Transforming Your Contact Center: Effective Strategies for Cultural Change

You are just a click away from transforming your contact center from a drab workspace to a vibrant one; come join me, Tom Laird, as we revolutionize your call center experience. I promise to share the secrets to creating a positive and effort-driven culture, where attitude and effort outweigh resumes. I'm excited to share insights from my own journey of managing a contact center, making it a more desirable place to work, and how we can adopt these practices to revamp any workplace culture. 

This episode is a treasure-chest of practical tips. Learn about changing your hiring process that prioritizes culture, and the innovative ways to motivate and promote your agents. I'll share the importance of rewarding the best agents, not just the longest tenured, and creating an environment that values the agents who align with it. We'll also explore the critical role of culture in organizations, with a focus on building a strong team of agents who truly embody that culture.

If you are looking for USA outsourced customer service or sales support, we here at Expivia would really like to help you support your customers.
Please check us out at expiviausa.com, or email us at info@expivia.net!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

This is advice from a call center geek a weekly podcast with a focus on all things call center. We'll cover it all, from call center operations, hiring, culture, technology and education. We're here to give you actionable items to improve the quality of yours and your customer's experience. This is an evolving industry with creative minds and ambitious people like this guy. Not only is his passion call center operations, but he's our host. He's the CEO of Expedia Interaction Marketing Group and the call center geek himself, tom Laird.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Welcome back everybody to another episode of advice from a call center geek the call center and contact center podcast. We try to give you some actionable items to take back in your contact center improve the overall quality, improve the agent experience. Hopefully improve your customer experience as well. My name is Tom Laird. How's everybody doing? I am the CEO here at Expedia Interaction Marketing. We are a 600 plus call contact center outsourcer located here in Northwestern Pennsylvania. How's everybody doing?

Speaker 2: 1:29

It is July 19th, summer is flying as we record here and go live currently live on TikTok. Any questions that you guys may have, throw them out there. Tiktok can be, I know, a little bit different for some of the questions, so if we think it's going to add value, I'll throw it on there. Also, live on LinkedIn. So, again, if you guys have anything that you want to talk about with that, have any questions, let me know. We can talk it through.

Speaker 2: 1:55

But I want to talk about culture today. Culture specifically as it relates to customer experience, culture as it relates to the contact center. So many times and I hear this all the time right, the contact center is a horrible place to work. You're answering calls, you deal with customers who hate you. All you do is get yelled at your bosses, just tell you to keep talking. Breaks are brutal. Let's talk about all this and how it doesn't have to be that way and in a lot of places it's not and talk about some of the ways that you can improve the culture of your contact center. Some of the examples that I'm going to give you from what we've done here at ours that I think have made a huge difference in how our employees like to come to work, how they interact, how we incent them, how we promote them, how we even hire based on cultural aspects, and I think you could take this across the board. This doesn't have to be in the contact center, but there's a lot of things I think that hopefully you can gain from this If you're looking to improve your contact center and just improve the overall. I guess that feeling that you get right, like you kind of know if people are dreading coming to work, like you don't want that, and how do we change that and how do we evolve that.

Speaker 2: 3:11

I'm going to show you a book right here. It's called the Advantage, and I think I'm pronouncing his name right. I should probably know this, but it's Patrick Lincione. It's called the Advantage. I would tell you that 90% of the cultural aspects that I have thought through and we have thought through here at Exviva have come from this book. Even the kind of the mantra that I'm going to talk about here of what we do from a cultural standpoint I highly recommend this. Doesn't matter if you're into contact center in any kind of business where you have an opportunity to change culture, to lead to change how an environment is. This is a really cool book and again, I don't like books that are theory, like show me how to do things and tell me how I can put it in kind of my way. And this was that right. So again, we talked about actionable items. There's actionable things in here that I think really, really helped us develop what we want it to be as a contact center and as a business, because our contact center is our business. So again, the Advantage I can't tell you highly recommend. Make sure you pick it up.

