Category: Podcasts

Ep. 28 The Three Pillars of Digital Transformation in the Customer Experience

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Keeping the Agent at the Center of Digital Transformation in Customer Experience

Today’s featured guest is Tarn Shant, Senior Vice President, Transformation and Governance at iQor. Tarn leads a team of digital customer experience experts, engineers, and security analysts focused on building out the technology infrastructure by which iQor delivers outsourced customer services for our clients.

Tarn has been in the BPO industry for more than twenty years. He began his career as an agent handling customer phone calls. This background inspires Tarn to keep the agent at the center of the conversation when planning technologies that enable them to deliver great customer service.

As Tarn’s career has progressed, he’s held different roles achieving a Certified Black Belt Six Sigma along the way. Many of his roles were business-centric responsibilities while leading large-scale operations. About seven years ago he got the opportunity to move into technology, which he embraced.

Earlier in 2021, Tarn was heading up infrastructure and operations technology. Around the middle of 2021, he got the opportunity to lead transformation and governance. His team is devoted to helping customers optimize the CX experience for their end customers.

iQor’s Approach to Digital Experience Transformation

Tarn’s team is focused on deploying technology that results in a great customer experience along with a happy and productive contact center agent. Their approach to building CX technology is built on these three pillars.

Call Deflection

This entails creating an end customer experience that is as effective as possible through self-service to reduce the chance of a customer calling to speak with an agent to resolve simple questions such as “where is my shipment?” This can be achieved through intelligent automation such as IVR technology, chatbots, in-app messaging, etc. The result is a great experience for the end customer that also benefits the agent by resolving simple questions before they get to an agent through a voice call. This allows agents to get more fulfillment from their customer interaction by helping them solve more complex issues.

Digitization of the infrastructure that enables the CX experience.

Tarn is extremely proud of the iQor private CX cloud. It provides stability and scalability that delivers great value for our clients and for our business.

He explains further that we are moving toward a hybrid cloud that enables us to choose workloads that can be executed better in a public cloud, and keep certain workloads on our private cloud, within our data centers. We are accelerating the hybrid cloud model because it’s paying dividends for our clients.

The Agent Experience

Every decision we make considers the impact on the contact center agent. We ask how will this technology impact the agent? It starts with the hiring process.

Once an agent is hired, the onboarding process is all about training the agent. There are technologies that help agents train faster, reducing their learning curve. Once training is completed, the focus is ensuring that we enable them to perform well. Agents want to be productive, meeting the KPIs established by and for our clients.

Agents benefit from tools such as chatbots, knowledge management tools, speech analytics and AI-powered coaching as well as feedback from their supervisors. The combination of these tools and the human supervisor element enables our agents to perform at a high level of performance and job satisfaction.

The iQor Differentiator is Speed and Security

Tarn points out that successful execution comes down to speed and security. When it comes to speed, he shares an example of a client who had a need to stand up 500 agents in 7 days. Due to our established technology infrastructure coupled with our robust and proven recruiting processes, we got it done, much to the thrill of the client.

Naturally, clients want to know that our customer care service delivery is secure. In today’s hybrid CX delivery model where some frontline staff are located in an iQor facility and others are work-at-home agents, security is paramount. Tarn explains our approach to data security is partnering with best-of-breed partners such as Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, NICE and Thinscale to deliver endpoint security that scales.

He ensures that his staff gets proper training, so they are up to speed on the technology ensuring effective deployment of secure CX service delivery regardless of an agent’s location. Collaboration with our partner’s security team ensures the right controls are in place for us to deliver highly secure customer service to our client’s end customers.

Balancing People with The Technology Infrastructure

Another element that exists as a layer above the four pillars is change management. As technology is planned, Tarn works closely with his team to ensure that cultural change is inclusive so that everyone is part of the common story.

For Tarn, it’s always been about people, making sure everyone understands what they are trying to achieve. People ask is each technology initiative aligned to the company goals? Investing in people’s skills development, giving them the proper tools and an environment where they can share their ideas and flourish is an important part of the culture. He regularly reaches out to frontline staff to have skip-level meetings to give them an opportunity to be heard.

Another important consideration is technology training. Whenever we sign up for a new technology, we ensure the partner offers training directly or through an authorized partner to train our team.

What Tarn Does for Fun

Tarn started playing tennis for exercise and fun during COVID. Since he lives in the northeastern U.S. where outdoor tennis is not available six months of the year, he also enjoys going for long walks and listening to podcasts to stay up-to-date on topics of interest.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 27 A Purpose Driven Leadership Customer Experience Strategy in Trinidad

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Customer Experience Strategy Goes from Academia to Real World 

William Huggins, DBA, is Vice President Operations and Country Lead at iQor Trinidad. In this episode, we discuss his purpose-driven approach to leading the iQor team in Trinidad. William recently completed his Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) with a concentration in customer experience. He explains how he is applying his previous work experience, his education and his purpose-driven approach to leading the iQor team in Trinidad.  

His Previous Experience Set the Stage for His Current Role  

William’s past roles have led him to iQor in this leadership role. He has worked in several industries in different roles including marketing, sales, business development and customer experience. Of all those roles, he attributes the most impactful in his career to roles in the contact center industry. When the VP Operations, Country Lead position in Trinidad became available at iQor, he jumped at the chance to apply his professional experience, his education, and his passion for the local economy. iQor is a dynamic and innovative customer centric organization that is passionate about its employees, its customers and the local communities in which it operates, all of which excited William.   

