How to Develop A Spectacular Performance Development Policy/Program

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Administrator

Whether your call center is a sales operation or a customer service operation, it is mandatory that your staff is judged and motivated to an extent that drives them to perform beyond the standards. Developing a serious and clear improvement program is extremely important to ensure that your staff gets the feedback, opportunities and penalties that they deserve. Without a performance development program, your call center agents and supervisors are missing opportunities to increase performance and impact retention.

Everybody likes limits. A performance development plan sets the limits for agents. If an agent performs poorly, management must have a stable and well-outlined improvement plan to get people where they, and the customer contact center, need to be. The plan has to be consistent with every employee. If agents can’t or won’t perform to standards, management must have a dismissal policy that they follow consistently, every time. A performance development program sets limits that management and agents follow so both parties are on the same track.

In most call centers we’ve seen, limits are benign, if they even exist. Agents who have sales goals aren’t penalized when/if they miss their goals. In many instances there are no sales goals and no programs exist to ensure agents get every opportunity to meet their goals. We see countless centers where agents aren’t on development tracks so their skills don’t develop and they consistently miss goals. When programs exist, they are generally weak and ineffective.

Among the many advantages of having performance development plans in place is the fact that high achievers WANT a specific, critical and consistent in place. The plan will weed out underperformers and assign value to the hard work that the high achievers are doing.

For a detailed walk-through of our suggestions, download the white paper “How to Develop A Spectacular Performance Development Program” from our website www.callcentertoday.com.

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Increase Productivity with Organizational Teams

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Administrator

Organizational teams make a call center department sparkle. In some environments, supervisors are responsible for performing every job themselves. Projects – such as new employee training, residual training, product training, interviewing, company policy training, communications training, sales training, quick updates, intranet training and team meetings – all fall to the supervisor. Not to mention all of the paperwork that accompanies each assignment. Even quality managers and supervisors can get work down making certain that call center agents have everything they need to excel.

The questions to ask yourself are: How can I better integrate the call center agents who want to be more involved in the department? How can I ensure that agents who wish to dedicate more time to important call center projects feel empowered to do so? The answer is often right in front of you. in this white paper, you’ll learn 8 innovative team ideas that promote added performance and benefits in the call center environment. By putting these teams together and allowing employees to participate in the opportunities, the agents in your call center who desire a greater role in the organization can get their wish. Best of all, your call center will benefit with many creative and influential ideas that you and your staff may not otherwise have developed themselves.

8 TEAM IDEAS:

Team 1: Manager/Companion Team

Team 2: New Product Distribution Team

Team 3: New Hire Team

Team 4: Computer Training Team

Team 5: Contest Team

Team 6: Awards and Prizes Team

Team 7: Sales Training Team

Team 8: Employee Monitoring Team

To read more, download the White Paper at our website: http://www.callcentertoday.com/ click on “Free White Papers” and scroll ALL the way DOWN.

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The 21st Century Call Center? A TEXTING Center?

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Administrator

Do you remember the marathon phone calls you made as a teen? To your best friend or maybe a boy- or girlfriend? Hours spent on the phone, till your mom warned you that the phone would stay attached to your ear if you didn’t stop?!

Well the epic teenage telephone call may be a thing of the past. A new report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project has found that as the frequency of teenage texting continues to increase, teen use of the phone is on a significant downslide.

The typical American teen is sending and receiving a greater number of texts than in 2009. Overall, 75% of all teens text. Here are the key findings about the role of texting in teens’ lives:

  • The median number of texts (i.e. the midpoint user in our sample) sent on a typical day by teens 12-17 rose from 50 in 2009 to 60 in 2011.
  • Much of this increase occurred among older teens ages 14-17, who went from a median of 60 texts a day to a median of 100 two years later. Boys of all ages also increased their texting volume from a median of 30 texts daily in 2009 to 50 texts in 2011. Black teens showed an increase of a median of 60 texts per day to 80.
  • Older girls remain the most enthusiastic texters, with a median of 100 texts a day in 2011, compared with 50 for boys the same age.
  • 63% of all teens say they exchange text messages every day with people in their lives. This far surpasses the frequency with which they pick other forms of daily communication, including phone calling by cell phone (39% do that with others every day), face-to-face socializing outside of school (35%), social network site messaging (29%), instant messaging (22%), talking on landlines (19%) and emailing (6%).

The frequency of teens’ phone chatter with friends – on cell phones and landlines – has fallen. But the heaviest texters are also the heaviest talkers with their friends.

Teens’ phone conversations with friends are slipping in frequency.

  • 14% of all teens say they talk daily with friends on a landline, down from 30% who said so in 2009.  Nearly a third (31%) of teens say they never talk on a landline with friends (or report that they cannot do so).
  • 26% of all teens (including those with and without cell phones) say they talk daily with friends on their cell phone, down from 38% of teens in 2009.

