Why Focus on Employee Engagement in the First 90 Days?

The early days of employment are a make-or-break period for new hires. In fact, 70% of employees decide within the first month whether they feel the company is the right fit. Unfortunately, a significant number—35%—leave within the first 90 days. This turnover can be costly, with replacement costs averaging 50% of an entry-level employee’s salary. By investing in engagement strategies during this critical time, companies can reduce these costly departures and instead build a workforce that is motivated, dedicated, and aligned with organizational goals.

To avoid these pitfalls, organizations must prioritize engagement from day one. A strong onboarding process fosters an emotional commitment to the company’s mission and culture, driving enthusiasm and reducing turnover. By focusing on engagement in the first 90 days, companies can create a foundation for long-term employee loyalty and success.

Breaking Down the First 90 Days: Key Phases for Engagement

To effectively engage employees in the critical early days, the onboarding journey can be broken into four key phases:

1. Pre-Onboarding: Building Anticipation
   Pre-onboarding begins before the new hire’s first day. Engaging employees before they officially start—through welcome emails, early introductions, or first day tips—can make them feel more connected and valued from the beginning.
2. Onboarding: Welcoming and Connecting
   Onboarding is about more than paperwork. It’s a chance to introduce new hires to the company culture, build relationships, and clarify their role. Icebreakers, team introductions, and a clear roadmap for their first week can help employees feel welcomed and confident.
3. Training: Ensuring Competency and Growth
   The first 30 days are a period of intense learning. Structured training, consistent feedback, and mentorship are key to helping new hires feel competent and engaged in their role.
4. On-the-Job Transition: Fostering Ownership
   As employees settle into their roles between 30 and 90 days, engagement should focus on long-term growth. Performance feedback, career development discussions, and fostering ownership over their work can solidify their connection to the company.

Best Practices for Elevating Engagement

1. Broaden Your Definition of Engagement
   Engagement is about more than just job satisfaction. Gallup’s Q12 Principles measure factors like recognition, personal growth, and clarity of expectations, which provide a valuable framework for enhancing engagement during onboarding.
2. Conduct a Current-State Analysis
   To improve engagement, start by evaluating your current onboarding process. This analysis will help identify areas for growth and create a baseline for measuring future success.
3. Pilot Engagement Initiatives
   Testing new engagement strategies during the first 90 days, such as mentorship programs or early feedback loops, allows you to refine your approach. Start small, assess the impact, and then scale what works best.
4. Survey and Showcase Impact
   Surveys can be a powerful tool to measure engagement. Regularly assessing the effectiveness of your initiatives and showcasing their impact helps demonstrate their value to leadership and reinforces the importance of continuous improvement.

Looking Ahead: Elevating Employee Engagement

Employee engagement starts on day one, but its benefits last throughout an employee’s tenure. By focusing on the first 90 days, companies can build a strong foundation for a motivated, loyal workforce. Engagement is more than just a “nice to have”—it’s a strategic investment in your organization’s success.

Are you ready to elevate your onboarding process and maximize engagement from day one? Don’t miss Amy Bouthilet’s Challenge and Opportunity session on The First 90 Days at the Customer Response Summit next week!

Contributed blog post by Alta Resources.

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The secret? It’s not just about perks and paychecks. It involves a deeper, more strategic approach. Organizations are employing various strategies designed to elevate employee engagement to new heights. From how agents are enabled to employees’ opportunities to grow and feel recognized, each aspect plays a vital role in shaping a workplace where everyone can thrive.

Check out the infographic below for five key ways to improve employee engagement.

Curious about how you can transform your company’s culture and boost employee engagement?

Join us on June 20, 2024 (11:30 AM to 1:30 PM ET) to unlock the secrets to this transformative environment at our CX Leaders Executive Briefing on The Power of People: Enhancing CX Through Employee Engagement. Discover how the heart of your organization—your team—can do more than show up. Learn how to ignite a passion in your employees that not only enhances their approach to work but also drives your key performance indicators, from productivity and retention to innovation.

The post 5 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement in the Workplace appeared first on Execs In The Know.

What does a positive agent-focused employee experience look like? The answer may differ depending on individual needs, but ultimately, an ideal employee experience should be uplifting and impactful. It should also be characterized by its human touch, enabling employees to bring more of their whole selves into the workplace.

In this blog post, we’ll be exploring the benefits and challenges associated with focusing on agent-focused employee experiences, specifically how integrating this kind of approach can improve customer interactions. We’ll also provide useful insights into best practices for leveraging this strategy so that you can make decisions about improving your CX team’s performance now and into the future.

Introducing the Agent-Focused Employee Experience

As CX leaders, we have the power to foster an environment where every individual feels valued, inspired, and excited to contribute their unique talents. By nurturing a culture of engagement, we create a team of passionate minds, working in unison to drive business outcomes and achieve remarkable results.

Enter the agent-focused employee experience. This innovative approach flips the traditional employee experience on its head by placing the employee at the center of everything. Instead of focusing on what the company needs from its employees, the agent-focused approach prioritizes the needs and desires of the employee. By doing so, companies can create a work environment that is not only engaging and fulfilling for its agents but also positively impacts the bottom line. So, if you’re looking for a way to attract top talent and improve overall performance, it’s time to shift your focus to the agent-focused employee experience.

When it comes to employee happiness, there’s a truth we can’t ignore: money alone won’t buy lasting satisfaction.

A truly positive employee experience extends beyond salary considerations. Fortunately, there are various ways to ensure agent happiness that don’t rely solely on raises or promotions.

Benefits of an Agent-Focused Employee Experience

In today’s rapidly changing job market, companies are increasingly understanding the importance of an agent-focused employee experience. At the heart of every successful business lies a crucial element: its people.

We can never underestimate the profound impact that our employees’ knowledge, dedication, and, above all, happiness have on an organization’s overall success.