Speaker 2: 4:13

Taking from that book, one of the first things was to define the culture of your business and again, we're defining the culture of our contact center and our contact center is not just a customer experience center, it's our core business too. It's how we make money. So there's a little bit different deal from there, from an internal contact center. So when we said, you know what were some of the things that we found important, and this is you know we're going to get deeper into this as we go right. So we said, well, attendance is huge. Right, we have to bill off of minutes or hours. We have to bill off agent time attendance absolutely vital. Quality score is vital. Kpis are important. We're very regimented when it comes to those kind of things.

Speaker 2: 4:57

We said, ok, we want attitude to be a huge piece of this, right. So we want to hire people who are just naturally positive. We want to hire people that want to give effort. I don't care about their contact center experience. I don't care if they've ever done anything in a customer experience world. All I care about is that they have a really cool attitude, they're happy people, right. And they're willing to learn and want to give effort. That was it, so that's in everything, right. So from the agents that we're hiring, from our IT folk, I mean, you guys know, if you've been in any business, that IT guys can be really smart, but they can be such a pain in the rear sometimes when they're dealing with people. That was a piece of it HR supervisors.

Speaker 2: 5:42

So how do we develop this? And the cool thing is we got to start as a startup. So we got to start at the beginning. It wasn't like I was coming into an organization and trying to change culture, which I think could be more difficult, but for us it was all right. How do we define this from the ground up? So we came up with a sunshine attitude, with an entrepreneurial mindset. I know that sounds hokey, but that was kind of the first as we're brainstorming, throwing all this stuff on the dry race board that we had, and we realized what we were really saying was attitude and effort.

Speaker 2: 6:13

So when we were laying out the foundational aspects of our company, of our contact center, we decided that attitude and effort covered most of the things that we wanted from an agent, most of the things that we wanted from a fellow employee, and if we could hire, incent and promote off of the core tenets of our culture and off of those attitude and effort pieces and put things in place that promoted that, that, I think we could have something here. So we got really excited about that, especially at the beginning. We started to do that we don't hire off of. I could care less about your resume saying that you're 12 years in the contact center industry, that you've been a programmer for 30 years Now there's certain aspects that you have to have right. So, if you are coming into the finance team, yes, you need an accounting background, right.

Speaker 2: 7:10

But having said that, we needed to figure out ways right when we could interview people and talk to people and kind of maybe dig deeper a little bit into their personality, more than what their quote unquote skills were from before. Because, again, I think most jobs, unless you're like being a doctor or lawyer, we can be educated, can be trained on. So that's what we did. So we hire. Hr has some crazy questions and I know I've talked about this a little bit ago of some of the questions that we are unique when we talk to somebody from an interview process, not really looking at a resume, but getting them to laugh, getting them to have a conversation to see if it's natural, and again, I know some people are nervous but we've been able to kind of work that and kind of come with a really cool way of kind of developing that. And again, if any of you guys want any of those things, dm me, find me on LinkedIn. I'm more than happy to shoot those out. I know I posted kind of our hiring and kind of some of the things that we talk about and ask before, but I'm more than happy to give that to you guys again if you would like that, all right.

Speaker 2: 8:23

So we said, ok, fine, we have a way now to bring on people right that we think are good fits for the culture of our organization. But now how do we incent them? How do we promote them? What are some of the things that we need to look at from that aspect? So it was always easy to to kind of quantify effort, right. So what is effort? Effort is showing up right, coming to work every day, being open to coaching. You're really trying right, and I think you can. You know those agents that are trying to do that and that was easy, right. So we had somebody who has really good hours, who's coming to work all the time, who's really trying to succeed, trying to do their job right. Maybe they fail sometimes and that's fine. But because you know that's not part of the culture, we think that if you're just doing those right things from an effort standpoint, you're gonna be there.

Speaker 2: 9:14

But attitude was always hard, right? How do you quantify, how do you incent attitude right, other than saying, because it's very subjective, and we really didn't want any of that to be subjective, and we struggled with that until analytics came out. And so analytics has been, you're not only from a the aspect of listening to keywords, trending phrases, marketing data, getting all of that type of information from real voice of customer but also for our agents right, cause we can now prove that they're talking with the right tone. Right, and if you have a good tone, you probably have a good attitude that day. Right. So we found a way to quantify attitude and to pay our agents to be nice, right, how many times have we all struggled with this? Right, you call a, whether it's a, you know, your cable company, your internet company, amazon, right, you only want, you want that nice, friendly voice that isn't fake, that's trying to help you, and again, with analytics, we've been able to kind of prove and then incent and pay the agents more that are doing this, and that's the way that we're promoting now as well, right? So if we have somebody that we know is here every day, who's pretty much hit in KPIs, who has a good attitude, who, on analytics it says, you know, their sentiment scores are extremely high. They're kind of fun to be around. Those are the kind of people that we are promoting throughout the company and then that we are seeing and hopefully that it trickles down to the agent so that they can be like hey guys, this is what you need to do. So I think that that's, for us, has been a winning strategy.