How His Doctoral Dissertation Aligns  

William explains that his doctoral dissertation addresses a gap in customer experience theory which he describes as a lack of constructs of the customer experience and its impact at each stage of the consumer buying process. His dissertation is a unique study that unearthed a new theory and valuable knowledge for customer experience practitioners. 

He examined over 50 years of scholastic work conducted on customer experience and concluded that any given customer experience is created by the combination of four attributes, or dimensions, explained in the acronym FACT. This is how they breakdown: 

Functionality refers to the physical aspect of a company’s core product and service offering. 

Aesthetics involves the appearance of a building or staff (the look and feel). 

Communication with customers is considered fundamental to a CX strategy. 

Talent involves the people and culture of an organization. 

How His Doctoral Dissertation Correlates to His Leadership Role at iQor Trinidad  

William points out that customer experience IS iQor’s business. We interact with customers for the brands who entrust us to answer their questions and solve their problems. Hence, having a deeper understanding of what creates an excellent customer experience enables William to lead our team in Trinidad to focus on those key dimensions and sub-dimensions in the delivery of an exceptional experience to our client’s customers. 

What It Means to be Purpose-Driven in His Leadership Role  

For many years, the Trinidad and Tobago (TT) economy was largely driven by oil and gas. While there have been many discussions about diversification of the TT economy it has been slow in coming. Because of William’s involvement in the BPO industry for several years, he has long had the desire to influence the development of the BPO industry as an alternative revenue source for the TT economy. iQor provides William the opportunity to impact diversification in TT and to create desirable jobs for his fellow Trinidadians. As a result, William’s passion is to position iQor TT as the BEST place to work and the most desirable contact center location for our clients.   

iQor Trinidad employees are all local Trinidadians. William points out that he grew up in TT. He knows firsthand how passionate, and performance-driven his fellow Trinidadians are. As an example, he boasts that a client in the home services industry has ranked iQor Trinidad as their #1 BPO in performance among ALL their contact centers globally! And he mentions with pride that this same team is currently leading the pack in 2021 with the same client. 

Why iQor is a Great Place to Work for Local Trinidadians  

William points out the obvious to me, that iQor has an irresistible culture. When you couple our irresistible culture with an abundance of opportunities for local talent, iQor is an excellent place for young people to start their careers straight out of a university. Additionally, there are many job opportunities for people further along in their career as well, ranging from frontline agents to roles in HR, IT, Facilities, Operations, Finance, etc.  

iQor is fortunate to be expanding even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are currently preparing to open our third contact center in Chaguanas, Trinidad. Our TT employee count is currently approximately 1,350 and growing rapidly with expansion from existing programs and new clients coming on board. William says that it is an exciting time to be at iQor TT. 

A Situational Leadership Style  

I asked William how he is converging his work experience, education, and purpose to lead more than 1,300 people at iQor Trinidad. 

He explains that leadership is situational. He adopts an appropriate style to suit each situation. 

However, he points out that his inherent leadership style is participative and collaborative. This style is critical to support and drive his purpose of making iQor TT:  

  1. The best destination for our clients. 
  1. The best place to work for our employees. 
  1. The best investment for owners.  
  1. A valuable partner to the local government to assist with diversification efforts. 

His Leadership Action Plan 

William explains his leadership action plan this way: 

  1. It starts with our people. We have a unique culture that is difficult to replicate. William views his job as to harness this culture and bring out the best in our people to develop them and maximize their career path potential. 
  1. Each employee has something to contribute. He encourages a free flow of ideas.  
  1. Fostering a culture of performance that surpasses client’s expectations and enables continued growth. 
  1. Collaboration with key stakeholders such as InvesTT, Minister of Trade, local universities, Chamber of Commerce all to help iQor TT diversify the economy and enhance communities through its Corporate Social Responsibilities initiatives. 

What William Does for Fun When He’s Not Working  

William enjoys his work so much that he considers it fun. He also loves traveling with his family to other countries and exploring diverse cultures and foods during non-pandemic times. Additionally, he enjoys watching sports on television, particularly football, basketball and cricket. 

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 26 How iQorians Give Back through iQor Qares

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Giving Back through A Standalone 501(c)(3) Entity to Support iQorians in Need

Loren Dennis is Senior Vice President of Operations at iQor in charge of special projects. One of Loren’s favorite projects he has spearheaded is iQor Qares. In this episode, he explains what it is and why iQor has invested significant resources into it.

One of iQor’s core values is “always giving back.” In the past, when iQor employees – aka iQorians – ran into emergencies, the company organized fundraisers through events to provide financial assistance to those in need across our global population of approximately 35,000 employees. While noble, these efforts were ad hoc and only moderately effective because it was not a unified effort under one entity.

The iQor senior leadership team (SLT) decided to create a standalone philanthropic organization called iQor Qares. It was formed in Q4 2019 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit with its own board of directors (BOD). Loren sits on the BOD along with members of iQor’s SLT to oversee the direction and execution of its mission, which is to be a financial resource to iQor employees and their local communities when unforeseen hardship occurs during times of natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, and more.

Building the Philanthropy

In 2020, the primary focus of iQor Qares was to get the entity established in the U.S. This was a new venture for all involved. Creating the organization and getting approved in every state across the U.S. required a lot of coordination with government entities.  The Board made headway across nine states, standing up the organization as a philanthropy ready to be of service to iQorians.