• Improved Employee Engagement: When employees are happy, satisfied, and engaged in their work, it positively impacts the way they interact with customers. Engaged employees are more likely to go the extra mile, provide personalized service, and genuinely care about customer needs, leading to an enhanced customer experience.
• Increased Productivity: When employees feel valued and supported by an organization, they are motivated to perform at their best. This can result in increased productivity and efficiency, allowing them to serve customers more effectively and promptly.
• Consistent Service Delivery: An agent-focused employee experience focuses on providing employees with the necessary training, tools, and resources to deliver a consistent level of service. Consistency in service delivery is crucial for building customer trust and loyalty, as customers know what to expect from the organization.
• Enhanced Problem-Solving Abilities: Organizations that prioritize the employee experience often foster a culture of empowerment and autonomy. When employees have the freedom to make decisions and solve problems on their own, they can address customer issues more effectively and efficiently, leading to quicker resolutions and higher customer satisfaction.
• Improved Customer Communication: Satisfied and engaged employees are more likely to communicate effectively with customers. They can actively listen, empathize, and communicate in a clear and friendly manner. Such positive interactions build rapport and trust with customers, resulting in a better overall customer experience.
• Higher Employee Retention: Investing in the employee experience and creating a supportive work environment can lead to higher employee retention rates. Retaining experienced and knowledgeable employees reduces turnover costs and ensures that customers interact with skilled professionals who understand their needs.
• Positive Word-of-Mouth and Advocacy: When customers have a positive experience with an organization’s employees, they are more likely to share their positive experiences with others. Word-of-mouth recommendations and customer advocacy can significantly impact an organization’s reputation and attract new customers.

When team members are fully engaged, magic happens. After all, as the saying goes, happy employees equal happy customers!

Taking on the Challenge

While there are numerous benefits to adopting an agent-focused employee experience, when it comes to this approach, challenges may arise. The truth is, it’s not just about giving employees snacks and bean bag chairs in the break room (although those don’t hurt). It requires a fundamental shift in company culture-one that prioritizes the well-being and success of the individual employee.

According to the Harvard Business Review, 47% of employees reported that their stress was higher than anything they’d previously experienced in their careers, and only 37% agreed that their organization understood what they needed in their personal lives and for their families.

It’s not an easy task, but the rewards of creating a workplace where employees feel supported, valued, and motivated are immeasurable. So, is it worth taking on the challenge? Absolutely.

Adopting an agent-focused employee experience in organizations can bring several challenges.

Here are some of them:

• Mindset and Cultural Shift: Implementing an agent-focused employee experience requires a significant mindset and cultural shift within the organization. It may challenge traditional hierarchical structures and require leaders and managers to embrace a more employee-centric approach. Overcoming resistance to change and promoting a culture of empowerment and trust can be challenging.
• Leadership Buy-In and Support: Obtaining leadership buy-in and support is crucial for the successful adoption of an agent-focused employee experience. Leaders need to understand the benefits and actively champion the initiative. Without their support, it can be challenging to allocate resources, make necessary changes, and drive the cultural shift throughout the organization.
• Technology and Infrastructure: Adopting an agent-focused employee experience often involves leveraging technology and creating a supportive infrastructure. This may include implementing employee self-service tools, digital platforms for collaboration and communication, and data analytics systems. Ensuring that the technology infrastructure is in place and integrating different systems can be complex and require significant investment.
• Employee Training and Development: Shifting towards an agent-focused experience requires providing adequate training and development opportunities to employees. This includes empowering them with the necessary skills, knowledge, and tools to make decisions, solve problems, and serve customers effectively. Developing and implementing comprehensive training programs can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
• Performance Measurement and Metrics: Traditional performance metrics may not align with an agent-focused approach, which emphasizes employee empowerment, autonomy, and collaboration. Organizations need to redefine performance measurement and metrics to focus on employee satisfaction, engagement, and customer outcomes rather than solely on individual productivity. Developing new measurement frameworks and aligning them with organizational goals can be challenging.
• Change Management and Communication: Effectively managing the change associated with an agent-focused employee experience is crucial. Organizations need to communicate the purpose, benefits, and expectations clearly to employees at all levels. Transparent and ongoing communication is necessary to address concerns, manage expectations, and create a shared understanding of the new approach.
• Balancing Employee Autonomy and Organizational Control: While empowering employees is a key aspect of an agent-focused experience, organizations must strike a balance between employee autonomy and organizational control. Finding the right level of autonomy that encourages creativity and decision-making while maintaining consistency, compliance, and alignment with organizational goals can be a delicate challenge.
• Scalability and Consistency: Implementing an agent-focused experience across a large organization with multiple teams, locations, and functions can pose scalability and consistency challenges. Ensuring that the approach is consistently applied, training is delivered uniformly, and the experience is seamless across the organization requires careful planning, coordination, and monitoring.

Addressing these challenges requires a thoughtful and strategic approach to ensure a successful adoption of an agent-focused employee experience in organizations. It involves aligning leadership, culture, technology, and processes to create an environment where employees can thrive and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

It begs the question: how can employee experience impact CX? As professionals in this industry, we must recognize that employees are the backbone of any successful business. By crafting an employee experience that focuses on their needs and abilities, we can improve customer satisfaction, decrease churn rates, and ultimately increase revenue.

How Do You Implement and Sustain an Agent-Focused Employee Experience?

As businesses have shifted their focus towards building a great customer experience, it has become increasingly important to prioritize the employee experience as well. So, what can CX leaders do to implement and sustain an agent-focused employee experience?

Implementing and sustaining an agent-focused employee experience requires a strategic and holistic approach from leaders.

