ICMI's Customer Management Insight - September 2007 - (Page 11) CONTACT CENTER SPOTLIGHT Amex de España contact center staff celebrate their winning of several industry awards. Customer Service Leader Pepa Fernandez is all smiles in her contact center. tenure of more than 10 years, with another 20 percent of agents having tenure of three to five years. The center has consistently maintained a voluntary turnover rate of less than 8 percent annually. Such remarkably low attrition can be attributed to many factors, but starts with the center’s forwardthinking hiring program. Hiring is viewed by managers as a retention tool, not merely a tool to get butts in seats. In addition to screening and assessing agent candidates’ skills and aptitude, the center provides candidates with a thorough job preview so that they can see exactly what the agent position entails, thus helping them make a more informed decision should they be offered a job. “Our retention strategy for call center employees begins at the hiring process, explains Fernandez. ” “[Applicants] are exposed to the work environment, the job itself — by listening to calls with an agent — and introduced to some team leaders, managers and a few colleagues. ” Once a qualified and enthusiastic agent is on board, the center still needs to keep him or her fully engaged to ensure commitment as well as high performance and customer satisfaction. That’s where Amex de España’s solid training, coaching, development and recognition programs come into play. In addition to comprehensive newhire training — featuring a healthy mix of didactic and practical instruction — the center is big on providing each agent with plenty of ongoing coaching and training, which is closely tied to quality monitoring results. And this coaching and training involves much more than just having a supervisor listen to calls and tell the employee what he or she needs to do. Agents are praised for good work, and are very much involved in establishing goals for improvement. “Feedback is given on an individual basis, says Fernandez, “and ” the rep has the opportunity to listen to their calls during the session. Focus is put on rewarding and recognizing high performance and opportunities for improvement. Action plans, training, coaching and mentoring needs are agreed upon, with the rep setting targets that will help increase performance in the coming months. ” While long tenure and continuous improvement are pretty good hints that agents are engaged and satisfied, Amex de España likes to hear it straight from agents. Managers solicit such feedback via an annual employee survey, which contains 14 different dimensions. The latest such survey yielded the following results (warning: the results you are about to read may make you cringe with envy): 94 percent for Leadership Effectiveness; 87 percent for Employee Engagement; and 87 percent for the Job Itself. Of course, nothing is as revealing as a direct quote from an actual agent in the center. “From the very first moment here, I realized that this was an exceptional place to work, where my leaders and colleagues made me feel comfortable, supported and valued, ” says Elena Cardenas Sarralde, who has worked as a customer service rep at Amex de España’s contact center for more than four years. “This environment of respect and care has motivated me to perform to the best and serve my customers with the same respect and care, and pushes me to continue growing and developing myself. ” • | icmi’s insight www.icmi.com SEPTEMBER 2007 11 http://www.icmi.com
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