Soliciting Donations

 From a donation standpoint, the initial rollout of iQor Qares is in the U.S. to support any employee regardless of geographic location. iQor employees can set up donations to be made automatically from each paycheck. As is customary with a 501(c)(3), reporting is provided to the employee for tax deduction purposes. In 2021 donations began to be collected to help iQorians anywhere in the world.

Examples of iQorians Supported through iQor Qares

Loren explained that approved requests for support remain anonymous except between HR and the iQor Qares vetting committee. Beyond this group, identities are not revealed to protect their privacy.

In 2021, examples of recipients of support include an iQorian whose home caught fire, where much of the house was destroyed. iQor Qares provided support to aid with meals for the iQorian’s family while they dealt with the transition to temporary housing. iQor Qares also provided support to iQorians who were displaced by the horrific floods in Texas in mid-2021.

iQor Qares is also available to support employees and their families during times of loss. When iQor was made aware of a tragic death of our own, iQor Qares was quick to provide their family with funds to aid in funeral expenses. When an iQorian family member was battling cancer, they were met with high hospital bills that drained their finances.  iQor Qares helped cover heating costs to keep their home warm during the winter months, so the employee could focus on their health and not stress about bills.

Small Donations from Many iQorians

As you can see by these examples, life circumstances can cause financial hardship. The vision of iQor Qares is for many people to give a small amount. Loren specifically says he’s not asking for large donations. If many people regularly donate a small amount from each paycheck, the coffers are well supplied, enabling us to respond to situations in times of need.

Looking to 2022

Loren and the BOD at iQor Qares are spreading the word and expanding into other countries in 2022. Hopefully, conditions will allow for an annual charity golf event. The power of volume with many small donations will make a difference in people’s lives. The easiest way to set up automatic contributions is to visit the website iqorqares.com to configure a steady donation from each paycheck.

How to Apply for Assistance from iQor Qares

iQor Qares is set up to provide financial aid to iQor employees who are experiencing temporary financial hardship. iQor employees in need of assistance should begin by contacting their local HR representative. This individual will have a confidential conversation with the iQorian and assist with the application process at iqorqares.com.

How to Donate to iQor Qares

iQor employees can easily set up a donation commitment. It’s simple and safe.

iQor employees can donate here at iqorqares.com.

Anyone outside of iQor is welcome to make a one-time donation (or as often as they want)!

People outside of iQor can donate on this website. 

What Loren Does for Fun When He’s Not Working

For Loren, it’s all about family. Whether it’s watching a movie, having a family game night, or spending time outdoors, he cherishes each moment with his family.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 25 How Strong Language Can Be Used to Deliver Great Customer Service

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Customer Service Can Be the Easiest Use Case to Harness Language

Chris West is the Founding Partner of Verbal Identity, a leading strategy agency specializing in the power of language. His firm has guided global and national brands, relaunches, and startups from B2B and B2C to tech and luxury and everything in between. Chris is a multi-award-winning copywriter and the author of the highly acclaimed book: Strong Language: The Fastest, Smartest, Cheapest Marketing Tool You’re Not Using.  

This episode discusses the key takeaways from his book, including insights into how strong language can be deployed in customer service delivery.  

Chris is a copywriter by background. He has written in every medium ranging from short films to newspapers. He loves the power of language to share ideas and build relationships. He founded Verbal Identity to help brands harness the power of language in their business.

The Inspiration to Write the Book – Strong Language 

Chris has been running Verbal Identity for more than ten years. When his firm was a boutique advertising agency, clients frequently asked him to write copy across the spectrum of the business, not just for advertising, for example, customer service use cases. He witnessed clients becoming more aware of the need to write copy to support their entire business. This inspired Chris to focus on language. After being asked by many people how to harness language, he decided to write a book about it.

How to Know When Your Brand Voice Isn’t Working Well

How does an executive team determine if their current use of language is working for their business? It’s more accessible in customer service because the people on the front lines are closer to the customer. They’re able to observe engagement with customers in response to the language used.  Executives can observe how agents are talking to customers or communicating on social media channels when delivering omnichannel support. What they often discover is a disconnect among different channels with different voices using inconsistent language. Sometimes, they find that their brand voice sounds the same as everyone else in their space. In that situation, their brand lacks differentiation and value. This can result in customers not remaining loyal to the brand, which can result in lost revenue.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Churn, and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores can indicate how ineffectively a brand communicates during customer care delivery. Improving language can be a fast, smart, cheap way to improve customer service metrics.

How to Find Quick Wins Using Strong Language

When executives recognize they need to change their language, they usually want to find quick wins. Most companies don’t approach changing their language with the mindset of allocating a big budget, particularly assigning a lot of time to it. Chris recommends mapping out where people interact with your brand in a high-impact way to identify the areas where you can change the language to measure a change in business impact quickly. These quick wins allow teams to understand the power of language, often leading to a willingness to invest incremental budget and time in impacting other business areas ranging from marketing to sales to customer service.

How to Measure the Value of Updating Your Brand Voice 

All stakeholders want to measure the value of updating their brand voice. When considering this, Chris suggests starting with the metrics you care about most. Consider the contributing factors to those metrics. CX professionals use a different set of metrics than sales, marketing, and operations people use. Chris suggests dividing metrics into two categories: self-serve engagement and human interaction engagement.