1. Understand the needs and expectations of their employees. Conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups to gather feedback and insights about what employees value, what motivates them, and what challenges they face.
2. Define a clear vision that aligns with the organization’s overall mission and values. Communicate this vision to employees to create a shared understanding and commitment.
3. Empower and involve employees in decision-making processes and provide opportunities for them to contribute their ideas and feedback. Empower them to take ownership of their work and give them autonomy to make decisions within their roles.
4. Foster a positive work culture that emphasizes trust, respect, and collaboration. Encourage open communication, provide regular feedback, and recognize and reward employees for their contributions. Promote work-life balance and well-being initiatives.
5. Invest in employee development and growth through training programs, workshops, mentoring, and coaching. Support employees in their professional development goals and create a culture of continuous learning.
6. Enhance the physical and virtual workspace to ensure it is comfortable, functional, and conducive to productivity. In the case of remote or hybrid work arrangements, provide employees with the necessary tools, technologies, and resources to perform their roles effectively.
7. Implement supportive policies and practices to align with an agent-focused employee experience. This includes policies related to performance management, flexible work arrangements, diversity and inclusion, and work-life balance.
8. Measure and track progress by establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of the agent-focused employee experience initiatives. Regularly collect feedback and analyze data to identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions.
9. Continuously improve and adapt: Employee needs and expectations evolve over time, so it’s important for leaders to continuously monitor the employee experience and adapt their strategies accordingly. Seek feedback, listen to employees, and iterate on initiatives to ensure their effectiveness.
10. Lead by example: Leaders play a crucial role in setting the tone for the employee experience. Demonstrate the desired behaviors, values, and attitudes in your own actions and interactions. Show genuine care and support for your employees’ well-being and success.

By following these steps, leaders can create and sustain an agent-focused employee experience that fosters engagement, satisfaction, and productivity within the organization.

Final Thoughts 

As businesses evolve, so do their employees’ expectations. Creating a positive employee experience can spell the difference between retaining talented staff and enduring high attrition rates.

Agencies that take steps to optimize their employee experience with a new perspective will see positive results. Providing perks and benefits, work-life balance, opportunities for growth, and effective communication channels for constructive feedback are just a few ways to create an environment where employees feel valued and equipped to perform their best possible work.

After all, a happy and motivated employee is often more productive and efficient, which ultimately supports the success of the agency. Investing in the overall employee experience will pay off in tangible and intangible ways in the long run. An agent-focused employee experience can bring many benefits to CX operations and improve engagement and productivity in the customer experience industry.

It is important to recognize the challenges that may arise while optimizing your employee experience, but with a well-thought-out strategy and taking advantage of technology solutions, you can ensure that your employees are working efficiently and effectively.

Developing use cases for customer service agents when it comes to employee experience should be one of the key focuses when improving the overall digital transformation process. With this longer-term vision and strategic framework in place, your team will be thrilled by their newfound skills, integrated digital capabilities, and sense of ownership over their customer experience role as they come together to deliver fantastic experiences every day.

The post Looking to Boost Your CX? Boost Your Agent-Focused Employee Experience First appeared first on Execs In The Know.

Companies and contact centers are asking employees to come back to the office now that most “lockdowns” are over. Now used to the flexibility and convenience of remote work, many employees are resisting. Where employers are forcing compliance, employees are re-evaluating their choices, and many are making decisions to quit or try something new. People are flocking out of the big cities and finding larger homes in more rural areas. What does all this mean for the nature of work?

It means that there is no going back in time. The pre-pandemic model of work has been rendered obsolete by the success of the remote work model. So, how do we stop bleeding attrition if we can’t go back?

There are three key trends shaping the workforce today that employers should embrace – listen more, adopt a gig workforce, and build internal resilience.

The first trend is so obvious yet often ignored. It is the power of listening to our employees. At the EITK event in Clearwater, Jen Johnson from Frontier highlighted the need to listen to the customers and those supporting them every day. She spoke about how Frontier improved NPS by 30 points as her team learned the common language of “speaking customer.” Their agents also felt more valued and heard, and their jobs became easier as customer barriers were removed. I feel that many leaders get “busy” and forget the basic skill of listening. If we can’t stop the great resignation from happening, we can at least understand why each of our employees is making this decision.

The second trend is to adapt to the changing workforce. I believe the change that is here to stay is the rise of “gig” work. Gig typically means a short-term job. You have probably heard it in reference to musicians who are going to work a “gig”. Over the last 10 years, with the rise in ride-share services, food delivery, and other freelance work becoming available, many workers have turned to this “gig economy” to have more autonomy over their work. At Directly On-Demand, we define gig work as:

1. Flexibility in choosing where to work, what to work on, and how long to work
2. Rewarding the worker for the specific work product and outcomes achieved rather than an hourly rate
3. Patented routing logic to present the work available to the right skilled worker with the best performance

In product support, adding gig workers as an extension of the traditional contact center provides a resilient layer of talent to meet volume fluctuations.

That brings me to the last trend – planning for and building internal resilience in the organization. To build resiliency in your workforce, you need to have carefully planned career progression opportunities for employees, including embracing this new nature of work. If you have high performers who are no longer interested in the in-office 8-hour shift, give them the option to use their knowledge to provide services in a flexible model, for example, as a gig worker.

In summary, employers need to listen to and understand their employee voice and offer flexible work models to attract and retain the best talent in 2022. However, moving away from traditional models can be challenging if not done right. There are very few providers in the market today that can offer a workforce model that blends the power of global gig experts, in-house full-time associates, and CX transformation technology to offer flexible, scalable, and on-demand CX services. This hybrid model could be the answer to the challenges faced by the customer service industry today as it strives for stability, resilience, and agility in service delivery. Directly OnDemand, recently acquired by CSS Corp, now offers this model in addition to the pureplay gig expert model mentioned above. There is enough empirical evidence to suggest that the customer satisfaction achieved using gig peer-to-peer experts is superior to the traditional model and the model is robust enough to scale up and down during seasonal spikes.

I believe that gig work is here to stay and has already changed the nature of work forever. It is time to participate in it and leverage this new model to find and retain diverse and highly skilled talent.

