But if customers have all this power, what does that means for our frontline reps? Suddenly, they are dropped into a world that is not only increasingly complex (as products and services become more intricate) but also has well-informed customers that are demanding more.  Customers want things faster, they want the rep to know them, and to do more of the work for them to boot.

Pretty hard for a frontline employee who only a few years ago was probably focused on efficient resolution of pretty simply issues, right?

Well, the strain on the rep is starting to show.  81% of service organizations have not seen their frontline performance improve in the past few years.  Over 25% of reps say they are currently highly disengaged in their jobs – putting forth less effort and more likely to leave their job.

So, what’s the answer?  How can the service organization get the next boost in rep performance?   Well, we’ve identified a previously undiscovered, but extremely powerful skill set that will deliver a 11% increase in rep performance.  (Hint: it’s probably not what you think it is!)

In response, CCC conducted a survey of frontline staff across B2C and B2B companies – asking their supervisors to rate them against a host of skills and behaviors that we thought could drive rep performance.

What we found was that among all the skills and behaviors that could matter – only a few do.  And, the few that do statistically group (or factor) together into four skill buckets.

Three of the buckets are pretty straightforward, each having a small to moderate boost to performance:

-Basic Behaviors and Skills: Six skills and behaviors factored together here – all around basic knowledge of the company, multi-tasking, and communication skills.  These are considered the baseline for any employee.

-Advanced Problem Solving (IQ): These four skills and behaviors all focused on issue resolution skills required to diagnose and solve customer problems.

-Emotional Intelligence (EQ): This grouping of six skills and behaviors center around empathy and making emotional connections with customers.

Each improves rep performance between around three and a half percent to about five and a half percent.  Nothing to sneeze at, but there isn’t one clear skill set that is a winner in this new era of customer service.

Until that is, we reveal the fourth factor.  Coined the Control Quotient (CQ), its five skills and behaviors represent someone who is in control over their job, their interactions with customers, and themselves.

And CQ  improves rep performance by over 11% - accounting for nearly half of the total potential lift of performance, giving a greater boost than any of the other two factors combined.

So, what is the Control Quotient?  Well, it is the ability of frontline staff to take control over their interactions at work – including their ability to remain resilient, take responsibility for their actions, and respond well to constructive criticism.  This person doesn’t let one tough call or unhappy customer ruin their day – they do not take the baggage of one bad conversation into their next conversation.  They remain able to see the bigger picture, enabling them to be adaptive to customers in the moment to provide tailored service.

Okay – now you are probably thinking.  How do I get more CQ in my organization?  If you are thinking about hiring and coaching – those aren’t the most effective levers you can pull.  In fact, getting your reps to have more CQ has less to do with getting reps doing something differently – and everything to do with managing your frontline differently.  Your reps have the potential to demonstrate CQ – but it’s the service organization management that is inadvertently suppressing these skills.

See Dalia’s post to learn more about the three environmental keys you can use to boost CQ within your own frontline folks (Hint: it’s all about trust, alignment, and peer support).  In the meantime, learn more about CQ and what it’s all about.

CCC Related Resources:

The Next Frontier of Rep Performance executive summary | full study

CQ Hiring and Screening Tools

How to Demonstrate Trust in Reps

How to Align Reps to Common Goals

How to Build Strong Rep Peer Support Networks

Difficult economic times have prompted many organizations to reevaluate their existing business processes—everything from how the CEO is compensated down to the food served at the company cafeteria. Even when it comes to screening and hiring potential employees, companies have realized the need to increase efficiencies and are looking at new methods to find the ‘best fit’ candidates for their organization.

The problem is that finding those ‘best fits’ isn’t always easy to do in an interview, and with more applicants and fewer positions, companies are increasingly faced with tougher decisions between what appear to be equally qualified candidates. As a result, many organizations are turning to new ‘pre-hire tests’ to check for personality, cognitive abilities, and other competencies in an effort to gain an edge in hiring.

