Delivering Engagement in the Contact Center
Brian Flagg, Š 2011 Introduction The management of employee engagement is critical to all organizations, especially operations organizations such as contact centers. Leaders must know what engagement is and why it is important, the impacts of engagement in a contact center environment, what drives engagement, and how they can foster increased engagement within their center. The impacts of low levels of engagement are many and severe, ultimately affecting the survivability of the contact center. Steps can be taken to increase the level of engagement in the contact center, but improvement can be slow as those employees that are really at the heart of the problem, the actively disengaged, are the most resistant to change. This article will define engagement and explain its importance, identify key points for engagement relevant to the contact center, and provide a recommended set of actions to foster improved engagement.
What is engagement and why is it important? The Gallup company ran the largest study to date on employee engagement and found that employees fall into one of three categories with respect to engagement; engaged, indifferent, and actively disengaged. Engaged employees believe in the organization and deliver positive interactions with customers, are more productive, less likely to leave the organization, and contribute positively to the profitability of the organization. The engaged employee is less likely to call in sick and more likely to adhere to their assigned schedule. The actively disengaged employee is detrimental to the organization, actively seeking to move the employees in the indifferent category to their category. They are frequently tardy or absent, frequently out of adherence to their schedule, are less productive and negatively impact the profitability of the center. Gallup developed an engagement ratio as a macro-level indicator of the health of an organization and found that in average organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is less than 2 to 1. This level of active disengagement has a huge cost, estimated by Gallup to be more than $300 billion per year in lost productivity alone. In the contact center, where each customer interaction represents a moment that can either build or destroy a brand opportunity, having a world-class level of engagement is critical. A satisfied and engaged employee has a much better chance of satisfying a customer during an interaction than a dissatisfied and disengaged employee. Indeed, an actively disengaged employee is more likely to have a dissatisfied interaction than a neutral or satisfied interaction. An actively disengaged employee will not only have lower productivity themselves, but will lower the productivity of those around them, as well as lower the productivity of the supervisor who must spend more time and energy coaching or counseling an actively disengaged employee.
Lower productivity means more cost. A dissatisfied customer means lost revenue or service penalties. Actively disengaged employees therefore keep the average contact center just that, average. World-class organizations, however, have a ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees of over 9 to 1. Such a high ratio means the actively disengaged employees are less likely to affect the productivity of other employees, and are less likely to move indifferent employees to their position. Engaged organizations are therefore more likely to provide quality customer interactions, and are more productive in their interactions, and hence drive organizational profitability. Indeed, Gallup found that engaged organizations have almost 4 times the earning per share (EPS) growth rate compared to organizations with lower engagement in their same industry. And, Best Buy found that for every 10th of a point improvement in employee engagement scores, its stores saw a $100,000 increase in operating income. Organizations operating in the ratio of 8 to 1 were found by Gallup to have a sustainable model, in other words critical engagement mass.
What drives engagement? Gallup developed a 12 point model to help organizations assess engagement. The reader is referred to the Gallup work to get the details. I have summarized the 12 point model into what I believe to be important for a contact center. The key levers of engagement I see are; •
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Feeling Valued; do your employees understand their value to the organization and company and do they know the leadership team is aware of how they stack up in terms of providing that value? Are measurements aligned to the value statement, and are the measurements of value clear and unambiguous? This is the bedrock, if employees do not feel valued or do not understand how their value is measured, most likely the organization is failing badly at managing engagement and the answer to the remaining questions in this section is "no". Have input to decisions; can your employees affect the policies, rules, measurements, and environment in which they operate? Are opinions, especially of the informal leaders of the organization, sought for input to key decisions? Know their voice is heard; is closely related to the previous point. Do employees have the ability to tell management what they think and feel? If they bring forward a problem or opportunity, is action taken? Front-line employees usually have a very good understanding of the operational problems and challenges that impact productivity and quality, and have a good understanding of opportunities for driving forward key initiatives and additional organizational value. How does the organization utilize the employees to bring their ideas forward? Are they rewarded or penalized for surfacing problems and offering suggestions? Are recognized appropriately; is the right reward system in place? Did the employees have a part in the design of the reward system? Are rewards timely and do they link to behavior? Are the right number of reward programs in place, or does the organization have so many reward programs as to render them ineffective? Tools for the job; do your employees have the right technology, information and training to enable them to have quality interactions? Do the skills match the expectations?
