New call centres were announced recently by Wipro who is building [...]]]> And this just in a A Cheektowaga company plans to hire 40 workers for a new call center in Fort Erie.Northstar Location Services Inc. will open its first Canadian operation on June 1 at the Crossroads Travel Centre, according to the Niagara Falls Review.

New call centres were announced recently by Wipro who is building a new 500 seat site in Brantford ON and by SP Data that is building a new 250 seat site in Trenton ON.

Alpine Express announced an increase in their Canadian home agent seats of 150.

The Snapshotz Online Download April 2012 What’s on the menu of the April issue of ‘Download’ • Snapshotz: “Enabling a thousand flowers to bloom” • Millennial myths busted – learning’s for contact center management • “There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished [...]]]> Monthly Download

The Snapshotz Online Download April 2012
What’s on the menu of the April issue of ‘Download’
• Snapshotz: “Enabling a thousand flowers to bloom”
• Millennial myths busted – learning’s for contact center management
• “There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.” 7 more Leadership Secrets of Henry Ford
• The Language of Leadership, Influence Culture, and Influence Strategy – Words can be weapons of mass destruction or weapons of mass inspiration. Chose them with extreme care!
• Event information
Our readership and ‘pass on’s’ continues to grow with over 500 new readers last month thanks to readers who found the download useful and passed on to friends and colleagues.
Please let us know if you wish to have this newsletter sent to another email address or be sent to someone else whom you think will benefit from this mail.
Send to another email address or Please forward
Wishes for a successful Month of May 2012.
All the best from the Team @
WWW.CustomerServicesAudit.com
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Snapshotz: “Enabling a thousand flowers to bloom”
Whilst a third of the year has zoomed past, for many including ourselves it seems like we are only just gathering momentum. There are over 50 plus Snapshotz users who are currently working through the Snapshotz assessment or have just completed them over the past week.
With South Africa and the Middle East beginning to lead the charge, other locations of Snapshotz Customers include the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Snapshotz is a unique and multifaceted tool and one of the key facets is benchmarking provided by the 700 plus data points collected by the Snapshotz tool in the assessment process.
A striking feature of a majority of those completing the Snapshotz assessment for the second time around is the degree of innovation that is beginning to breed. Whilst in some cases there are dramatic changes wrought about by introduction of new technology for many it is the ability to make small but innovative changes to vastly improve the operations of the centre, staff engagement and customer engagement. This has only been possible through the ability of the Snapshotz tool that assists in identifying these and providing the structure to do so and in the words of Masaaki Imai Kaizen, enabling a ‘thousand flowers to bloom’ or change for the better!
May a thousand flowers bloom in your center! Click here if you would like to have a thousand flowers bloom in your center or have a specific query
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Millennial myths busted – learning’s for contact center management
Colin Taylor
I read an interesting article by Jennifer J Deal at strategy+business looking at three myths we hold about Millennials (Those employees born between 1980 – 2000). For the past number of years we have all heard horror stories about organizations that gave away iPads, spot bonuses, socially conscious and social responsible activities, but still had staff leave for greener pastures. Read more

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7 More Leadership Secrets of Henry Ford
Darlene Richard
“There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.” 7 more Leadership Secrets of Henry Ford
Written for Snapshotz Online Download, journey once more with Darlene as she guides us to apply these principles to life and in our contact center environments. 7 more…
Missed her last article? 7 Leadership…
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The Language of Leadership, Influence Culture, Influence
Audrey Watts
The power of words, read this article from an experienced industry stalwart…
Words can be weapons of mass destruction or weapons of mass inspiration. Chose them with extreme care! Click to read…
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Events … Snapshotz Online – CCiNZ Monthly Bites April 2012
In thoroughly educative, entertaining and interactive sessions, we traversed a range of topics (and some distances) that are crucial to operations within a contact center. Here is a sample of feed back from the events:
“Fabulous contact centre, great networking opportunity, great format”
“Its interactive, great hearing other peoples work stories”
“relaxed and informal, great mix and learnings”
“I really appreciate the effort by CCiNZ and Snapshotz to help us understand similar solutions to major issues we face”
“Great presentation from Peter and the team, great hosts”
“Learned so much from Lyn and her team, it was a really worthwhile journey!”
See Photo’s from the Genesis Energy and Lantern Insurance site visits April 26th & 27th 2012
As evident lots of benefits… so if you wish to be a part of this journey contact us.
Watch out for news of the June event coming to you shortly!
Do wish to know where you stand against key benchmarks from organisations across the industry you are in? Request a free comparison guide for your center – Please send me the comparator report.
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Developed in NZ but gaining ground around the world, Snapshotz is the cheapest tool to keep track of the entirety of the customer experience. Check out the website http://customerservicesaudit.com/ See sample reports generated as well as other links such as customers experiences Customer Experiences
Snapshotz Online has multiple applications – audit, planning, training, comparison of teams and performance, review and reporting.
If you wish to find out more contact us or our certified partners and we will be happy to discuss any questions you may have. Contact information: Email: Info@customerservicesaudit.com

