Tag Archives: Workforce Management Articles

Articles

Call Center Work-at-Home Opportunities

The Benefits of Home-Based Telephone Agents

By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.

Author Peter Lyle DeHaan

In the past few years, we’ve seen an unprecedented move to pursue work-at-home opportunities in call centers. Granted, a few operations were already there. And some outright reject home-based staff as an option. But others have embraced a distributed workforce as a new way of doing business. And most operations have moved in that direction, albeit with varying degrees of interest and success.

Work-at-home opportunities apply to all employees, both agents and non-agent roles. At the risk of reviewing what you already know, here are some reasons why you should consider tapping home-based employees.

Retain Existing Staff

Providing employees with the option to work from home may mean the difference between keeping a great employee and losing them to another company—even a competitor—who offers that option.

Sometimes an employee’s situation changes, and they can’t—or no longer feel comfortable—coming into your office to work. But you can keep them as an employee if you offer them work-at-home opportunities.

Attract New Staff

When you’re looking to hire staff, having work-at-home opportunities for them to consider may mean the difference between you hiring a new employee and losing a great prospect. Don’t miss out on an otherwise-qualified candidate because you don’t allow for them to one day work from home once they’ve proven themselves.

Expand Labor Market

Every call center, it seems, struggles to find qualified employees. Though most prefer to pursue hiring from the labor market where the call center is located, this severely limits your prospects. By offering work-at-home opportunities, you can expand your labor pool to cover anyone, in any area, who has stable internet service.

New Agent Solutions

There are also a couple of new work-at-home opportunities that present themselves once you remove the restrictions of working from a centralized office. Though these aren’t impossible outcomes to realize with your in-house staff, they’re much more realistic to achieve from a home-based workforce. These are split shifts and on-demand work.

Split Shifts: Split shifts occur when an employee doesn’t work in one continuous block of time, but in two or even three smaller blocks. This can be ideal in meeting scheduling forecasts.

This depends on the specific needs of your call center and what your traffic looks like, but it could include working at the beginning of the business day and again toward the end. Or it may be taking calls for a few hours midmorning and a few more hours midafternoon.

It’s a lot to expect someone to travel to a call center to only work a few hours, leave, and then come back for a few more. But it’s much more realistic when someone’s already at home, can quickly login, work, and then log back out.

On Demand Work: Split shifts also point to another solution, which is on-demand work. This is effectively having someone on standby for when your call center gets busy. If they’re already at home and have a flexible schedule, they may be more than willing to log in and take calls to handle an unexpected traffic burst and then log back out when things return to normal.

Just make sure to treat your on-demand employees fairly. In exchange for their flexibility, pay then a higher hourly rate for on-demand work. It also means only contacting them when you really need them and promising them a minimum amount of pay when you do, such as for at least one hour. What you want to avoid is having someone take calls for only a few minutes at a time, multiple times throughout the day. This will lead to frustrated staff and burn out.

Conclusion

Work-at-home opportunities abound. Make sure to make the most of them to best staff your call center, maintain a qualified workforce, and serve your callers.

Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Connections Magazine. He’s a passionate wordsmith whose goal is to change the world one word at a time.  Read more of his articles at PeterDeHaanPublishing.com.

Articles

Happy Employees Mean Happier Customers for Telemarketing Companies

By Patrick Gilbert

The phrase “attitude is everything” is vital for telemarketing companies. Those working in telemarketing face unique challenges every day. Aside from the abundance of factors that affect call center agents both personally and professionally, telemarketers face the exact thing that makes this line of work interesting and unique: every call is different. 

Call center agents aren’t just the face but the heart and soul of your company. They’re the first—and last—voice customers hear and have a massive influence on customer experience. A cheerful call center agent versus a crabby short-fused agent provides a distinct experience. 

Happier employees mean happier customers, and what business doesn’t want that? Here are four ways to cultivate a culture of happy employees.

1. Open Communication 

How do you know if your employees are happy? You may think the pizza Friday you just provided communicated you are pleased with them, but have you considered not all may see it that way? Perhaps you have a perception of your employees’ overall mood because none of them have brought their concerns to you. 

It’s a common misconception that discussing workplace issues in the breakroom is the fastest way to see change. Are you part of those breakroom discussions? The only way to know how they feel or what they need is to have regular, individual communication with your team members. 