These trends in hiring are of particular interest in light of CCC’s most recent research, The Next Frontier of Rep Performance. In this study, we highlight the importance of a set of skills and behaviors we call the Control Quotient (CQ), which quantifies a rep’s ability to exercise ownership over their day-to-day work, as well as to remain in control of themselves in stressful situations. And while there are several actions service organizations can take to develop CQ in their existing reps (for instance, creating strong peer support networks), there is also an opportunity to screen out ‘low CQ’ candidates in the hiring process—and avoid choosing a bad fit for the organization from the beginning.

So how do service organizations do this? Interestingly, they use some of the same behavioral interviewing techniques as their counterparts in other areas of the business, but with a special emphasis on the qualities that underlie CQ.

For example, one telecommunications company has developed a set of questions to test for specific behaviors critical to success in their service center, as well as an ‘answer key’ that guides interviewers in interpreting the responses—a crucial tool that is often lacking. The company focuses on assessing candidates based on their past experiences, asking targeted questions with the following guidelines in mind:

1)      Be Specific – ask questions that prompt candidates to share a specific experience or action they took in a given situation.

2)      Ask Why – beyond just what they did, candidates should be able to articulate their rationale for a given action.

3)      Discuss Results – even if the experience was a failure for the candidate, they should be able to articulate a lesson learned.

While this unique approach has lead the company to hire better fits—as evidenced by a 20% increase in retention—the best news is that it can be adapted to screen for just about any rep behavior you can think of. CCC Members can use our Hiring and Screening Tools to help them create a tailored, effective hiring process for their organization, and can learn more about this company’s approach to hiring in our upcoming webinars on hiring for CQ.

CCC Buzz readers – how do you find the ‘best fit’ candidates for your organization?

Related CCC Resources

Webinar: Hiring for CQ Using Behavioral Interviewing
CQ-Based Behavioral Interviews (T-Mobile)
CQ Hiring and Screening Tools

In fact the changes are so significant and long-lasting that companies that once saw these trends as temporary are now embracing these changes as permanent.  And of course service and support organizations have not been immune to these changes.

Among the most major changes is the new influx of younger generations into the workplace.  With them come different expectations, motivations, preferences, and styles, leaving many organizations at a loss for how to effectively manage and motivate these staff.

But given the economic climate, older demographics also have changed their perceptions and expectations of the workplace environment, creating a complex management situation for many organizations.

In fact, organizations today are not just coping with managing the demands of individual demographics, but how the demographics interact with each other, too.  Suddenly retention, engagement, and team dynamics are quite complex, calling into question tried and true engagement and management strategies.

So what is the right way forward?  Here are a few considerations:

1. Understand the preferences and motivations of different demographics as they vary significantly.

CCC’s sister market research arm, Iconoculture, has conducted substantial generational research, finding that some of the biggest differences lie in different demographics’ definitions of success, perception of space and roles, and perception of technology.

Included in this post’s graphic are some broad expectations broken out by demographics that Iconoculture has surfaced.  Take these into consideration when building communication and development plans and creating incentives.

2. Flexibility is the new norm.  All demographics increasingly value work flexibility, enabling them to more effectively balance personal lives, families, and even exercise routines.  That means flexible scheduling and remote agent programs are growing in popularity.

In fact we are increasingly seeing interest in remote worker by B2B order management and technical support organizations, business models that previously ruled out the possibility of flexible work arrangements.

And of course the benefits of flexibility are numerous, included lower absenteeism and turnover rates and higher engagement.

3. Leverage new communication channels.  Monthly memos and mass blast e-mails from leadership may have been effective in the past, but staff increasingly value collaboration tools such as social networks and wikis to connect and share knowledge.

In fact, CCC’s latest research finds that different demographics are embracing these channels as virtual peer support opportunities, which can actually increase frontline staff performance.

What other demographic trends are you noticing in your service and support organization are you seeing?  And how are you addressing the changes?

CCC Related Resources:

• Attracting and Retaining Generation Y
• Remote Agent Program Development Process
• Creating Flexible Schedules
• Employee Engagement Survey

By Kirsten Robinson

January 1 didn’t just mark the start of a new year—it also represented the start of the era of the “Golden Boomers,” or Baby Boomers who will turn 65 this year, the age typically standard for retirement. Comprised of 79 million people, the Baby Boomer generation will be making an enormous impact on the job market as they retire en masse. And employers know it; 64% of respondents to CPI’s 2010 Mature Workforce Survey say retiring workers would have a significant impact on their organization.