We’re living in a time of higher staff turnover in many businesses. By shortening the learning curve to effective language among employees, we can impact the business faster. This is especially true in customer experience delivery. The more effective the language is the more effective the customer experience delivery. This has a direct correlation with contact center agent job satisfaction, which impacts employee retention metrics.

Ultimately, the best way to measure the value of language in your brand is by reverse engineering it. Start with the key metrics that are important to the business. Identify how language is used to impact the current state of those metrics. Standard metrics on an executive’s dashboard include revenue pipeline, actual sales, employee retention and attrition, inventory turns, and others unique to each business. These metrics are essential, and the use of language is a crucial factor influencing them. Changing the language to improve any one of these metrics is a great way to measure the value of revising the language.

Decision Making Process in Language Change

The decision process in language change varies for each company. In founder-led companies, all decisions get approved by the founder. In other companies, it’s more decentralized. Language programs that compare your brand to one or more competitors help get c-suite awareness and support.

Another approach is to run an internal survey to gauge the current effectiveness of language. When internal stakeholders express their opinion about the ineffectiveness of existing language in a particular use case, it can influence the c-suite’s interest in making change. Often, the c-suite appreciates calling attention to the inconsistency and the opportunity to remedy the situation to improve key business metrics.

How to Develop a Consistently Distinctive Brand Voice

Chris shares that the original title of his book was, One Business, One Voice. Executives can all agree, whether it’s marketing, customer service, investor relations, sales, or operations, the language of their brand should always sound like one voice for the company. But how does a company create one consistently distinctive brand voice?

Strong Language (the book) documents a framework made up of three levels of communication.

  1. The first level is the ten thousand foot view of what your business stands for and against (i.e., your worldview).
  2. The second level is the one thousand foot view, your brand’s personality (how you express your world view).
  3. The ground level is about your jargon, grammar, and style.

Splitting it into three levels helps people have a common framework for harnessing the power of language. Sometimes the feedback tells us that the language for the world view is great, but the personality language doesn’t support it. Or vice versa. This simple framework allows for congruency among the overarching worldview narrative, internal and ground levels. It is a simple method to enable stakeholders to agree on the language needed to guide people in language development, resulting in one business, one voice.

What Chris Does for Fun

In response to the “what do you do for fun” question, Chris has three activities that make him smile. He is an avid reader, which should not surprise anyone, given his passion for language. He is also an avid swimmer. Chris is a husband to an entrepreneur and father of two amazing kids.    

Visit VerbalIdentity.com to learn more about their approach and Chris’ book – Strong Language: The Fastest, Smartest, Cheapest Marketing Tool You’re Not Using.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 24 Patient Engagement Can Create Customer Experience in Healthcare

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Customer Experience in Healthcare Does Not Exist without Engagement

Rohan Kulkarni is the healthcare practice lead at HFS Research. HFS Research is recognized as second to Gartner in healthcare influence among decision-makers.

In this episode, we discuss the “triple aim” model, which addresses the three pillars in healthcare:

  1. Improving patient outcomes
  2. Reducing the cost of care
  3. Enhancing the care experience through engagement

In our limited time together, we reviewed the first two pillars and spoke in more detail on the third pillar, enhancing the care experience, which is equivalent to the customer experience in business.

Rohan’s background is in product management in health plans. Most recently, he was CIO at Versant Health before joining HFS Research. His extensive background in healthcare and being a consumer of healthcare services (as we all are) has led him to many insights on these three pillars and ways we can improve the care experience.

The Triple Aim Construct in Healthcare

The triple aim is recognized as a construct to measure how well we are doing in delivering healthcare services. In the U.S., the cost of healthcare has been increasing at twice the rate of inflation. Chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiac disease are on the rise. Life expectancy in the U.S. has declined from 79 to 78 years of age, despite rapid advancements in healthcare technology. This data supports the need for a triple aim engagement model.

Enhancing the Care Experience through Engagement

A healthcare consumer is a patient and a healthy member of a healthcare plan, possibly an employee, or a beneficiary of a government program. Each role is unique, with different expectations.

In reality, the current state of healthcare is sick care. The experience at the point of care happens when people are already ill and trying to get back to health. However, we could benefit significantly from increased engagement with our healthcare providers and professionals when we are healthy.

In a traditional customer journey model, a brand engages with consumers at different touchpoints throughout their purchasing journey. In healthcare, there is no current construct of engagement. Healthcare engagement is limited to transactions at the point of care.

The opportunity to improve is providing omnichannel engagement during the patient’s life journey before they are sick. This approach can increase the chance of the patient remaining healthy and/or recognizing circumstances that warrant healthcare treatment sooner to reduce the severity of illness and the cost of care.

Ownership-Based Engagement

An HFS Research study found that a healthy consumer with an income above the median wage is more satisfied with their experience at their point of care. By comparison, those dealing with illness and whose income is below the median wage are less satisfied with their healthcare experience. This data calls out the inequity in healthcare in the U.S.

Rohan points out that the potential remedy to address this inequity is to create an engagement process with shared ownership among the stakeholders, including the patient, the entities providing care delivery (e.g., hospitals, doctor groups, etc.), and employers who either self-insure or insure through traditional carriers.

Rohan points out the importance of educating consumers with vital information to enable them to improve their healthcare journey. Allowing the patients to manage their data and chart their choices in food and activities with accurate information in a shared ownership model would go a long way toward improving healthcare.