Guest post written by: Melanie Fricke, Directly OnDemand (recently acquired by CSS Corp)

Guest blog post written by Melanie Fricke of Directly OnDemand, recently acquired by CSS Corp. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

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1. Don’t Overthink or Overspend: Keep Your Focus on What Impacts Customer Loyalty

According to recent Gartner research, a reactive CX strategy focused on “fixing” customer experience issues, or even just refining them, does not lead to increased customer satisfaction rates. So, while you should still look at customer data and survey results, often what seems like a problem is actually negligible in the grand scheme of your customer’s perception of your brand. Instead, focus on where it counts most – and where it can make the most impact.

According to Gartner, that focus is “innovating salient experiences linked to product experience… to achieve true differentiation.”

In other words: updates and upgrades to the way your customers experience your product or service are most impactful when it comes to customer loyalty, accounting for over 36% of increase in loyalty. The bottom line is this: once the basics of your CX program are met, the real focus should be in CX initiatives that enhance the product experience, which will in turn strengthen customer loyalty.

2. Reassess Your KPIs & Rebuild Your Journey Maps

When was the last time you assessed your North Star KPIs or rebuilt your customer journey maps? As consumer habits shift, you need to consistently be re-evaluating your measurement tools and benchmarks. Not only will this ensure you’re meeting the needs of your customers, but it also generates efficiency in how you apply your CX resources.

For example: while you might have historically cracked down on AHT, new data may reveal that more personalized (and longer) interactions with your customers may drive higher levels of satisfaction. Making strategic training investments in this area will then generate higher ROI and better CSAT.

How old are your customer journey maps? Your customers are facing the same economic volatility you are, and the ways in which they engage with your brand – and their needs – may be shifting. As a critical first step to understanding your customers biggest needs and challenges, accurate customer journey (and friction) mapping is essential to triangulating your best-path CX strategy.

3. Get Smart About VoC and Business Intelligence

Capturing, understanding, and acting on customer sentiment is critical to properly understanding your customer journey, and where to focus your CX strategy.

• Reignite Your Voice of Customer (VoC) and Survey Program: For a business to create a successful VoC program that actually tells them something valuable, you’ll need consistent insights coming in through as many channels as possible in order to capture the most data, from the most customer types, at different junctures of their journeys with your brand. While you might already use questionnaires or surveys, consider adding additional elements to your VoC program to create a more robust feedback engine. Consider elements like:
  • SMS Surveys
  • 5-Star Surveys
  • Social media monitoring
  • Text & Sentiment Analytics
  • Email surveys
• Build Better Business Intelligence: Business Intelligence is one of the single most important investments you can make in your CX program – and right now, most of your competitors are probably lacking. That’s why you can’t afford to. In fact, 99% of contact centers don’t think their data intelligence strategy currently meets business needs. By harnessing the power of BI and data analytics, you can see the actual breakpoints and pain points in your customer journey, and it’s the only way to build a truly customer-centric program.

4. Empower The Employee Experience

The Great Resignation hasn’t shown any signs of letting up in 2022 and CX programs will continue to contend with an ongoing war for the best talent in an industry already known for its battles with turnover and attrition. Not to mention, replacing a representative is costly. Gartner research puts the price tag at $14,113 per agent.

Largely, most organizations need to focus on engagement. Gartner research found that only one-third of contact center agents are engaged, and those who are not are 84% more likely to search for another job. A Gallup Poll showed that engagement could improve turnover rates in businesses up to 43%.

So why is engagement so low, and retention following suit? Consider the full employee experience:

• Pay & Benefits: The desire to better their paychecks and benefits package, especially during a period of inflation, could be alluring to your agents. Consider if you are competitively compensating your contact center agents – raising pay and/or providing better agent benefits is likely cheaper than replacing them entirely if they leave.
• Career Advancement: You are more likely to see CX agent retention improve when agents can see a career path in your contact center. CX leaders should consider prioritizing promoting from within. For example, create a portal for agents to apply for internal openings that is separate from the one you use for external hires.
• Assist Technologies: Consider technology additions that will help to ramp your agents quickly, set them up for success, and keep tabs on contact center performance with consistent improvement over time, such as:
  • Training simulators that onboard new agents and upskill existing agents to learn new skills in simulated environments.
  • Personalized coaching technologies to seamlessly track, measure, and act on agent performance needs on an individualized basis and identify personalized KPIs and goals.
  • Gamification solutions that integrate real-time coaching and analytics with gamification and incentives have benefits for agents and supervisors alike. Agents are in it to win it, literally, when they are rewarded for their performance. Supervisors are armed with performance data and more engaged agents.

5. Re-evaluate Your BPO or CX Partner For Agility & Flexibility

If you’re not sure whether your CX outsourcer is delivering the quality and results you need, think about what your new CX goals are, and who might be best poised to help you achieve them. Consider what technologies they have available, who their clients are and what industries they play in, and how their strategies, vision, and values align with your own. Here’s our must-have list for any CX partnership:

• Robust Digital and Omnichannel Support
• The Makeup of Their Agent Workforce (Try to secure a team of digitally-native agents)
• An elite selection of technology tools and offerings
• How flexible a partner can be, and how ready they are to face the unexpected
• The more secure and crisis-ready, the better

As the world shifts into increasing levels of uncertainty, it’s vitally important to start building a CX strategy designed for volatility.  In times of economic uncertainty, sticking to a core focus around what success means to you (your KPIs), who your partners are, and how you’re engaging your customers and employees, is a sure way to keep your program focused and ready to withstand any ups and downs ahead.

Guest blog post written by ibex. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

The post Best Practices for Protecting Your CX Program During Economic Volatility appeared first on Execs In The Know.

While contact centers are increasingly turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications for a variety of reasons, these technologies are not a silver bullet for everything, nor are they a complete solution for a specific problem set. They can, and should, play a role in helping contact centers adapt to digital transformation – in conjunction with existing technologies and processes.

When considering vendors offering AI applications, contact centers should consider how well they interwork and support the systems currently in use, rather than looking to replace them altogether. For now, AI will best serve contact centers as a complementary technology.

Operational Challenge #1: Maintaining Staff

The impact digital transformation has on staffing may not be that obvious, largely because it’s been overshadowed by the pandemic. By now, contact centers and agents have adapted to a work-from-home model, which will remain in place for many contact centers.