So, who should you hire to fill the gaps left by retirees? It may sound like a trick answer, but it’s not: the retirees themselves. Retired workers are still seeking employment, presenting a pool of untapped talent. Contact centers in particular can benefit from hiring older workers—not only do they have extensive professional experience, but retirees are better at coping with the emotional stress and burnout that lead to reduced productivity and increased absenteeism.

The challenge is that most companies don’t know where to begin sourcing within the unique retiree labor pool. Older workers require different methods of recruitment, and organizations need to tailor efforts to match their interests and value propositions.

Here are a couple of key questions to consider when getting started, and our take on answering them:

What sourcing channels should we use?

• Retiree-focused organizations. AARP is a prime example—their National Employer Team partners with employers to help them hire retirees. Companies currently leveraging AARP include Verizon, Peace Corps and Universal Health Services.
• Targeted advertising. For most of their lives and working careers, Baby Boomers used traditional media channels, e.g., newspapers, television and radio—and continue to do so. This doesn’t mean you should rule out using new media, but be sure to focus on traditional outlets for advertising job openings.
• Niche job boards. When you do go into the digital realm, there are a number of Internet job boards that cater to providing career information to retirees. Sites include: www.retiredbrains.com, www.seniorjobbank.org and www.retirementjobs.com.
• Employee networks. Referrals are a great sourcing method for all age ranges. But when hiring retirees, employee referrals can help to reduce recruiting costs—referrals provide credibility for retirees without customer service experience.

How can we appeal to the retiree talent pool?

• Tailor recruiting materials. Recruiting retirees is different than other new hires; you’re coaxing them back into the workforce, which is a more difficult task than appealing to those coming from other working environments. Factors as subtle as word choice in job listings can make an impact, e.g., ads emphasizing “energy,” or “fresh thinking,” may be interpreted as targeting a younger audience. You can appeal to older workers’ breadth of experience by using words such as “knowledge” and “expertise.”
• Consider applicants with varied backgrounds. Many organizations think that people can work as successful agents and meet customer needs without specific contact center experience. Varied work experience lends itself to the other qualities that make a great customer service rep, e.g., professional backgrounds in empathy, relationship building or critical thinking.

CCC members, to view the rest of our research, check out the white paper on Hiring Retirees in Contact Centers.

The statistics are impressive: Toys “R” Us to open 600 Express locations to provide more convenient locations to potential customers. Borders is doing the same, opening 25 Borders Express outlets in smaller markets.

More eye-catching is the number of staff required for the holiday season. Toys “R” Us announced plans to take on 45,000 temporary employees, and Best Buy, also expanding, will bring on 29,000 seasonal staffers.

As customer service knows well, this seasonal expansion is often invisible to consumers when it happens behind the walls of the contact center. Customers may notice more retail staff in the stores, but may not know the company also hires more contact center staff to keep up with increase in contact volume.  And, with holiday call volumes spiking as much as 10x normal volume, many more frontline staff are required to provide high levels of service for customers who have very urgent needs for the holiday season.  

But, a fast ramp up in staff size presents a tall order for the service organization: How do we quickly recruit and train seasonal staff to meet customer demands without a gap in service?

There are three starting points to ramp up seasonal workers that I’ve heard from members, including:

1. Recruit at the right time. Stagger hiring and training sessions for seasonal staff according to anticipated contact volume. For example, Mattel forecasts call spikes and staffing needs using historical call volume data and projections from the marketing department. The service organization works closely with HR to ensure hiring occurs on schedule. 
    
