Kevin Wheeler, the noted HR consultant, provided a list of Hot technologies, products, and firms for 2008 in his column at ERE.NET.  We’re pleased that our CC Audition realistic job simulation was included.

Said Wheeler, “Recently, online simulations have emerged, especially in assessing call center staff and other positions where skills are straight-forward and success measurable in quantitative ways. ”

Wheeler is exactly right.  Not only do simulations like our CC Audition measure critical competencies like multi-tasking and computer ability, but our clients can see links between candidate testing scores and job performance metrics (call control, quality, and sales for example).  These links can be quantified allowing the hiring team to better evaluate a pool of job candidates.  Better evaluation allows increases the probability of making the right hire.

Simulations also provide a “cool” factor for the candidate experience.  Imagine two contact centers in the same office park and both are hiring.  One center uses a traditional typing test.  The other center uses an interactive simulation.  Which center will deliver a better candidate experience and potentially have the advantage in hiring?

Simulations allow your organization to be faster and more accurate in matching job candidates to open positions in your contact center while delivering a better candidate experience.

Absenteeism is one of the biggest challenges facing contact centers.  It is also one of the most perplexing to solve.  The cost is significant and probably haunts all Workforce Managers into the wee hours of the night.

What causes absenteeism?

Some high level, systematic causes are:

• Poor selection is probably the first cause.  Many contact center firms simply do not have a hiring process with the right tools that allow them to identify unreliable applicants.
• Poor front-line leadership is another cause.  From poor Supervisor hiring practices to weak development systems to the wrong incentive/reward systems, many Supervisors are just not able to manage their teams and help prevent absenteeism.
• Poorly engaged workforce where missing work is OK.

Digging deeper, we find other factors that influence absenteeism:

• Mandatory overtime
• Lack of schedule flexibility
  • Cannot make up lost time during the week
  • Cannot change any part of the schedule for 90 days
  • Not being able to take sick leave in short (60 minute to 1/2 day) increments
  • Frequent mandatory shift bids
• Lack of sufficient mentoring or supervisor support during the transition period after training
• Large team sizes (20+ per team)
• Cancelled team activities like 1:1 coaching due to heavy call volume

What are solutions to helping to reduce absenteeism?

• First, a pre-hire process for front-line employees and supervisors that is based on best practices and empirical methods should be implemented.  This will arm hiring managers with the tools needed to better identify reliable applicants.
• Second, an employee engagement survey to gain insight into the employees’ attitudes towards the company and its leadership.  The output of this survey is an action plan designed to address key issues.  Note, these results should be shared with the employees as well as the action plan to address the key issues.
• Third, review internal processes and systems.  Are there any factors that might be unintentionally rewarding employees for taking leave?  Are there links between absenteeism rate and early indication of voluntary termination?
• Fourth, implement attendance management programs.  Some ideas include:
  • One organization uses a “bank account” type allotment of time off.  The employee can use the account as needed but if they run out of time, they go on corrective action.  Each employee can earn more time to deposit into the account by not being late and keeping 100% attendance. 
  • Another program uses the standard verbal, written, and final warning process leading to termination.  However, the attendance is the primary factor determining if the employee can pick their shift in a shift bid process or have it assigned, promotional opportunities, and pay increases. 

Themes from Call Center Summit 2008

Home Based Agents

These sessions were the well attended and created the most discussion at the show.  Traditional brick and mortar firms are considering hybrid models.  Hiring home agents offers unique challenges. 

Turnover

While turnover is always a topic at these events, we found significant discussion around Generation Y and specific challenges with retaining this demographic group.     

Performance Metrics We found continuation on existing themes, call control metrics are less important and greater focus is being placed on customer satisfaction and quality scores that front line agents have more direct control over.

Recently, several articles and industry people have questioned the value of personality testing.  As an example, an article in Workforce Management claims the five Industrial Organizational (I/O) Psychologists state that personality testing is overated and does not provide value to pre-hire candidate evaluation. 