How is Engagement Fostered? Engaging employees cannot be done by simply proceeding through a checklist of actions. Actions to increase engagement deemed by employees to be disingenuous are often met with worse outcomes than doing nothing as the actively disengaged employees will quickly point at leadership as being part of the problem. Engagement begins with the leader of the organization. The leader must show unwavering belief in the organizational values, mission, and measures of success. Furthermore, the leader must communicate to the point of over-communicating. Every employee must see commitment in their leader, commitment to the organization and commitment to the individual. Developing a world-class organization with 8 engaged employees for every actively disengaged employee is a goal that can be reached. However, change is not easy, and the actively disengaged will find every reason to fight the change. So, line up your engaged employees and garner their help with one or more of the following recommendations.
First and foremost, and this is more of an imperative than a recommendation, your organization needs to have a documented set of values, and one of the values needs to read something like "our people are the most important asset in our organization". There is a wealth of material available on building organizational values, but I have found the focus on three principles most important; employees, customers, and continuous improvement. Furthermore, your statement of values needs to come from the leader. These are not democratically developed by committee or you will end up with a set of values to which nobody is committed. If you are going to take away one recommendation, you absolutely need a statement of values that includes your employees. The remainder of the recommendations that follow will likely not produce results without this statement of values.
Closely connected to the statement of value for the organization is the statement of the value of the organization. This is typically referred to as the mission statement, but I prefer to label it the organization's value statement. The statement should be clear and concise and address the value of the organization to its stakeholders and to its customers. For those familiar with Kaplan and Norton Strategy Maps, this is the external view of the organization, comprised of the financial view and the customer view. The value statement drives objectives in these two areas and objectives drive measurements. The key external measurements become the value measurements, which must be translatable to the lowest level of the organization if each employee is to understand their contribution to organizational value. Furthermore, ensure the larger organization or company understands and agrees with the value statement and the measurements of value. Broader organization or company communications such as quarterly meetings and newsletters should communicate positive value associated wit the contact center. Bring in a company executive for town hall meetings on a quarterly or annual basis to talk about the value being provided by the contact center. Recognition from senior executives, and communications from the broader organization or company recognizing the value contribution that can be understood by every employee in the contact center will drive an increased level of engagement.
Open, honest, and continual communication is a must to foster engagement. Communication must be top down and bottom up. Newsletters, leader blogs, unit and organization-wide meetings are all venues to foster two-way communication. Another key action leaders can take right away is gather employee input is to schedule roundtables. Choose 4-7 front-line employees and schedule a roundtable session where the leader not only gets to hear the challenges, improvement suggestions and opportunities, but employees also get to hear what is on the mind of the leader in terms of challenges, opportunities and future directions. I have found it best to have separate meetings with the supervisors, and have only non-management employees in the roundtable meetings. Be sure to write down any actions or follow-ups from the meeting, and provide closure to the actions or follow-ups in organization-wide communications.
Gathering employee input to decisions and input to understand operational challenges and opportunities can take many forms. The annual employee survey has, as one of its aims, to improve engagement. However it can, in many cases be more destructive to engagement than helpful. To the extent the annual company-wide survey is viewed as punitive to management and leads to a flurry of activities and initiatives that are neither desired or welcome, in other words 'you asked for it', will be to the extent the annual survey actually damages engagement. Face it, in a contact center environment, either employees have not been around long enough to provide any meaningful input, or they will be gone by the time the dust settles on the annual survey process and any positive actions are begun. A better solution is needed for contact centers. However, simply running a 60 question annual survey more often is not the answer. A more frequent survey is needed, but it should be focused on the areas primarily affecting engagement. Asking questions about company benefits is still valid on an annual survey, but as the leadership in an organization typically has no way to affect changes in the company-wide benefits program, leave the question off of a frequent engagement survey. The Gallup research identified 12 questions that need to be asked to assess engagement. Don't go much beyond 12 questions or the survey will likely be viewed an onerous and the leadership may be left with too much input to deal with on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Employees on the front lines usually have a very good idea of what is and what is not working at the operational process level. They even will have a variety of very good recommendations to fix what is not working. A key problem in the contact center, especially large contact centers, is how to tap into this vast store of good ideas, and how to deal with all of the input. Asking for improvement ideas and being able to manage the ideas is key. If the ideas and suggestions are not properly managed, employees will become disenchanted and will drive lower engagement among the engaged employees and provide ammunition for the actively disengaged. Technology can be a great advantage to implementing an ideas or suggestions program. Technology can foster an environment where ideas and suggestions become owned by the employees. This is key to a successful program. If ideas or suggestions are simply dropped into a box, whether actually or figuratively, management is left to handle the suggestion from that point forward. Employees are largely disconnected from the program and do not become engaged in the program or its objectives. Social technology can allow employees to raise suggestions that can be viewed, amended and voted upon by all employees in the contact center, ensuring a good deal of input and agreement is reached among the employees prior to a suggestion being given to the
leadership team. In essence, the employees then manage the suggestion, ensuring it receives the proper level of discourse before reaching management for action. The leadership team needs to have a process in place to receive the suggestion, develop a business case if needed, and prioritize action on the suggestion. Employees should have the ability to view the list of actions and the status of each action so as to close the loop on communications. Having employees vet the suggestions should lead to a set of actions for the leadership team that is much more manageable. Online discussion applications are numerous and I suggest the leadership team let the employees choose the application they want to use. The contact center recognition program should be tied with the suggestion or ideas program where employees have an opportunity to share in the business case benefits created by the implementation of their suggestion.