2. Limit onboarding time as much as possible—but be sure to guard the customer experience. Seasonal employees often handle less complex customer contacts. Focusing only on subject-matter expertise of a small set of contact scenarios, many of these can be easier to train for.We’ve seen how the UK insurance firm Friends Provident shortens its training program by teaching new hires how to handle only the 10 most common call types before learning anything else. The concept is well suited for application to seasonal employee training sessions.Another way to limit onboarding is to create separate teams dedicated to handle “outlier” products. New products or services, often released during the holiday season, present unexpected call spikes of their own. Mattel uses a dedicated team for such outlier products. 
3. Provide incentives for seasonal staffers to come back. If done well, you’ll decrease next year’s recruiting and training costs as previous seasonal staff already have some of the subject matter expertise. Companies incent seasonal staffers to come back in many ways, from product discounts to healthcare benefits, or even by making it easy for staff who move their residence throughout the year to join the company wherever they are.

If you have seasonal workers, what do you do to quickly get them up to speed?  What has worked and what hasn’t?

CCC members, check out more of our resources on Developing Staff Skills or see more details from Mattel’s (and two other company) season hiring practices. Additionally, get more guidance on Friends Provident’s onboarding approach and company examples of incentive programs.

How could a former player, someone who seemingly knows the game so well, fail miserably as a coach?  Well, like brokerage statements say: Past performance is not an indication of future success.

And the mistake that the Redskins made in hiring a coach based on success on the field is similar to the mistake many contact center leaders make when they pluck star performers from the floor and make them supervisors, even though the star performer may not have shown any aptitude (or interest!) for coaching.  And ask anyone who’s made a hiring mistake and they’ll tell you, it’s easier to get someone in the door than it is to get them out!

How do you overcome making a poor hiring decision, especially when it comes to such a critical service organization role?  Here’s some guidance to follow as you think about your next round of supervisor hiring:

1. Look Beyond the Stars – Expand the candidate pool to include not just star performers, but middle performers, too. 
2. Gauge Their Interest – Ask your candidates “reluctance” questions to gauge whether they’re truly interested in coaching, or simply want a position with a pay increase and time off the phone.  Click here to read my colleague’s take on reluctance.
3. Show Both Sides of the Coin – Allow candidates to observe supervisors with various degrees of expertise: seasoned supervisors with strong coaching skills will show candidates what good coaching should look like, and newer sups give a sense of how the candidate’s early sessions will go. 
4. Let Them Test Drive Before You Buy – Set-up role play scenarios for candidates to practice coaching interactions with staff members to get a sense of whether they’re ready for the job.  Struggling with the interactions is okay here, but you should be able to get a sense of whether candidates possess, or lack, a natural ability to coach and lead staff.

Do all great players make terrible coaches?  No, there are plenty of former professional athletes who found success as coaches, but success on the field (or contact center floor) doesn’t always equate to success as a coach.  Following this guidance will help ensure that your coaching selection process nets you a winner and not someone who can’t succeed at the next level. 

CCC Members: Want to learn more?   Click here to learn how one member uses a super-smart approach to selecting supervisors.  And, click here to learn how to screen for reluctance to coach.

No doubt about it…and in case you’re still wondering…remote reps are here to stay.  Stories of “failed” programs are rare, and most companies have very positive experiences.  Commonly cited outcomes (when compared to brick and mortar operations) include:

• Better customer survey scores
• Higher productivity
• Lower turnover
• Environmentally friendly (This is a new one…we’ve recently heard some organizations publicize remote programs as a “green” initiative to cut the company’s carbon footprint—because fewer people are driving to work.)

CCC members, learn more about our remote rep research.

These benefits are great, but almost all of them are highly dependent on the reps you choose to staff the program.  If you hire the wrong type of rep, you’re investing time and resources into people likely to leave the job or, worse yet, stick around and be entirely unproductive.  When hiring remote reps, here are some things to consider:

1. Start with your stars—Many companies acknowledge one primary reason their programs are so successful is they are primarily staffed by high-performers who used to work within the brick and mortar operation.  Even if you don’t target your high-performers, using reps that already work for the company does have several benefits, including:

A. Leveraging proximity—Operating on the assumption that they already live in the area, you’ll be able to maintain the option of asking reps to come to the office when needed.

B. Using the program as a performance incentive—Many of our members use remote agent status as a reward, or a “promotion without a promotion”, for high performance.

