Dec 07, 2009

5 Reasons for Lack of Productivity
Posted by: Jim Shulkin

In this post Cyber Monday, full-steam ahead holiday shopping season, it’s more important than ever for your Call Center team to be firing on all pistons.  By examining the reasons given by admittedly unproductive employees, one can quickly derive and implement low- or no-cost ways to connect employees for an improved bottom line.  In a recent post on Call Center Café, the top 5 reasons for lack of productivity are discussed:
 
1. Lack of supervision.
There has been a trend in recent years to empower people by placing them in teams and letting the teams to self-manage their responsibilities. It is definitely true that this contemporary style of management improves results over traditional strict management.  Unfortunately many companies have gone too far in removing supervision. Supervisors still have a strong role in setting goals, holding their people accountable, and providing the resources necessary to get the job done. These supervisory responsibilities require supervisor becomes a coach for each employee, having daily contact at a minimum.
 
2. Insufficient training.
Many supervisors think that empowerment is nothing more than giving people the ability to make their own decisions. This thinking is far too simplistic for success. Giving people the ability to make their own decisions requires providing the education they need to make intelligent decisions.  Fortune 500 companies have learned the value of training and almost all of them have ongoing training programs. Small and midsize companies often overlook the value of providing training in important people skills such as time management, problem solving, decision making, or communication.
 
3. Exclusion from the decision-making process.
When was the last time you were excited that somebody made an important decision for you? You probably resented it. Most employees are no different: they do not want someone else deciding important aspects of how they do their jobs and meet their goals.  Including employees in the decision-making process is an important aspect in connecting them to a shared vision of your organization’s future.
 
4. No reward for good performance.
We all like to have acknowledgment for our accomplishments. Employees will be much more successful when you show appreciation for their efforts.  A common misconception to giving rewards is the belief that rewards should be monetary in nature. The truth is that employees crave specific verbal complements — which are absolutely free to the employer.
 
5. No opportunity for advancement.
Don’t be tricked by this heading. We are not talking about reality here — we are talking about perception. If employees do not feel they have an opportunity for advancement they will not connect to your organizational goals and visions. It’s a simple absolute truth.  I worked with one organization that claimed they had absolutely no opportunities for advancement due to financial constraints. I wondered aloud how they were so sure nobody was going to quit, retire, or die.  This company had fallen into the misconception that opportunities for enhancement needed to be immediate and constant. The opportunities offered by a company can be available anytime within the next five years. It is more important that opportunities exist than it is how quickly they can be realized.
To read the complete post, click here
 
5 Reasons for Lack of Productivity - 1:23 PM | Coaching & Agent Effectiveness | Add Comment (0) |
Nov 05, 2009

New! Southwest Airlines Webinar
Posted by: Jim Shulkin

You probably already know that a quality monitoring program is key to ensuring not only customer satisfaction, but also agent success. But, is your quality program as efficient, consistent, and measurable as it could be? 

Now is your opportunity to find out how a company known for its exceptional customer satisfaction and agent success does it. Find out about the key changes Southwest Airlines made in their quality program that helped them to offer a best in class customer and agent experience.

Join Jona Berta of Southwest Airlines, and Connie Smith, industry consultant for Envision as they present a complimentary webinar titled, "How Southwest Airlines Achieves Peak Agent Performance - The Successful Quality Program Makeover". 

This empowering Web session is now available online.  To view this free webinar, please click here.  
 

 
New! Southwest Airlines Webinar - 9:52 AM | News and Events | Add Comment (0) |
Sep 28, 2009

Fewer Seats in the Contact Center
Posted by: Jim Shulkin

Just in case there was anyone left that thought the Contact Center industry was immune to the global economic crisis (there isn’t really anybody, is there?), here’s new evidence to think again. In a recent report published by the National Association of Call Centers (NACC), it was determined that for the first time since the organization began collecting employment data in 2004, more contact center jobs were lost (approximately 5,000) than gained (2,500).
Although this shouldn’t come as a surprise to most of us, there are still some industries and specific geographies that have continued to grow through the recession and remain strong. The growth in these industries, and in some cases rampant growth (i.e., medical devices), has in large part been able to mitigate much of the losses of other industries that have been severely hit to show a continued industry-wide growth curve, albeit modest. For the first time in a while however, that’s no longer the case.
The good news is that David Butler, executive director of the NACC, also reports that there is light ahead. See the two key reasons he believes we’ll begin to see more jobs gained than lost again by the end of this year in this article by Chris Musico at CRM Magazine.
 
Fewer Seats in the Contact Center - 2:17 PM | General | Add Comment (1) |
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