2. Access to Tools and Training

There’s nothing worse than setting call center agents’ expectations without providing the proper tools or training to help achieve them. State-of-the-art technology is great only if it facilitates appropriate training. Ordinary soft skills training like sales or customer service skills will demonstrate that their long-term success is a priority. 

Training promotes autonomy. Increased autonomy produces more engagement, pride, and ownership in call center agent’s work.

3. Employee Engagement 

Engaging in your work is a clear indication that satisfaction exists. Telemarketing companies have an excellent opportunity to have their employees involved in the overall big picture. Your agents have more interactions with your customers than all other areas of your business. 

Gathering insight they have acquired, asking their opinion, and implementing changes based on their recommendations is the fastest way to ensure they are engaged. Involvement in the day-to-day operations and the respect given to the knowledge they contribute leads to a significant cultural development. They begin to care. 

4. Rewarding Performance 

Most people respond well to praise. They will also give up on trying when they receive none. Having initiatives in place to ensure a consistent flow of praise is vital. Programs such as employee of the month or recognition of your team on your company website are great ways to ensure the regular delivery of praise. 

Incentive programs that offer financial gain are always welcome but not always in the budget. Often the increased incentive given to high performers, however, is much less than the cost of onboarding replacements for those who left due to a lack of recognition. 

For telemarketing companies, it’s essential never to lose sight of the work your employees do for you. They spend the entirety of their workday on back-to-back phone calls with your customers, all while juggling maintaining performance, call quality, problem-solving new questions, ideas, personal issues, and so forth. Talk to your employees, get them involved, provide training, and reward them when they perform. 

Focus on making employees happy, and in turn, they will make your customers happy. What occurs on the inside of your business will certainly be felt on the outside by your customers. 

Patrick Gilbert is an operations manager for Quality Contact Solutions. With over twenty-five years of leading call center operations, Patrick brings a refined yet refreshing approach to the sales and service environment. His breadth of experience makes him an adept problem solver who expertly crafts creative solutions, implements best practices, and develops winning strategies for his clients.

Articles

5 Techniques to Optimize Agent Productivity and Reduce Attrition in a Remote Workforce

By Greg Hanover and Tricia Yankovich

As we begin to see people shift back into traditional workplaces—be it an office environment or co-working spaces—we should remember the lessons learned from 2020, a year of remote working. In fact, these lessons may be even more immediately actionable as many organizations will have a hybrid work environment with some team members working onsite, others working remotely, and having that mix of people change day-to-day. Forrester recently announced that remote work will rise to three times pre-COVID levels. 

Many enterprises managed to work through the logistics of having a remote team, and many even found it to be more productive. As they adapt moving forward, unique challenges persist. How do companies ensure that their teams remain efficient, productive, and satisfied while working from home as well as in the office? 

Translating this macro working trend to customer service agents, a McKinsey report found that 50 percent of contact centers rate retention as a key challenge. Retention of agents relates not just to satisfaction but to engagement and meaningful work. An engaged agent is more than a happy agent. They have an emotional investment in their company and their work. As a result, they go beyond basic expectations. 

As such, here are five proven methods to building engagement in a hybrid workforce of call center agents:

1. Give Your Agents Time to Adapt

Yes, people have adapted to working from home so much so that working in pajamas has even lost its luster. In this year, many contact centers have changed their recruiting practices, bringing in agents who have the specific capabilities needed but live nowhere near a brick-and-mortar facility. These people will remain remote while others will start working in an office. This will change team dynamics.

In determining who works where and when, it is important to remember that remote work isn’t a one-to-one replacement for an in-office environment, and it is important to identify the right talent that can succeed in a remote environment from the start. Working from home successfully requires agents to be self-motivated, disciplined, and organized. A star performer in the office may have difficulty adapting to working from home. 

It’s important to give these agents the training and tools critical to build work-from-home skills, as is communicating the benefits they may see in returning to in-office work. This learning curve may be fluid in the beginning, but as companies understand the skills they need within their teams, this adjustment period will get shorter. 

2. Measure Engagement and Productivity

Measuring engagement and productivity is not a one-size-fits-all model. There are many routes to take and many platforms to use. An important piece to integrate is real-time feedback. Engaging with agents on a regular and frequent basis allows you to get a quick check on their productivity and overall sentiment. Quarterly surveys are common. However, they tend to be lagging indicators. 