C. Eliminating some unknowns—By using reps already in seat, you’ll know what to expect in terms of performance, trustworthiness (particularly regarding sensitive customer information), and dependability.Please note: I’m not saying that you can’t be successful with externally-sourced remote reps.  But be aware that you will need to put a lot more effort into getting the program up and running from a training perspective, including considerations like —Will you house these people temporarily in your center to onboard them?  If so, where will you put them?  Or will you invest in remote learning technology?—and your benefits will be a) slower to come and b) incrementally smaller.

2. Give applicants a test-run—Even among your high-performers, not everyone is suited for remote work.  Given the complexity and expense involved with launching work at home arrangements (specifically from a technology perspective), some companies stipulate that employees must commit to working from home for a minimum period of time (perhaps six months). 

Better yet, giving reps an opportunity to back out before they enter the program can save you quite a bit of time and money of brining them back into the brick-and-mortar operations after a few months. 

One way to give reps a taste of remote work before fully committing is to create a “test cube environment” that mimics the physical isolation that reps will experience when working from home.  This allows reps to self-select out of the application process if they decide it isn’t right for them.  If you try this, have the applicant work from the “test cube” for at least a week—a single shift is likely not going to be enough of a trial.

These considerations are certainly just a start…what would you add to the list?  How have you ensured that you are sending the right people to work from home?

CCC members, be sure to review our tool for remote rep program development

And the news from one of our sister programs, the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC), isn’t good.  In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, their study of over 20,000 ‘emerging star’ employees found some startling facts:

• 1 in 3 high-potential employees are disengaged from their job – and are far less productive as a result
• 1 in 4 intends to leave their current company within the next year
• 1 in 5 see a misalignment between what the company wants and their own personal aspirations

Sound scary?  Well, it definitely got my attention.  And it got me thinking about what we can do to swing these statistics back in our favor.

CLC outlines six key mistakes organizations make when developing high-potential employees – and ways organizations have overcome these barriers.  I urge you to give it a read, but one caught my eye in particular –  Mistake 2: Equating Current High Performance with Future Potential.

CLC data found almost 70% of high-performing staff don’t have what it takes to be successful in their next role.  We know who those people are – and we likely promote them all the time, like the stellar problem-solving frontline rep who as a supervisor doesn’t listen to his team.

How do you screen for someone who has high future potential?  CLC has three attributes to look for:

• Ability: Our best talent must have the required knowledge to succeed in more advanced responsibilities.  But, interestingly enough, emotional skills are also mentioned.  Thinking of the supervisor/coach role, emotional attributes (like the ability to have tough conversations) are key – yet few innately do them well.  Many emotional skills need to be honed – and CCC sees members embed supervisor candidates in coaching roles for several months to both identify innate ability and further develop skills.  We need to coach our coaches, not just expect they’ll perform well from day 1.
• Engagement: Our top talent needs to be committed to our organization and put forth maximum effort in their jobs.  As Jacob mentions in his recent post, there are several ways to drive engagement.  I want to add the need to measure it – and it’s not enough to simply ask about job satisfaction.  Instead, ask them about their intent to leave and what will cause them to switch to another company.  Their answers may surprise you.
• Aspiration: Finally, tomorrow’s leaders must actually aspire to their new role.  The supervisor who doesn’t like to coach and doesn’t care about recognition or advancement?  Probably not a good fit.  Melissa has talked about screening for coaching reluctance in a past post, and I agree –we can just ask high-performers about their goals.  But we also have to find ways to see them in action to make sure no one is gaming the system – and that’s were coaching mentor programs fit in

Many of us just consider our highest performers to be our top talent, but these three attributes teach us that these two pools don’t have 100% overlap.  First step, let’s start measuring these three attribute to see who within the organization has all three.

So, what are your big takeaways from the article?  How are you thinking about retaining your top talent?

CCC Members, check out our Engagement Portal – including an Engagement Pulse Survey for your frontline staff.

On the flip side, what about the folks who shunned the classroom for a  “real world” education?  Turns out that some of them have been pretty successful too.

