Category: Blogs

Part 3: Supporting WAH Employees, Three Pillars of Seasonal Staffing in the BPO Industry

Posted on by Blake Graves

By 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely—an 87% increase from pre-pandemic levels, the study revealed. And when it comes to supporting busy season seasonal staffing with a virtual, work-at-home workforce, there are many things a call center needs to get right. From a highly supportive onboarding process to extensive training and ensuring an active and engaged team, companies need to provide the whole package for their employees while meeting or exceeding service levels for their clients. 

In parts one and two of our blog series, Three Pillars of Seasonal Staffing in the BPO Industry, we discussed best practices for contact center technology, recruiting, training, and retention. In part three, we focus on the third aspect that is a new critical component of seasonal staffing: Work-at-Home. 

Supporting Work-at-Home Employees for Seasonal Staffing in the BPO Industry 

Work-at-home employees in the BPO industry face many unique challenges, including isolation, lack of office socialization, and distractions at home or from family members. On the other hand, they have some distinct advantages such as greater flexibility for time management and decreased stress due to the short commute to their at-home desk. 

BPO companies can improve their seasonal, virtual staffing by fostering a culture of employee engagement and communication. To do this, they need to engage employees in the same way as their onsite counterparts: supporting them with technology while ensuring a positive work-life balance, career development, and engagement. 

Here are three ways to achieve the high level of support that your work-at-home employees need. 

Onboard Early 

Building a solid onboarding process is crucial for cultivating a cohesive, productive, and engaged workplace. Yet, according to Gallup, only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees. Additionally, 76% of new hires felt less equipped to do their job compared to 85% of tenured employees. In other words, new hires need extra support when they work remotely. 

Onboarding is more than going through a logistical checklist: computer, check; headset, check; internet, check. It’s making sure your new team member gets onboarded as soon as possible, has the support they need, and is engaged early and often. 

Essentially, you want to mitigate the potential of stress and confusion from the get-go. This ensures your newest members feel valued, are well-prepared, and are ready to head into training knowing that their new company has their back, even from afar. 

At iQor, many of our work-at-home employees have their entire recruiting and onboarding experience through a secure virtual work-at-home setting. And when it comes to being hired for a busy holiday season, it can be intimidating and overwhelming to hit the virtual production floor without a physical support system present. To put our employees at ease and help them feel their best for our client’s customers, we provide extra time and support resources: 

  • Prepare Employees’ Setups Early. We onboard our call center agents one to two weeks before product training. This gives new employees plenty of time to transition into our culture, form relationships, and prepare their equipment setup. 
  • Bring Your Own Device Support (BYOD). With our private CX cloud and secure remote worker technology, employees can quickly turn their personal device into the same, secure, compliant desktop they’d find in the physical call center environment. 
  • Increased Service Desk Staff. We add extra staff to our service desk to help our new seasonal employees through their onboarding and BYOD setup, so employees always have the support they need 24/7. 

Develop High-Potential Employees into Frontline Leaders 

One of the biggest challenges BPOs face in managing the high influx of seasonal employees is ensuring compliance and quality. At some point, the amount of employee to management support ratios becomes too unbalanced, and seasonal employees end up feeling lost, confused, and undervalued, leading to a dip in customer satisfaction and struggling KPIs. And in a virtual environment, it’s even harder to keep up that one-to-one connection. 

We sought to solve this issue by developing our year-round employees into leaders that could provide extra support to seasonal employees. As discussed in Part Two: Recruiting, Training, and Retention, we begin developing high-potential frontline agents for leadership roles around two to three months before a seasonal ramp. Our leadership training programs teach frontline employees vital leadership skills, including performance management, increasing engagement, and best practices for managing a virtual workforce. 

Always Remember That Engagement is Key to Supporting a Remote Workforce 

When it comes to a virtual customer service workforce, engagement is equally, if not more, critical as engagement within the physical call center. 

According to the Harvard Business Review, 62% of employees believe working remotely positively impacts engagement, yet only 5% are likely to stay at their company long-term. 

This gap offers an opportunity for companies to be creative in boosting their engagement efforts. Being a genuinely engaging employer requires a strategic approach and long-term commitment to your workforce and company culture. In other words, you may need more than virtual happy hours and occasional one-on-ones. It’s in your best interest, too, as a business. When organizations invest in their remote employees, they see happier, more productive employees on board for the long term. 

Try out some of these employee engagement activities to keep your virtual seasonal workers engaged from day one:  

  • Be neighborly. Welcome and check-in on WAH employees with goodie baskets, care packages, and food delivery services. 
  • Photo contests. Drive competition, creativity, and comradery with themed photo contests. Some examples include Father’s Day, Pride Month, and July 4th.  
  • Monetary incentives still go a long way. You may not be able to give physical gift cards or vouchers, but digital versions with a thank you message send the clear message of a job well done. 
  • Theme days. Video conferencing fatigue is real. Keep it fresh and engaging with theme days. Incorporate their favorite sports teams, fun hats, and superheros, so team members can show off their personalities. This activity has been particularly successful for our one customer care program for a major airline client, resulting in 100% participation rate. 
  • Respect boundaries. Show you care by setting healthy boundaries around employees’ schedules, assignments, and performance expectations—check-in on them to chat about their families, hobbies, workload, and mental and emotional health. 
  • Ask for feedback often, and listen! A simple weekly survey is one way we stay on top of our employees’ happiness and engagement. Continuous feedback allows us to make positive impacts quickly, resulting in more personalized retention and engagement strategies. 
  • Leave the work-talk at the office every so often. Conduct weekly touch-bases where work talk is off limits! At least for part of it. Put employees at ease and just chat. We found that casual discussions foster inclusiveness, engagement, and comradery.  
  • Celebrate success with virtual awards. One study found that employee recognition is a top driver for employee engagement. Use your employee communication platform to allow team members to congratulate and call out their coworkers in real-time. We do this through virtual “high-fives” and host year-round iQor Recognize Awards. 
  • Offer a mix of remote and in-house work options. Research shows that employees enjoy a mix of remote and in-office work. Gallup found that the optimal engagement boost was when employees worked from home 3-4 days out of a five-day workweek. Going into the office helps employees feel connected to their coworkers, build relationships, and collaborate. At the same time, the majority of the days spent working remotely helps employees stay focused, productive, and less stressed.   

