What are some of the best-in-class contact centers doing today to drive efficiencies, enhance productivity, improve performance and strengthen loyalty? What contributes most to their success? You might be surprised.

This article helps answer these questions and highlights six common practices among high-performing contact centers in the U.S. The six strategies in action are….

• Live and lead by this equation: Employee satisfaction = Customer satisfaction
• Provide “focused feedback” coaching to dramatically improve employee performance
• Know the difference between basic e-Learning and simulation-based e-Learning and why the latter will net the highest ROI
• Recognize that the most direct path to building long-term customer loyalty is to give employees the right tools to demonstrate care and take ownership
• Certify contact center managers
• Hire squirrels (stay with me on this one!)

Employee Satisfaction = Customer Satisfaction

According to findings from a recent study conducted by the SQM (Service Quality Measurement Group Inc.), there is a minimum of a 12% increase in customer satisfaction when employees are satisfied. The more satisfied employees are, the better they feel about their jobs. The better they feel about their jobs, the better they care for customers. You cannot ignore the power of feelings. Feelings and perceptions are what drive customer and employee satisfaction and, ultimately, loyalty.

If you believe this concept to be true (as our best-in-class contact centers do), take action by implementing employee satisfaction strategies and tactics that focus on: 1) control; 2) compensation; and 3) recognition.

Regarding control, make sure your employees feel they have the control to take care of customers. The key here is something we refer to as “one and done”. Do you have the processes in place that allow employees to handle customer inquiries on the first call (the best contact centers have an unwavering focus on first-call resolution) or refer them to someone who will? And do your employees have faith in this process? Nothing is more dissatisfactory to an employee than handling return calls from customers who weren’t taken care of the first time. (And we know how customers feel about this too, don’t we?) “One and done” control is paramount.

The second key to employee satisfaction is compensation. Obviously employees are satisfied when they are compensated fairly. Another motivating aspect of compensation is budgeting for top employee’s career development. Generations X and Y, especially, are motivated by the “what’s in it for me” philosophy. Show them how you have budgeted for their career development (which can lead to more money, prestige, and opportunity, etc.) and you’ll get their attention.

And then there’s recognition. Most of your top performers are goal driven. When they achieve a goal; they anticipate a reward. Remember to reward employees not just with money, but with praise, feedback and opportunities. Praise them one-on-one and in front of the group, provide them forums for giving and getting feedback, and offer them opportunities to get involved with developing processes that improve your operation and build customer loyalty. The reward will truly be yours.

Focused Feedback

When it comes to monitoring, the contact centers I examined follow a process that is typical in most contact centers today…at least for part of the process. Monitoring is guided by a checklist that outlines 10 to 15 behaviors that a given representative is expected to perform. Outlining the behaviors is an important part of the overall process because those are the very behaviors that lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction.

What happens next in most contact centers is that a coach – the employee’s manager, supervisor or team leader – goes through the laundry list of behaviors with the employee providing “you did that/you didn’t do that” feedback on each point. However, if a representative is struggling, chances are they are really struggling with one specific behavior that’s usually the most critical.

Here is where the best-of-class contact centers differ in their approach. Through their work with Ulysses Learning, these contact centers support a coaching process where coaches and representatives focus on one behavior – a “pivotal” behavior that has the greatest impact on the call. Plus, they are skilled in providing coaching feedback that’s immediate and quick, usually done in 60 seconds or less.

After coaching, employees are able to clearly and easily answer questions like “What behavior will you focus on to improve customer satisfaction? What’s the one behavior that you are going to do differently or better as a result of this conversation? If they can’t answer these types of questions, the coaches know they didn’t provide focused feedback.

So what does focused feedback sound like? Let’s say the coach monitored a call where the representative missed a sales referral opportunity. A typical coaching response would be “You missed the opportunity to sell the customer an additional service.” Using the Focused Feedback ™ coaching model, coaches would focus on where the rep missed the opportunity or the pivotal behavior, saying “The customer said their daughter is about to go away to school and that they didn’t want to drain their savings. The clue was that the daughter is going away to school and the customer could be in need of a school loan.