We have all had the experience, we phone our cable company, wireless provider or our utility and Bang! The pain and suffering begins: “Your call is important us, Please hold”. Well if my call was really important I would have thought you would have answered it. Of course some hold messages [...]]]> By: Colin Taylor

We have all had the experience, we phone our cable company, wireless provider or our utility and Bang! The pain and suffering begins: “Your call is important us, Please hold”. Well if my call was really important I would have thought you would have answered it. Of course some hold messages can be even more frightening: “We are experiencing higher call volumes and you should expect a longer than average hold time”. No I don’t make it a habit to phone my wireless provider often enough to know what their average hold time is, but I am scared nonetheless. Perhaps the standard greeting announcement should be replaced by “Abandon All Hope Yea Who Enter”, a little dramatic, but perhaps more accurate.

Then when I finally reach an agent can they help me? Am I able to get done what I want to get done? The answers to these questions often depend upon the organization and the complexity of the question I asked. In some cases the center is quite helpful and able to provide me with the information I seek quickly, effectively, completely and professionally, with other centers it is more like phoning the call center in those old Capital One ads that featured David Spade. None the less research has repeatedly shown that while the quality of mercy is not strained the quality of customer service call center often is strained. The expectation of poor service has become engrained in our society. Comedians quip, television ads for Capital One and CarMax entertain us with bad service experiences and the twitterverse is alive with hundreds of thousands of people complaining about their call center or customer service experiences- hashtags #custserv, #callcenter and #cctr. Why do so many organizations deliver poor service?

Research Proves Service is Bad

I would like to propose some highly intelligent and provocative explanation, but unfortunately I feel the truth is much simpler. Companies and organizations don’t care. It’s not that they necessarily want to not care it is just that they don’t. There are too many other priorities and ‘more important fish to fry’. The research on this topic backs me up: 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience, according to Harris Interactive. That figure is closer to 73% said Gartner. American Express found that Customer Service Experiences generally….’
•Exceed Expectations – 2%
•Meet Expectations – 62%
•Miss Expectations – 32%
•4% weren’t sure!

In fact 90% of executives see Customer Service as crucial to their future business success. In the same study more than 70% of senior call center executives revealed that their companies fail to meet their customers’ expectations, according to Bain.

So we have a strange dichotomy. Organizations know that good customer service is essential to their future success; they understand that there is a real tangible cost and risk of dissatisfied customers defecting and yet these same organizations seem incapable of affecting change.

They say that the first step to dealing with a problem is to first to admit you have a problem. Well we as the customers of these organizations we may see the problem, as call center and customer professionals we may recognize the problem, but the organizations in question do not seem to recognize this. Why is that, businesses are full of bright, knowledgeable and skilled professionals.

Is it as Dave Farrell suggests in his recent article Why Do Companies Give Bad Customer Service? “We have a Contrary Point of view. A point of view is simply how you view, judge or appraise things. How you see things determines how you act. How you act determines your results. In the world of Customer Service it would look something like this; a customer calls in and has an issue. Let’s say that I see customers as people who will lie through their teeth to get what they want. My point of view of the customer will determine how I act toward them. I am much more likely to be defensive and argumentative. The customer then will deal with me however they deal with defensive argumentative people. The result won’t be pretty.”
Or perhaps as Grant Nieddu pointed out in a Linked In post “Companies give bad customer service because they see that it is far cheaper to pay for a corporate rally and “mission review” teams than to over-haul their tactical processes. Rewording personnel reviews, restructuring the training process, and, gasp, revisiting incentive programs is far more costly and takes more time. You can learn, execute and train a culture of quality customer relationships, as long as you are willing to invest the time and money to do so. Companies that give bad customer service simply do not believe in the investment.”

Both of these experts raise good points, we can certainly project our feelings and perception to others and define the service process from this perspective and as Grant said we certainly can’t discount the fact that some organizations are just cheap, but I think that the single biggest factor contributing to bad customer service or as my kids would say Customer Service that Sucks, is… drum roll please…..wait for it… neglect.

