THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAGAZINE ISSUE 2 • 2014
10 questions to ask before buying a phone system ❯❯The little company that could ❯❯Ensuring company growth with proper staff development
There are a lot of good reasons to consider the cloud. Increased flexibility. Faster deployment time. Minimal upfront capital expenses. Reduced IT requirements. But selection of the best contact centre cloud-vendor is the make-orbreak decision. The Communications as a Service offering from Interactive Intelligence is used by some of the most well-respected companies around the world. Our cloud solution provides you the high levels of security you require, with the level of control you determine, and the ability to move to on-premises if your business needs ever change. Moreover, you have access to the broadest set of applications available, with the ability to move as rapidly as you’d like. Good reasons to trust the Interactive Intelligence cloud.
www.inin.com CONTACT CENTRE • UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS • BUSINESS PROCESS AUTOMATION Cloud or On-premises
Success Stories
The little company that could The secret to Canadian Tire Financial Services’ call centre success
T
he call centre industry is not typically referenced in the same sentence with metrics such as 10-year average tenure and 93 per cent employee engagement. However, these numbers are in fact part of the Canadian Tire Financial Services (CTFS) success story that has recently earned the company its third consecutive Call Centre of the Year award from Service Quality Measurement Group (SQM). Since 2002, SQM has presented CTFS with more than 60 awards. Another interesting fact (if the above hasn’t caught your attention): no other company has earned the top honour of Call Centre of the Year three years running … CTFS has achieved it twice! What is it about this world class company that enables its continued success in the area of first call resolution, customer and employee satisfaction? Is it in a magical “secret sauce” which the company jokingly refers to it as? It extends beyond employee programs, process improvements and competitive compensation and benefits. It starts, many would say, with the red triangle that plays an extraordinarily large part in the everyday lives of Canadians from coast to coast. In the Canadian retail industry, the triangle is synonymous with retail giant, Canadian Tire. Attached to this giant, is the little company that could. CTFS’ roots go back to 1961 when a small credit company in Ontario’s Niagara Region began managing the books for a few local merchants that included one Canadian Tire store. This evolved into credit granting to customers and shortly, the birth of Canadian Tire Acceptance Limited in 1968. Today, the company has grown to approximately 1,400 employees and supports the growth of the “Tire” and its banners in an increasing number of ways. The call centre operations employ 800 people across three locations in Welland and St. Catharines, Ontario. They provide call centre services for more than four million of their own MasterCard customers and they perform collections, recoveries and customer security (fraud prevention) services and receive incoming customer calls for the Canadian Tire Retail stores, a 24/7 Roadside Assistance program, the Home Services division and several Retail Banking products. In total they handle inbound call volume averaging 400,000 calls per month or 4.8 million per year.
Enough about who they are, how do they do it? The secret to the company’s world class results, says Dave DiFelice, Vice President – Customer Service and Operations, is the influence of two key factors: the employees’ pride in the triangle and a strong culture focused on creating and keeping customers for life. “I’m not sure which one came first, or if it even matters – the two things are completely intertwined and play out Issue 2 • 2014
in our world class results,” says Dave. “The instant you have both running at high speed, and in tandem, you have the perfect environment for sustainable world class service. Employees try harder on every call, every situation and that drives first call resolution and customer satisfaction.” In fact, some might say, the two are quickly becoming melded into one. By definition alone, CTFS’s culture – to support the Canadian Tire brand by delivering an excellent customer experience through all interactions (phone, email or web) and create customers for life – is linked to brand affinity. “The (customers for life) philosophy connects employees to the brand. They love Canadian Tire and care about what they do, therefore they care about the customer, which drives first call resolution and world class service,” says Dave. One important aspect of this phenomenon, is consistency. The customers for life philosophy has been in place for more than 15 years and everyone is aligned to it – from the executive level to the newest frontline representative. It is also supported by a monthly employee recognition program of the same name. This longevity becomes increasingly important when you consider the long tenure of the CTFS call centre team. The focus on creating excellent experiences also transcends to the employee experience. CTFS representatives know the work they do is valued – by the customer and by the leadership team – and they’re given the freedom and proper support to be successful. In turn, that means employees stay. The call centre has a very low attrition rate (5.4 per cent in 2013), which over the years, results in the ten-year average tenure and high knowledge and expertise at the frontline level. The long tenure trend
continues for those supporting the frontline – supervisors (17 years) and managers (20 years). Although CTFS is batting a thousand with pride in brand and strong culture built on customers for life, it hasn’t neglected other must-haves in creating a great place to work: flexible benefits package, profit sharing, stock purchase plans, $18-22/hour average pay plus bonuses. CTFS also employs proven feedback channels at various levels. First they survey all customers through SQM Group. This gives them direct and meaningful feedback on each frontline representative. Second, the representatives themselves have access to a “voice of the customer” system that allows the team to track common customer pain points for further analysis and correction. Third, they involve representatives in generating solutions. “We’ve had tremendous success in fixing problems when we involve our frontline team in the development and implementation of a process improvement” says Dave. “They hear from our customers all the time, so they know what’s not working properly and often have great ideas on how to fix it.” A recent example of this would be upcoming changes to a set of letters previously sent to inactive customers. “Our representatives told us about this customer issue. We involved them in a cross-functional group to solve the problem and we’re implementing the fix this month.” If there was a secret sauce for world class service, CTFS is the one to develop and market it. They’ve got a world-class recipe: pride in the brand, strong culture, and tools and programs to bring out the very best.