More than Just a Transactional Model

Setting up an engagement model would create a shared experience with incentives among all the stakeholders to maximize better health outcomes and reduce the cost of care delivery. Giving consumers a reason to stay healthy through information and resources would benefit all the stakeholders.

The health plan providers and employers should also be encouraged to engage patients during their healthy times, mainly since so many chronic conditions are often poorly managed for many reasons, including a lack of accurate information consumed by patients.

For effective engagement to happen, patients need to be educated about their health choices. And when they do need sick care, they need support and assistance with medication and other care details.

The Future of Triple Aim

Rohan hopes we will eventually reduce cost and improve patient outcomes and improve engagement, largely through evolving technology and the availability of innovative health plans.

Our population is constantly evolving. Lifestyles are changing. We’re likely to see more consumer engagement and literacy on healthcare topics. Healthcare distribution channels, including employers and the government, will play a different role, mainly as information concierges. As new distribution models emerge, they can disrupt the industry in favor of engagement and better patient outcomes.

Not surprisingly, Rohan enjoys a healthy lifestyle. He enjoys cooking healthy meals and hiking with his wife on the Appalachian trails near his home in northern Virginia.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 23 Three Strategies for Creating Stronger Employee Relationships

Posted on by Blake Graves

Companies That Thrive on Disruption Have Strong Employee Relationships

Charlene Li is renowned as a strategic thinker. She helps leaders and organizations thrive with disruption as an author, speaker, advisor, and board member. She has worked with dozens of companies such as IBM, Oracle, 3M, Adobe, Cisco, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft, to name a few. She has authored six books, the most recent titled: The Disruption Mindset – Why Some Organizations Transform, While Others Fail.  She is prolific at sharing content through her LinkedIn live streams and on Twitter and Clubhouse, sharing her thought leadership on the disruption mindset.

In this episode, Charlene discusses disruption in business, starting with what it is, why it is important for leaders to embrace it, and her recommendations to create stronger employee relationships within the disruption model. 

What is Disruption and Why it Matters

Charlene grew up in Detroit, where she was the only person of color in her early school years. Her presence alone was a disruption that prepared her mindset to look at mainstream principles through a different lens.

Now, she looks at the rapid evolution of technology as an opportunity for companies to thrive. In other words, she helps business leaders look at change and disruption as excellent opportunities for growth.

Charlene’s first book is the critically acclaimed Groundswell, which was published in 2008 when social media was in its early days. In this book, Charlene and her co-author Josh Bernoff encouraged business leaders to embrace the disruption of social media as an opportunity to engage and communicate with their audience. Leaders frequently asked her why do some companies thrive in disruption and others fail? So, she set out to research what’s different about those companies that thrive in disruption over and over again.

The Disruption Mindset

For a company to thrive in disruption, there must be a vision for what the future looks like. It begins with leadership, but the employees must catch the vision and trust leadership’s commitment and ability to embrace the disruption to thrive. Disruption will take people out of their comfort zone. Employees must trust their leaders to succeed in the midst of disruption. Leaders must have a plan to bring employees with them willingly on the disruption journey to a new future.

What it Takes to Create Stronger Employee Relationships

Charlene identifies three strategies for creating strong employee relationships to enable the disruption mindset to thrive across the organization. They are:

  • Integrity
  • Agency
  • Openness

Integrity

Leaders who do what they say they’re going to do with consistency between action and messaging operate with integrity. Employees know the difference between empty promises and actions that live out the company’s values. Leaders should communicate the reason for a different future, how the company needs to get there, how each employee is integral to getting there, and why it’s valuable to the employee. Beyond communication, leaders must live it every day to be recognized for integrity. Building long-term, sustained employee relationships start with integrity, which leads to long-term trust.

Agency

Agency means that employees believe in the mission and work hard to achieve the strategies defined by leadership. When agency is present, employees behave like owners in the business with accountability for their actions because they genuinely care. In other words, they are bought into the vision and they want to help achieve it.   

Openness

This is the simple concept that nothing is hidden. That everything not considered company confidential is out in the open and available for discussion. No question is off the table.

Charlene points out that these three strategies are intermixed to define the relationship between leaders and employees in the disruption mindset.

How to Implement Integrity, Agency, Openness

Charlene points out that leaders must be committed to building relationships with employees by defining what the relationship looks like. Leaders should document the attributes of their desired relationship with their teams as the starting point in this process.

At iQor, we deploy a weekly Mood-o-Meter survey to our contact center agents to measure their current mood. Anyone who scores low for more than one week in a row gets contacted by a skip-level manager to set up a meeting. These meetings allow the employee to discuss what’s on their mind. The relationship and trust built in these skip-level meetings exemplify our attempt at integrity, agency, and openness.   

Borrow Best Practices from the Marketing Department

Your marketing team is adept at listening and communicating with customers. Employers should adopt some of these marketing practices to listen and engage with employees in relationship building, treating them with the same care as customers are treated.

A Long-Term View of the Employee Relationship

The lines are blurred between an employee’s life outside of work and at work in the digital age. Employers should embrace the employee’s whole self, including their passion and dreams. By providing a supportive work environment that allows employees to thrive as an individual working toward their long-term dreams the relationship between employer and employee is strengthened. 