In addition to frequent checks with agents, allow them the ability to provide feedback to managers in real time. This can be done through technology tools or with built-in check-ins. As part of this measurement make sure to not equate happiness with engagement. Agents can be promoters and say they’d recommend their place of work while still feeling disengaged because they don’t have the right tools or support to help them be successful.

3. Equip Agents with the Right Technology

Technology in the remote environment is crucial, yet there is no secret formula for what works for each business. Creating engagement may require several tools, so it’s important that they complement each other to reach your company’s goals. 

To help nurture emotional intelligence and prevent potential burnout, building a virtual community allows team members to connect in a remote environment. Private corporate social networks can also act as a hub for agents to interact and access company information, participate in events, and link into gamification challenges. 

With technology implementation, it’s important to keep in mind the fatigue that sets in when you lean too heavily on one platform. Zoom fatigue is common after a year of virtual meetings. Be sure to add variety to your tools to create connections without burnout. 

4. Provide Professional Development

If agents aren’t growing in their position, they tend to leave. It’s vital to encourage constant professional growth. Effective distance learning helps maintain competencies and upskill in any environment. Having a platform that provides short digestible sessions can really help individual development, particularly programs that give agents the flexibility to learn around their schedules. This should include a mix of instructor-led sessions as well as self-paced content that agents can review on their own and refer to whenever they need. 

A shift to virtual or hybrid working intensifies the need for training around emotional intelligence. This includes how to provide feedback to team members, how to manage a distributed team, and how to organize your time when working from home.

5. Create a Virtual Community 

Creating a virtual community in a remote world is a challenge many enterprises face since the shift to virtual work. Brick and mortar offices have organic culture and community, where you can roll over to your co-worker and ask them about their day. In a virtual world, you need to have the right tools and technology in place and be intentional about fostering community. 

A successful virtual community involves more than having great collaboration software. Hosted events can merge fun with networking, as well as encourage buddy systems within the organization. 

Conclusion

The post-COVID call center will look incredibly different from what it once did, but the keys to agent engagement remain the same. Empathy remains an essential character trait for agents and leaders. Agents who are empathetic to their customers perform at higher levels, and leaders who manage with empathy to agents meet their needs and concerns, keeping them engaged and successful in their work. Empathy also helps in understanding which agents are suited for remote work and which thrive in an office environment. 

Giving agents the same resources, feedback, and opportunities for collaboration no matter where they work will be critical to succeeding as a hybrid organization, reaping the benefits of both in-person and virtual work.

Greg Hanover is the CEO at Liveops and Tricia Yankovich is the SVP of people and human resources at Five9.

Articles

Flexing Your Leadership Courage

By Steve Yacovelli

When you think about being courageous in the workplace, even if you’re being your bravest self, there are still many factors that can prevent you from being your most courageous (and effective) leadership self. Here are the top three courage-inhibitors that come up for leaders:

1. The Challenge of Fear

If you were to ask around, you’d find that a lack of courage and an abundance of complacency in the workplace come down to one simple thing: fear. When you think about this in the business context, it breaks into two subtypes: 1) fear of failure (perceived or actual) and 2) fear of feeling like an outsider. 

With the first fear, you tend to strive for perfectionism, resulting in the idea that submitting anything less than perfect could alter the opinion of a boss or trusted ally. Typically, like most folks, you want to put your best foot forward; you want to be a rock-star performer. You see anything less as failure (even if it’s on par with others’ best work).

But the second fear comes from a more personal place, where challenging the status quo may make you feel like an outsider within your own workplace. At some point in your career, you’ve likely had that feeling (or maybe you currently do). It’s not fun; it’s alienating, and for some, it’s a feeling they don’t want to ever feel again. 

So, in a work context, this desire to avoid the feeling of being an outsider leads you to be compliant, even if at your core you know the idea at hand really needs to be challenged for the good of the organization. Having courage here means being OK with failing; it’s being OK with others perceiving you as an outsider for the sake of doing better work, benefiting your team members, or moving your organization forward.

2. The Challenge of Assumptions

As humans, it’s common to fill in the gaps when presented with a situation where all the data isn’t available. It’s easy to connect the dots between one problem and the next, even when the two aren’t related, without taking the time to examine your own approach. It’s how we humans are wired. 