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Employee Engagement
Building on your strengths To ensure company growth, proper staff development must occur across all levels By Sangeeta Bhatnagar
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e have taken the time to do proper recruitment/ selection and onboarding. As a company you have developed a culture to retain your top employees (those with great attitude + desired competencies). To ensure company growth, and to continue to retain our top employees, we need to have proper staff development across all levels. There is a thought that I share with my clients, around the fact that we first must build our people in order for them to build within their teams. Within every company, big or small, there are several smaller business units. Within each business unit, there are small units that function and deliver a product or service. Let’s tap the strengths of our staff, allow them to develop and watch the team blossom!
High Type
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How do we start to develop our staff?
Step 1 -This will start by understanding the needs, wants and goals of each staff member. Step 2 - Some development can be general for all staff but some can be customized to each to ensure maximum return on investment. After understanding the drivers and motivating factors for each of our
Dominant
Influencing
team members, we can apply certain tasks to allow for development. The best development comes from focussing on the strengths of the individual and then putting them in an environment where they must overcome some of their weaknesses in order to succeed. Step 3 – Here is a brief guideline to assist in determining some developmental steps.
Steady
Compliant
Strengths
Quick Action Creating Change Taking Charge Getting Results
Verbalizing Generating Enthusiasm Optimism
Staying in One Place Demonstrating Patience
Following Directions Maintaining Standards Checking for Accuracy
Motivated by:
Challenges Power & Authority
Flexibility, Freedom to Talk, share ideas New fun activities/ adventures
Stability, Peace Having time to adjust to change
Being Included in the Idea Process Having Time to Analyze Facts Good Reasons
Areas to start developing
Collaboration, Increasing people skills
Taking Ideas to Execution Increased focus on task completion
Leading a team, Learning how to say ‘No’ when appropriate
Collaborating with various personality types to increase people skills Issue 2 • 2014
Employee Engagement
Developing leadership skills Leadership is used in every avenue our lives from our workplace, to our outside activities and in our personal lives. There many authors on leadership with various themes and laws. Here are few points summarized from John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Here are a few that each of us can apply regardless of “position” in a company: • Law of Leadership – One true measure of leadership is INFLUENCE Leadership is about influence. It is taking people, a team from where they are today – Point A to Point B – where they need to end up. • Leadership develops daily - Not in a Day Everyone in the team has the potential to be a leader as there is something called 360 degree Leadership. Leadership is continuous growth, listening and learning to be a humble. Effective leaders can influence in a positive or negative manner from anywhere within the organization. It is important to recognize your leaders early on and develop them. Most Leaders are Readers. Read the positive and build yourself so that you can build your team! • Law of Solid Ground – Trust is the foundation of Leadership Remember that saying – “you are only as good as your word” – Mean what you say and say what you mean. • The Law of Buy In – People buy into the leaders first and then the vision. When your team trusts you, they will believe in the vision you share and then help you move the Team from Point A to Point B.
