The last few weeks have been quite busy for me, juggling tight deadlines at work with the stresses and struggles of buying my first apartment...

Well, the work deadlines and the apartment are sorted now, but I couldn’t have done it without the flexibility my employer offered me during this period.

This flexibility I am referring to is working from home... and I truly believe that you will not fully appreciate the benefits until you need to work from home yourself. I was able to save the travel time to work, sort out what I needed to do with regard to the apartment and complete the projects required at work by the deadlines.

Working from home not only benefits the Employee, it also benefits the Employer.

Some of the commonly reported benefits of having a Home-Based Agent programme include:

1. Access to a wider resource pool that you would not usually access (e.g. work from home parents, regional/rural communities)
2. Improved staff morale and retention
3. Improved productivity of staff
4. Improved service response to customer needs
5. Reduced travelling times for employees
6. Improved work-life balance

With so many benefits and proven cases of the concept working across the world, it puzzles me as to why only one in ten contact centres in Asia allow agents to work from home.

Western countries such as the US and Australia have higher adoption rates of Home-Based Agent programmes and this looks set to continue to grow and attract increasing support from senior executives in 2012.

With the relevant OH&S and Security measures, working from home makes logical sense and should be the direction that the contact centre industry in Asia head towards.

Welcome back everyone to the first DragonCall blog of the new year, the year of the Dragon (how appropriately named is my blog!). 

While you recover from the excessive eating and drinking over the new year celebrations, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all good luck, prosperity and health in the year ahead.

Now to other important matters...

Recently I came across a white paper, How Can I Help You?, which talked about how having the right headset can improve agent performance and customer satisfaction.

This is indeed quite interesting because headsets are not really top of mind when organisations think about purchasing technology in the contact centre, typically it is the big items such as ACD, IVR, CRM, WFM and Knowledge Management. 

After reading the white paper it makes sense to place a higher level of priority on headsets – the values of headsets presented in the white paper include:

Welcome to the last DragonCall blog for the year before the Christmas and New Year break.

I have just returned from a few weeks holiday across Asia - China (Guangzhou), Macau and Hong Kong – and I had a magnificent time!

In between the numerous hotels I stayed at, shopping malls I splurged my money in and restaurants that have helped me gain a few extra kilos, I have come to observe that the level of service offered by service staff in these countries is quite different to what I have seen in western countries such as Australia.

Put simply the level of service I experienced was much better than what I've experienced in western countries – friendliness, willingness to help, attentiveness and timeliness were all top notch. This made me feel valued and important, hence I was much happier during my stays in the hotels and was more willing to buy more goods and services than I would have been if I was in western countries.

This comes off the back of recent research undertaken by Australian research consultancy AMR, where Australians were surveyed about their perceptions and experiences of customer service. Results showed almost 3 in 5 respondents felt customer service has declined in the last 5 years, with only 17% saying it has improved.

Understandably, the service experience in Asia is my personal experience but if you take into account that the level of service in Australia is also declining, it is no wonder western organisations are outsourcing their service operations to countries in Asia.

Better service experience = more engaged customers = higher customer loyalty = higher likelihood to recommend and re-purchase = increased revenue.

Simple.

Have a safe and joyous break everyone, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

See you all in 2012!

In the midst of some global natural disasters, including the Turkey earthquake, US snowstorm, and something closer to our hearts the Bangkok floods, my deepest condolences goes out to all those who have been affected by these unexpected events.

Whilst we’re on unexpected events... quite often contact centres are impacted by unexpected events – these not only include natural disasters, but also controllable events such as marketing campaigns and changes in Government policies that are not communicated to the contact centre beforehand.

As per the FIfth Quadrant Australia and New Zealand Workforce Management Market Report, here are some common ways the industry handle unexpected peaks in contact volumes:

1. Offer staff overtime/shift extensions/additional shifts (80% of organisations in Australia/NZ use this method)
2. Minimise off-phone activities such as meetings and trainings (62%)
3. Multi-skill agents to be prepared for unexpected peaks (45%)
4. Use off-phone staff (39%)
5. Call in part-time/casual staff/temps to assist (32%)

A combination of the above methods will assist in handling the extra load.

Now delving into each of the points above...

We wouldn't want to offer too much OT/shift extensions as this may burn staff out

Minimising or cancelling off-phone activities is not ideal as this affects WFM practices in that staff may miss some important training or meeting, and may affect staff morale especially if the training/meeting is cancelled altogether and not rescheduled

Whilst multi-skilling of agents is a good method, there is still a fixed number of agents in this circumstances and additional load required of agents when peak periods kick in

Off-phone staff also have their day job and may not be fully equipped to handle customer enquiries

Which leaves me to the last point:

Use of part-time, casual staff. This strategy would be ideal especially if you have a part-time/casual workforce (work at home, outsourced) that is readily available and trained to quickly ramp up or ramp down when needed. This allows costs to be managed and staff to not feel too pressured or exhausted from the other methods, without compromising the customer experience.

Obviously these are reactive methods of handling unexpected peaks. With the controllable events, such as marketing campaigns there is opportunity to work more closely with marketing and allow the contact centre to be involved in planning throughout campaign development. So have a process in place, and reduce the likelihood of unexpected controllable events occurring.

The business will benefit and so will the customer.

More often than not we always hear about what the customer wants, what the customer needs, improving customer service, etc etc... whilst this is extremely important, a lot of organisations have forgotten about the people on the other end who actually have to deliver the service to your customers... Yes, that's right, your agents!

With over 80% of customer contacts handled via the contact centre channel, agents are by far the most important people to your organisation – they are the 'face' of your organisation, they represent how customers perceive your organisation.

Organisations need to continually look at ways to motivate and engage their agents, which you can search all over the internet to see what works for your staff (obviously aligned with some Employee Engagement research).

However, it is just as important to avoid actions that may de-motivate or disengage your staff... here are some pointers:

• DO NOT neglect your staff. Provide guidance and support for them even if you are extremely busy, they are your staff and they need your support. Be approachable.
• DO NOT leave staff in the dark. Always keep communication open and transparent. Talk to your staff not just email.
• DO NOT just give orders about what to do. Also encourage participation and collaboration from staff.
• DO NOT simply point out errors or mistakes. Recognition and praise of performance is always welcome and encourages repeat positive behaviour.
• DO NOT stick to one type of reward or reward criteria. It may not work for all staff so vary how you reward people/teams and the criteria for rewarding – it doesn’t have to be expensive – PRAISE is the universal reward.
• DO NOT allow staff to settle in their roles even if they are top performers. Always provide a challenging work environment, and provide growth and learning and development opportunities for staff. Talk to staff to see what they want to do in the short and long term.
• DO NOT simply focus on meeting hard KPIs and targets. Focus on the customer related metrics as well – first call resolution, customer satisfaction/engagement.
• DO NOT forget to have fun. Although it is a work environment, it can still be fun, hold activities that allow staff to have fun whilst at work – games or theme days.

Once you get this right, the benefits are directly transferable to customers. Highly motivated and engaged staff will represent your organisation in the best possible way to customers.