Infusing Integrity, Agency, and Openness into Employee Relationships

Imagine speaking with an employee about their last day at your company on their first day. Strong relationships are built if we talk openly with employees about their aspirations and offer support to help them achieve their dreams. In return, the employee is more likely to have a strong relationship with their employer while they work there. Additionally, we can ask cooperation to receive more than two weeks’ notice of resignation and the employee’s commitment to help hire and train a replacement. This level of relationship lives beyond current employment and breeds agency among employees.

What Charlene Does for Fun

Charlene is a serious business leader who enjoys playing with her cat named Cosmo. She has trained him to do tricks, which he is motivated to do for treats. She says he performs about a dozen tricks, such as jumping through hoops and playing with cups and balls. Charlene loves dogs, but with her busy travel schedule, a cat is purrfect for her lifestyle. 

Learn more about Charlene’s books and other valuable resources at her website.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 22 Three Reasons NICE Powers iQor Global Workforce Management Solutions

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Workforce Management Enables Operational and Human Capital Efficiencies

David Wasserman is in Product Marketing and Sales Enablement at NICE, a global provider of next-gen digital customer experience technology enabling companies like iQor to maximize the operational efficiency of front-line employees responsible for customer interaction. This episode discusses three reasons iQor selected NICE as our technology partner in workforce management (WFM) solutions.

David is in the portfolio marketing group, responsible for brand storytelling, helping customers achieve better engagement with NICE solutions. He also helps sales teams articulate the brand story clearly, allowing customers to understand how NICE solves their business problems.

iQor’s WFM Evolution

iQor manages millions of interactions between agents and customers in many different circumstances around the globe. We previously managed a significant percentage of our customer care teams on a workforce management solution across our 50+* contact centers. Still, some employees could not easily be scheduled because of system limitations and scaling issues. Meanwhile, iQor was adding thousands of employees per year, increasing pressure on our WFM capabilities. 

When the pandemic disruption occurred, more than 18,000 thousand iQor employees suddenly became work-at-home employees, putting more pressure on our WFM capabilities.  

iQor searched for a WFM solution to address the pain points of size and scale while also providing mobile access and improved reporting for supervisors and managers.

We needed a workforce management system that could 1) allow for maximum operational efficiency, ensuring the right amount of people are staffed at the right times to deliver excellent customer experiences, and 2) ensure that agents are engaged, allowing for a smooth work-life balance.

The WFM system must also understand customer experience outcomes and forecasting outcomes, allowing iQor to manage our business efficiently and meet the KPIs we need to meet for our clients.

We determined three primary criteria for our WFM partner selection:

A Centralized & Unified WFM Solution 

When iQor moved thousands of employees to a work-at-home model, the traditional peer-to-peer interaction was shifted from in-person to virtual. We needed to extend the as-usual capabilities for agents to be happy.

One essential element of contact center agents’ morale is the ability to manage their schedules. When agents want more time scheduled or time off for vacation, the NICE WFM mobile app provides agents 24/7 access. The system decides the best time for agents to work and take time off, and it does so in an employee-friendly way.

WFM Should Provide a Platform for RPA 

We needed robotic process automation (RPA) to eliminate mundane tasks to allow employees to focus on value-added tasks. The pandemic accelerated the need for agents to handle customer interactions in higher quantities and often under emotional circumstances. Enabling agents to eliminate “cut and paste” activities is key to empowering agents to manage meaningful customer engagements at a higher level of helpfulness for more timely results. ‘Workforce Management-as-a-Service’ (WFMaaS) powered by NICE enables iQor to leverage the NEVA Robotic Automation Platform to identify manual data tasks that can be automated to improve employee and customer satisfaction. 

RPA drives improved efficiency of contact agents’ time while relieving stress. The job becomes more of a knowledge job, and it is more fulfilling to the agent. Workforce management and RPA have enabled both customers and agents to have a more satisfying experience.

Enable iQor to Deliver WFM as-a-Service 

iQor delivers a service that is in demand known as Workforce Management as a Service. Partnering with NICE enables us to leverage their platform by adding our in-house expertise in customer care delivery for clients who don’t want to manage their own contact center operations. This allows iQor to enter into new client relationships through WFMaaS and expand existing client relationships.

iQor Wins Judges Choice Award from NICE  

Each year NICE puts on the Interactions Live (virtual) event inviting its 25,000 customers around the globe. In May 2021, NICE recognized winning organizations for driving innovative customer interactions resulting in next-gen, digital customer experiences. iQor received a Judges Choice Award for successfully deploying NICE’s enterprise-wide solution across 200+ clients, 21,000 employees, 50 global contact centers, and a sizable and growing work-at-home platform during the pandemic. 

What David Wasserman Does for Fun

David combines fitness and his vegan diet to create a healthy and enjoyable lifestyle which he points out is very gratifying in pandemic times.

Learn more about NICE workforce management solutions.

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

*As of November 2023, iQor has 40+ contact centers located in 10 countries worldwide

Ep. 21 Becoming a Top Certified Trainer Against All Odds

Posted on by Blake Graves

Helping Others Succeed Motivates Top Certified Training Certification

This episode features Stephon Griffin, a certified trainer who has shown remarkable initiative and results in his four years at iQor. In his first role, Stephon proposed a solution that was approved and implemented under his leadership. It is still delivering phenomenal results. In this episode, we discuss what inspired him to propose this solution, how he got it approved and implemented, and how he became a Top Certified Trainer at iQor.