Personality testing refers to pre-hire assessments that measure a job candidate around various behavioral factors like conscientiousness and extroversion.  As an example, a candidate may demonstrate the ability to problem solve but on the job do they demonstrate an interest or willingness to problem solve.  You can learn more about personality testing in our Knowledge Center.

These challenges have created a stir within the I/O community.  At the SIOP website, several responses have been noted.  You can read a summary here.

In terms of practical results, yes personality testing works.  When evaluating job candidates, we want to know if the can do the job (ability) and will do the job (behavior).  Personality tests are one of the best methods at measuring potential job behavior which ties into job fit and culture fit.  Our own internal data shows strong results for personality tests to predict retention and job performance.

On TV and in newspapers, many commentators are claiming that the United States is in recession or heading into recession.  We won’t debate that point here.  However, we find that talk about recession does cause many organizations to start rethinking potential investments.  It makes us wonder if a recession proof investment exists.

Our answer is yes.  One recession proof investment is an investment in pre-hire assessment tools.  Even during recessions, contact center firms are still hiring new employees.  They are still struggling with retaining those new hires.  And, they are still struggling to identify candidates who will perform (CSAT, AHT, Sales Ratio, Promises Kept, etc.) on the job.  In fact, recession offers an opportunity to potentially hire job candidates who wouldn’t normally be on the job market if their current employer engages in layoffs due to changing financial conditions.

An investment in pre-hire testing tools is recession proof because of the signficant return on investment that can be created by just a small performance improvement.  A reduction in turnover by 5% can yield more than a 200% return on the investment in assessment tools.  Performance increases can be even larger.  As an example, one case study we have shows that new hires with high test scores had 30% lower AHT than new hires with lower test scores.  While AHT is not the most critical metric, the financial impact to this organization is significant.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article on the challenges facing call centers in small towns.   The article focused on two centers operated by 1-800-Flowers.  In summary, the article referenced high attrition combined with a small labor market creating operating challenges.  1-800-Flowers adopted some interesting strategies to combat this.  Two of the three are working for them.

First, they increased the pay rate.  The article did not provide details on whether or not this worked.  Based on data we have seen, only real low pay rate and real high pay rate seem to influence hiring results positively or negatively.

Second, the focused on improving supervisor training.  This is a great strategy to improve retention.  Once a new hire is past 60 to 90 days in tenure, the quality of the supervisor has a significant impact on their retention.  According to a study conducted by the SQM group out of Canada, appreciation, coaching, and value/respect are three of the top four metrics that employees value.   Our experience with our SupervisorHIRE solution has shown strong relationships between key competencies that a Supervisor should have with successful Supervisor job performance.

Third, 1-800-Flowers has increased the use of home agents.  The home agent model offers numerous wins for contact centers.  First, the ability to tap into labor pools without regard to geographic boundaries.  Second, the ability to tap into labor pools that offer better candidate quality.  Third, the powerful financial models that make home agents less expensive than traditional call centers and potentially competitive with off-shore models.  In addition, the ability to match home agents to a per call payment model is very attractive.  1-800-Flowers found that the home agent model helped them overcome some of the hiring challenges that the small market towns created.

Tracey Schelmetic, Editorial Director at Customer Interaction Solutions, recently wrote about a study released by our hometown, Rockford, IL.  You can read the original article here but we’ve pasted the story below.  Rockford is the classic blue collar town that is trying to remake itself.  For decades, Rockford led the world in certain types of manufacturing capability.  Now, the city is trying to shift jobs to knowledge based work.  We wanted to highlight the study for you.

From Customer Interaction Solution magazine:

In terms of local job creation, it’s hard to find a better industry than call centers. Labor intensive and flexible and quick to start up (nowadays, little more than PCs and headsets are required for each agent), many U.S. towns are actively courting the call center business. Rockford, Illinois is the latest city to take steps to tempt call center companies.

The Greater Rockford Area is poised to become a major hub for the inbound call-center industry according to a new study released this week. The study, which was commissioned by the Rockford Area Economic Development Council and Winnebago County, shows that Rockford has the right mix of attributes — low labor costs, a well-educated labor pool and reasonable rent rates — to rank it among the best call center locations in the Midwest.