Designate an engagement team and plan events early so you are always prepared and have creative ideas flowing throughout the year. 

Bonus Tip: Get Your Clients Involved! 

Want contact center employees to form a deeper connection to the client they are supporting? Collaborate with your client to provide a welcome video so employees can connect with a human face and develop more of a brand connection. iQor found that programs where clients collaborate and increase their visibility into the contact center, resulting in higher retention and engagement and better customer experiences. 

A contact center that wants to support peak seasonal staffing with a virtual, work-at-home workforce has to address all the details covered in this article. From providing an excellent onboarding process and extensive training to ensuring the team is engaged and active, there are many things they need to get right to succeed. No matter what strategies you put in place to support work-at-home employees, remember to show how much you value their dedication and provide creative solutions that reduce stress, encourage engagement, and build strong company relationships.  

Are you ready for the next big holiday or promotional event? Let us help you optimize your seasonal staffing needs with digital CX tools and irresistible people to give your customers the best experience.   

Learn more about iQor’s seasonal staffing solutions.  

Part 2: Recruiting, Three Pillars of Seasonal Staffing in the BPO Industry

Posted on by Blake Graves

For most businesses, it is a normal expectation to bring in extra support for seasonal staffing. This is especially true for call centers that need to increase staff to meet the demands during peak holidays and event-driven periods. But for this hiring process to be successful, companies need the right combination of technology, people, and recruiting and training strategies so they can manage high call volumes without sacrificing quality or their bottom line. 

In this three-part blog series, we dive into the details of what the right combination of tools, people, and strategies looks like so you can partner with your next BPO partner with confidence.  

In part one, we focused on CX technology. In part two, we’ll dive more into hiring, training, and retention strategies.

This blog post shows you:  

  • Best recruiting techniques to find the best-fitting employees fast 
  • Best training strategies and tools to increase speed-to-proficiency 
  • Innovative retention strategies for contact center employees  

Let’s dive in. 

How to Recruit, Train, and Retain Employees for Busy Season Contact Center Staffing

To bring in as many candidates as possible, your BPO partner should be able to recruit as many qualified call center agents as possible — fast.

Recruiting: When you need to hire right and hire fast

Go Big on Referrals

By far, the biggest candidate pool for iQor comes from employee referrals. Referred employees are more likely to stay throughout the season — and longer– because they know what’s needed and expected.

Year-round, we encourage referrals through our Talent Referral Incentive Program (TRIP). TRIP is a unique rewards program that provides employees with cash incentives for bringing in employee referrals.

Referred employees can account for as much as 60-70 percent of our seasonal hires for seasonal events. Some of our programs will hold “resume parties” where employees invite their friends and family members to see what iQor is all about.

Here are three other ways iQor hires right and hires fast: 

  • Leverage Pool of Candidates and Social Channels. At iQor, we draw upon our existing pool of pre-qualified candidates and our recruitment automation platform. We use social media channels like Facebook to find and engage candidates automatically. We build relationships with our employees so many come back year after year while others to continue working. So when one client’s peak season ends, iQor is able to allocate employees to another client who is in need of additional support.
  • Automate Pre-Screening. From there, we send an automatic mobile link for our customized pre-screening questionnaire. If the candidate meets the criteria, our recruiter reaches out to them within the hour via text message and phone call. 
  • Track Candidates Like They’re Your Best Leads. One key difference in our recruiting process is that we track candidates like we would sales leads. We then staff our recruiters accordingly to contact every pre-screened candidate and ensure we get them set up for interviews as soon as possible. 

Once the candidate finishes the final round of interviews (in-person or virtual), they are extended an offer. In combination with our private cloud technology, this recruiting system instantly allows your company to ramp up agents in any location. 

iQor deployed this methodology for our eCommerce client and successfully hired 1,500 customer support experts in just two months. 

Training: Proactive Development of Next Generation Leaders to Support the Influx of Seasonal Hires

Around two to three months before a seasonal ramp, iQor begins developing high-potential frontline agents for leadership roles. These new leaders will serve as team leads, trainers, and subject matter experts to provide additional support for the large number of new employees. This helps reduce burnout, mitigate stress, and aid in speed-to-proficiency as employees dive into a call center environment experiencing some of the busiest times of the year.

Some of our award-winning leadership development courses include:

  • PeaQ Performance Qoaching (PPQ) training. PeaQ is a coaching leadership workshop that aims to coach and develop current iQor leaders with a focus on driving team performance and positive engagement in both physical call centers and work-at-home environments. Participants learn how to identify and coach to an agent’s root cause behavior using multiple techniques.
  • sQholar program. The sQholar program is a series that provides a clear path to leadership roles through training and skill development. sQholar’s are trained to be supportive, they learn how to build trust and provide constructive feedback which will result in less turnover, increased retention, and highly engaged team members leading to higher Net Promoter Scores, client satisfaction and increased ROI.

Retaining: Seasonal Contact Center Employees 

Now more than ever, employees expect more from their employers. So, reducing turnover will take more than a few performance-based incentives – it’s going to take an employee-centric approach that celebrates successes, promotes transparency, and shows proof that the company values and appreciates its workforce. 

Here’s what we found are four sure-fire ways to increase retention for peak seasonal staffing: 

Use employee-centric data analysis 

At iQor, we track retention by many attributes, including recruiter, lead source, work type, geo, and many more, to analyze winning retention combinations and where we can tweak areas for success. Our recruiting teams also employ a simulation and talent prediction toolset better to understand a potential recruit’s strengths and characteristics. We have found that better hires coupled with increased employee engagement result in improved retention.  