Stephon is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2018 Stephon was employed at another company, and he was ready for a new challenge in his young career. He noticed an ad on Facebook posted by iQor. After applying, he met his future manager over a phone interview, who made a quick impression on him. On the second interview, he was shown the facility in person and was offered the position on the spot. He later learned that his manager was exploring Stephon’s potential to grow and develop as a leader.

Stephon’s new manager taught him how to be an effective leader of customer care employees. He learned how to develop people who can grow in his absence. This approach to leadership changed his mindset about modern leadership practices. He came to understand that career development comes in many different forms.

Helping People Be Their Best

As an Operations Supervisor, Stephon reviewed the current processes used to measure the client customer experience program’s success. He studied key performance indicators (KPIs) and recognized room for improvement. He came up with the idea that would become a program called the Agent Mentor Program. He worked on his new idea over an entire weekend. Stephon is that type. When he gets excited about an idea that he believes can impact many people, he dives in with both feet.

While devoting a weekend to writing the business plan for his program idea, he anticipated the questions he could receive from his leadership team. He presented his plan on a Monday morning to his manager. The response was an overwhelming approval to go ahead with the program under his leadership. This vote of confidence helped to skyrocket Stephon’s own confidence. He appreciated the belief demonstrated in him by his leadership team. His leaders never micromanaged him, giving Stephon full authority to roll out the program from A to Z.  With the go-ahead to roll out this Agent Mentor Program, Stephon extended many opportunities to his coworkers.

The Path to Trainer Certification

One day, a training manager asked Stephon to run a seven-day training program in her absence. He enjoyed the experience so much that at the end of the week, he learned more about the journey to becoming a certified trainer at iQor.

Stephon approached his manager to ask for guidance on how to embark on the path to trainer certification. As previously shown, Stephon desires to impact many people at iQor and now as a trainer. He embarked on the trainer certification program, which has four levels. He was certified on Level 1 and Level 2. When the time came to consider getting certified on Level 3, he learned that it requires curriculum development. That’s when he asked for advice. A supervisor told him that getting Level 3 certified is itself a significant accomplishment. However, to achieve Top Trainer Certification is a tall mountain to climb. In fact, many trainers who earned Top Trainer in Level 3 were previously corporate trainers, which Stephon was not.

This challenge inspired Stephon. The fact that his journey to Top Training in Level 3 would be somewhat of a unicorn motivated him to go after it.

The Level 3 trainer certification is a four-day program. At the end of three days, he stayed up all night to develop a new training curriculum. During his all-nighter, he went through four drafts of his new curriculum until he was satisfied it was good enough to earn Top Trainer Certification. He presented it to Tarisse Grant-Shelton, Lead Trainer. He waited to hear back from her with great anticipation. When Tarisse contacted him the same day with the good news that he was to be awarded Top Certification in his class, he was thrilled. He achieved a massive milestone by aiming high, working tirelessly with a can-do attitude. He slept well after getting the good news.

Stephon’s Advice for iQorians on their Career Journey

Stephon is currently the Assistant Manager of Quality and manager of a sales program for a client supported at the Charlotte facility. His career advice is to take advantage of all the resources available at iQor. Anyone who wants to grow has access to valuable resources through iQor University. Leaders want to help employees learn and grow to develop their careers in different roles. His advice is to let your manager know that you want to grow, and they will guide and coach you. Stephon’s drive and tenacity are very inspiring. You’ll notice his enthusiasm and the smile in his voice, as well as the smile on his face. It’s downright contagious!

Stephon’s Fun

Stephon is a gamer. He enjoys relaxing and playing games on his computer. I have a hunch he wins many games that he plays – his can-do attitude never seems to fail him!

Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.

Ep. 20 Rapid BPO Career Success by Embracing iQorian Values

Posted on by Bernie Borges

Career Success with Recognition and Awards

April Segovia’s career journey at iQor is both impressive and inspiring. April joined iQor as an operations supervisor in 2016 with six years of experience in the BPO industry.

Her career journey at iQor has been challenging, in a good way. The telco client she supported started with 15 call center agents. The campaign was so successful that her team’s headcount tripled in just a few months.

April was recognized as Top Supervisor in 2018 in Manila for her work at iQor’s Bacolod site. Earning this distinction is largely due to April embracing iQor’s values, always being committed to doing the right thing for the client and other iQor employees, no matter their role. This award recognition event was held at another iQor facility, where she met many others and expanded her network at iQor. Her leadership team is thrilled about her achievement.

Just a few months after receiving the Top Supervisor award, doors began to open for April. She recognized an opportunity to apply for a manager position. Even though she was somewhat challenged by it, the support from her direct manager and others around her encouraged her to go for it. April became an Apprentice Manager, and after just six months in that role, she was promoted to full-fledged manager. April realized that by believing in herself and the support of her peers and manager, she could grow into even more seemingly challenging roles and succeed. 

April was very excited to take on this new manager role. She was leading a team at the same client under a new program. This time, she was challenged to meet the needs of this program which was in high growth mode. The agent headcount and supervisor headcount were doubling rapidly. She managed six teams with fifteen agents each. As the client expanded their program with iQor due to its success, April pioneered ramp-up on this program including training and nesting programs that allowed for the headcount to grow, all while keeping the client exceedingly happy with the results.