Contact centers have been hugely impacted by the Great Resignation, as has the entire service economy. Turnover in call centers has averaged 30% to 40%.

Supporting home-based agents presents many operational challenges for contact center leaders, and compounding that is the way digital transformation is reshaping the customer experience (CX). A key change is the need for seamless omnichannel communication with the growing use of digital channels by customers. If contact centers cannot effectively support this, the agent experience (AX) suffers and, as we’ve seen with the Great Resignation, agents will leave for greener pastures.

In terms of maintaining staffing levels, there are two immediate AI use cases to consider.

The first would be intelligent routing where AI can direct incoming inquiries based on the channel used by the customer. This can be especially effective for existing customers, where analytics can determine channel preferences based on past history. This way, inquiries will get routed to agents with the right skills set – both at scale and in real-time – making their jobs less stressful and more tenable.

A second use case would be self-service automation. The main idea is that better forms of self-service are critical for AX, and all contact center vendors now have AI solutions that go well beyond conventional IVR. Digital transformation is simply raising the bar for what self-service needs to be. The longer agents have to keep dealing with routine queries or repeating steps already covered in IVR, the bigger your staffing issues will become.

Operational Challenge #2: Speed to Competency

Digital transformation enables a remote working environment and allows contact centers to draw from a much larger pool for hiring agents.

While contact centers don’t have the luxury to keep hiring agents as traffic grows, they do need to hire and train them faster than before. This is another by-product of the Great Resignation, where there has been a sudden surge of people exiting the workforce, making the need to replace agents a top priority. As such, the challenge of speed to competency and onboarding new agents is more about maintaining current staff levels rather than adding agents to scale up.

In terms of operations, this means contact centers are playing catchup trying to replenish their depleted ranks rather than staffing up for growth. As noted above, AI applications alone won’t enable contact center leaders to totally catch up, but it has a key role to play, especially to speed up the hiring and training process.

When considering AI vendors, there are two capabilities you should be looking for.

First is the ability to quickly vet candidates for the skills needed, not just for specific agent roles, but also for the basic competencies they’ll need for your industry and customer base. This is especially relevant for global businesses, and how digital transformation removes the borders of geography, allowing contact centers to hire agents with greater proximity to customers on a regional basis. These possibilities are very recent, and while they hold great promise for improving CX, you really need the scale of AI applications to execute on this promise.

Second would be the next step, which is to train and onboard new agents once drawn from this pool of candidates. Machine learning (ML) is of particular importance as you’ll need to profile best practices from your top agents and use that as the template for training new hires. This is how you leverage AI to shorten the learning curve and provide real-time guidance for new agents.

Not only will agent turnover drop when you can onboard them more effectively, but so will the associated costs with staffing.

Guest blog post written by UpstreamWorks. To learn more about this topic and others, visit our events page to check out upcoming events.

The post Maintaining Staff and Improving Speed to Competency During the Great Resignation appeared first on Execs In The Know.

CRS Clearwater was attended by an impassioned and enthusiastic group of some of the customer experience (CX) industry’s best and brightest, and the event featured more than a dozen sessions including keynote presentations, discussion panels, and informative breakout sessions and workshops, as well as ample opportunity for professional networking and socializing.

If you were able to join us for this special event, you know exactly how valuable these sessions were. But if you were not able to attend, now’s your chance to catch up on the conversation with the following keynote session synopses, along with a dozen or so key takeaways.

…………………..

How Beachbody Became a Digital-First Company

Presented By: Todd Montgomery, Executive Vice President, The Beachbody Company

Synopsis:

Beginning in 2014, Todd Montgomery and team began a journey of robust transformation. This change has since yielded a more responsive, more consistent customer care experience, along with improved performance across several key metrics like average speed of answer, customer satisfaction (CSAT), and Net Promoter Score (NPS). All while lowering costs, improving the agent experience, and creating greater internal accountability.  Not to mention this was all accomplished amid a global pandemic.

Todd’s keynote kickoff told a compelling story about the value of investing in technologies like self-service solutions and better agent tools, while always maintaining a focus on the customer experience. Through thoughtful scaling, careful and ongoing assessment, and a data-driven, results-minded approach, Todd and team are already checking the box on many objectives, while constantly assessing and looking toward what’s next.

Key Takeaways:

• Prioritize identifying and tackling pain points, focusing on those things that drive the most volume
• Invest in areas that allow you to leverage your program data (including Voice of the Customer) to create more efficient experiences for customers
• Implement and experiment with tools and solutions that can simultaneously automate and improve the customer experience

How Fanatics Activated Its CX Data Superpowers

Presented By: Carolyne Truelove, Head of Global Fan Experience, Fanatics

Synopsis:

As the ultimate one-stop sports fan destination with a database of more than 80 million global customers, the Fanatics brand is working with a wealth of data, and actively using it to field a team of data superheroes. Together, this team is united with a shared goal of improving the customer experience right across the enterprise. Faithfully following where the data leads has already unleashed many performance and cost improvement victories, including steadily decreasing Contacts Per Order, fewer escalations, and lower costs.

By focusing on the right metrics, harnessing data to better understand the customer, and tirelessly championing the cause in a way that informs and unites, a data-driven strategy can produce profound results. By approaching CX with a fan’s passion, Carolyne and team are turning data insights into heroic moments — all in the spirit of a mission to serve.

Key Takeaways:

• Data is a powerful mover of meaningful change when leveraged correctly and consistently, and the data always tells a story when seeking investment and support
• Feedback is a gift that should be both treasured and acted upon
• Strong internal partnerships and centralized metrics are the keys to unlocking support for not only a single powerful superhero, but a powerful super team

Embracing a Commitment to Employee Success

Presented By: Teresa Ignacio, Vice President, Client Care Managed Services, Visa

Presented By: Mike Jones, Senior Director – Customer Care, The Home Depot

Synopsis:

Teresa Ignacio and Mike Jones lit up the stage, evangelizing the critical importance of creating better employee experiences. Although each told a slightly different story, the themes remained the same. The employee experience was nothing short of a rallying point, one for effective deployment of improvement efforts — the type that can have a multiplicative effect. By supporting a drive for greater employee success, each leader demonstrated how their efforts were empowering an ingredient essential in the recipe for customer success.