When you think of this in the context of courage, you’re either avoiding understanding the situation, or you’re scared (back to fear again) to dive more deeply into the truth of the situation. Having leadership courage means lifting those rocks and seeing what’s underneath. The lack of courage causes you to make assumptions about the situation without knowing all the information.

3. The Challenge of Being Locked into Current Behaviors  

Let’s talk about change for a minute. On a fundamental level, change is an impressive idea: it’s fresh and new, it expands horizons, and it allows for innovation and new experiences. In a workplace context, you initiate change so the organization can grow and prosper. 

But the hard truth? Most people hate change. Why? On one hand (at an unconscious level), we don’t like change because it hits a part of our brain that values safety and security. As our cave-ancestors survived and grew as a species, they (like us) were wired to be fearful of change. Engaging in something new could lead to a dangerous situation. 

Now, flash-forward to today: you’re still wired like this in changing situations. When most people engage in change, it leads to an unsettling feeling of vulnerability. On the other hand, your conscious self doesn’t like change because it’s difficult. There’s a tendency to simply accept situations and adjust to them, even if the situations aren’t ideal. 

You might have heard the phrase “the devil you know versus the devil you don’t,” meaning that we tend to be OK with even bad situations, bosses, friends, and relationships because we know where we stand. Too many people dislike change so much that they’d sooner stay in an unpleasant situation because it’s familiar than make a move to something new but unfamiliar. 

So, whether unconscious or conscious, for most people change is hard. It takes courage to try something new and individual resilience to keep at it when it doesn’t work perfectly the first time.

As a leader, courage should be your foundation—the courage to challenge the status quo and to be your authentic and effective self in front of the world. It’s a superpower that every leader has within them; it’s just a matter of avoiding the three courage-inhibitors and then channeling your courage.

Dr. Steve Yacovelli is owner and principal of TopDog Learning Group, LLC, a learning and development, leadership, change management, and diversity and consulting firm based in Orlando, Florida, with affiliates across the globe. With over twenty-five years’ experience, Steve understands the power of using academic theory and applying it to the real world for better results. 

Articles

Work from Home Success

By Phil Kenter

One of our family friends told us that she disliked working in New York City as an investment broker/manager and was considering another career despite her financial success. She decided to try working from home and found it worked fine. She since has become more successful than before without the stress of commuting to the city every day. 

In another case, the daughter of one of our clients was an equipment trainer, which required her to travel extensively throughout the country to hospitals and healthcare facilities. She convinced her employer that she could accomplish the training remotely from her home with the use of video conferencing. 

That prompted an idea for us to consider. We changed our Help Wanted ad to read “Work from Home After Training. Details: www.rccjobs.com.” The site describes the job and includes a twelve-minute video of an operator processing a call. 

We began to receive inquiries and requests for interviews. Applicants must train in our office for four to six weeks, four hours a day, five days a week. We usually know within the first week or two if they have what it takes. 

Once fully trained, we assist them in setting up their home office. We provide a headset, electronic access equipment, and detailed instructions. They provide their own computer, per our specs, that we set up and program for them to use exclusively for us. They’re also responsible for the telephone circuit and the internet connection. In under six months, we have hired four operators, all of whom enjoy working remotely. 

Because of that success, our remaining staff requested remote status too. Now 100 percent of our staff work remotely. This has resolved all our staffing problems. The midnight operators enjoy working from home in their pajamas rather than driving to the office in the middle of the night. 

If we need an operator to cover for someone else, one or more of them are readily available and enjoy doing it. The same applies for weekends and holidays. If we have a major snowstorm—when no one can come in—now they all are available to log in. In the winter when we become inundated with heat calls for oil deliveries, we always have operators available. The same occurs in the summer months during a heatwave when we’re inundated with air conditioning outage calls. 

When one of our lead operators moved to Florida with her family and informed us of minimal employment opportunities near where she lived, we sent her equipment. Now she continues to work for us forty hours a-week from her home in Florida.

Phil Kenter is with Relay Communications Center in Long Island, New York.

Articles

Why You’re Not Getting the Most from Your Training Dollars

By Kate Zabriskie

Each year, organizations waste thousands of dollars on training that doesn’t deliver what the people who bought it thought it would. Consequently, remorseful purchasers determine that either training has no value to their employees, training facilitators don’t know what they’re doing, program designers are out of touch with reality, or all three.