Sorry to let you down after the big build up but let me explain. There are a number of types and forms of neglect that can lead to poor service.

Neglect Equals Bad Service

The first one I will deal with is complete neglect. This is most common in SMB’s with small call centers where the center is not really considered as a major part of the enterprise. They are neglected, their costs and budgets roll up into other much larger budgets like Operations, IT or Sales and senior managers and executives do not any visibility into what is really going on in the call center nor, likely do they really care. It is neglected. Of course this can change dramatically once the call center reaches that special threshold, whose level varies by organization, but it is when the call center actually appears as a line item on the monthly P&L. The first time this happens you can almost hear the screams of astonishment from the executive suite, “We are spending what on the call center!” In centers receiving this form of neglect they will generally be underfunded- trying to do more with less, significantly lack appropriate technologies to serve customers and be struggling to meet their service performance and targets. The operation of the center is usually in a vacuum, they are disconnected from the organization and only dimly aware of the company’s goals and aspirations. With insufficient staff, poor processes and technology and no vision these centers struggle day in and day out not to deliver lousy service, but they do not often succeed. This is not good service.

The second form of neglect is neglecting to understand that a call center is a primary communications channel between the organization and its customers. In fact for many organizations it is the primary communications channel and the only meaningful one that facilitates a two way discussion, a dialogue. Failing to recognize this fact leads organizations to undervalue the contribution the call center and broader customer service and technical support plays in sustaining the business. Not only can a call center generate revenue through orders, up-sell and extensions, but the call center also protects revenue already promised through solving issues and fixing problems, many of which were not caused or created by the call center. As my colleague John Cockerill is wont to say “There are only two kinds of calls; Value, where we gain revenue and Fault, where we fix a problem someone else created”. By neglecting to understand the role played by the call center in maximizing lifetime value and customer retention these organizations treat the call center as an after- thought. The call center discovers new campaigns and initiatives only after they launch are criticized for failing to meet patently unattainable goals which they had no part in creating and generally receiving all of the perks and privileges bestowed upon it by ‘mushroom management’. It is in these centers where senior executives will ask if we really need all of those people or even if we really need to answer the phones at all. For the record I have heard that exact statement on two occasions in my consulting career. In centers suffering from this form of neglect they will be generally underfunded-trying to do more with less than none, they will often invest in technologies to reduce costs or create efficiencies regardless of the suitability to the purpose of the center or its potential impact on customers. The operation of the center can be characterized as a cost center, in a way that informs you that this is a very bad thing to be. There will be calls to transform the center to a profit center, to reduce costs and to increase productivity. Of course all of these activities can be positive however they are all but doomed to failure if they are not connected to the desired customer experience and the service quality the organization wishes to deliver. With insufficient staff, poor processes and technology focused on reducing volumes and/or reducing transaction times these centers make it difficult for their customers and when they get an answer they rush them off the phone. This is not good service.

The third form of neglect is complicity in these organizations the call center is acknowledged to exist, its role appreciated and generally understood and there is an agreement on the value the center delivers to the organization. Senior executives look at their weekly dashboard reports and might comment on the change in service level or abandon rate. All may appear to be happy in ‘mudville’, but that is not necessarily so. The company having invested in people and technology to equip the center to do its job and recognizing its value reviews and scrutinizes the weekly reporting can feel that its job is done. You can almost hear them saying, “There now the call center is completed and we won’t have to worry about that again”. In the call center itself this stage can be the most frustrating as it begins with such promise; spending on headcount to match the demand, acquiring new technologies etc., but it soon grinds to halt coming face to face with the perception that ‘we did this (the call center) and now we are done’. The conversations go along the lines of “why do you need more people, you just hired 6 last quarter”, or “Last year we spent X million on your techno-goodies so you will have to make do”. All of the hallmarks are there of a professional call center engaged and integrated into the business, but it is not really so. The center likely struggles with scheduling and a disinterested and high turnover workforce, adequate technologies give them a fighting chance, but the absence of integration to the company vision and low level of agent experience condemns it to deliver inferior service.