Basic e-Learning vs. Simulation e-Learning

The organizations I examined have made a commitment to using a blend of learning methodologies to accomplish their performance goals. E-Learning is emerging as a dominant methodology. However, some of the most provocative research has shown that if you want to truly build skills through the use of e-Learning, it’s best when it’s done through simulation-based e-Learning vs. basic e-Learning. And the best-in-class organizations have experienced this distinction first hand.

Simulation-based e-Learning, in its simplest sense, focuses on providing adults opportunities to learn by doing. It’s all about practice, repetition and failure, featuring real-life computer generated customer situations.

Let’s focus on practice first. “Practice makes perfect,” we all know that expression. But what’s really happening when you practice is that you build “muscle memory”. A good example of this is a basketball player practicing to make a free throw before he makes the winning shot. You see him practicing the shot without the ball, going through all the motions while fans are screaming (good things and bad). Then, when he goes to make the real shot, his “simulated” practice will increase the odds that he’ll score the extra point.

The same is true for representatives. When they’re in the heat of the moment and the customer yells or demands something out of frustration, a rep’s emotions will kick in. If the rep has practiced this scenario their muscle memory will take over and they’ll remember the best path to handle the call to the customer’s (and their own) satisfaction.

The second benefit of simulation learning is the ability it provides employees to repeat key behaviors over and over again in a safe environment. Practice and repetition go hand in hand.

Third is failure. Adults learn best at the point of failure. That’s when our minds are most open to learning. And simulation learning provides plenty of opportunities to fail in a safe, secure environment.

But all simulation learning is not created equal. The best-of-breed feature expertly crafted e-Learning simulations that develop targeted skills through realistic mistakes or “potholes” carefully built into the skill practice. This provides learning that’s more challenging and meaningful because participants have plenty of opportunities to pursue conversation paths that go “off track” and in the process of getting the conversation back “on track” they learn more.

Furthermore, the best-in-class organizations have learned that validated content is one of the hallmarks of great simulations. Without content that has been researched and validated using thousands of real-life customer interactions, an organization runs the risk of getting simulation e-Learning that might look good (slick technology), but doesn’t achieve targeted performance results.

Care and Ownership: The Building Blocks for Customer Loyalty

In today’s marketplace, it seems that just about every business is focused on ways to build customer loyalty…to strengthen and hold on to the client relationships we have. From an economic standpoint it’s a strategic imperative. Business isn’t rushing through the doors like it used to and it’s getting increasingly difficult to differentiate ourselves from our competition. So what do you do?

If you’re like the high-performing contact centers, you know that the best way to build customer loyalty is at the point of customer contact. Think about it. Each day your reps take between 90-110 calls. That’s 90-110 opportunities to build loyalty…if two things occur consistently. One, your reps are able to show the customer they care; two, they are able to take ownership of the call.

The organizations I’ve worked with have discovered a powerful, easy way to accomplish these two tasks – by developing their reps skills in using the “I can” statement.*

Let me give you an example. When you’re monitoring calls you probably hear your reps say things like “Let me see what I can do for you” or “I’ll do my best” or “If I can’t help you, I’ll see if someone else can.” Each of these types of statements does absolutely nothing to build customer loyalty. Worse, they give the customer the impression that the rep probably won’t be able to help them. Not good.

By just changing the wording in these examples to “I can help you with that” or “I know how to find the answer for you” or “I will take care of this for you” or “I will get the right person to take care of this for you” your reps will give customers the impression that they care and that they have control over the outcome of the call. Very good.

Some will object that reps can’t always control the situation. But there is always something in the call they can control and that’s exactly where to place the “I can” focus. “I can” – two simple words used correctly, will do more to build customer loyalty and improve customer and employee satisfaction than dozens of other more expensive initiatives and programs.

Certification Makes a Difference

The contact center industry has certainly come a long way over the past 15 years and the professionalism and skill level of our managers has evolved considerably as well. This is especially true for the best-in-class organizations.

A common point of comparison among these organizations is that they all take the concept of management certification very seriously. Managers, supervisors and others with leadership potential are tapped to participate in industry certification and formal (mostly internally driven) career development opportunities. They recognize a link between these types of activities and the ongoing viability and success of the contact center.

