The Customer / Employee Experience Link in Service Centers

We find all the recent attention given to the importance of linking a satisfied customer and an engaged employee to be quite startling. Why?  Well because for as long as we can remember didn’t we all just know that when we have pleasant, happy and engaged employees helping the customer that a positive customer experience followed?  “The customer was always right” was the model which exhorted the service staff to give high priority to customer satisfaction.  We traded where we were given the kind of service that pleased us; we usually avoided places where the experience was less than desirable.  Don’t we still do that?

I guess not.  Now it would seem that marketers are just waking up to the critical role that employees play in business.  Certainly the advent of the non-human connection built into the digital age has something to do with it.  We can literally stay in our own small cubical world, doing almost everything we need to do to live, and never interact with another human being unless it’s a call center employee we finally get to after going through three robots.

In a recent article from CMSWire.com, the author Phil Britt found that companies feel that a motivated and fully equipped workforce may have been critical to the customer experience in the past, but that employee engagement and enablement was at the bottom of their priority list, not the top. 

It is so easy today to let all the bells and whistles of the latest “app” or platform do all the work.  The sale is conducted from start to finish and you never connect with the customer.  In a customer contact center where constant turnover can be a major challenge, a positive, talented and engaged employee is much more likely to have a positive impact on the customer.  In many instances  your customers often prefer self-serve options for convenience, but this can also help with employee engagement by allowing your contact employees the time to focus on more challenging and value added customer interactions.

Recognition awards have long been a part of call center strategies to increase employee engagement. They work, they always have.  In most companies call center positions are entry level, fairly low salary or hourly positions where a small recognition award can be very meaningful.  These employees are usually the first contact point between the company and customer.  Every one of us has had the experience of dealing with these hard working employees.  And we know immediately which ones of them are engaged and which are not, which are tired and just going through the motions and which sincerely want to help.  Recognition, respect and meaningful thanks for good performance will go a long way in maintaining and even improving their engagement and corresponding customer satisfaction.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Not Another Employee Engagement Survey - Please

Are you really thinking of doing another employee engagement survey?  Do you really want to take on this huge annual project spend many months analyzing the data to  spend another couple months planning what to do with it in order to take action a year or more after on whatever was driving those scores in the first place?

Maybe more frequent data collection to uncover short term issues with a program designed to address performance improvement issues on the spot would be a better use of your time and money?  These frequent short term surveys, referred to as pulse surveys, offer the ability to quickly and frequently measure feedback within entire groups.  You can judge real time engagement and react accordingly. Think of these as a way of gathering data that is current, rather than on an annual basis.  Reacting in a timely manner can often make all the difference.

Traditionally, employee engagement data has been reported in the aggregate when it is really a metric about individuals.  Why not design the survey to specific needs and challenges and not ask everyone the same question? This would lead to more targeted action, better supervision of performance improvement issues, and the ability to use proven techniques of employee recognition to drive results. The one area of concern in an individual approach is that the data would no longer be anonymous, but frankly, there’s not much about attitude and performance that is anonymous in any case.  If you want to improve discretionary effort you can look for the signals of them in the data that point directly to it.

The safety industry for years has been using the psychological based principles of behavior to improve safety performance.  This approach observes performance that can lead to accidents and rewards individuals who perform those safe behaviors in the described manner.   This just in time approach to changing performance can be done to improve performance on any number of the issues that help to build employee engagement throughout the organization, not just safety.

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Instead of another employee engagement survey, and considering the new technologies and analytical tools we have, isn’t it time to experiment with new approaches to determine what kinds of data might help with that?

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Tips to Create a Better Wellness Program

When it comes to employee wellness, we all want long-term results, not just quick-fixes. Unfortunately, once we’ve decided to implement a wellness initiative we can get caught up a mindset of getting it done “now.”  And that attitude more than any can sink a wellness effort before it even gets going. When we realize that wellness is a collection of old habits that die hard.  We can then understand that our focus needs to be on changing those habits…something that takes time. 

According to Psychology Today, it takes 66 days to form a habit. Whether that habit is thirty minutes on the treadmill, running a mile, or eating more fruits and vegetables, it takes more than two months for it to stick. The key then is to focus a program on turning those kinds of wellness actions into regular habits.

Here are some ideas to help you create a program that focuses your employees on forming healthier habits:

• Do research to know what your employees want to gain from the program and help them with their goals; exercise, weight loss, lowering cholesterol or blood sugar, etc.  Every company finds different results so it’s important to find what the participation motivation is for your organization and their demographics 
• Test different formats, offer different program activation dates, different days of the week, times of the day, etc. Know the best design for your situation that allows the most participation.
• Measure your performance often. If your program structure or incentives aren’t motivating positive change, the program won’t be effective. Adjust and relaunch the structure when necessary.
• Embrace feedback. Make sure your employee population likes the program. While it may be tough to get in shape, or learn to eat healthy, employees should be able to see the value to their overall well being. Getting feedback ensures your program is on the right track, and if it’s not, you can change it in process rather than waiting weeks or months and having to overhaul the program. 
• Use incentives strategically. They should be about the kind of things that your employees want, not what you think they want or what you want them to have. The longevity and memory of the reward helps drive motivation to the next program milestone, and the more milestones, the more success your program recognizes.
• Communicate your successes.  It’s true that nothing succeeds like success.  Your employees like to see success and want to emulate those who are having it. 

A Positive Approach to Reduce Absenteeism

Absenteeism is expensive. Some estimates put the direct costs of unscheduled absences at $2600 - $3600 per year, per employee, and those are just the potential direct costs. Indirect costs of high employee absenteeism can range from low productivity of the frustrated employees who have to make up the slack to a lowered respect for management for putting up with it.   

If you periodically experience a spate of absenteeism try taking a positive approach to it in the form of well-planned incentives.  It can be a good strategic decision that can save a great deal of bottom line profit and add to a positive and engaged employee base.

Most company attendance policies focus only on the consequences and penalties associated with poor attendance.  While it is important to have this "stick-side" as a policy, consider the alternative of using the “carrot-side” as well.  Simple behavior science knows that reinforcing good behaviors has more lasting value to you than punishing bad ones.  Including incentives for employees who exemplify good attendance can be just as effective for improving absenteeism as penalizing them for noncompliance.

A Presenteeism Program

Things to consider when planning your incentive program:

• Set the timing for the program to include seasons where you have the most absences,
• Have a clear start and stop date
• Set clear goals for the program that are based on realistic expectations and use past performance as the measurement to start.  Unrealistic goal setting will guarantee that you program will fail.
• Communicate the program measurement and improvements before, during and after program completion
• Start awarding minor awards at achieving an improvement to the base, with escalating awards for incremental improvement. Think inspirational yet achievable when setting attendance rewards.
• At program conclusion make sure you recognize those employees with perfect attendance.
• The logic of the program should be as transparent as possible to avoid disputes.
• Finally, make sure the program isn't penalizing employees for allowable absences.