Practical application A client of mine recognized that development had to be customized to each of her team players. Someone that was more fast-paced and task orientated just blossomed when he was given a challenging project to complete. He was able to share his vision for the project, tap into his strong sense of task and utilize his ability to lead. The development came into effect because he had to work with more people and learn collaboration in order to complete the task. In this scenario, the agent that was comfortable working alone now had to tap his strengths and collaborate with others. He had to listen to ideas, allow others to shine and provide guidance as required. Since his motivating factors were tapped, he enjoyed the development process. ROI: 1. Timely task completion. 2. An engaged team-player ready for the next level. 3. A strong task person learning how to collaborate with the other team members Another situation occurred when an agent was recognized as having outstanding “People skills”. She was full of energy and knew everyone on the floor and on many of the different shifts. Her area of development was to become a little more task orientated. By tapping into her motivating factors, which was talking and connecting with people, this agent was assigned to organize the team social and volunteer activities. Her manager recognized what she loved to do, which was really anything
Highest user adoption
Lowest cost of ownership
of a social nature. In doing so, she tapped into some skills that were not so comfortable as in delegating tasks, organizing meetings and sticking within a specific time frame. All of this development focussed around her primary strengths and motivating factors. ROI: 1. Creative socials with an increased number of staff ready to participate as the largest influencer knew how to put the “Party on 2. A engaged, vocal influencer spreading energy to others 3. A strong, vocal “people” person learning how to complete tasks on time, within budget Sangeeta Bhatnagar, Principal, SB Global Human Capital Solutions has over 15 years of Talent Acquisition and Team/Leadership Development experience utilizing the Model of Human Behaviour. work is meaningful and that they are contributing to the success of the organization. Through my work with a variety of contact centres, one thing is consistent – employees want to feel proud of where they work and what they do. This is reinforced through the leadership words and
Highest rate of standardization
Award-winning customer service
Why us? We make software solutions that empower all your decision-makers…because everyone makes decisions. Business Intelligence and Analytics | Integration | Data Integrity informationbuilders.com WebFOCUS
Issue 2 • 2014
iWay Software
Get Social
Omni
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Feature
10 questions to ask before buying a phone system Before you decide to invest in a phone system, you should ask the person you’re buying from the following 10 questions. By doing so, you can save yourself thousands of dollars and countless hours of headache. Hosted PBX provides your business the flexibility to adapt your phone system to your changing business needs. By Matthew Leppanen
1
What start-up costs are there beyond setup & equipment fees?
Many companies make a purchase decision based off of the quote that they receive, but often there are hidden costs that aren’t included that could add thousands of dollars over the length of a contract. You should find out exactly what you will need to purchase or supply in order to use the service, including; phones, servers, switches, interface cards, power adaptors, and the voice or IP access connection. What is expected of your team to install and 6 | contact management
setup the new phone system? Will the provider also be your single point of contact for the access portion or will you have to source that separately? One area that is often under estimated is the internal project management effort and costs by having to onboard a new system.
2
What costs are not included in your monthly plan?
Not all providers are created equal and that is no more evident than on costs like moves, adds, changes, and deletes (MACD) and features outside of the base monthly plan. Are the advanced features the sales rep told you about included or extra? We’ve found that many service providers Issue 2 • 2014
Feature and hardware companies talk about advanced features, however, what they don’t tell you is that you have to pay extra for them. These usage-based features or additional licences can add up quickly, especially when every user in your company takes advantage of them.
3
Will you be able to send & receive faxes?
One of the biggest challenges with a VoIP phone system is the handling of fax calls. Many companies will state that they support fax calling, but when you finally start using it you may discover it’s not what you expected. Fax on VoIP requires T.38 support, not only on the phone system, but throughout your VoIP provider’s network to fully make and receive fax calls. Without it, you may only send or receive partial faxes or have frequent failures. It’s important to find out if you can plug your fax machine directly into your phone system or if you will require additional equipment. In some cases, you’ll need to buy a traditional phone line because your fax machine is not compatible with T.38.
4
What level of complexity is involved in adding a call centre?
Adding call centre applications to a phone system can vary on complexity to a great degree. On traditional premise based systems, it often involves additional servers and complex license structures for the various user types and reporting modules. Configuration requires expertise often only available through a support agreement or professional services. Hosted phone systems offer the availability to quickly add call centre on a per unit basis and are completely virtualized. Factors such as speed to market, frequency and level of effort required for changes, scalability, and the ability to easily move agents to other locations are all important to review before you choose a phone system.
5
Can you easily add call centre agents who telecommute?
Many companies make a purchase Telecommuting for call centre agents is growing at a rate of 40%1 and is seen as a dramatic way to improve productivity while reducing operating costs. It is estimated that attrition rates decrease by 30%2 in call centre environments that support work from home. But many companies have been challenged with adopting teleworking for their call centres in a cost effective manner due to complexity. Hosted environments have been designed to easily support this on both a permanent and occasional basis. All productivity gains made through teleworking could be quickly erased if the complexity to configure, deploy, and manage teleworkers is miscalculated. 1 Michael DeSales, strategic analyst, Frost & Sullivan, April 19, 2010 2Working Successfully with Gen Y, Call Centre Times, 2013
6
Can the system expand as your company grows?