Why certify? Most have found that certification adds credibility to the contact center management role within their organization. This comes into play when contact center managers ask for additional budget dollars to develop and hire additional staff, fund new technology purchases and provide higher salaries or additional incentives.

Certification also “completes” managers, helping them to become more proficient in areas that are not necessarily their strengths. For example, a manager might really excel in working with people, but their skill in using technology to make management decisions is under-developed. Certification, along with training and development, helps uncover and fill these types of skill gaps.

Certification also plays into the organization’s overall succession plan. Managers, who have gone through a formal certification program, attract attention within the organization. Their success as contact center executives could open opportunities in other parts of the company, if that’s something of interest to them.

Hire Right (Hire Squirrels)

Each of the contact centers I examined, emphasize their focus and dedication to their people…and for good reason. The majority of their contact center budget is spent on people – salaries, incentives, insurances, not to mention training and development. People are inarguably the single most important factor for success.

In training and development alone, according to a various industry benchmarking studies, contact centers spend between $20,000 and $26,000 per year per employee with turnover rates between 20 and 30+%.

What do these numbers tell us? With turnover rates this high, coupled with the high cost of training, we better do everything we can to hire the right people in the first place.

This is where the squirrels figure in. There is a popular animal analogy that goes like this…You’re working really hard to teach a bunch of dogs to climb a tree, gather nuts and then come back down. Wouldn’t you be better off if you just went out and hired a bunch of squirrels to do the job? Your chance for success would be pretty good since squirrels are naturally best suited for the task at hand.

Our best-in-class organizations make conscious decisions about the types of people who are best suited for their contact centers. Sometimes their labor pool is limited, so they are challenged. And sometimes they make unpopular decisions…but they’re the right decisions.

One of our clients (a software company) found themselves a while back in a situation where customer satisfaction was at an all-time low and escalated calls and callbacks were at an all-time high. They were really struggling. At the end of the day, they found that the people they had servicing their customers understood the technology piece of the business but had lousy customer interaction skills. These folks knew the software, every bell and whistle imaginable, but they couldn’t sell it and their service was woeful.

This organization ended up reversing its entire hiring model. Instead of hiring technology savvy folks, they set their sites on candidates who demonstrated average or high levels of customer service skills. They strongly believed that people skills were tougher to develop than product knowledge because the former were more intuitive (people either had skill in working effectively with customers or they didn’t). Bottom line: They saw a turnaround in customer satisfaction from 40 to 70+ percent within 8 months of implementing their new process.

Parting Thoughts….

So what’s your reaction to these six “great” ideas? Have you, too, had success in these areas? Have you tried some of these ideas but they didn’t work? I’d truly like to know and encourage you to call or e-Mail me.

While every organization is different, we can learn from common practices if we continue to share them with one another. I hope you continue to talk with your fellow contact center managers inside and outside of your company. Seek out opinions and other ways of doing business. Participate in more conferences, join a networking group….talk, listen and learn.

About the author…

Dina Vance is a widely respected thought leader on developing and leading contact center staff and a pioneer in improving performance of financial services contact centers. Ms. Vance was responsible for the ground-level start up of two financial services contact centers before she moved into a consulting role where she also managed the call center division for an international consulting and training organization. She currently leads Ulysses’ Contact Center Practice and serves on the executive boards of the Call Center Industry Advisory Council, American Bankers Association and Call Center Networking Group.

Dina can be reached at via e-mail at dvance@ulysseslearning.com or by phone at 800.662.4066.

Ulysses Learning partners with leading global organizations who want to achieve measurable and sustainable results in sales, service and coaching using the most effective methods available – Ulysses’ simulation-based learning, integrated with facilitation, coaching and performance consulting. Ulysses is widely respected for building Judgment@Work™ skills – decision making and advanced interaction skills – in contact centers and at all points of customer interaction throughout financial services, insurance and telecommunications enterprises.

For more information on Ulysses Learning and its CallMentor learning system, which includes ServiceMentor®, SalesMentor™, and CoachingMentor®, contact the company by phone at 800.662.4066, by e-mail at info@ulysseslearning.com or visit the company’s website at www.ulysseslearning.com.

* The use of the “I can” statement is a skill developed in ServiceMentor® and SalesMentor™ by Ulysses Learning.