It is clear from the above that neglect can take many forms and that these various forms of neglect can handicap a call center and ensure that they deliver bad service…service that sucks. Success in delivering Good Customer Service lies in not neglecting your center but rather to paying attention to the center. Organizations have found success by elevating the call centers role within the organization and openly discussing the role the center plays in attracting and retaining customers. By defining the strategic plan for the call center and linking the call center plan to the company goals, mission and values brings everyone onto the same team and speaking from a perspective of alignment. By equipping the center with the appropriate tools to do the job the organization can begin to reap the rewards of this stewardship. Of course this should not be construed to suggest that the call center should be given a blank check. Quite the contrary each desired investment in people, or process or technology should be modeled, justified and be confirmed to be in line with the call center strategy and the broader goals and objectives of the business. Any requested investment that doesn’t make economic sense and/or fails to align and support the business goals must be discarded until a more suitable and appropriate solution can be found.

There is no excuse for an organization to have poor service the cause can includes neglect, lack of funding or perhaps even projection. But if there is no excuse for bad service why hasn’t somebody done something about it?

There are likely a million reasons that have been cited by other authors, experts and pundits, but I would suggest that the simplest reason is that companies don’t have too improve service. We expect poor or at least difficulty in resolving customer service issues Forrester Research found in some verticals such as computers and health insurance only 30% of consumers expected customer service to be easy. We often expect to have a fight on our hands. If this is the view of the customer, then is it any surprise that organizations steel themselves for the conflict with restrictive policies and penalties for changes.

The Way Forward

Of course at the same time this expectation of poor customer service creates an opportunity for those organizations able to rise above the din and actually deliver superior service. They could be motivated by a sincere and genuine wish to deliver better customer service to their customers or they may simply realize that happier customers stay customers longer and spend more money with you.

But this can on the surface appear to be a risky strategy, to spend more money to improve the quality of service, staff, technology and processes and then to wait and hope it pays off. But maybe it is not so risky. Research from American Express found that 61% of Americans report that quality customer service is more important to them in today’s economic environment, and will spend an average of 9 percent more when they believe a company provides excellent service.

A few organizations are bravely marching forward carrying the ‘Superior Customer Service’ banner. Some of these organizations have achieved fame and success others are just quietly reaping the financial benefits. Zappos has defined itself as a Customer Service organization that just happens to sell shoes and has created a cult of believers. F&C has been recognized as the best call center in the UK by exceeding all service parameters. And American Express, well it is their research cited above that tells us that customers will pay more for better service, it appears that they are walking the talk. American express derives their customer satisfaction scores directly from their customers and this CSAT score has replaced the internally generated quality score that they used to rely on. Satisfaction is in the eye of the customer, it is as simple as that.

So we are not forever doomed to suffer through endless IVR call trees, hours on hold only to speak with an ill-tempered and poorly trained agent. We needn’t abandon all hope when we enter the customer service queue. We must simply choose to patronize organizations that deliver superior service. Voting with our feet and our wallets is the best way to encourage lagging organizations to cease their policies of neglect and embrace the new maxim of better service equals more and happier customers.

Hopefully and not to far in the future companies will no longer be able to provide poor customer service because they can get away with it, customer service laggards are going to be punished by the market and forced to change their ways. At least that’s what my crystal ball says.

Former Apple, Inc. executive Ron Johnson continues to make his mark at J.C. Penny. The company is going through large changes, and the customer service call centers are not escaping the close scrutiny:

J.C. Penney Co. announced Thursday that it will close its Customer Call Center [...]]]> J.C. Penny To Close Call Center, Layoff 300 Workers

Former Apple, Inc. executive Ron Johnson continues to make his mark at J.C. Penny. The company is going through large changes, and the customer service call centers are not escaping the close scrutiny:

J.C. Penney Co. announced Thursday that it will close its Customer Call Center in Pittsburgh, and eliminate 300 associates.

The company laid off 600 associates, or 13 percent of the staff at its headquarters in Plano, Texas, as the department store chain looks to streamline its operations amid a major reinvention of the business.

The company had hinted that cuts would come when it told investors in January that it planned to reduce layers of management at its headquarters. Before the layoffs, the company had 4,400 employees at its headquarters.

The announcement is part of the Company’s plan, announced on Jan. 26, to reduce annual expenses by $900 million by the end of 2013.

The moves come as its new CEO, former Apple Inc. executive Ron Johnson, is transforming every aspect of its business, from pricing to the brands it carries.
WTAE Pittsburg

The comparator is drawn from data across the 400 plus centers that use Snapshotz as an audit and benchmarking tool.