If only the root causes of training failures were as simple! Even with willing learners, great content, and strong facilitation, you can still encounter problems that will keep you from realizing strong returns on your training investment. If your training isn’t delivering what you think it should, you may be suffering from one of three major problems that plague all organizations.

1. Training Isn’t Part of a Larger Learning Ecosystem

Just because people participate in a workshop doesn’t mean they’ll change their work behavior. In fact, even if they demonstrate an ability and willingness to apply what they’re learning in class, all may be lost once they exit the classroom.

Why does this happen? Good workshops usually fail to deliver because they’re treated as a training solution instead of a component of one. In other words, a workshop isn’t the answer. Rather, it should be part of a larger apparatus or ecosystem.

Solution: Start small. Creating a strong learning ecosystem is an ongoing and often complex endeavor. It takes time to build a holistic structure that supports continuous development. Ask yourself: 

  • Prior to training, do managers explain to people why they will be attending a course and what the expected application will be?
  • Will someone with authority (other than the facilitator) launch the session by explaining how the workshop ties into the bigger picture?
  • Are there check-in opportunities after training to ensure participants are implementing new behaviors?

If you answer no to any of these questions, do what you need to do to shift those answers to yes.

Next, think about the incentives you can put in place to encourage behavior change, the barriers you need to remove to encourage success, and the corrective action you’ll take if what’s happening in the classroom isn’t replicated on the job.

Once you start thinking holistically and view courses and workshops as a component of learning versus learning in its entirety, you will have taken the first step in getting the most out of your training dollars.

2. Continuous Learning Isn’t Part of the Culture or a Priority

You have great content, and you have a skilled facilitator, but half the people scheduled to attend don’t make it a priority.

When training occupies a position of “nice to have” versus “need to have,” getting the most from it becomes problematic. This most often happens when people are in survival mode instead of on a growth trajectory. In other words, they scramble to get through their work instead of thinking mindfully about the work they’re completing and how they’re completing it.

In practical terms, if people are always putting out fires and don’t regularly ask “What have we learned?” and “How can we improve?”, why should they care about learning new skills?

Solution: Start by asking the right questions. Shifting from a reactive culture to one that is deliberate about its activities takes months or even years. However, it’s not difficult to make big strides over time when you begin by asking the right questions throughout the organization.

Start the improvement conversation at multiple levels and at various times. Frequently ask after training: 

“What have we learned?”

“What do we need to do better next time?”

“What do we wish we’d known earlier?” 

In the rare instances when something goes perfectly, remember that there are still questions to ask: “How can we replicate what we just did?”; “Why did that work well?”; and “Is there any reason this approach won’t work again in the future?”

When questioning becomes the norm, the solutions offered via training should have stronger importance and value. For example, if turnover is an issue, a learning organization wants to know why and may ask several questions: 

“Are we hiring the wrong people?”

“Are we expecting too much?”

“Is there something better for the same money somewhere else?”

“Do our managers not manage well?”

“Do we need to provide people with better tools?”

Then, when learning and improvement are a priority, you’ll hear such things as, “Today is a training day for me. I’ll be unavailable until 4:00. If you have an emergency, please see my supervisor, Melissa. The workshop I’m attending is of top importance and part of my effort to reduce turnover.”

Who can argue with that? The logic sounds right and ties into big-picture improvement goals.

To get larger returns from training, use questioning to drive improvement. The answers will help people connect the dots and understand why training is a priority and not just something they do because their schedule tells them to show up in a classroom.

3. Few Annual Development Plans Exist

The world doesn’t stagnate, and your employees shouldn’t either. If they’re doing their work the same way they were five years ago, and nobody is encouraging or demanding change, why should they care about training or think you care about them?

Solution: Regardless of level, every employee should have a development plan and some learning and growth goals that connect to the big picture and enhance their skills.

“I want to improve XYZ skill to drive ABC result, and 123 is how I plan to grow” is a quick and easy format to follow when setting development goals. Three to five goals is a suitable number for most people.

Better still, if you can tie those goals to performance reviews, you’ll be amazed at the interest people develop in improvement, training, and implementing new skills. As with the other two solutions, start small. For example, if your company doesn’t have any development plans, choose one department to pilot them.