The world has undergone significant change, and contact center agents have been asked to handle challenges unimaginable only a couple of years ago. While the foundations of the past may have been a good starting point, they weren’t designed to address all the employee needs that have arisen in our new normal. Contact centers have been impacted in ways large and small, and forward-thinking companies have responded with greater flexibility, awareness, and dedication to their most important asset — their people.

Key Takeaways:

• The employee experience is multifaceted … many critical areas need to be addressed like career development, engagement, and work environment
• Investing in employees (and the tools and technologies that support employees) is one of the single best investments that can be made in the CX space
• Leadership approach, processes, and policies must all be flexible enough to change with the times and evolving consumer expectations

CX Transformation Secret Revealed: The Hero Is Your Customer!

Presented By: Jen Johnson, Senior Vice President of Business Transformation, Frontier

Synopsis:

Transformation isn’t easy, but it’s almost always essential. And if done correctly, the rewards go far beyond the bottom line. Frontier has undergone many transformations in its nearly 90-year history. But its most recent transformation has led Frontier toward a path of truly putting the customer first, taking center stage in everything the organization does.

Jen shares her thoughts on the compelling narrative of “the customer as the hero,” and how such an approach inevitably leads to positive experiences for Frontier customers. Naturally, it’s a long-term investment, and not necessarily an easy sell. But with the help of true CX champions, alignment up and down the organization, perseverance, and a common language of “speaking customer,” a cultural shift isn’t only possible, it’s inevitable.

Key Takeaways:

• Every customer is a mighty advocate, just needing the right experience to become activated
• Organizational alignment is a massive enabler in achieving transformational success
• The process is not always easy, and it takes some honest self-reflection to get there

Our Next Event Is Closer Than You Might Think

Catching up on an event by reading these sorts of post-event blog posts might be the next best thing to attending, but it’s a far cry from the experience of attending an Execs In the Know CRS event. That’s why we invite you to consider joining us during our next CRS event, taking place in Coronado, California, October 24–26, 2022.

To learn more about CRS Coronado, or register for this highly anticipated event, take a moment to visit us at the CRS Coronado web page.

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Although the WFH hybrid model looks different for every organization, the success of the hybrid workplace hinges on organizations’ ability to balance the experience of in-office and remote workers with business goals and objectives. It requires a transformation in the way leaders plan, direct, and engage employees in their organization.

Two key areas are central to a successful WFH Hybrid program: the employee experience and the technology that powers the work. This blog post shares some key actions in each of these areas to help your organization improve the WFH Hybrid experience.

Employee Experience Checklist

Let’s start with the employee experience checklist. We all know that engaged employees are higher performers and deliver far better outcomes than disengaged workers. In the WFH hybrid environment, organizations successfully expand the corporate culture beyond the office walls to include and engage remote employees focus on several leading practices. Here is a list of key activities for consideration:

• Invest in programs that actively collect and listen to the voice of the employee. Closed-loop systems that collect data and share decisions and actions spurred by this data help organizations understand and act on the employee perspective.
• Map and design employee journeys that ensure satisfaction and happiness. What’s working and not working when employees are remote? What’s the experience when they are in the office? Using journey mapping to identify expectations, activities, and emotions can help answer these questions and ensure a well-rounded experience.
• Increase your skills and prowess at remote management. Leaders on all levels should consider improving the way they manage remotely. Most employees want to perform well, and everyone needs training and coaching to help them succeed. Has your team analyzed the agent training and coaching programs considering the current environment?
• If you don’t already have one, consider launching an emotional intelligence (EI) program. Employees displaying high EI report a more positive work experience, higher levels of engagement, and enhanced interpersonal chemistry and performance.
• Examine offerings and extend in-office resources to remote employees to redesign the employee experience and emphasize wellbeing. Consider family-friendly activities to help employees make the most of time spent at home and focus on being mentally and physically healthy. Investigate wellness and learning challenges and webinars to help workers cope with new realities.
• Redesign the way you hold meetings. Planning meetings and events with remote workers in mind is a must. For example, rather than gathering in-office workers in a conference room and having remote workers join onscreen, have everyone join the meeting remotely using their own laptops to offer the same experience to all. Ensuring remote workers feel included, comfortable speaking up, and able to contribute is important to their engagement level.
• Find ways to prioritize online communication. Online communication will help avoid issues that may arise from remote workers being unaware of conversations or decisions that were made in-person.

Technology Checklist

In addition to the employee experience, technology is the second critical area for a successful WFH hybrid program. The backbone of a hybrid workforce is a technology stack that supports workflows, processes, and systems efficiently and effectively.

At the beginning of the pandemic, companies hustled to get remote employees access to “must have” technology to allow work to continue. Two plus years into today’s WFH hybrid environment, the checklist for technology investment and use has shifted. Which of the following items does your organization need to consider?

• Double down on security to keep systems and data safe. Security programs should include all employee devices and include forced password changes, encrypted password software, use of and enforcement of multi-factor authentication (MFA), and mandatory connection via virtual private network (VPN).
• Strengthen partnerships with internet service providers (ISP) and VPN vendors. Use these relationships to better understand the demand generated from remote employees and identify secure and reliable solutions to support those needs.
• Update and deliver security training regularly. Great training can help avoid security mishaps and increase awareness of critical issues. Training can also reduce unnecessary frustration and issues, improving the employee experience.
• Stay on top of maintenance. Create and adhere to a proactive maintenance plan and keep enterprise software updated and secure.
• Involve your employees. Make it easy for employees to ask questions and report connectivity issues and security concerns.
• Provide tools that allow employees to collaborate to the max! Collaboration tools can improve efficiency and productivity, and video conferencing tools are the tip of the iceberg. Consider platforms for storing, sharing, and editing documents as well as project and task management software. Online whiteboard tools can be fun and increase employee interaction and collaboration.
• Investigate expanded offerings from technology providers. Many organizations have base versions of tools but examining new features and expanding functionality is trending among top-performing companies.