In This Issue Is Your Website is a Call Center Tool? Millennial Myths & the Call Center By Colin Taylor Coming Events Call Center Wishes Can Come True…No Genie Required Trends for 2012 from Snapshotz & Customer [...]]]> Is Your Website a Call Center Tool? Millennial Myths & The Call Center, News, Views and “How to’s”

In This Issue
Is Your Website is a Call Center Tool?
Millennial Myths & the Call Center By Colin Taylor
Coming Events
Call Center Wishes Can Come True…No Genie Required
Trends for 2012 from Snapshotz & Customer Services Audit
Case Study
Testimonials

See why more than 12,000 Call Center professionals read Customer Reach every month.

Read The Newsletter Here

Halogen Software shared the following information “The cost of losing good talent is particularly acute and one of the most direct calculations that demonstrates the impact of poor talent management. • HCI research shows that at a [...]]]> The following statistics are food for thought when we consider the real costs of turnover in our organization.

Halogen Software shared the following information
“The cost of losing good talent is particularly acute and one of the most direct calculations that demonstrates the impact of poor talent management.
• HCI research shows that at a minimum the cost of losing good talent is 1.5 times the employee’s fully loaded salary.
• David Ulrich says that top performers are valued at two to four times the performance of competent employees.
• Dr. John Sullivan quantified that when a top performer does leave, it costs the organization $7,000 a day to operate without them if they are in a strategic position.
These statistics attest to the morale, corporate memory and momentum that also walk out the door when you’ve got bad turnover.”

When looking at the above figures the average call or contact center may suggest that these costs are overstated, but they costs may cause us to reconsider the $5,000 to $7,000 per employee turnover cost that many call centers employ.

I read an interesting article by Jennifer J Deal at strategy+business looking at five myths we hold about Millennials. For the past number of years we have all heard horror stories about organizations that gave away iPads, spot bonuses, socially conscious and social responsible activities, but still had staff leave for [...]]]>
By Colin Taylor

I read an interesting article by Jennifer J Deal at strategy+business looking at five myths we hold about Millennials. For the past number of years we have all heard horror stories about organizations that gave away iPads, spot bonuses, socially conscious and social responsible activities, but still had staff leave for greener pastures. This point has been used time and again to characterize the lack of loyalty that Millennials are supposed to posses, which makes hiring and retaining them difficult.

Call centers I know of have changed their mobile phone policies to allow millennials to have the phones on and with them at their desks and they are free to check facebook or twitter between calls. These same centers often speak of millennials feeling entitled to the fast track to easy street, their lack of interest in their work and difficultly managing them.

This all fits well with our stereotypes and our expectations around millennials, but it may be all wrong. The article cites research involving thousands of respondents and dashs five of the major millennial myths completely.

Conventional wisdom would have it that Millennials don’t want to be told what to do or follow direction. The research (Center for Creative Leadership) however shows that Millennials are more likely to follow direction than are Gen Xers or Baby Boomers. 41% of Millennials agreed with a statement that Employees should do what their Manager tells them, versus only 30% for each the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. If you think about this the results really are not too surprising, Millennials know that following direction from authority figures often ends well (at least it has done so often for most of us a children). This perspective on Millennials also creates an opportunity to engage with these individuals by ensuring they understand and appreciate the organizations culture, values and expectations.

Myths also surround Millennial loyalty or perceived lack there of, but the research shows that Millennials have a similar level of loyalty and commitment as Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. It is a fact that younger workers tend to change jobs more frequently, even the Baby Boomers were guilty of this. This ‘young age = job hopping’ was even true when jobs were often perceived to be for life.

Similarly Millennials are just as motivated as their Gen X and Baby Boomer predecessors were by work. As with job hopping above the lower you are in the hierarchy regardless of your generation the less motivated you will be.

There is no link between your generation and you motivation by perks and high pay. Everyone loves perks and who wouldn’t want high pay, but neither of these attributes is unique to Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers display the same behavior and there is no evidence in the research to show these perks improve loyalty regardless of age.

So what does this mean to you in managing your call center? Well first of all I think you can lose the generational labels. Increasingly Millennials look just the same as you and I, only younger. Second forget trying to attract them with the perceived hot-buttons around perks, toys and special treatment. Nothing the research shows that these tactics work. the ability to take direct is one area where Millennials perform better than Gen X or Baby Boomer workers and this provides you with a great opportunity to share what your company is about and to show them how they make a difference. Be specific with how they will be judged and assessed and what you expect of them. Transparency is also valued by workers of every generation and Millennials are no different. So be open, transparent and specific about what they are to do and what you expect them to achieve and you can be well on your way to a successful working relationship.