Act Now

Whether you suffer from one, two, or all three of these problems, act now. When thoughtful goals and development plans exist throughout an organization, people are conditioned to ask the right questions. With a drive toward improvement and a strong learning ecosystem that supports learning, it’s almost impossible not to realize a stronger return on your training dollars.

Kate Zabriskie is the president of Business Training Works, Inc., a Maryland-based talent development firm. She and her team help businesses establish customer service strategies and train their people to live up to what’s promised. For more information, visit www.businesstrainingworks.com.

Articles

Seven Reasons to Not Share Ownership with Key Employees

By Patrick Ungashick

Many business owners consider at some point sharing ownership of their company with one or more key employees. Sharing ownership can create powerful advantages. Retaining employees for the long-term and incentivizing them to increase business value are usually the top motives. Sharing ownership elevates valued employees into a true partnership with the owners in the ongoing effort to sustain company growth.

However, sharing ownership is not without downsides, some of which are immediately apparent. Obviously, sharing ownership dilutes the owner’s equity position. Consequently, sharing ownership can end up being the most expensive way to incentivize, reward, and retain top employees. Other potential problems create unwelcome surprises. Sharing ownership backfires more often than it succeeds. If it fails, it may jeopardize the business owner’s ability to successfully exit from the business one day.

Here are seven reasons to avoid sharing ownership with key employees, whether you are contemplating selling or gifting to them a piece of your company:

1. Key Employees Sometimes Leave

No matter how loyal and trusted they are, it happens. Making matters worse, when key employees leave, they rarely switch industries. If they leave your company, they may join or become competition. Now you may have somebody competing with you who owns a piece of your business.

To prevent this, you will need to have employees sign an agreement obligating them to sell their stock (or units, if an LLC) back to you should they leave. This helps avoid a competitor owning some of your company. But you won’t like writing a check to a former employee to buy back your stock. That’s not fun.

2. Sharing Ownership Complicates Legal Governance 

Sharing owners requires creating (or updating) legal documents such as a buy-sell agreement, which outlines decision-making and ownership-transfer rules among co-owners. One important issue to address is who has the authority to sell the entire company one day.

You cannot allow minority owners to hold up a potential sale in the future. This buy-sell agreement therefore also needs to give the majority owner clear authority to sell the entire company, further complicating your exit planning.

3. Sharing Ownership Complicates Income Tax Planning

Certain laws regarding retirement plans—an important tax planning tool—require treating owner-employees differently for antidiscrimination testing. Also, if you have an S-corporation (a popular legal form) and you wish to make a profit distribution, it must be in proportion to ownership. Sharing profits proportionately with all owner-employees might not be what you had in mind. 

4. Sharing Ownership Changes the Employer-Employee Relationship

Ownership bestows rights. Employees who receive ownership typically gain the right to review the company’s financial information and records. You may not be crazy about employees seeing that level of financial detail. Once an employee has ownership, it’s easy for the line to blur between ownership and employment.

It can become harder to manage an employee who is also an owner. Firing that person, if ever necessary, can become more difficult and expensive.

5. Sharing Ownership with One or More Employees Creates a Precedent

You intend your company to grow, and that growth will lead to additional valuable employees coming into the picture, either promoted from within or hired from outside the company. Those future key employees may want ownership, too, given that their peers already have it. You will have two options: either offer ownership to them, further diluting your ownership, or deny ownership to them, which risks alienating them, even to the point that they leave the organization.

6. Ownership May Complicate Matters with Your Employees

Owners typically enjoy some personal expenses paid by the company, such as vehicle, cell phone, meals, and so forth. Employees who receive ownership often expect to participate in such perks too. You must either include them, which increases costs, or temper their expectations, which risks alienating them. 

With ownership also come responsibilities, such as personally guaranteeing company debt. Top employees may be hesitant or unprepared to share in this debt and risk, further taking away some of the excitement and appeal of receiving ownership.

7. Sharing Ownership Increases the Company’s Exposure to Outside Risks

Occasionally, employees might do things that put themselves and their ownership in the company at risk, such as get divorced, get sued, or find themselves in financial difficulty. Sharing ownership increases the possibility of having your company dragged into one of these situations.