However, the Pew Internet survey shows that the heaviest texters are also the heaviest talkers. The heaviest texters (those who exchange more than 100 texts a day) are much more likely than lighter texters to say that they talk on their cell phone daily. Some 69% of heavy texters talk daily on their cell phones, compared with 46% of medium texters (those exchanging 21-100 texts a day) and 43% of light texters (those exchanging 0-20 texts a day).

Other findings include:

About one in four teens report owning a smartphone.

Three quarters of teens – 77% – have cell phones. Ownership among younger teens has dropped since 2009.

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Getting Good Feedback – Actionable, Relevant Data from All Agents

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Administrator

Building effective communication and feedback programs in the call centers are among the most critical tasks for a call center manager.

Managers who know and use the right techniques for getting feedback and getting the right kind of feedback are well on their way to success. Those managers are sensitive enough to understand under which circumstances certain agents will open up and communicate. They visualize circumstances in which the more reluctant agents will participate. By doing this, good managers create feedback opportunities to meet the needs of different agents. It’s our experience that feedback programs work best when agents want them to work and are compelled to contribute.

The agents who are most eager to provide feedback don’t always have the most important things to say. They petition to talk to management just to be seen sometimes, and may have little to contribute. They may feel lonely in their personal life and crave communication primarily for face time with management. Imagine a room filled with these “needy” agents, each one fighting for attention. How much real, usable feedback can be taken in and analyzed in that circumstance? Probably not a very constructive meeting.

Conversely, those less interested in communicating may have plenty of quality feedback to contribute, but they don’t see the channels to do so. They expected quality of and the opportunity to give feedback should not be determined by the willingness to do so. Some agents choose to communicate only when exceedingly motivated. You may have a few quiet agents who keep to themselves until given an opportunity to share their thoughts. We have gotten some great, important feedback and some of our best ideas from the quietest agents, those who needed to be invited to a dialogue.

*****Answer these questions about your call center:

  1. Might a group of introverted agents provide a fruitful group discussion?
  2. Should feedback be sought from agents who don’t appear willing to provide it?
  3. Do we want a mixture of participants’ input? From those that are eager to participate and those who are hesitant?

To read the action plan for creating valid agent feedback, download the white paper called “The 5 Ps to Creating Agent Feedback in the Call Center” here http://store.callcentertoday.com/frwhpa1.html

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What if I told you to forget everything you know about Closing?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Administrator

Forget what you know about closing? You’d probably think we were crazy! And you wouldn’t be far off! I don’t REALLY mean to forget what you know about closing prospects and customers, not really… but I do want you to put it in proper perspective.

We all know that call center sales and customer service reps usually have some form of performance compensation.  Maybe the comp is purely for making a sale.  Sometimes people are rewarded for using the “closing” script as much as possible.  I’ve seen agents compensated for how long they keep customers on the phone. It’s a basic human law that compensation drives behavior, and that means that many reps just want to get to the close as soon as possible.

My advice? Don’t be like all of the “other” call center reps.  Stand out to customers and prospects by building a relationship with customers before you start trying to close the sale (or wrapping up the customer service call).

In surveys, customers continually identify one key characteristic that makes exceptional call experiences.  They report that the best agents made them feel they were talking to a real-life, breathing human, someone who talked to them like a friend or expert advisor.

Our customers and prospects are looking for someone who listens to their wants and hears their real needs.  Reps who are empathic and connect to callers have much better closing ratios, and receive higher quality scores. Those two factors translate into higher commissions and bonuses!  All because you “forgot” what you know about closing.

My experience is that reps who enjoy what they are doing and get paid well for doing their jobs well, perform longer and more consistently than other call center reps.  These “actual humans” stay hot but don’t burn out.

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What Your Inside Sales Group Can Look Like

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Administrator

Do you want your inside sales group to ROCK?! Let me ask you that again… Do you want your inside sales group to ROCK?! It’s not a trick question, it’s an obvious question. I don’t think there’s anyone in business out there who would answer NO to that question. But just in case there are any skeptics out there, what if we said you could

  1. Achieve consistent inside sales rep practices.
  2. Build a strong bond so your prospects convert to sales and your leads convert to customers.
  3. Consistently talk to your prospects, leads and customers.
  4. Utilize CRM to drive the engine

Let’s start with #1. In order to rock your sales projections you have to document, codify and implement consistent sales practices. If everyone on the phone is doing something different, how do you know what they’re doing and can it be duplicated? Great performance is 99.99% practice. Michael Jordan was a naturally talented basketball player but he famously practiced more than anyone else. All that practice made his talent appear natural. It’s the same with your reps. Document what your high achievers are doing and make that standard practice.

#2 In order to rock your sales, reps have to drive interest in the company when they’re on the phone. That happens when reps have strong bonds with callers. Strong bonds are based on trust, and callers who trust the reps will trust their suggestions.

#3 To rock sales, you need an ongoing conversation with prospects, leads and customers.  We see great companies keep the conversation going with inside sales, direct marketing, websites, webinars, e-newsletters, and traditional advertising.  We recommend that you always use inside sales as the follow up.

#4 To rock sales you need solid technology driving your business. Are you making the most of your CRM? Is it really working for you? Are you data mining? Batching?

