact centers attract, retain and engage the brightest talent, it has far-reaching effects for the organization. "It's critical to maintaining a leadership position, growing the organization and increasing shareholder value," he said.

Doran also hopes the CCEOC program will elevate the status of contact centers and their employees - no small challenge for an industry that has long suffered from a bit of an inferiority complex, and where jobs are sometimes viewed as stepping stones to 'real careers.' "The industry has come a long way, but we need to build on that image and create stability to attract great talent," he said.

Becoming a Contact Center Employer of Choice©: the path to transformation
According to Doran, for most contact centers, the path to this cultural transformation begins with analyzing and understanding where the contact center is today and what it needs to work on to become a Contact Center Employer of Choice©. The process sometimes starts with a diagnostic review which is essentially a consultative engagement. Here, key CCEOC objectives are measured against elements that influence the employee's perception of the work environment. "This helps the organization understand what pieces they need to put into place to be successful with the Contact Center Employer of Choice© certification," said Doran.

Other centers that already have more highly developed employee programs often proceed directly to the certification process, which has two main components. The first step in this process is a management interview, communications and feedback session in which the contact center is reviewed from the management's perspective. "It's a great opportunity for management to take stock in what they've already done and the impact that it has had on employees," said Doran.

The second part of the process is a targeted assessment which is done in the form of an employee survey. Doran's organization spent about a year developing the survey, and it's the scores on this survey that ultimately determine whether or not the center gets certified and the ranking it receives: standard, gold or platinum. The survey goes to all contact center employees and includes questions in ten key areas designed to get employee feedback on everything from how they are compensated and rewarded to their opinions on training and development, and even the contact center environment.

"We ask all kinds of things," noted Doran, "like - 'does my contact center provide a pleasant, physical working environment? Does it provide technology that improves my ability to satisfy the customer? Is it easily accessible by public transit?'" Once the surveys are completed, the data is compiled and analyzed and an action plan is developed from the results.

Centers can repeat the survey process as often as they like to see what progress they have made against their action plan, or to move up in their certification level, but they must re-certify at least every twelve months. "It's really an improvement program," said Doran. "That's the best way to describe it."

The results of the employee surveys can be very telling. The questionnaire results help organizations dig down to the root causes of employee discontent, turnover and low morale, and develop specific, actionable plans to effect positive change. For example, one center's CCEOC surveys revealed that technology within the center was causing a high level of dissatisfaction. The agents' desktop applications hooked into an old mainframe system that was slow and caused bottlenecks in the agents' handling of customer calls. Customers took their frustrations out on the agents, who were powerless to help them. That frustration, in turn, spread to the agents. Knowing about the problem empowered the center to fix it, and that not only relieved customer frustration, but also relieved the agents of their frustration too. Other centers in the program have used the survey feedback from their agents to remedy everything from agent stress to ineffective quality assurance programs.

According to Doran, participating organizations have realized quantifiable benefits from the program. "Many of the companies we work with conduct their own company-wide employee satisfaction surveys, and they've seen increases of five to ten percent in employee satisfaction year over year. That's quite significant. And we've seen turnover rates drop from double to single digits," he noted.

From a corporate standpoint, the branding benefits are considerable too, and they are a strong motivation for contact centers to improve and maintain their certification. The designation instantly gives the center unparalleled recognition as one of the best, most people-centric contact centers to work for in North America. Certified centers are profiled in the CCEOC registry and promoted through targeted media channels.

The role of technology
While the Contact Center Employer of Choice© program has its sights set exclusively on people, Doran affirms, technology can be important too - to the extent that it empowers agents to do their jobs better and creates a high morale, low-stress environment. Such technology includes the systems that agents use in their day to day interactions with customers. It also includes those systems that help contact centers better train, coach, monitor, and evaluate agents so they are equipped to perform their jobs.

One emerging technology that could prove especially useful is emotion detection software that analyzes captured contact center interactions to identify high emotion, and potentially highly stressful calls. "Stress is a common, recurring issue in contact centers," said Doran. "There is a lot of focus on conflict and dispute resolution-type calls, because those are the ones that have the highest emotion, and in turn cause the highest stress levels for agents. So if contact centers could identify those calls and do more specific training in that area, they could do a better job of controlling stress, which would be a big plus."

While the role of technology in promoting a people-centric contact center culture is still evolving, one thing is certain: the concept of creating a Contact Center Employer of Choice© environment is an idea whose time has come. "If your contact center is a vibrant, exciting, great place to work, people are going to want to come to work there, and they're going to want to perform for you," said Doran. "That's what our program hopes to instill and we are getting a sense that we are accomplishing that."

Learn more...
You can learn more about the Contact Center Employer of Choice© program by visiting www.ccemployerofchoice.com or by emailing info@ccemployerofchoice.com.