We utilize a recruiting analytics tool to enable operations and human resources to report on each recruiting source, applicant, hire, and retention rate at 30 and 60 days, by location and the program. Sites identify successful recruiting sources and will target future recruiting dollars in those areas. This analytics tool allows us to predict future turnover to take proactive steps to improve retention and identify our best employees for better-targeted marketing. 

Celebrate success 

We celebrate employees’ achievements and top performers through regular events such as giveaways, contests, and celebrations to foster a team spirit and create positive energy. We also incorporate retention bonuses and provide extra resources to support resources through their coaching and development. Currently, we host our global iQor Recognize Awards, where employees and leaders can nominate fellow iQorians throughout the year for their exceptional work and achievements.

One of our favorite ways to connect with employees is through our Engagement Champions, who plan and lead activities that engage and recognize employees. These individuals are outgoing, charismatic types that help energize teams, reduce stress, and create a welcoming environment through acts of kindness and genuine care.

Surveys 

Surveys are great tools for gauging contact center agents’ level of satisfaction and helping you find out the best ways to improve their work environment. 

Every week, we survey every employee through our employee portal with a simple five (5) – star question “How’s life for you at iQor?” The results are confidential and roll up to provide each line of business a score between one and five. The trend enables us to measure the impact of change and identify opportunities for more engagement and retention. 

Keep work-at-home an option 

According to Gartner, seventy percent of customer service and support employees want to continue to work at home (WAH) at least once a week after the pandemic ends. Despite growing concerns for the future of organizational culture from some service leaders, Gartner’s data indicates that WAH has not posed too great a challenge to organizational culture. In fact, most customer service employees who work remotely say that organizational culture has remained relatively unchanged – and more than 7 out of 10 think it’s improved since their shift to WAH.  

At iQor, our work-at-home solution allows the onsite experience to be easily mirrored at the agent’s home and improves agent performance and retention. 

Finding the best-fitting employees fast, building a solid talent pipeline, and retaining employees throughout the busy season can be a challenge. Organizations need to go beyond the standard practices and start using automation, data, and employee-centric strategies to better impact their contact center operations. If you’re outsourcing seasonal staff during peak times, look for a partner that can imbed this mindset across recruiting, training, and retention strategies so that you can navigate spikes in customer care volumes with confidence in your teams and your bottom line. 

Are you ready for the next big holiday or promotional event? Let us help you optimize your seasonal staffing needs with digital tools and irresistible people to give your customers the best experience.   

Learn more about iQor’s seasonal staffing solutions. 

Part 1: CX Tech, Three Pillars of Seasonal Staffing in the BPO Industry

Posted on by Blake Graves

For most businesses who partner with a BPO provider, busy seasons require the extra support of seasonal staffing. This is especially true for call centers that need to increase staff to meet the demands during peak holidays and event-driven periods. But in order to successfully get through these busy seasons, companies need the right combination of technology, people, and recruiting and training strategies so they can manage high call volumes and increased customer interactions without sacrificing quality – or their bottom line.  

In this three-part blog series, we dive into the details of what the right combination of tools, people, and strategies looks like so you can partner with your next BPO partner with confidence. 

In part one, we focus on CX technology. 

The Right Technology for Busy Season Contact Center Staffing 

When it comes to keeping up with seasonal staffing, organizations need CX technology to manage call volumes and easily scale their customer service teams. We found that there are five key technology solutions every contact center should have during peak holiday and event seasons: 

  1. Workforce management (WFM) solutions to automatically manage seasonal staffing and scheduling. 
  1. Interaction analytics that can record 100% of interactions and provide insights in near real-time. 
  1. Intelligent IVR solutions that can automate low-level inquires and allocate calls to the right agent with the necessary skillsets. 
  1. Chatbots and self-service tools to speed up the customer journey and improve first contact resolution rates. 
  1. Cloud-based infrastructure that enables dynamic allocation of digital tools to agent workstations. 

Workforce Management Automation 

Workforce management (WFM) solutions allow call center managers to create schedules, track staffing needs, and schedule shifts with ease. 

For peak interaction volumes, the ideal WFM tool for seasonal staffing should be able to: 

  • Automate scheduling based on real-time call and staffing data 
  • Monitor staff variances 
  • Identify near-term operational challenges 
  • Provide full visibility into performance and reporting 
  • Automatically analyze data to know what type of coverage you need at a given time 

Call center operations can quickly adjust call routing to account for busy periods or staff shortages by monitoring staffing variances in real-time and identifying near-term operational challenges. Automated WFM tools can also automatically communicate with contact center managers and frontline employees to reduce overstaffing, meet service levels, and adapt rapidly as staffing issues arise. 

The most rewarding benefit of a WFM tool is that it provides increased productivity and employee morale since intelligent scheduling prevents burnout. This leads to an improved customer experience over time. 

Interaction Analytics 

A contact center without interaction analytics during peak call volumes is like a pilot flying blind. Interaction analytics, also known as speech analytics, is a critical tool needed to analyze performance metrics during peak call and message volumes and busy times of the year. It helps teams identify and respond to trends, optimize customer service levels, and maintain quality assurance. 

The right speech analytics platform will include features such as: 

  • Recording of 100% of calls 
  • Automatic speech recognition 
  • Live chat analytics 

VALDI is iQor’s proprietary speech and interaction analytics platform that uses cloud computing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. It mines every available recorded interaction between agents and customers. Interaction analytics software like VALDI helps analyze audio data and provide immediate feedback on customer tone, sentiment, emotion, and even the stress in a customer’s voice. 

Another advantage is that it can provide agents with a distinct edge in cross and up-sell efforts. Contact center employees can leverage data captured during a call to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Organizations can analyze the data further to identify which types of scripting or conversations lead to more sales for a positive impact on your bottom line. 

Intelligent IVR 

An Intelligent IVR solution is a phone automation system that automatically connects customers to the right customer service representatives. This solution eliminates long wait times, reduces abandonment rates, and improves contact center efficiency. 