Rockford would be especially well suited for a mid-sized tech support or financial support customer service call center with 200 to 300 employees, the study found.

“Rockford has all the ingredients to make a new call center operation a huge success,” said Eric Voyles, VP of national business development for the RAEDC.

The study compared Rockford to five other mid-sized Midwest cities — Iowa City; Indianapolis; Madison, Wisconsin; Naperville, Illinois; and Springfield, Illinois — and found that Rockford would offer the lowest overall cost of doing business.

Among the five towns, Rockford offers the second-lowest office lease costs (roughly $15.50 per square foot) and the lowest overall wage costs, the study found. Businesses operating a call center would save roughly eight percent a year operating in Rockford instead of Naperville and about four percent a year by choosing Rockford over Indianapolis or Madison.

Tom Ewing, CCIM, a commercial real estate broker focusing on the Rockford area, said there are now at least a dozen available Rockford office sites that could accommodate a 30,000- to 80,000-square-foot call center.  “There’s plenty of supply on the market, including a lot of newer buildings, for this type of use,” Ewing said.

Sue Mroz, director of regional planning and economic development for Winnebago County, said inbound call centers offer the kind of jobs that are in demand by local residents.  “These jobs offer good pay and benefits to people with varying skill sets and verying amounts of training and expertise,” Mroz said. “We’re hopeful that the results of this study might encourage these businesses to consider Rockford in their expansion plans.”

The study, which is available by contacting the RAEDC, was conducted by the Phoenix, Ariz.-based consulting firm Carter & Burgess.

For more information, visit www.rockfordil.com.

Several years ago, we attended a call center industry conference where one site director discussed how they had reduced their headcount by 50% using technology.  If an article featuring Netflix is any indication, people might be replacing technology.  You can read the article via this link with Yahoo!. 

Netflix, in their battle with Blockbuster, has adopted a strategy of human to human customer service instead of the email based customer service it has historically used. 

According the article in Investor’s Business Daily by Patrick Sietz, Netflix started losing customers to Blockbuster.  As a way to cut subscriber churn, Netflix moved to the call center only service model.   

From a hiring view, we believe that Netflix might be helping new hire retention with this approach.  By removing many of the front end automated voice system steps, callers will get to an agent quicker and not have to repeat the same information again with the agent.  In our view, repeating this information causes frustration for the caller and subsequently the agent.  By eliminating this potential frustration from the call, the agent may enjoy the job more which could lead to improved retention. 

The article goes on to highlight areas where Netflix is using technology to improve customer care.  Netflix is focusing on improving their web site self service based on key take-aways from caller interactions.  Given Netflix’s use of analytics in its business, this makes a great deal of sense. 

We give credit to Netflix for focusing their technology dollars on how they can best help the customer, not on ways to reduce the most cost at the expense of service.

Over the last five years, we’ve supported a number of site selection projects by evaluating local labor markets in terms of candidate quality and candidate quantity.  Many of our clients have a global perspective with off shore, near shore, and domestic centers.  The growth in the home agent model combines the economics of a near shore cost environment with the advantages of a domestic team.

 With the release of our new SpeechScreen and Coach product, we’ve been reviewing research on the off shore markets.  Here in the United States, contact center hiring organizations face challenges with both labor pool quantity and labor pool quality.  Candidate quality usually falls short in work ability competencies (multi-tasking), work habits (dependability), or work attitudes (attitude towards work). 

For the off shore markets, a driving factor for candidate quality is their English proficiency.  As an example, we performed a study in India several years ago.  The study was for an outsourcing firm that was making outbound calls to the UK and US for a large credit card provider.  We demonstrated a link between sales yield and assessment scores on the test.  Candidates who scored higher on the FurstPerson tests also had better sales yield performance.  The challenge, however, was the candidates oral communication ability limited their ability to use their work abilities on the job.  Building on this, as an example, data from the Philippines shows that only 6% of the labor pool has the language capabilities to perform call center work.