Speaker 2: 11:00

And so many contact center managers, contact center leaders they do not define the culture of their organization, they just tell you to hit service level, hit average, handle time and make sure that your schedule's adhering. And again, I think what you do with the cool thing about kind of keep calling a mantra or a motto is that you don't have to say, hey, you're not hitting adherence, like, hey, we have to look at some of these effort things right, and they're kind of like this kind of this all-encompassing thing. Sorry, I got a phone kind of call that came in and I think that that can really help talk through some of those aspects when you need to coach, when you need to talk through, because, again, if you're just hammering that cultural aspect, you're not talking about service level you're not talking about. You're talking about that, but the overall is more important of attitude, effort, attitude, effort, attitude, effort. And when they understand that, what pieces kind of fall into those, I think it can be a really winning, a winning combination for you. So, again, defining culture, let's talk about that for you guys and I have some notes here, so I'm looking here on my so for us we are a service-based contact center, right. So again, for us we found those things from attitude and effort. Those were important. But maybe you're a sales-focused contact center right, where you you're, you're, you're kind of your focus is on maybe you say persistence and performance, right. So, because you have to keep knocking on doors and you have to keep making calls from maybe from an outbouncing and we got to perform right, those are the things that you think are really important in your contact center and those are the individuals now that you want to find, that are persistent and that can perform right. And then you kind of funnel down what do those aspects meet? And then you find that ideal person right. You don't want to just find somebody who's been working in a call center for 12 years and maybe doing outside sales or anything like that. That doesn't mean anything to me, right, when you can really define that cultural aspect, that's when it means something.

Speaker 2: 13:01

Another customer service one is empathy and excellence, right, depending. Right, we didn't use empathy, not because we don't think empathy is important, but we have a lot of customers that we need a more of a sales aspect to, from a cross-sell, from an upsell. So just having empathy for us wasn't good enough. We had to kind of roll it in. But for, maybe, depending on the type of service center that you're running or you're a part of, you have to be extremely empathetic. Maybe you're in a 211 scenario, right, where you're dealing with some really heavy stuff. From a social services standpoint, empathy is the number one thing. Nobody cares about sales, nobody cares about the type of tone that you're using, as long as you're extremely empathetic and you're working with those guys.

Speaker 2: 13:45

That's where you see culture comes in. Right, in really defining it. You can now go look for those type of individuals Technical account or a technical support center, problem solving and patience, right, I think that makes sense, right? So you're trying to problem solve and you have to have patient people that can get that Kind of get that message through. And again, for us being a BPO, we have this overall culture, but we have to kind of see some of these things too. And that's why we've kind of defined some of these other roles, because if I do have a tech support company, I want to find within my attitude and effort somebody who can kind of match those. Our company culture is still number one, but you still have to then kind of look and see the different personalities and maybe who fits into these other little niches that you have Outbound, maybe resilience and results, and it goes with that sales focus one. So I think you know what, kay, this is kind of like my logo. Back here, kay's ripping on my clock again. So you know I'm live, or you know who I am when you see that darn clock. So I appreciate it. It's not going anywhere, but thanks again for the shout out. So again, I hope that that kind of maybe helps you a little bit to kind of think some of that stuff through.

Speaker 2: 15:16

When you're trying to define your contact center, trying to define the culture of it, I think that you can change the culture as well just by starting to talk about some of these things. You know, if I had to go change. Like if I got hired by XYZ company and they said, hey, we have 500 seats and we have high turnover, high attrition, we're really struggling. What would you do? And I would go in and we would talk about okay, what are we trying to find? And I think I've just talked about that for the last 15 minutes and I would bring in agents, I would bring in supervisors, I would bring in QA staff and I would get them to buy in with me. This can't come. So again, this is another tip. I think we talked about those committees in previous podcasts Having a cultural committee, I think, to redefine some things when you can get the team leaders so, let's say, you have 10 really hardcore leaders on your contact center floor.