Recognition and reward programs have been used in the contact center to foster employee satisfaction and engagement for many years. Front-line customer service or sales employees are typically paid hourly and are usually some of the lowest paid employees in a company, and hence their pay is not a key influencer of high levels of engagement. Incentives, both financial and otherwise do influence engagement, usually in a positive way. However, the contact center leadership team should develop an overall award and recognition program, and have a process in place to periodically review the program to ensure its effectiveness. I have seen too many contact centers without a program but just a myriad of disjointed, point-in-time recognition ideas that address point-in-time problems or challenges that live on far past their usefulness. One contact center I visited had 13 separate recognition 'programs' which had the contact center looking more like a circus than a place of business. There were so many opportunities for recognition for so many reasons, virtually every employee was being recognized for something during the month. In the end, recognition was diluted and the employees actually grew weary of the plethora of banners, pictures, posters and other communications regarding recognition. Furthermore, the contact center had no measurements of the effectiveness of the recognition. I recommended the center develop a program by first determining what the recognition was to be used for, in other words what value measurements or engagement measurements the program was to affect and how From the measurements, I suggested the center choose no more than three or four rewards. By keeping the number of rewards to a manageable level, and by understanding the outcomes expected, the center had a rewards program that improved engagement. Another approach is for the leadership team to develop the objectives for the program and have the employees choose how best to be rewarded. Whichever method is chosen to the development of the recognition program, ensure the recognition is specific and timely. Employees should not be left guessing why the winner of the particular recognition actually won. A final note on the recognition program; a strategy for many contact centers is to move workers outside of the confines of the brick-and-mortar contact center and implement work-at-home programs. Athome workers can complicate the recognition program, especially is one objective of the program is to increase employee engagement. The leadership team needs to design a recognition program that includes the at-home worker and ensures that the at-home worker feels integrated with the contact center. Over-communication is key for at-home workers. Be sure to conference them in for any team or center-wide communication as well as conferencing them in for roundtables. Engagement of at-home workers is an especially challenging topic which is discussed later in this article.
Any contact center leader that has lived through the annual employee survey, or has held employee roundtables, knows that the most frustrating situation in a contact center is when employees do not have the right tools or knowledge available to perform their job. The right tools for the job is enlarged to include the environment within the contact center, including proper areas for relaxation and socialization, the layout of the employee workspace, the type of technology hardware within the workspace, the application or applications the employees need to access and use, and the knowledge or documentation available to the employees. A majority of the employee-level measurements in the contact center are directly affected by the tools available to perform the job. If the tools are inadequate, the employee will feel that their measurements are being impacted by factors outside of their control, and if not rectified, will drive employees into the ranks of the actively disengaged. Have proper feedback paths in place to ensure employee concerns in this area are surfaced and addressed as quickly as possible. The physical layout and facilities in the contact center will depend in a large part on whether the center is open for business 24 hours a day and the proximity to site services and facilities such as meal and dining, and break rooms. A variety of physical layout and work area footprints choices are available. I have found the best arrangement addresses the following considerations: •
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High walls vs. low walls. If noise can be kept to a minimum with low walls, I have seen a much better level of engagement and cross-team collaboration rather than using highwalls where each customer service agent is unable to see anyone else in the center. Adequate storage space. Ensure staff have storage space for personal items. If the workspace is shared, a locked drawer or cabinet should be available. Adequate work space. Design the workspace layout for comfort and efficiency. Have enough room for technology and for personal items. Design for peak demand or rapid growth. Choose a workarea layout that has enough space for temporary expansion or for temporary peak staff demand, if needed. For this, I like the following layout:
Fig 1: Work area set up for temporary expansion
The layout in figure 1 can be stacked in a line with the supervisor at one end or can be arranged as a replicated pod where the supervisor can be located in the middle of the pod. The cabinets in the layout can be stored under the temporary workspace when that area is not needed, and can also be used for supervisor seating when doing side-by-sides or other coaching activities. The net is, the customer service representatives will spend 7 to 8 hours a day at their workarea, and the workarea should be as comfortable and efficient as possible.
