in this issue
Driving Confidence in a Brand Through Superb CX
By: Execs In The Know
KIA Online Community Member Spotlight: GEORGE BEVENSEE
GEORGE BEVENSEE
Vice President, Customer Experience at TVC Pro-Driver
George Bevensee is a seasoned customer experience leader in possession of a career that spans from the agent’s chair to a seat at the boardroom table. George is an operational maverick, applying great passion for his people while always pursuing the next great project or innovation to deliver an enhanced experience to his customers at TVC Pro-Driver.
We had a chance to speak with George in early December to learn about his experiences, his current focus, and what makes him passionate about his life’s work.
George is Vice President, Customer Experience at TVC Pro-Driver, where he leads a talented team dedicated to serving the needs of professional truck driver members, no matter where the roads may take them.
EXECS IN THE KNOW (EITK): George, you kicked off your career as a call center representative and have 30+ years of customer experience
(CX) leadership under your belt. What initially drew you into the space, and what keeps you passionate when it comes to helping customers?
George Bevensee: I kind of fell into the space. I took a job right out of college as a customer service rep (CSR) for a major telecom. It wasn’t exactly my career aspiration or a dream job for me, but I realized I had to start somewhere and put my best foot forward. I soon realized I really enjoyed being a CSR and liked delivering great service.
Those early experiences, both good and bad, never really left me. In fact, they proved invaluable and still help me even to this day when it comes to understanding and empathizing with our workforce and making thoughtful decisions. This background helps me always have our workforce in mind when making decisions for the organization.
My passion for great customer experience is rooted in my own experiences as a customer. Some of those experiences were not so great, and this inspires me to try and do better. I want to provide quick access for our customers, a high-quality experience, and ensure our team conveys a high degree of confidence. When a customer gets off a call with one of our people, I want them to think, “Wow, they’ve really got this!” It’s important in our business, since we deal with legal issues for our customers, and we want our customers to understand they have someone working for them.
EITK: TVC Pro-Driver might not be a household name, but the company’s customers (professional truck drivers) are a critical part of the American economy. For anyone not familiar, can you share a little bit about the services TVC Pro-Driver provides?
George: We are well-known in the trucking industry.
We provide a membership service for professional truck drivers. The premiere service is our legal support. Essentially, if a driver gets a violation out on the road, we have a network of attorneys across the United States, partners of ours, that can help with that situation. And, of course, our attorneys are in court all the time. They are familiar with the players, like the prosecutors, so they are able to get the best possible outcome for our members. We are very interested in keeping our drivers’ livelihoods intact. If someone gets enough violation points, they don’t have a driver’s license anymore. For you and I, that would be very disappointing, but it’s not the end of the world. We can always take an Uber or have someone drive us where we need to go. But if you are a professional driver and you lose your license, you have also lost your livelihood. So, legal representation has been a core element of the membership service we provide for our drivers.
Also, about four years ago, we introduced a fuel discount program which is a very significant program for our drivers. It’s good for our company as well. The program provides around a $.50 discount per gallon of diesel fuel for our members. They get a card and can load funds to it, and when they get to the pump, they get the discount. This has been a great part of our business, and we have a huge demand for this product. There are also other significant benefits for our drivers, and we offer several membership plans depending on a driver’s needs.
EITK: You have been in your current role with TVC Pro-Driver for nearly two years now. What can you share about the philosophy and culture of the company as it applies to CX?
George: We have a deep concern for how our drivers are served and for their life cycle with us. We want customers to stay with us long-term and, along the way, realize the value of their TVC Pro-Driver membership. Recently, I was invited to speak at a presentation for our sales team. One of the things I talked about was my belief that CX starts with the sale — what a customer is told and how our service is described. It’s very important for us to correctly describe our services and then, along the way, have our marketing team there to remind our members of the various services and value included in their membership. And then, of course, my team coming in and adding even more value by providing the best service possible. What we really strive to do at TVC Pro-Driver is create a white glove experience for our members.