Speaker 2: 16:16

You have three or four supervisors that you know are they're in it for the long haul, they're frustrated with what's happening too, and sit and have these brainstorming sessions like we did. Talk about the type of individual, the type of skills that you really need to have to have this work, and I think you can come up with the definition of that. And then you gotta have your HR team buy-in right. So you probably should have some HR or an HR person part of this conversation too, because they're the ones that are gonna be bringing people in and you need to maybe change or tweak the type of individual that they're bringing in. It's very difficult to say clean house, because in the contact center it is very difficult because a lot of times it's three to four to five, six week trains.

Speaker 2: 17:02

But I think again, if you start to talk about this, if you have meetings with the higher level agents that can kind of infiltrate and kind of dominate some of the lower level agents to have them start to talk those things through, and if it becomes more powered by the agent, I think it's really important when they can see the benefit of it, when they can see we're rewarding and we're gonna do and sent certain behaviors that are now based on our culture, instead of just we're willy-nillying it because HR says that there are six months is up, so we have to give them a raise. I'm not saying don't do that, but I'm saying look at some other aspects of it. If you really want to infuse culture into your contact center, you have to be able to hire, you have to be able to incent, you have to be able to promote based on those cultural aspects and I think coming up with those models is a great way to build that foundational aspect of it, to really start to help. I guess, change what you've been doing and you will start to see as well, because if we do have somebody who's not a good fit for us, that does sneak through and we're not perfect right, so maybe their attitude is a little bit low. When you get around a lot of like-minded people, they either change to kind of be like them or they leave, and either way is probably a good thing for us when we're talking so heavily about the cultural aspects of our contact center. So again, I don't know if that, I hope that that helps a little bit.

Speaker 2: 18:39

You know it's something I think is really important. It's one of the main reasons I think that customer experience is so bad in so many organizations because they just throw bodies at it. There's no thought process with it, and I get it. You know I'm talking in the small worlds of the under a thousand seat center. I understand when you have a 10,000 seat center right, you have a 5,000 seat center, it can be very difficult to find the right staff or to be that picky about the staff, and what I would say with that is I agree, but you should still be really working hard to at least get that core number right. So, if you have 10,000, to get a thousand of your agents that really buy into this and let them try to work their magic whether you have to pay them more, but have them really understand what those concepts are and really start to infuse it with everybody else. But I think you gotta have that team right. You gotta have that kind of go to agent and that go to supervisor group. That kind of has bought into what you're saying Because, again, it's going to help them advance in the company.

Speaker 2: 19:43

And we want people who are gonna advance in the company based on things that we think can help help our organization grow and help our organization be better. We don't wanna just again, I'm the anti. You've been here 10 years, so you deserve to be here. If you're not doing what you need to be doing, then that person who's been here for two years, maybe they should be there right. And that's where I think a lot of organizations have an issue. We wanna hire an incentive and promote the best agents for the best culture, not just because you've been here for a very long time. So that's kind of my rant on culture. I hope that that at least gets you to think through, as kind of where we're winding through halfway in the year, what maybe you could do even for next year to start thinking this stuff through. What changes could you make to improve the contact center, to improve the kind of the working attitude of what everybody's doing and make it just a cooler place? I mean, we all wanna work for something that either we believe in or kind of aligns with our values, and this is one major way that you can do that align values with the culture of your organization and then with the people that are here with you.

Speaker 2: 20:55

So if you guys any last questions or anything on TikTok, I can kind of scroll through here, see if there are any. I know there's been some comments, I don't know, about questions and then on LinkedIn, if you guys have anything, I can wait another minute or two. But again, thank you guys for joining. I do hope that that helps. It's a subject I'm really passionate about and I think it's just so. It's not easy to do, but the concept of getting started is so easy and it makes such a huge improvement and nobody really so many organizations are not doing that. So again, thank you guys very much. I hope that helps a little bit and I will talk to everybody next week.