The right IVR solution for busy holidays and seasonal rushes will include features such as: 

  • Personalized routing of calls to the right agent based on call type, skill, and availability 
  • Support for multiple languages with text or spoken prompts 
  • Integration with CRM systems 
  • Automated pre-recorded messages can help centers manage high call volumes 

Automated pre-recorded messages can help centers manage high call volume periods where staffing is usually stretched thin. It also reduces the risk of overstaffing. 

Chatbots and Self-Service 

When high call volumes occur, chatbots are an essential tool. Chatbots provide instant responses and self-service solutions without any human intervention from a contact center employee. 

To get the most out of a chatbot solution during peak call volumes, look for features such as: 

  • The ability to take customers through a series of steps on their own with no human intervention 
  • The ability to generate automatic responses based on a set of predetermined criteria 
  • Conversational AI to learn, remember and respond to customer input 

Chatbots also allow agents to focus on more complex customer interactions. The chatbot can be programmed to handle routine, low-value tasks or questions. This frees up staff time which can be crucial when busy seasons are in full swing. 

Cloud-Based Infrastructure for Dynamic Allocation 

At iQor, we use private cloud technology for an effortless connection into our secure MPLS network. With dynamic allocation, you can launch your support teams to any scale you need. Whether it’s for voice or non-voice interactions, the right cloud-based solution should be able to push the required tools to an agent’s desktop seamlessly — no matter where they are in the world. 

Contact centers are the backbone of any company, providing customer service for anything from sales to support inquiries. But when it comes to holidays and event-driven volume, frontline employees are put under extreme pressure to meet demands year after year. Tools like automated WFM solutions, interaction analytics, chatbots, intelligent IVR, and more can help mitigate the risk of under and over staffing, burnout, and dips in customer satisfaction. 

Are you ready for the next big holiday or promotional event? Let us help you optimize your seasonal staffing needs with the digital tools and irresistible people that give your customers the best experience ever. 

Learn more about iQor’s seasonal staffing solutions.  

Getting Smart on Analytics in the Contact Center

Posted on by Blake Graves

Enterprises are sitting on a treasure trove of data derived from an ever-increasing number of communication channels. 

The promise of Big Data has many forward-thinking contact center leaders dreaming of the insights it can deliver, but getting from raw data to actionable insight is a multi-step journey that begins with deep thinking about the measurements that matter most.

At iQor, we believe that by taking comprehensive measurements, interpreting them in a disciplined and scientific way, and then sharing the resulting analysis with relevant company stakeholders, contact center leaders can put Big Data to work, driving strategic customer initiatives at the highest levels of the organization. 

5 Key Steps to Measurement

Step 1: Decide What You Want to Measure – and at What Level

The first step in the path to Big Data leverage is defining what you need to measure and at what granularity.

  • Do you already have a metric – or even a scorecard – that you use to gauge performance?
  • Do your scorecards address only enterprise-level performance or are you capturing performance metrics at a lower level?

For example, if your goal is to increase overall sales, you need to measure aggregate sales volumes and revenue at the enterprise level. You can often get this data in summary form, directly from your financial systems. But to find specific opportunities for sales improvement, you need to ask questions at progressively lower levels – ideally down to the transaction – where the context of every sale carries a rich set of attributes that you may be overlooking at the enterprise, business unit, salesperson, or even product level.

Defining your enterprise scorecard is important, but when you decide to drill deeper with your measurements – down to every available sale, customer service interaction, or other transaction – you take the first step on the path to Big Data value.

Step 2: Cast a Wide Net

Once you’ve decided upon what you want to measure – from top to bottom – it’s time to take stock of all available data sources. Look across all the information silos in your enterprise. Consider leveraging information from dialers, IVRs, ACDs, workforce management systems, CRM systems, quality audits, CSAT surveys, sales, and HR systems and tap data at the most granular transactional level. For example, don’t settle for summary-level agent call data – get the call detail records (one record per call).

Although some sources may involve millions of data records every day, the keys to unlocking emergent value may be in the small silos, such as spreadsheets where specialists or departmental contributors enter data because no formal application is in place. Big Data computing allows you to process the million-record data volumes alongside the tiny ones – so cast a wide net when you’re thinking about the data that describes your operations. At iQor, we believe that the whole of all the transactional data across these systems is far greater than its parts.

Step 3: Find the Right Measurement Platform

Finding a measurement and reporting system that easily integrates data across your enterprise, converts that data into business metrics, and, most importantly, delivers dynamic views to the business on a timely basis can be a challenge. To truly help change the way you do business, this system must be quick to implement and modify, be intuitive and user-friendly, have scalability, and not be overly dependent upon IT for maintenance. Whether you build it or buy it, your system should be capable of delivering business measurements beyond the contact center so that it eventually incorporates all lines of business.

Step 4: Correlate, Analyze, and Interpret Your Measurements

Once you have data combined from different sources, you’ll begin to paint a new picture of your contact centers’ performance. Like any great painter who experiments with color combinations, you should combine data sets in new ways. The results will correlate performance at multiple levels and likely highlight how one key metric influences another. Expect to discover that real performance improvements are not governed by a single variable, but through a complex, interdependent set of variables.

Step 5: Leverage Results to Educate and Drive Specific Action

Now that you’ve transformed your data to generate reliable metrics, it’s time to switch mindsets from reporting to ROI. Package information in a simple, timely, and credible format. Then, make it accessible to those in your organization – be they contact center agents or C-suite executives – who can create new initiatives and set policies. For example, you can use performance metrics to generate agent ratings in real-time, motivating managers to address issues quickly. Then move beyond the agent level and score the performance of campaigns or programs across different segments, like day of the week or location.

By moving up the measurement and analysis hierarchy, your organization can react quickly to improve performance and evolve methodically toward more sophisticated models that predict future performance. Many contact center leaders already know the value of measuring performance within their organizations. Indeed, many businesses today do it to some extent. However, the tools and the processes many use to do the job are becoming archaic. A group of specialists with access to a data source and an Excel spreadsheet can gather information and crunch the numbers for one-time views of performance, but that is not an efficient, comprehensive, or scalable way to measure performance.