EITK: A lot of attention has been paid to the employee experience (EX) recently, but this has always been an area of focus for you. For CX practitioners who have only recently been empowered to invest more time and attention on EX, what advice do you have?
George: My advice might seem a little counterintuitive, but it’s to focus on supervision. People’s satisfaction with their jobs rests with their direct manager. Supervisors spend more time than anyone interfacing with CSRs, but they typically have the least amount of training and development within call and contact centers. If a company spends the time and really works with their frontline supervisors, it’s a win-win-win kind of situation. The supervisor gets the time and attention they wouldn’t normally get. The CSR gets a better employee experience. And the organization, for its part, will tend to have fewer employee issues. This is a formula I’ve taken with me to numerous organizations within my time in the CX space.
EITK: Expanding on the topic of employees, can you talk a little bit about your organization’s pivot to work-from-home during the pandemic, and how you maintained engagement with your frontline staff?
George: The decision to shift to work-from-home was made before I joined the company, taking place in the depths of the pandemic. When I got here, the workplace was already remote, and one of the first things I discussed with my boss, the CEO, was the need to keep the arrangement in place. Looking into the future, and understanding business was changing, I understood that once we opened that door to let people work from home, they wouldn’t want to let go of that arrangement. We want to be an employer of choice, as well, and work-from-home has been working quite well for us. As I understand it, there were a few bumps in the road initially, mainly technical, but those have been overcome. The workforce has adapted quite well. So generally, our thought is, let’s not disrupt this, because it’s working quite well, and it really is a value-add for attracting people to us in the future.
In terms of engagement, we recently enabled Yammer for our company. Everyday people are using the platform to post things and stay connected. Our people use it approximately 70% for personal vs. 30% for business. We have everyone working from home, so it’s a way to bring everyone together on a platform that’s not necessarily work-intensive.
EITK: Along the lines of the previous question, what strategies does TVC Pro-Driver employ to develop agents into future CX leaders?
George: There needs to be a career path within the contact center, and this is very big for us. At TVC Pro-Driver, we’ve tiered our CSR positions. We have a CSR Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 with different salary ranges. Someone qualifies to move up through the tiers based on good performance and tenure on the job. Our Level 3 position, which can be achieved after two years with the company, comes with a wage able to handle all of someone’s needs, and we’ve awarded this to several of our people. Also, after six months, people can become supervisors at TVC Pro-Driver. Sometimes we’ll hire people who really have the aptitude for supervision, and we can bring them up through the organization to that supervisory role.
We also just brought onboard a new director level position on Development and Engagement. I’ve been collaborating with this person recently, looking at where we can help people along on their career path … what are their development needs … that sort of thing.
The other thing that we are in the process of putting together is a learning management system (LMS) curriculum on team management and leadership — not only for our supervisors, but also for our Level 2 and Level 3 customer service reps who may become supervisors. More to come on this.
And finally, on a personal level, more than anyone I’ve ever worked for, I spend a tremendous amount of time information-sharing with my direct reports, explaining concepts, and discussing strategy. Even if it’s not in their wheelhouse, I set the vision of where we’re going and the different roles that everyone is playing to get there. This ensures everyone is up to speed on what’s going on, making sure everyone can see they are a part of something bigger.
EITK: Can you share with us which projects have had the biggest impact on the experiences of TVC Pro-Driver customers over the past 12-24 months? What are today’s top priorities? What have been the outcomes, and what results are you expecting from
current efforts?
George: Prior to my arrival, TVC Pro-Driver had a good operation but there was a lot of low hanging fruit that I’ve been able to address. Coming in the door, the first thing I worked on was access. Correct staffing and agent productivity are both huge. We’ve taken care of this to a very large degree. We created an automated SMS notification for legal cases for our members, and this also acts as a call avoidance system. When a member’s case moves to a different level, a message goes out to them to explain where their case is at in the process. Additionally, I launched a Quality Monitoring Team. We developed a legal support team for our fleet customer that didn’t exist in the past.