Tools also include the technology used by the staff. Easily-viewable, low-glare LCD computer screens, ergonomic keyboards, and wireless headsets are typical user-friendly physical technology. A unified desktop, integrating all back office and CRM applications is very helpful to assist staff in being as productive as possible during an interaction. As technology should not negatively affect staff measurements, a unified desktop should limit or eliminate multiple signons, copy or cut and paste, and other non-value activity, and potentially even automate some tasks typically performed by the customer service representative.
Knowledge also falls under technology. Engaged customer service employees have a real desire to provide an answer, solve a problem, or close a sale. Employees are frustrated when they do not have knowledge available to them that enables a successful contact. There are three imperatives around knowledge in the contact center; the content needs to well-structured and complete, the search engine or capability over the knowledge must be robust and accurate, and a successful change management process needs to be in place to ensure the knowledge is up-todate.
In conclusion, facilities, work area layout and technology are key differentiators in employee engagement. When engaged employees have a poor working environment or inadequate technology, they can become disengaged and even actively disengaged as their desire to meet their measurement goals and desire to have successful contacts are thwarted. Is it strongly recommended to include a question or two on monthly or quarterly employee surveys that includes satisfaction with workspace and technology.
Special Considerations for At-Home Workers Many contact centers have embraced a work-at-home model for a variety of reasons. A work-athome program is developed to either primarily benefit the employee, or the company, and the choice will affect engagement strategies. A program benefiting the employee will have a workat-home designation used as a reward, for example by hitting goals on key metrics for a six month period. The company will promote such a program as a reward, and use words such as responsibility and empowerment. The employee will feel a sense of joint ownership of the program and its objectives, and hence will experience a higher level of engagement. This is very positive at face value. However, the leadership team must consider the potential unintended
consequences and be prepared to deal with them appropriately. One major consequence is that what remains on site in the contact center is the lower performing, actively disengaged staff. Supervision and coaching or counseling is therefore directed at what management can see, and too much organizational resource is spent on the least desirable employees. The leadership team must recognize this possibility when designing a program and be prepared to address the potential. One way of doing so is to have the work-at-home employee spend a period of time in the contact center on a monthly or quarterly basis, perhaps a week every month or every other month. Another tactic is to explicitly provide scheduled, over-the-phone coaching time for the employee and supervisor.
A program primarily benefiting the contact center usually falls under the overcrowding or facilities overhead savings. The employee is sent home to work not as a reward, but as a necessity. The obvious consequence here is that if your center is currently in the 1.83:1 category and employees are sent to work from home at random out of necessity, you will have 30% of your workforce, out of the sight of supervision, that is actively disengaged. Being out of sight allows your actively disengaged to exhibit much of the actively-disengaging behavior virtually unrestricted unless leadership is actively paying attention, though even the definition of "actively paying attention" is difficult to elucidate. Supervisors will have little or no control over what actively disengaged employees are doing at home, posting negative comments on external social media sites, instant-messaging using external tools with other like-minded actively disengaged employees, and participating in other potentially negative behaviors to push their disengaged agenda. A recommendation I would likely make to a contact center leader that is currently in this state, and simply does not have the facilities to have all staff onsite would be one of two alternatives; either only have engaged employees work at home, or find an outsource provider.
Regardless of the primary driver behind the work-at-home program, the considerations and recommendations in the previous section are all valid. Work-at-home employees still need to feel valued, still need to know their voice is heard, and still need to have the right tools and knowledge for the job. Communications channels will need to be augmented so as to be inclusive of work-at-home employees. They need to participate in department meetings, area meetings, need to participate in the innovation program, need to be at roundtables either on the phone or when they are on the periodic back-in-the-office week. They need to have their coaching, mentoring, and career discussions. To net, work-at-home employees need to be managed and receive communications as if they were onsite.
Conclusion The management of employee engagement is critical to contact center leaders who must know what engagement is and why it is important. The leadership team also needs to understand the significant potential impacts of engagement in a contact center environment, what drives engagement, and how they can foster increased engagement within their center. Actions can be taken to increase the level of engagement in the contact center, but improvement can be slow as those employees that are really at the heart of the problem, the actively disengaged, are the most
resistant to change. There are some special considerations for work-at-home employees, but in the end they need to be managed, and their engagement needs to be managed, as if they were on your site.
References Gallup, Inc. (n.d.). Employee Engagement - A Leading Indicator of Financial Performance. Retrieved 14 2011, November, from Gallup, Inc.: http://www.gallup.com/consulting/52/employee-engagement.aspx Harter, J. P., Schmidt, F. P., Killham, E. M., & Agrawal, S. M. (2009). Q12 Meta-Analysis: The Relationship Between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes. Gallup, Inc. Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1992, Jan-Feb). The Balanced Scorecard – Measures that Drive Performance. Harvard Business Review .