For more tips, visit our website www.callcentertoday.com and download more resources.

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Call Center Happiness Factor

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Administrator

Busy call center managers have to factor in ways to get agents to continuously improve. A recent cover of Fast Company magazine asks how important is it for people to be happy at work? The conclusion? IT’S VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT that people are happy at work. In case I didn’t get my point across, let me repeat that IT’S VERY VERY VERY IMPORTANT to keep employees happy at work. By employees I mean everyone who collects a paycheck. Even the C-level exec who signs them!

Turns out happiness has EVERYTHING to do with engagement and call center performance. If that’s so, is there enough evidence to convict you and your management for establishing GREAT employee engagement programs in your contact center?  Are you motivating your managers and your agents to drive results?

Before anyone goes running off to design training or survey employees, hold on.

How can you actually ENGAGE employees? You have to build relationships with them first. Do employees at your call center trust each other? How would you rate that trust? Do we kinda sorta trust each other? Are we sisters and brothers in arms? Are we somewhere in between? Are we all free agents or are we on the same team?

Think about it. The most fundamental build block of all relationships is trust. Trust is like the glue that holds everything together. As in personal relationships, work relationships won’t succeed unless people trust each other. So if you want to get people engaged? Start building relationships – real ones based on trust and mutual respect.

How you go about building your trust quotient at work is as individual as you are. One piece of advice, we’d like to give that will speed up your efforts. You don’t have to establish trust with one person at a time. Because of the pervasive impact of trust your efforts with one will impact many.

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Liven up the call center floor and turn on your perception.

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Administrator

A call center on low volume is dying a slow death. The sound

of conversation, work happening, and people applying themselves is noticeable,

even palpable. You can tell the difference when you walk into a room of happy

productive people vs. a room where people are practically zombies. Zombies don’t

care much about their output – and you can hear them churning along with no

enthusiasm or sparkle.

In the call center, supervisors often run around, clap their

hands and do everything they can to motivate agents, even shouting

encouragement. We’ve heard bells ringing, music playing and prizes offered. Hitting

goals and breaking records should be encouraged and even expected. The noise

level in the call center should be so loud it enlivens agents and encourages movement and personal expression. Your

employees’ emotions will get stirred up in the liveliness of the day.

Let your ears listen the next time you visit your call

center. How does it sound? Do you hear laughing, enthusiasm, conversation. Are people

collaborating? That’s what should be happening. If it’s not happening like

that, open your eyes wide and start investigating. Look for the supervisors;

what are they doing? Glance at the walls to analyze the culture. What messages

are being sent to agents? What expectations are being communicated? We suggest

you do research into the link between movement

and personal expression and performance to start understanding how emotions

are playing with the communication culture.

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What’s the difference between listening and hearing?

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Administrator

When we coach call center reps we make a distinction between listening and hearing; listening is the act of being available, hearing can be defined as the act of understanding.  Hearing is comprehending, or understanding the meaning behind the words. 

We have found that one reason that reps are not able to close as many sales is because they are too busy listening for an opening to make their closing pitch.  Instead, they should be listening for meaning, or hearing, so that they can recognize buying signs and prepare a compelling close.

We coach sales reps to understand that customers find it hard to communicate clearly.  Socially, they’ve learned to hold back information from sales reps, so that they have “options”.  Customers need to feel comfortable in order to share their true wants and needs.   

Research shows that the top-performing call center reps speak fewer words than “average” reps.  We attribute it to two factors: 

1.) People trust those who listen to them more than speaking at them.

2.) The more that a customer talks, the more information they share.  The rep then has a better understanding of the customer’s wants and needs, which makes it easier to close the sale.  If you’re really lucky and stay quiet, some people will “close themselves” as they talk it out. 

TALK LESS + HEAR MORE = SELL MORE

Your thoughts???

!

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The Customer’s Perception of Benefits & Features

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Administrator

Let’s be perfectly clear on how selling benefits and features to one customer can differ completely from selling them to the next.  There is an old saying in the sales world that the sales representative can’t sell the same benefits and features to different customers, and the sales representative can’t hold a grudge against a new customer because of the actions and reactions of the old customer.

Selling benefits becomes increasingly difficult when customer aptitudes and attitudes change from one dial of the telephone to the next.  Some customers may hear that the benefit of ordering a pizza early is that they will get it early, and that may ring as gold to them. On the other hand, other customers might hear that exact same benefit, and wonder why in the world they would want  to order a pizza in the first place!

As a customer at home, I am sold benefits and features on the telephone all of the time, and quite often my perception is that they are misrepresenting their products and selling me trash.  I hope, for the industry’s sake, that I am wrong, but I know in some instances that I am correct in my assessment.  The most important aspect of my thought process, however, is predicated upon the perception that the TSR is misleading me.  Whether the TSR is or isn’t misleading me doesn’t matter.  Whether I am right or wrong doesn’t matter.  Because I perceive that the benefits and features I am hearing are misleading, there is very little chance that I am going to allow the TSR to complete the sale. Continue reading →

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