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Finally contact centre staff are getting the recognition they deserve!

Reading recent research by Siemens, I was delighted to see that they are acknowledging that there is a new breed of contact centre operative – the neatly defined “Professional Listener” characterised as skilled, loyal and career orientated.
 
The old perceptions of contact centre staff still persist however. If you say you work in a contact centre you’re still likely to be labelled as unskilled, unmotivated, disloyal or something equally demeaning. Such views are of course, at best outdated and at worst a complete insult to all those people who work tirelessly to provide excellent customer service.
 
With contact centres now offering customer communication channels across the different platforms of Email, Phone and Internet, agents need an increasing array of skills to meet these evolving needs.  It should be recognised that excellent career opportunities now exist within the industry, with many companies offering quality training programmes and career progression. Furthermore, if you want to learn about modern customer service and sales techniques what better environment to learn your trade?

See below for the report on the research by Siemens

Professional Listeners: the evolution of the contact centre worker
 
Independent research commissioned by Siemens dials in on the much-maligned contact centre operative; unique insight proves that traditional stereotype doesn’t ring true
 
Contact centre professionals have an unfair stigma attached to them for being disloyal, unmotivated, poorly trained and having a ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude.  Independent research, commissioned by Siemens Enterprise Communications, looks beyond the technology employed in UK contact centre environments and into the habits, tips, thoughts and working practices of the workers themselves.  This first of three parts puts paid to perceived wisdom and generates a 21st Century profile of the modern day ‘Professional Listener’.  The research questioned over 500 contact centre workers in the UK, comprising a combination of inbound and outbound workers across both the public and private sectors.
 
The research concludes that there is a new breed of Professional Listener emerging who is loyal, motivated and highly satisfied, all set against a backdrop of ever increasing process and the proliferation of IT applications needed to do the job. Key trends in the survey provide insights into where contact centre improvements could be made, and how to achieve best practice.  Significantly, it highlights that Professional Listeners have the same career aspirations as any professional worker in any other industry.  These career aspirations have in turn created loyal employees who stay in the same job for more than two years, on average.  They crave training, want to improve and, as with all of us, want to be paid more!
 
Some of the characteristics of the Professional Listener include:

• On average, 4.3 years of experience
• 2.2 years average job tenure
• Loyal to company – 44% who would like to progress within the department of their current job
• Keen to work flexibly – 77% of non-home workers would like to work from home, or combine home and office working
• Overall satisfaction is high – 53% satisfied, and 17% “very satisfied”

“The Siemens findings are at an aggregate level, but if you disaggregate the data there is a significant variation in the experience of contact centre workers.  We agree that contact centre work is becoming more complex, and that contact centre workers identify with the job and want to do a good job,” said Jeannie Drake, Deputy General Secretary at the Communication Workers Union.  “Skill levels are rising, and contact centre workers want to be committed to their company and to customer service.  Attrition can be quite low where people have permanent jobs in good companies.”
 
“Contact centres have been undergoing a quiet revolution for some time now – increased automation and efficiencies gained through better working practices and increased usage of unified communications technology.  This research uncovers one of the key drivers behind this transformation: the Professional Listener.  The results clearly challenge the traditional stereotypes of contact centre workers with the modern worker seen as motivated, loyal and keen to progress,” said Tim Bishop, Head of Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications.  “At Siemens we are constantly looking to improve the contact centre experience for both the Professional Listener and the customers that they serve.  It is great to know that over time the industry has matured to such an extent that people coming to work within it are seeing it as a valid and valuable career choice.  We are very proud to be part of that shift, but realise there is still a long way to go in ensuring that the technology we provide contributes to this positive perception.”
 
UK contact centres are responsible for employing almost 300,000 people in the UK – this equates to 1% of the UK workforce.  Through automation of processes over the past decade, contact centre managers have a vast array of data at their disposal to inform strategy and business decisions.

 

An article posted on Precision Marketing recently caught my attention.

Sadly, it’s an all too familiar scenario.  You are just about to finish your conversation and hang up, and then you think, wouldn’t it be really useful to have that information on file. So you make a simple request to the call centre agent – ‘Can you email me….” Apologetically and slightly sheepishly, “sorry we don’t have that facility…” comes the reply.
 
Technology is fundamental to enable agents to meet customer expectations, but recent research from Rostrvm Solutions claims that a lack of technology in call centres is jeopardising customer satisfaction so it seems the issue is far from resolved.

In this age of multi-channel communication, it is surprising and extremely worrying how many agents still don’t have multi-channel capability at their finger tips.  Consumers expect to be able to interact with a brand in the way they want - either on the phone, via email or through other digital channels, and surely this expectation must be met.
 
Of course, we mustn’t ignore the influence of the human dimension.  It is has been proved that 70% of our decision to buy is based on how we are treated as people.  But, when prices and products are often so similar, companies are guilty sometimes of forgetting the simple fact that customers are looking for quality service. 

So, agents need to be equipped with the right tools that allow them to seamlessly combine different communication channels on demand.  Providing our agents also with real-time access to all past interactions with a customer, including transcriptions of previous chats and emails, scanned copies of letters received and dispatched, as well as call recordings and comments allows a satisfactory outcome to be reached.                 
 
If we are honest, many companies are still wasting money on employing different channels in an isolated way; providing disjointed, blanket marketing messages which results in lacking a ‘single view’ of the customer.  If an organisation truly understands how to use the right message with the right communication channel at the right time, it can increase revenue, reduce operating costs and increase its word of mouth advocacy.  Agents need to be empowered now!

Interesting to see that BA has attributed its nosediving fortunes of late to the rising fuel prices. Those of us with longer memories might possibly be tempted to add that, what has become universally known as ‘The T5 Fiasco’ could have had something to do with it. Particularly when you contrast these stats with easyJets’s news that their passenger stats have risen by 20% to 4.1m.

It will be a bitter pill to swallow for BA, particularly for those directors that just a few months ago were toasting boosted annual profits and big fat bonuses. The trouble is that there are good profits and bad profits – and BA are starting to see the difference.

Bad profits come from measures taken to create short term profit to the detriment of long term shareholder value. Bad profit means you get a customer on a plane, but you neglect to worry about that customer’s  impression of the brand. It’s all about expectation management; if you charge a premium for service you have to deliver it. You can’t give a Ryanair level of service and charge a lot more. You have to remember that customers have a choice and in a recession, where everyone has less money to spend, we expect more.
 
A national institution like BA should place far more stock in developing the mood the public associates with it. Bonuses should be dealt out in the context of customer service scores – not the FD’s. Bosses should only pick up bonuses if and when the net promoter score of the business has increased.

The net promoter score of a business measures how much customers would recommend the business to other people on a scale of 1 to 10. A score of 9 or 10 makes them positive promoters. We did some recent research within the travel industry and found that Emirates and P&O provide the most highly recommended experience to travellers, with a net promoter score of 32. And BA? Well, last year, BA flew in for 9th position with a NPS of just 11.

It really is simple. If your customers are happy and recommend you – you make profits (and your planes don’t take off half empty). This could be the crucial difference between easyJet and BA. Put customers first and the rest will follow.