Decide to evolve from distributed, localized measurements that focus solely on collecting single-source data to platforms that generate systematized measurement across all available data sources. This measurement approach scales and expedites the path from raw data to measurement – and eventually Big Data analytics. Learn how performance management and business intelligence solutions can help your organization measure smarter.

How to Build a Gamification Platform

Posted on by Blake Graves

According to Gallup’s “State of the Global Workplace,” over two-thirds of US employees are not actively engaged in their jobs.

That’s bad news for the bottom line as well as 60 million unhappy workers. Disengaged employees drag down production levels and can erode morale with negativity. By contrast, employees who are actively involved with their jobs are more motivated, which makes them more productive.

To boost engagement levels, businesses are continually experimenting with different strategies. One innovative approach is gamification, aka digital motivation. Gamification mixes work with play by applying game elements and techniques to non-game situations. It has proven effective in education and as a customer retention tactic. Now the enterprise has gotten in the game.

However, as with most technology, the success of your gamification efforts will depend on your people, processes, and the objectives you want to achieve. Through trial and error, we’ve learned some rules of what works and doesn’t to engage your players and keep them competing to win on the metrics that matter.

Gamification Innovation at iQor

Many of our gamification efforts have been developed in iQor’s Experience Innovation Lab and led by Ada Smith, an iQor IT professional. To build their successful program, Ada and her team created and played by clear-cut rules from the start. Use them or make up new ones to turn your own company into a power player.

1. Have a Clear Objective

Early on, you need to nail down the top goals for the program. “We wanted to focus on changing behaviors and driving outcomes,” Ada explains. “All our content addresses three major contact center Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs—Average Handle Time, NPS Score and Quality Assurance. At iQor’s huge volumes, even a slight improvement in any of these areas makes a tremendous impact, especially in mid- or low-level performers.”

2. Choose the Right Technology

There are a number of game mechanics apps out there. Choose the one that best fits your objective and integrates easily with your existing software. Look for scalability and simplicity of use, and make sure you’ll be able to add features and customize later. iQor’s team picked Centrical as the basis for their colorful, dashboard-driven program.

3. Bite-Size the Content

Chunk the content so agents can fit in a “game” whenever they have a few minutes. “Agents can play games, read articles, and take quizzes between calls or on breaks,” says Ada. “We have a mobile app so they can play on their own time.” iQor’s program uses Jeopardy-style trivia matches, contests, challenges, missions, quizzes, and other short, engaging activities.

4. Make Progress Trackable

Color-coded graphic devices measure and define performance so participants can see their progress and track it over time. “Measurement influences behavior,” Ada comments.

5. Build in Rewards. Lots of Rewards.

As anyone who has run a customer loyalty program knows, people love free stuff. iQor’s incentive program works on a scoring system where solo agents and teams earn points for wins. The software collects and calculates the points automatically, and players can redeem them for gift cards or “iQor bucks” to spend at the company’s virtual store. Free lunches are also a popular prize.

6. Ditto for Recognition

Badges, employee-of-the-month honors, pop-up tokens of encouragement, birthday and anniversary shout-outs: It’s crucial to give people plenty of moments to shine. Research shows that workers who feel ignored and unimportant have little motivation to excel.

7. Keep It Competitive . . .

“Like rewards and recognition, competition motivates people,” says Ada. “It builds excitement and encourages them to participate.” A leader board shows participants where they rank relative to each other on various activities, providing an incentive to climb higher—along with positive feedback and recognition when they do.

8. . . . While Building Community

“We keep our program competitive, but we also want to encourage team spirit and community-building,” Ada explains. She recommends a Community page to share information, congratulate special achievers, or just reach out and connect—a kind of virtual bulletin board.

9. Don’t Forget the Human “App”

The best technology is only a tool. It takes a skilled human application to be of real use. “Our management dashboard shows supervisors agent by agent and team by team exactly how everyone is performing,” says Ada Smith. “Our leaders can quickly identify opportunities and generate content and challenges to address and improve metrics and behaviors.”

10. Change the Rules When You Need to

See what works and don’t be afraid to ditch what doesn’t. Every tweak could be a game-changer.

And the Golden Rule of Gamification: Make it fun! 

7 Ways to Morph Managers Into Leaders

Posted on by Blake Graves

Hint: break some rules to create leaders that inspire leaders

Did you know that only one-third of U.S. employees are engaged at work? According to a recent Gallup report, people are increasingly indifferent about their jobs, and even more so, lack confidence in their managers in communicating effectively or making them feel enthusiastic about their roles. This is a tough pill to swallow, especially since lack of engagement can lead to increased employee turnover and all-around dissatisfaction.

The thing is, organizations can throw manuals, training videos, and performance metric box-checking forms at their management all day, but workers’ priorities are changing, and thus leaders must break some of the hard and fast rules of regular employee management. They must be trained to be engaging, emotionally intelligent, and even more, inspirational.

At iQor, we rebuilt our leadership training from the ground up to better reflect the skills our managers, directors, and VPs need today to manage a fast-changing workforce. Called Leaders Inspiring Leaders, our program specifically focuses on how to create managers that rewrite the old rules and blaze new trails in response to our employees’ needs.

Here are seven ways you can incorporate some trailblazer-worthy training into your business today based on what we’ve learned through the creation of our Leaders Inspiring Leaders program.

1. Revamp Your Library of e-Courses

In order to morph your leaders into true trailblazers, you must “be” the change. Redesign your leadership landing and training pages so they are more engaging, easier to navigate, and provide reviews and course completion progress for your managers and their direct reports. And remember, while eLearning may not be the end all be all in development, it does provide an opportunity to introduce new learning approaches and reinforce and support other traditional learning methods.

Provide short 30 minutes to 1-hour competency-based training videos or material that speak to people on an emotional level. This can be developed in-house, or outsourced (here is one company that breaks down lessons into three-minute videos). Your goal is to create inspirational leaders by setting the foundation for developing their emotional intelligence, which is critical in building and sustaining positive and engaged individuals and organizations.