Conclusion

As the pandemic eases and operations stabilize, the WFH hybrid model will be a mainstay for the foreseeable future. To deliver the best results and meet business objectives, organizations must focus on the employee experience and technology.

Great companies strive to create employee experiences that drive happiness and peak performance while considering those that are remote. Similarly, focusing on technology enhancements that reduce security risks, stabilize connectivity, and increase collaboration is critical to an effective program.

The era of the WFH hybrid model is here, and employees deserve a great experience with access to the tools needed to power excellent interactions. How is your organization responding to these needs?

The post Checklists for a Successful WFH Hybrid Model appeared first on Execs In The Know.

• Key drivers affecting labor markets
• Best practices & approaches to reinvent labor policies
• Managing/leveraging outsourced service providers
• Attracting & retaining top talent to meet service levels

The Great Resignation has made it significantly more challenging for many US firms to retain good talent and fill open positions. Contact centers have not been immune to this phenomenon. Attrition and recruiting difficulties are not new to contact centers, and strategies to combat this have been developed and honed over the years.

But for some reason, this time, it feels different. This time, traditional retention and recruiting strategies don’t seem to have the same success level for some organizations. Why is this? And what can customer support operations do to begin to solve the current challenges of the labor market?

To begin solving any problem, we must clearly define and understand the root causes. Once we know the causation, we can formulate and pilot solutions. Research firms, recruiting experts, universities, employers, US Labor Statistics, and other data sources have identified several contributing factors behind the Great Resignation.

Significant labor market trends may be the primary cause of a particular contact center’s hiring and retention challenges. However, there is still a possibility that labor issues are unique to that call center. We recommend conducting a study to identify and confirm your specific drivers to know for sure.

This article will highlight significant industry trends and show how the current labor market dynamics demand innovative solutions.

More Jobs than Workers

The main driver of labor challenges is the simple fact that there are millions more job openings than people looking for a job. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 10.9 million job openings in the US in February 2022 compared to 6.3 million unemployed persons. This gap creates a vacuum that favors the average US worker and makes it difficult for employers to attract new talent and hold on to good workers.

A job market where skilled labor has the upper hand allows workers to reflect on how satisfied they are with their current job and employer. Workers have more options, and their talents are in high demand! You’ve probably considered changing careers at some point during the past two years, or maybe you did.

A recent article by the HR Network referred to the Great Resignation as the Great Reassessment. HR network said, “It takes a significant or traumatic event like a pandemic or world war to get people questioning their lives and how work fits into it.” Well, I think we can all agree that the pandemic, wars, and social unrest over the past two years qualify as “significant or traumatic events.”

What existing criteria are prospective employees using to evaluate customer support roles, and how does your organization measure up? Limeade research found that people primarily changed jobs for:

• higher compensation
• flexible work schedule
• work-life balance
• ability to work remotely

How well do your organization’s customer support roles compare against these criteria? Typically, contact center jobs don’t offer much flexibility, and compensation is at or near minimum wage — especially for staff with less tenure.

What differentiates your organization’s customer support roles in such a way that they stand out in today’s hyper-competitive labor market?

 The Ultimate Guide for CX Practitioners

The Big Gig

Multiple data sources [1] [2] [3] indicate that anywhere from 9% to more than one-third of US workers participate in the gig economy either as a primary or secondary source of income. We can expect gig economy participation to grow over the next five years, with projections of more than 50% of US workforce participation.

It’s an understatement to say that the gig economy has completely disrupted the landscape of traditional jobs. While gig jobs bring certain benefits to workers and businesses, they’ve also created a new challenge for conventional employers with traditionally designed roles.

Many gig jobs offer workers the ultimate flexibility regarding which gigs to accept, when, where, and how long they work, plus a choice of available compensation rates. Although gig workers generally don’t earn as much as full-time workers annually, gig jobs offer other perks such as quick or immediate compensation for performed services. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, the majority of gig workers “rely on this income to meet basic needs.”

Most gig workers are from lower to middle-income brackets, as are many customer support workers. The availability of gig jobs, their flexible nature and access to near-immediate compensation have created real competition for customer support operations seeking to fill open positions and retain existing staff.

Gig jobs allow workers to explore other opportunities or career types, cover gaps in employment, and influence modern expectations of job design. It may be time for customer support organizations to rethink conventional job models like compensation and schedule flexibility. To compete with the gig economy, we can investigate granting quicker access to trying new roles or performing multiple jobs both in and outside the operation.

How much are you willing to change your customer support roles to better compete with gig job advantages?

Design a Work Culture that Motivates Your Staff

Generational Preferences

One of the largest and fastest-growing portions of the US workforce is Gen Zers, who share many job preferences with younger Millennials. These job, career and employment tendencies existed before 2020 but have intensified by the past two years’ events.

Gen Zers and Millennials challenge workplace norms as they seek jobs with more flexibility and personal meaning [4] [5] [6]. They want to work for companies with progressive values, benefits designed for more than the traditional family, fair pay and gender equity, and a genuine social conscience for regional and global issues.

Flexible work schedules, working remotely and trying different roles are essential. This age group prefers training and development models that leverage mentoring and one-on-one coaches over traditional larger group classroom training approaches.

With a growing percentage of the US workforce comprised of Gen Zers and younger Millennials, how have your customer support roles evolved to keep up with their preferences?

What are you willing to change about your customer support roles to better meet what Gen Zers and younger Millennials value in a job, career, and employer?