We also brought in the Lessonly Learning Management System (LMS) and developed it with the idea that we would do all our initial training online. We were successful with that, but very careful to make sure that we did it the right way. We landed on a blended curriculum, so there is the actual LMS learning, but there are also periods where the trainee observes phone calls, collaborates with their trainer, and partakes in one-on-ones. It’s worked out wonderfully and we’ve had great success with that.
We also went live with Five9. We had a very antiquated phone system when I arrived, and we went looking for a replacement. We decided on Five9 after a lengthy investigation and RFP process, and it’s been very good for us. All in all, a lot that has happened in a very short period of time here.
George: In 2022, my aim is to transform my group into a multichannel service center. Right now, we are voice only, but we have the ability to turn on chat, SMS, and email. We want to get to that point to offer more options for our members. The other thing we want to do is supplement our in-house Hindi support team with outsourced Hindi language resources. Twenty-five percent of our customer base is Hindi-speaking. It’s very challenging to find folks who can speak the language here in Oklahoma, and we want to match language to language.
The other thing I’d add … I mentioned earlier about our network of attorneys … well, we have built an automated online scorecard for our attorneys, measuring how they are performing. Our legal case outcomes are really important to us, so we are starting to closely monitor this — the outcomes that are achieved, as well as the rates being charged, how easy they are to work with — that sort of thing. We want to make sure we do an excellent job of managing our roster of attorneys.
EITK: You have a strong security background and are even a Certified Protection Professional (CPP). How does this background and training serve you in your current role?
George: My security experiences really rounded out my business career by providing management experiences outside of the call center world. To name just a few of those experiences, I was able to lead programs such as ISO, certifying a division of a company,
I helped develop a post-order system for our field managers, and I was part of a team that developed and then distributed new technology to field managers. And before TVC Pro-Driver, for several years, I ran a security program for a company at a major sporting event with 800+ security officers. Based on my security background and my CPP designation, I was once chosen to lead the startup of a large operation center that included a call center, a national temporary security officer order team, and a national video surveillance operation.
Summarizing … I’ve got these experiences that rounded out my career, but then put me in a position to have a program build under my belt, which was something I didn’t have before. It was a beginning-to-end experience. Literally, all the way from site selection to go-live, I led the development of the center from the ground up. All of these experiences just helped me hone my leadership and management skills, putting me in different scenarios where I had to perform. It has all helped me get to where I am now.
EITK: You have been a very active member of the Know It All (KIA) community since joining this past spring. What value do you get from your interactions on KIA, and how would you describe the value of the community for anyone considering joining up?
George: I’ve had great interactions in the KIA community. I think it’s a very vibrant community of professionals, and it’s always interesting to see what others are doing. I enjoy floating ideas to others and having them float ideas to me, as well as the wider community. It’s great to have a place to go to get my questions answered.
Also, I will tell you, aside from being active, there’s always a lot of reading that I’m doing. Maybe not always responding, but just reading what people are talking about. I think it’s a great way to help elevate the profession, and I’m so glad I joined. I’ve even had conversations with community members outside of the online platform. For instance, I’ll post a question, and someone will respond with, “Why don’t we hook up and talk?” I’ve had conversations about outsourcers, vendor selection, and workforce management (which I have a background in). I have found that people are very giving of their time, which is great to see. Whether it be online or offline, people are very willing to give a half an hour of their time to talk about the topics that are so important to our industry.
Thank you to George Bevensee, Vice President, Customer Experience at TVC Pro-Driver, for his leadership, participation, and insights. To connect with George, or to participate in the wider conversation, consider joining the Execs In The Know “Know It All” (KIA) Community. The KIA Community is a private, online community designed exclusively for CX Leaders at consumer-facing brands. Come learn, share, network, and engage to innovate. LEARN MORE.