Conclusion

Because of these disadvantages, business owners should attempt to retain and reward key employees without sharing actual ownership. Alternative strategies exist, such as golden handcuff plans that include phantom stock, stock appreciation rights (SARs), and executive compensation plans. Many of these programs can simulate business ownership, achieving the original goals without creating the inevitable risks and downsides. 

There are a few situations where to share ownership with key employees may make sense. The most common would be sharing some actual ownership now as one step within a comprehensive plan to eventually sell or transfer the entire business to the employees. Otherwise, in most cases, it’s advisable to pursue a different course of action.

Patrick Ungashick is the CEO of NAVIX Consultants, a celebrated speaker on executive and business owner exit planning, and the author of A Tale of Two Owners: Achieving Exit Success Between Business Co-Owners. With his wealth of knowledge on exit planning, Patrick has provided exit advice and solutions to business owners and leaders for thirty years. 

Articles

What You Should Know Before Making Your Next Call Center Headset Purchase

By Bonnie Landis

The call center agent’s best friend is their headset, but choosing the right headset for your call center or office staff can be daunting. There are several things to consider when shopping for headsets. Here are five things to think about before you make your next purchase.

1. Know Your Vendor

A good relationship with a reliable headset company can mean the difference between getting the right equipment at a reasonable price and paying too much for equipment that doesn’t meet your needs. Your headset advisor should have in-depth product and industry knowledge. They will ask the right questions to uncover your needs and make the right product recommendation.

2. Performance and Durability Matters

Your staff uses their headsets every day; expect damage and depreciation to occur. Replacing headsets prematurely can be costly in terms of agent downtime and financial outlay. Make sure you are purchasing equipment that is call-center designed, as this will result in a lower cost of ownership.

3. Noise Cancelation

Call centers are noisy! Be sure you purchase headsets with good noise-canceling microphones that filter out background noise. Your agents will be heard clearly, and this results in a better call outcome.

4. Compatibility

Every headset needs to be compatible with the phone or device it’s used with. Each device has its own compatibility requirements—and the headset cord is the vital link between the headset and the device. Purchasing a headset with an incorrect cord means that it will not have adequate audio sound or perhaps none at all. Always rely on a trusted headset adviser to guide you through this critical process.

5. After-the-Sale Service

After the sale, you should feel like a valued customer and be satisfied that the equipment you purchased is the right equipment for your requirements. The sales process should have exceeded your expectations, and you won’t hesitate to purchase again from the vendor and even recommend them to your colleagues.

To summarize, if you work with a reputable vendor with a knowledgeable sales staff, you’ll have peace of mind knowing you’re getting the right headset equipment for your specific needs.

Bonnie Landis is a senior headset advisor with Comfort Telecommunications. For more than thirty-five years, Comfort Telecommunications has provided headset equipment to the call center industry. Their line of best-in-class Smith Corona headset products are recognized for its durability, cross-brand compatibility, and affordability.

Articles

Top Workplace Best Practices for Contact Centers

By Donna Fluss

The workforce is a mash-up of diverse, multicultural, and multigenerational personnel. Organizations that want to attract and retain top talent and become employers of choice must use workforce best practices. This will engage employees and let them know that their contributions are important to the mission of the company, so they feel good about going to work.

Here are some of the best practices that help attract and retain employees. It’s not about catering to millennials, the largest demographic in the workforce today; instead it’s about creating a work environment that plays to everyone’s strengths.

These best practices are ideal for contact centers and also apply to many other areas.

Train Employees: Make sure everyone knows how to do their job and has the information, systems, and support needed to excel and deliver an outstanding customer experience.

Give Employees Visibility into Their Performance: Ensure that all employees know their goals and how well they are meeting them. Do this on a continuous basis throughout the year.

Know Your Employees: Take a personal but professional interest in your staff so they understand that you care about them and are committed to helping them succeed.

Appreciate Staff Contributions: Communicate to each employee that their work for the company is important and appreciated.

Create a Collaborative and Supportive Working Environment: Be sure everyone knows how to get help when they need it.

Make an Engaging Work Environment: Make it fun and enjoyable for people to come to work.

Welcome Constructive Feedback: Give employees a voice. Encourage their input, suggestions, and recommendations.

Treat All Employees Fairly: Be consistent, and don’t play favorites.

Advocate Work/Life Balance: Recognize employees for the work they do during normal business hours. Don’t expect staff to dedicate themselves to your company at the cost of their family or other commitments.