Here are some example course topics that iQor has incorporated into our e-course training:

  • Becoming an Inspirational Leader
  • Successful Delegation: Supervise and Encourage
  • Performing with Others under Pressure
  • Thinking Strategically as a Manager

2. Launch a Leadership Book Studies Group

Keep the group small (10-12 max) and meet bi-monthly. Each session should include a review of the topics covered in the previous chapters and how the lessons can apply to current challenges or be incorporated into one’s own management style.

In iQor’s Leadership Book Series, we encourage participants to apply new techniques or ideas and share feedback with the group. Again, engagement is the key theme here, with the goal of it flowing down from our managers to their direct reports, and so on. Engaged teams lead to increased customer satisfaction, increased retention, and a better bottom line. In fact, our own employees are two times more likely to stay when they are highly engaged and well-trained.

Here are a few books that iQor is including in our leadership studies book group:

3. Keep the Performance Review…But Do it Differently

Couple the traditional performance reviews and self-evaluation forms with career and goal outlines. Then, un-silo! Instead of filing this information within its traditional HR walls, share it with the corporate training department where they can use it as a resource and work with your managers when they need program support. Most importantly, make sure that the manager has open access so they can revisit it themselves and have the opportunity to hold themselves and their boss accountable.

At iQor, we call this our Performance Review 360 because we want our leaders to see the complete picture — from how they are doing within their roles to the progress they are making in their personal and career development journey.

To recap, your 360 view should include:

  • Traditional performance evaluations
  • Self-evaluations
  • Career path outlines
  • Goal setting outlines

Another tip: conduct reviews and check-ins more frequently than just once a year. Companies that do this are 45 percent more likely to have above-average financial performance.

4. Get Down to the Nitty-Gritty

Not all your leaders show up with a business degree. In fact, there are many things you can’t learn until you reach that leadership position. Thus, it’s a good idea to give your frontrunners the tools and lessons for the nitty-gritty processes that they will encounter on a daily basis.

Some of our own core-knowledge workshops include:

  • Change Management
  • Principles of Accounting
  • Social Media/Tech Acumen Training

5. Host Monthly Leadership Lunch & Learns

These 60-minute lunch workshops focus on current employee-related challenges and issues. We recommend that Lunch and Learns contain real-world examples and best-practice sharing for leaders at all levels of an organization.

Again, this is another way to engage your leaders, keep up a growth mindset, and improve morale.

6. Blend Virtual Training with Real Life Role Play

Incorporate workshops based on understanding what a competency is and how it is practiced in real life. At iQor, we blend learning formats and delivery techniques from role-playing to best practice sharing and post-training feedback sessions.

According to trainingmag.com, role-playing helps to build confidence, develop listening skills, and improve creative problem-solving.

Some of our competency-based workshops include:

  • Managerial Courage (Feedback)
  • Strategic Planning
  • Inspiring Others
  • Developing Direct Reports
  • Process Management

7. Develop an Executive Mentorship Program

Mentorship is a recognized and successful method for encouraging professional development. It also increases the chances of employees, especially millennials, in sticking around. Your organization has an abundance of seasoned and accomplished senior leaders. Why not engage them and use them for helping others to grow in their career, share their experiences, and coach other individuals who have been recognized or aspire to be future leaders?

We recommend meeting once a month for an hour over the course of a year, albeit flexible enough to meet the needs and schedules of the mentors and mentees. In our program, we encourage our mentors to share with the mentees how they were able to navigate through company challenges, political situations, and cultural norms.

Bonus Tip

One more differentiator of our Leaders Inspiring Leaders program is that it is an ongoing program. Leave out the certificates, application deadlines, and timed exams, and give your leaders the opportunity to learn and develop themselves on their terms. Let your leadership training evolve and grow over time based on their needs. By simply building up a strong foundation of leadership excellence training, you give your managers the fuel they need to inspire, engage and blaze forward.

In need of more inspiration? Check out how iQor’s leadership training programs have been snagging awards left and right, including from HR.com and the Stevies.

Real-Time Performance Dashboards for Agents

Posted on by Blake Graves

Show Me (All) the Money: Why Agents Need Real-Time Access to Pay and Performance

To become faster, runners use fitness watches to track their cadence, mileage, heart rate, and other metrics to evaluate their progress. With a quick glance at the wrist, runners know how they performed and are inspired to do better, be it by adjusting stride length or upping the pace.

Now, think. What if you could create a similar experience for your teams of agents? No running shoes required.

To keep your agents on track, motivated and self-assured, they need the opportunity to review and understand their pay and performance in real-time. A performance dashboard provides your agents with current and past interaction data, including rankings, feedback, and compliance scoring. With this knowledge, agents are better equipped to go the extra mile for your customers and are more motivated to improve their performance and payouts.

Likewise, a compensation dashboard is extremely beneficial. Bonuses, free time, overtime, and other perks are viewable so that agents understand that there’s much more to their paychecks than just base wage. The compensation dashboard leads agents to stick around longer and is also a unique benefit to showcase while recruiting.

iQor recently implemented our own agent performance and compensation dashboard through our proprietary business intelligence tool. Through our own learning experience, we’ve cracked some codes on a few key differentiators we think will spark life back into your agents – especially when dealing with stale performance, attrition, or growing apathy.

Quick Note on Metrics

When it comes to choosing dashboard metrics, the key is to provide visibility into what matters most to your agents and review them frequently. In our contact centers, we never go full year without a review. And thanks to having their own set of tools to supplement these face-to-face interactions, agents go into meetings and coaching sessions as better communicators and problem-solvers.

  1. Keep Agents Longer with a Compensation Dashboard

Through iQor’s personalized ‘Qompensation’ Dashboard, agents can view and track recent pay periods and see a full year-to-date snapshot. The compensation dashboard gives a complete picture, including associated bonuses and benefits that agents either are or could be receiving. With a clear status of their money (and its potential), your agents are more likely to stick around longer, and less likely to leave for a seemingly menial pay increase.