Many phone systems are designed for a specific number of users and it can be quite surprising to learn that the phone system you bought last year is no longer able to support your business because you have added employees and exceeded its capacity. This can be a very costly mistake for many businesses. Finding out in Issue 2 • 2014
advance the process for adding more phones, increasing access, or adding more locations is important. When considering scalability in a call centre environment one of the big challenges is in call capacity. Premise-based systems require a channel for every call in queue while hosted holds calls in the cloud and only sends them to a live agent, requiring only a channel per live agent. Miscalculating your long-term requirements can lead to fast busy signal because someone cannot connect – resulting in a poor corporate appearance, bad customer experiences and, quite possibly, lost business.
7
How do they guarantee your quality of service (qos)?
Quality of service varies dramatically from provider to provider. VoIP has many advantages over traditional voice phone lines, but without a Qos guarantee you’ll find many disadvantages and a lot of frustration. Some providers offer monitoring of their equipment, but if your voice packets travel over the open internet you may be exposing your business to a loss in quality and potential security risks. Without Qos guarantees you could experience jitter, latency, and interference which could impact your revenue and customer experience. Further to this, what happens if there is an outage in the IP connection or to the power in your office? Take the time to understand how Qos will be handled, who will be responsible, and what the implications will be to your contract terms if you’re not happy with the Quality of service that you receive.
8
Do they provide 911 or e911?
In an emergency situation at your office, what will happen if someone dials 911 on the new phone system? Will the 911 dispatchers know where you are or will you be required to provide address details? It’s important to know this in advance so you can make an informed decision on what is the best solution for your business. Understanding the differences between 911 and e911 could mean the difference in saving someone’s life – maybe even your own. Ensuring your provider is in full compliance of regulatory guidelines on 911 management will also save you from costly litigation as a result of not meeting the basic needs of
your employees in the event of an emergency.
9
What s the disaster recovery plan?
With the globalization of business many call centres are finding their customers are from around the world, making serviceability more complex. But what happens if there is a disaster and people can’t come into work? Recent floods in Alberta and ice storms in Ontario have proven to be a huge challenge to keep a business up and running especially when global customers are completely unaware of local issues. The importance of having a phone system that inherently has a DR plan in place is cannot be overstated. Having a hosted system can allow for immediately turning an office environment into a virtualized one by sending all employees home to let them make and receive their queued calls. Find out what the DR plan is and how it can help maintain business continuity.
10
What is their contract termination policy?
Finally, you’ve reviewed the questions above and you feel confident that you’re making a sound decision on your new phone system, but what happens if your business changes and you need to cancel your contract early? What if the service provider doesn’t meet your quality expectations and you want to find a new supplier? If you bought your phone system are you stuck with it? Business-class services generally also come with a contract so beware of their month-to-month offers, as you are likely sacrificing something from 1-9. Matthew Leppanen is Director of Product Management at Primus Business
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Hardware Solutions
Hosted PBX phones New offerings from Primus Business Services ensures your agents always hear and sound the best PANASONIC® KX-TGP550 IP phone and cordless handset provide quick and easy expandability. Ideal For • Small & home offices, and retail • Working anywhere in the office Features • Expand up to 6 cordless handsets - all you need is an electrical outlet • Configure handset as a companion or as its own extension • DECT 6.0 technology provides crystal clear voice quality, and is interference resistant • Backlit LCD on handset & base unit • Two 10/100 Ethernet ports PRIMUS SOFTPHONE • Hands-free speakerphone Allows HPBX users to send • 2.5 mm headset jack and receive calls from a PC, laptop, or mobile device. Ideal For • Sales, mobile & teleworking staff • Managers & executives Features • Call Display, Speakerphone, Hold & Mute • Multiple-Call & Video Call support • Automatic Codec selection to ensure optimal call quality • Desktop version for Microsoft Windows, & Mac OS • Mobile version for iPhone, iPad & Android • Mobile softphone can utilize Wi-Fi and Cellular data networks
POLYCOM VVX500 A business media phone delivering best-in-class communications and voice quality. Ideal For • Call centre & receptionists • Managers & executives Features • Up to 12 line appearances • Polycom HD Voice up to 14KHz • 3.5” Colour touch-screen • Full duplex speakerphone with Acoustic Clarity Technology • 2x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports • Video calling (with add-on camera) • Expansion module support
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Issue 2 • 2014