Time Magazine recently published a list of the Top 10 College Dropouts, pointing out that several wildly successful individuals never got their diplomas.  Some names on the list are predictable: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, to name two.  A few others were news to me: Tom Hanks left school to become a theater intern, and Harrison Ford abandoned his philosophy studies to try acting.

Certainly the reputations of these people makes one at least momentarily pause to reconsider the time and expense of higher education as a necessary component of success.  What is it about experiential, non-classroom learning that drives similar outcomes?

And how could this relate to the time and expense of call center training programs?  Certainly, there are some things that all reps must learn.  Legal and compliance items come to mind, as well as basic systems or product knowledge.  But is it necessary to onboard your new hires for months before they even hit the floor?

One company we work with shared with us their approach to training, which helped them shorten onboarding time from seven weeks down to just two to three weeks while reducing turnover, absenteeism, training costs AND agent errors.  Good stuff, right?  Did I mention they save £1,400 (about $2,000 USD) per new hire?

This company found that their long onboarding time, which taught all possible skill sets (things like systems, products, policies), was overwhelming reps, and a lot of knowledge was lost since some skill sets were rarely used.  Plus, reps didn’t know how to integrate each skill set into a call.  But when those calls did come in, the reps—who didn’t remember what to do, but knew that they SHOULD know—were afraid to ask for help. They often guessed and gave the customer wrong information. 

To solve the problem, the company identified the 10 or 11 call types that were driving 80% of their call volume and just trained new hires how to handle each  call from start to finish, integrating skills in as necessary.  And this training is truly on-the-job: in the morning they sit on calls with experienced agents and in the afternoon they learn about one of the call types they listended to in the morning.  Then, in short order, the reps are released onto the phones and assigned an experienced “buddy” to help them on call types that aren’t covered in the top 10. 

Tell me, how long do you keep your reps in the classroom?  Is it worth it?  How have you successfully trimmed down the time and expense of call center schooling?

CCC members, check out the full story behind Friends Provident’s successful training overhaul.

One of Zappos’s core principles is to promote employee and customer happiness. Of note on the employee side: Zappos values happy employees so much that at the end of new-hire training, trainees are offered $2,000+ to quit.

Now, while offering $2K for new-hires to leave seems ridiculous and is likely unfeasible for most companies, the goal is noble. The program is designed to save the company money by getting rid of folks who won’t thrive and will likely leave soon anyways. In other words, it zeroes in on the importance of staff retention. And the costs you incur when unhappy employees leave aren’t just what you spent on training them.

CCC finds the frontline staff performance benefits of rep retention far outweigh the benefits of hiring for rep attributes indicating a high initial performance. In fact, the performance lift from just an additional six months of tenure is 2.6%, compared to a 0.2% lift from previous service organization experience.

On the flip side, poor engagement can cripple a service organization. It leads to early attrition and higher recruiting and training costs. Even worse, CCC data has found disengaged employees exert 63% less discretionary effort. In other words, disengaged employees do the bare minimum to get by – leading to less productivity and a lower service experience.

So how do we dodge poor engagement? Below are some tips to better engage your staff, based on the top three most important things to drive rep engagement:

1. A visible career path – Creating transparent advancement opportunities for staff boosts engagement. We’ve seen companies get creative to make more opportunities available, even just on a rotational basis. Leading companies also lay out a clear career path for reps so they know what tangible next steps they need to take to advance.
2. Staff motivation – An environment where reps believe in what they do leads to rep engagement. Companies have focused on communication and inclusion so reps can see how their work fits into larger organizational goals.
3. Coaching effectiveness – High-quality coaching is crucial to retaining reps. Simply having a coaching program isn’t enough – poor coaching actually degrades performance and engagement. For CCC members, we’ve taken an in-depth look at what a high-quality coaching system entails.

These are just a few examples of engagement techniques, and are by no means a complete list.  Help me add to it – what’s your favorite way to engage your frontline?

CCC Members, check out our Employee Engagement Portal where you can see how other organizations tackle the top drivers of retention and get involved in our Employee Engagement Pulse Survey. You’ll see how Dow Chemical communicates advancements opportunities and Cadence Design Systems boosts staff motivation through job rotations.