April’s rapid success at iQor as a call center operations supervisor and manager for a telecom client is an inspiration to anyone seeking to grow in their career, whether at iQor or elsewhere. April attributes her success to her commitment to integrity, drive, goal setting, and, as stated earlier, living each day according to iQorian values.

She stresses the importance of always doing the right thing even when no one is looking. Her passion for such integrity is a testament to the attitude that makes her career journey at iQor a success for the client her team supports, and those who report to her.

April looks forward to a long career at iQor. She embraces challenges and opportunities to continue to grow and to build teams from within. She is currently creating opportunities for QA agents and backup trainers, among others. 

April enjoys her work at iQor, and her authenticity is evident in the video recording of this episode, where she shares her story. When she is not working, April enjoys spending time with her five dogs. April’s family is very supportive of her dog family, one of which is a recently adopted puppy at the time of this recording.

Discover career opportunities at iQor here: https://jobs.iqor.com/

Ep. 19 How ThinScale Technology Transforms the Work-at-Home Experience for Call Center Agents

Posted on by Blake Graves

Work-at-Home Contact Center Agents are Secure and Happy

This episode features Andrew NcNeile, Chief Customer Officer, ThinScale Technology. Andrew is responsible for sales and marketing operations. His team focuses on helping BPOs deliver endpoint security to bring-your-own-device (BYOD) employees through Secure Remote Worker. Secure Remote Worker allows BPOs to improve security, manageability of IT, and recruit agents from different locations, resulting in a better agent experience.  

Background

At the start of 2020, iQor had a stable, robust work-at-home solution in place, having deployed it years earlier to various domestic and offshore customer care programs. But as COVID-19 began impacting global operations in March of 2020, the company saw the demand for work-at-home solutions expand rapidly and took the opportunity to strengthen its infrastructure with a BYOD solution.

A large segment of iQor’s work-at-home team now utilizes a BYOD work-at-home solution. We researched the marketplace for a technology enabling Work-at-Home employees to secure their personal PCs to work remotely as frontline agents for our clients’ customer experience programs. We selected ThinScale Technology as our partner for BYOD endpoint security.

Need for Speed

iQor needed to meet our client’s needs while meeting our employee’s need to work remotely during the pandemic. In the early days of COVID, iQor moved 18,000 employees to work-at-home in three weeks! An amazing achievement that preserved both the employee and customer experience.

BPOs who adopted an early relationship with ThinScale could make rapid transitions of agents to work-at-home, as mentioned above.

For example, in Trinidad and Tobago, iQor moved 95% of our team to work at home in a matter of days. The move was applauded by the Minister of Trade, Gopee-Scoon

“iQor Trinidad Limited, a global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) which offers support for several international telecommunication and retail companies, has managed to retain its employee base over 1,000 persons and has transitioned 95% of its workforce to work-at-home providing an internet allowance to support team members who required that extra support.”

More Robust Recruiting

iQor needed to expand recruiting beyond where the company has a physical presence (domestic, nearshore, and offshore) and into untapped labor pools in non-urban areas that offer equally irresistible talent looking for an opportunity to work from home. A survey in 2020 reveals that 51% of knowledge workers reported a productivity boost working from home during the pandemic with fewer meetings, no commute time, and fewer interruptions.

ThinScale worked with BPOs for more than one year before the pandemic to provide a validation link for the agent during the recruitment process. Agents download a validation link to their device, and they are ready to go. This allows us to recruit people who reside far away from our physical facilities. We can now recruit from remote towns with talent pools, allowing us to source agents at speed.

For example, iQor is a leader in seasonal staffing services for retailers, utilities, catalog companies, and other segments, with on average year-round teams representing roughly 3,500 employees. When holidays or events for a business drive customer interactions higher, iQor proactively grows the employee base by 164% in anticipation of the demand. This may not sound like much until you realize that’s it’s adding about 5,000 new employees who need to be experts on day one, bringing the total to over 9,000 employees for a window of time. And this can repeat itself throughout the year in planned and unplanned ways. With our secure work-at-home model, we’re very efficient at quickly recruiting and onboarding frontline customer experience employees.

Non-Invasive to Employee’s Device

The ability for agents to configure their devices with Secure Remote Worker without physically installing software is very productive. A single link installer eliminates shipping costs and complex logistics. The agent simply clicks a link to install the ThinScale Technology Secure Remote Worker product, and they are available to work securely immediately.

Once an agent logs out, the agent is completely disconnected from all work-related functions, enabling the agent to fully disconnect and unwind from work. This is an example of iQor’s commitment to creating happy employees.

Security

We needed to mirror security to the same level of security at iQor facilities as required by our clients.

The Bring-Your-Own-Device solution allows iQor to leverage our agents’ devices by temporarily using ThinScale’s Secure Remote Worker platform to lock down a device. Once locked down, the employee cannot access personal programs or software and logs into iQor’s secure cloud environment—the same environment accessed as when the employee is on-site. 

Our Working Relationship

Andrew says that working with iQor has been very cooperative from the beginning. Led by Tarn Shant at iQor, the relationship has been a sense of partnership. We’ve mutually built an operation that is working well for both of us.

Andrew’s Fun

At the time of this recording, Andrew had just returned from holiday, where he surfed in Ireland in cold weather in the rain. During non-COVID times, he loves to travel and enjoys skiing. He is also an avid reader and enjoys the theater.

Visit thinscale.com to learn more about Remote Worker Security. Learn more about iQor digital customer experience capabilities.