Reimagining Customer Support Roles

Companies face new and ever-increasing challenges in recruiting and retaining skilled workers for customer-facing roles. Although the global health crisis forced most customer support teams to transition to a work-from-home model, many customer support jobs are similar to those of a decade ago. However, evolving worker preferences, a highly competitive labor market, and other factors require serious consideration for restructuring these roles.

The Great Reinvention of customer support roles is upon us, is it time to reinvent staffing norms?

Rick Zayas, COPC VP, will address how organizations can overcome post-pandemic labor challenges in a pre-conference workshop at the Execs In The Know’s Customer Response Summit (CSR)  in Clearwater, Florida, March 28, 2022.

White Paper: Five Steps to Effective Recruiting, Hiring & Training

Guest post written by: COPC. To learn more about this and other critical CX topics, register for Execs In The Know’s Customer Response Summit Clearwater .

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The Current Landscape

While society is beginning to recover, our collective “new normal” is still unstable especially in the workplace. Given the war for talent, employees are empowered with the majority opting for better work-life balance, whether that’s remote work, scheduled hours, or shift preferences. Employers are facing far-reaching challenges related to their contact center workforce that include:

• Difficulty hiring strong talent
• High attrition
• Effectiveness of onboarding and ongoing development
• Agent engagement

Meanwhile, customers continue to voice their preferences after being forced through a self-service funnel during much of the pandemic. They prize greater self-service options, proactive issue resolution, personalized service, and are actively engaging with newer technologies like chat, video, and social media.

Contact centers must now balance a new employee dynamic (operating with lean staff and fewer onsite agents) with customer demands (as call volume, hold times, escalations, and difficult calls surge).

What’s a Business To Do?

In these turbulent times, how does a company navigate a transformed contact center landscape that must adapt to new challenges and demands … from both employees and customers?

Simply put, the organizations that prosper will connect the experiences of customers and employees to understand the cross impact and subsequently drive improvement, identify best practices, and spur business growth.

Collecting customer and agent feedback, giving employees a platform to share ideas, forecasting customer needs, capturing compelling data from both, and using the right dashboards to connect the data will give businesses the following advantage:

The strategic creation of a holistic picture that gets the right data to the right people at the right time to drive meaningful change

Where to Start

Numerous organizations are talking about the importance of connecting employee and customer experience to build an effective hybrid contact center workforce. However, these discussions are still in the early stages with many unsure exactly where to start or how to do it.

#1:  Understand & Connect; Then Address

Actively listen and frequently ask. Frontline agents are a treasure trove of information: unleash the power of their deep and rich customer engagements to understand vulnerabilities and identify valuable workarounds or permanent fixes.

• Use agent notes more often to further identify why customers escalate a complaint, give low satisfaction scores, or leave.
• On the employee front, create opportunities for their voice to be heard – the more frequent the better especially in these rapidly changing times.
• Consider adding pulse surveys to capture real-time feedback or to ask a probing question.

Additionally, identify common or key topics of interest across the two sets of feedback (from employees and customers) and incorporate this intelligence within your analytics.

#2:  Uncover Key Irritants

Understand what the most impactful irritants are for customers and employees and fix those first.

• Use surveys, agent notes (unstructured data), and one-on-ones with frontline managers to identify what broken processes or poor technologies agents are dealing with day after day that are never fixed. They tire of making excuses, feel bad they can’t provide a better customer experience, and know it will impact their service score.
• Begin to build a case for the financial impact of uncovering and addressing employee and customer irritants.

Interestingly, a 2021 Medallia Institute/Josh Bersin research study found that companies who are employee experience leaders were 12x more likely to indicate revenue growth of more than 20% over the last year.

#3:  Discover What is Really Valued

Salary, benefits, and workplace environment all matter, but dig deeper as it’s critical to understand what employees deeply care about and value. It may be:

• Training and education
• Corporate social responsibility
• Diversity and inclusion or
• How proud they are to work for your company/brand.

In terms of workplace pride, a Medallia Institute research study found that companies that ask for and act on frontline employees’ feedback garner the highest employee Net Promoter® scores.

#4:  Unite the Two; Use the Data

Many organizations have access to two data sources — one for customers, the other for employees. Is your organization using both independently … or using and connecting both data sources?

It’s critical to de-silo the data and get multiple business units to share and use the data for the common good. Then build dashboards that bring employee data and customer data next to each other to uncover and identify the correlating impact between the two in terms of:

• Topics of interest (customer feedback and employee feedback)
• Driven behaviors (customer behaviors and employee performance)
• Key indicators (customer interaction analytics and employee pulse, agent notes, and 1-2-1 meetings)

This connection will fuel the delivery of an effective hybrid contact center workforce, while enhancing both employee and customer experience. A holistic approach gives companies the opportunity to create targeted actions to combat workforce challenges, while delivering improved value to customers.

If both experience data sets are leveraged together, the advantages are far-reaching and can generate a significant impact on agent engagement, frontline team effectiveness, customer loyalty, operational efficiencies, product/service innovation, and future revenue.

Interested in learning more? Visit Medallia Experts on Demand to book a 30-minute private meeting with a Medallia Contact Center expert. You can also book meetings directly with Rachel directly.

About Medallia

Medallia is the pioneer and market leader in Experience Management. Medallia’s award-winning SaaS platform, the Medallia Experience Cloud, leads the market in the understanding and management of experience for customers, employees, and citizens. Medallia captures experience signals created on daily journeys in person, digital, and IoT interactions and applies proprietary AI technology to reveal personalized and predictive insights that can drive action with tremendous business results. Using Medallia Experience Cloud, customers can reduce churn, turn detractors into promoters and buyers and create in-the-moment cross-sell and upsell opportunities, providing clear and potent returns on investment. www.medallia.com

Guest post written by: Rachel Lane, Senior Solutions Principal for Contact Centers, Medallia, and originally written on November 30, 2021. To learn more about this and other critical CX topics, register for Execs In The Know’s recent Customer Response Summit and watch the Medallia-led Shop Talk Connecting CX & EX to Deliver an Effective Hybrid Contact Center Workforce on-demand. To access all on-demand content, please register.

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