Allow for Schedule Flexibility: Let staff have input into their work schedules, and give them the ability to change their plans without penalty.

Reward and Recognize Employees: Show the company’s appreciation for a job well done.

Provide Opportunities: Champion career and personal development. Demonstrate to employees a potential path for advancement within the company so there is no need for them to go elsewhere to get ahead.

Create an Inclusive Work Environment: Welcome a diverse staff who has the skills required to do their jobs.

Be a Responsible Company: Advocate social and ethical responsibility. Have your company encourage participation in activities that make the world a better place.

The objective of these best practices is to develop a positive, creative, and fulfilling work environment. Treat employees well, and they’ll tend to reciprocate and do a better job. Satisfied employees are also more likely to remain with a company because there is little reason for them to go elsewhere.

This is critical for contact centers, which typically invests two to sixteen weeks to train entry-level staff. The common thread among these best practices is that small acts of kindness go a long way to building a strong and dedicated workforce. This is well worth the investment.

Donna Fluss is president of DMG Consulting LLC. For more than two decades she has helped emerging and established companies develop and deliver outstanding customer experiences. A recognized visionary, author, and speaker, Donna drives strategic transformation and innovation throughout the services industry. She provides strategic and practical counsel for enterprises, solution providers, and the investment community.

Articles

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

By Sherry Gouel

Hiring the right person for a job is one of the most difficult tasks business owners face. There are so many factors to consider: experience, reliability, work ethic, honesty, professionalism, and the list goes on. Adding the wrong person to your team can be detrimental to the daily work environment, but it’s not really possible to predict if a candidate will work out.

There is another important question to keep in mind during an interview. Besides work skills, does this candidate have people skills? It’s one thing to complete a task well, but can this person work with others?

As with any new job, there is always a training period. A worker can eventually learn the necessary skills to accomplish their work, but if they don’t get along with their coworkers, it will affect the mood around the office. Call center agents must be team players, and tension between workers has a negative effect on the office atmosphere. Having staff that gets along and works well together reflect well on the business and how clients are treated.

Inclusiveness is an important factor in the workplace. An employee can be great at their job, be punctual, professional, and reliable, but if they cannot integrate with coworkers and be part of the team, it’s unlikely their employment will last. We’ve all met someone that for inexplicable reasons we cannot connect with. We might say, “They just rubbed me the wrong way” or “Their attitude just irritates me.” First impressions happen quickly and are difficult to change. We don’t set out to feel negatively about anyone, but it’s difficult to change our minds about our initial dislike. We tend to avoid this person and make no effort to give them a chance to prove themselves differently.

This lack of connection is difficult to change. It’s best to be proactive by looking for initial signs of friction during the interview rather than finding out a month after hiring them. Getting staff members involved in the interviewing process may help reduce future problems by testing the dynamics between existing staff and new additions. This doesn’t guarantee that there won’t be problems, but it may detect tension that could cause problems.

While no one knows if the candidate will be the right fit, there are a few things that can help. First have a list of questions to ask. Then, keep in mind that while part of the interview process is determining how comfortable and confident you feel talking to this candidate, you aren’t the only one that should be doing the interviewing.

Have existing staff join in to see how they relate to the candidate. It is often during small talk that we get to know and connect with another person. Following the interview, ask your staff how they felt about the interviewee; listen to their feedback and read between the lines. If you’ve narrowed down your choice to a few people, have your staff weigh in on this decision. It will hold them partially accountable in making sure this person gets the proper training and helping them to succeed.

Imagine a different scenario if your staff is not included in the hiring process and the new employee either lacks the people skills or doesn’t connect with coworkers. Will there be any effort to help the new worker feel part of the team? On the contrary—they may do things to exclude or alienate the new employee, hoping to make them quit. Losing employees and having to hire new ones comes with a cost.

If including staff members in the interview process is difficult, then extend the interview time by showing the candidate around the office. Stop at a few stations and allow some of your staff to show the candidate what the job consists of. All it takes is a few minutes of interaction to allow your staff the chance to meet the potential candidate and have a say in the hiring.

No one can predict whether a newly hired worker will be the right candidate, but these steps can better the chances. While a recruit may appear perfect on paper, remember that compatibility with the existing staff is just as important.

Sherry Gouel handles sales and marketing support for Szeto Technologies.