Here is an example breakdown of a total compensation package:

  • Company medical
  • Overtime
  • Free time pay
  • Bonus
  • Cash incentives (including non-cash incentives such as gift cards, electronics, and other tangible items), contests, or direct recognition
  • Referral bonuses
  • Company-provided compensation (may include retroactive pay, bereavement, jury duty, etc.)
qey agent dash 1-2
Compensation Dashboard

Sharing this Total Compensation Dashboard with the Agents as part of a larger Retention project helped decreased Annual Attrition rates across the company by over 12%.

  1. Drilldown to Details for More Accountability and Collaboration

Provide agents with the ability to go beyond seeing summary level key performance indicator scores (KPIs) by allowing them to drill further into the context of the interaction and feedback that a customer or quality analyst gave them.

Allow agents to see the outcome from the customer’s viewpoint (i.e., how the customer defines quality) in the context of important company metrics. This opportunity for detail fosters an environment of self-learning, accountability, and more engaging and impactful discussions with managers.

For example, your agent dashboard may provide more drill-able insights on the following:

  • First call resolution (FCR) score
  • Survey response
  • Call category/type
  • Customer inquiry history

A drilled-down report of a low FCR score may include a survey response. The customer may have simply said, “The agent didn’t know how to solve my problem.” Not very helpful on its own. But when it’s paired with the right information on the type of call and customer’s inquiry history, the agent then has all the necessary information to pinpoint the underlying issue. In this case, it could be that the script or handbook is actually missing the solution to that specific topic. The agent can then bring this to the manager’s attention to resolve and ensure that the program’s training material, scripting, and knowledge bases are updated accordingly. Future frustration averted.

  1. Integrate Interaction Analytics to Build Trust

Move beyond traditional KPIs and indexes by integrating interaction (voice, email, chat, social) analytics with drill-able insights. Metrics such as dead air, customer sentiment, escalations, and compliance are extremely beneficial to front-line agents and can serve as an immediate learning experience.

qey agent dash 2
Performance Dashboard

iQor allows agents to drill down into flagged interactions using our interactions analytics. Allowing agents to listen to or read these interactions drives self-correcting behavior and builds trust between the agent, QA team, and leadership. With the full story clear to all parties, agents are less likely to question negative customer feedback presented at review sessions or quality assurance meetings. Engagement will be higher and agents will be more open to discussing improvement strategies.

qey agent dash 3
Call Analytics Dashboard
  1. Create Friendly Competition with an Agent Performance Scorecard

Incorporating front-line voice of customer (VOC) data and a well-rounded scorecard allows agents to see the impact they are making in real-time.

Your performance dashboard may easily provide agents with any one or all of the views below:

  • Personal performance vs. company goal
  • Personal performance vs. team averages
  • Personal performance vs. peers
qey agent dash 4
Scorecard Dashboard

This type of intel isn’t new to the agent, but seeing positive and negative feedback outside a coaching session or performance review drives employees to improve, compete with themselves and others, and gives them the chance to recognize other top performers.

Final Thoughts

Customer service agents are the face of your brand, but sometimes they need help in keeping pace and understanding how you and your customers define a quality relationship. Like a runner to their fitness watch, the right level of transparency will inspire agents to perform better. They will be more driven to break their own personal records by improving personal accountability and self-motivation – leading them to stick around longer and shift the call floor culture for the better.

Click here to learn more about iQor’s performance dashboards, business intelligence, and CX analytics can work for you.

Five Guidelines for a Successful Call Volume Event

Posted on by Robert Sloma, Jr.

The Right Plan Makes All the Difference

Call volume events can be major online shopping days to rival Cyber Monday, the release of a new smartphone, or a customer appreciation sale. Whether you’re part of your company’s operations or workforce management team, or if you’re in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, planning for any call volume event can be daunting. Your plan, and how you execute it, will determine the call center’s success.

Five Call Event Guidelines to Keep You Focused

1. Forecast

You need to know what to expect, so review as much historical data as you have available. (If you’re a BPO, be sure to ask your client for any available data in enough time to raise questions.) Ask your marketing and sales departments for input on customer response rates. Review your forecast with senior leadership from both operations and workforce management.

As you forecast, remember that call volume may be higher in the days leading up to the event, as customers call in with questions or trying to beat the rush. Conversely, you could have lower than average call volume afterward. And don’t forget to consider the impact these events can have on-call handle time.

2. Agent Schedules

Every call center needs more coverage for special events. You may need to bring in additional agents or ask your regular agents to work more than their normal shifts.

Consider the following questions as you create schedules:

  • Is overtime mandatory or on a volunteer basis? 
  • Will it be necessary to shorten breaks and lunch? 
  • Can you switch agents’ days off so that most are scheduled to work on the day or days of the event? 
  • Do you have other hourly employees, such as lead or quality assurance representatives, who can take phone calls? How about supervisors and trainers?
  • As you schedule agents to be on the phone, think about how many other staffers you’ll need available to assist agents with questions and escalated calls. 

3. Food

More than likely, you will need to reduce lunch breaks, leaving your team no time to run out for food or even grab something from the vending machines. If you have the budget, look into providing a meal for each agent. Shop around for the best price, order in advance, and have the food delivered throughout the day.

If you have a smaller budget, try to arrange for at least drinks and snacks. And if there’s no money, consider a potluck. Management can provide plates, cups, and utensils, and you can create a sign-up sheet so workers don’t bring in too many items from one category.

4. Fun

This is where it’s time to get creative. It’s going to be a busy day, and the activities you plan should motivate your agents not only to come to work but also to stay for the duration of their shift or longer. For instance, you could raffle off an Apple Watch or hand out certificates for additional dress-down days. Whenever possible, tie prizes to desired outcomes or KPIs, such as call handling time or conversions. 

Schedule attainment jumps off the page as something to always focus on partnered with sales conversion for marketing and sales events. 

5. Communication

From the beginning, get out there and talk to your agents and front-line support staff. Announce the upcoming call volume event as soon as possible. Explain what you need from everyone to make the event successful. Describe the activities you’ve planned. Ask for a show of hands of who will be there. And if you can afford it, let everyone know that lunch is on you. 

Tap into iQor’s experience in seasonal and event-driven call volume spikes. Contact us to learn more. 

Robert Sloma, Jr. is a senior workforce manager at iQor.

Formula for Customer Service Excellence

Posted on by Blake Graves

Service Excellence = Design X Culture

Strong processes, clear policies, the right metrics, and the best tools are all essential components of an organizational design that puts service first.

However, if your culture is weak – if you don’t have in place a foundation that guides your organization’s actions and behaviors, you are missing the most powerful tool at your disposal. As Fei and Morris put it: “culture doesn’t just tell you what to do—it shows you how to think.” 

Service Design

That’s not to say that creating a service organization that knows the right thing to do at exactly the right moment is easy. It’s hard and getting harder with the growing complexity of operating in an always-on, omnichannel world. A customer’s journey with a typical business now means navigating across multiple functions and fiefdoms. Many get lost without a proverbial Sherpa to guide the way. 

Enter service design. It’s based on the humble idea that the experience a brand delivers to its customers can (and should) be the most important variable in delivering a differentiated product or service. When the customer is at the center of your processes and procedures, it should deliver value and reinforce your brand at every stage of the brand journey. The customer journey is designed with purpose and clarity.  

Building a Service Culture

Once you have designed the experience you want to deliver, how do you “institutionalize” it as part of your corporate culture? Contact Center Analyst Donna Fluss lays out a helpful framework for how to review and modify current systems, processes of delivering support to customers:

Source: The Real-Time Contact Center 

These operational building blocks will help you understand what’s happening inside your company. They will help you fine-tune and adjust what your employees are doing. But only a self-sustaining, customer-centric culture will change how your employees think—and light the path to service excellence. 

To learn more or purchase a copy of Uncommon Service: How to Win Put by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business, visit uncommonservice.com.

Agents Need Virtual Assistants Too

Posted on by Blake Graves

Virtually Perfect

Customer support teams at iQor have a new colleague that seems like a perfect fit—friendly, helpful, eager to improve and get this: available to everyone, at the same time, 24/7.

That’s better than perfect. It’s virtually perfect. The new hire is a chatbot, powered by a knowledge base of answers to typical customer questions. The data was compiled by experts at iQor and two client companies.

Businesses have deployed chatbots and other self-service tools with varying degrees of success. However, a virtual assistant/coach for customer care and product support professionals is something new.

It’s also something badly needed. Customers accustomed to instant responses from Alexa and Siri expect a fast fix to even a complex service issue. Agents need precisely targeted information at their fingertips so they can craft creative solutions quickly—before the customer hangs up and switches to another brand.

Born to Deliver Speedy Service

iQor’s virtual assistant, dubbed Q-Bot, was born in late September 2017, a brainchild of iQor’s Experience Innovation Lab. “We wanted to develop digital innovation that would automate shared knowledge and bring it up close to users quickly,” says Lukasz Lubas, a key member of the Bot development team based in Bydgoszcz, Poland. “It’s unique—artificial intelligence they can talk to.”

To use Q-Bot, agents type in keywords as they speak with the customer on the line. In seconds, Q-Bot can zip through thousands of pages of information, follow algorithms to find a solution and text it back to the agent.

How does a company go about creating a crackerjack silent partner for customer-facing support pros? Lukasz Lubas and his team learned some important lessons during Q-Bot’s beta testing.

Give Your Bot a Friendly Personality

Q-Bot is brainy, but it’s no smart mouth. Its responses are friendly and respectful. “There are some very nasty bots in the movies, but we built ours with a nice personality,” says Lubas with a laugh. “Our content philosophy is that everything Q-Bot says should feel like it comes from a friendly supervisor or helpful colleague.”

Choose the Content Team Carefully

That means the bot must use language and phrases that sound natural, not canned or mechanical. The problem is, bots aren’t born knowing how to speak human. They can only process information and apply algorithms. So a content team that understands technical knowledge and can also write conversationally is essential to transform what the bot “knows” into crisp, concise, actionable answers.

“Agents and techs are using this on the fly,” explains Lubas. “They have to be able to grasp the meaning of the words immediately, almost without thinking, and use the information to craft a solution for the customer.”

Teach Users How to Teach the Bot

Inevitably, and sometimes comically, bots will misfire the wrong answer. iQor’s Q-Bot has self-correcting tools to help. Every time it serves up an answer it asks for feedback: “Was that helpful?” Through the feedback Q-Bot “learns” which answers are right, growing its knowledge base/brain. When answers are labeled unhelpful, the content team works to improve Q-Bot’s knowledge, prioritizing the most frequently asked questions.

Keep Building a Bigger Brain

There are lots of plans for Q-Bot. “Eventually we could connect the bot to every knowledge base,” says Lubas. “We could eliminate a lot of information gaps, not only for agents and technicians but for all our iQorians. Engineers could search through countless internal and external databases using only one search engine. Anyone in any department could get data on demand.”

Keep the Path Open to Machine Learning

Q-Bot has many ways to grow. It could eventually be deployed externally as well as internally, and it could use voice as well as text. Lubas says, “At some point soon, we will augment basic process knowledge we have uploaded to its memory with Machine Learning techniques so Q-Bot can learn on its own. But first we want to show it how we want it to behave, apply rules and algorithms, and check if it is making an impact in iQor’s business.”

Virtually Endless Possibilities

Bots can be brilliant additions to customer and product support, but Artificial Intelligence can never replace human empathy and problem-solving skills. Learn how the entry of chatbots is changing the world of customer care, and how to integrate human and digital ecosystems for the best, most customer-centric solutions. Check out this related blog post, How Chatbots Can Transform the Customer Experience.