Selection Key to Retention

While customer service call centers are becoming more prevalent in the United States, the principles described in this article would apply to many different industries across the business spectrum.

The front lines of a corporate call center are often charged with emotion, and companies need to account for that when hiring and training workers to take on this critical role in customer contact. There is a growing need for workers who have to deal constantly with the public to manage emotions--and this is especially true for those on the phones.

With an estimated 3 percent of the U.S. workforce employed in call centers, the emotional labor of dealing with customers can lead to costly employee burnout and high turnover rates. It's important to figure out ways to counter stressful situations so that employees are not feeling overwhelmed by their work, so they are not building up more steam.

According to the results of research on workers' mood, performance and burnout conducted at a large property and casualty insurer, a group of 40 call center workers received computer prompts to answer four short questionnaires at the beginning and end of the day, and another two at random times, to gauge their mood. In addition, the researchers taped the workers during the period and coded the more than 6,000 calls in order to develop an objective measure of the emotions evoked during those calls. Each worker's overall positive or negative personal nature was also evaluated and controlled for in the research.

When we think about call center workers, one of the biggest challenges is to remain resilient to the anger and hostility that can come their way. The opposite side of the coin is what if a customer is pleasant and cheerful, does that infuse the call center worker with energy and a positive mood?

What was heard in the calls listened to, and in focus groups, was that there are a wide variety of emotions, from very negative hostile ones to very sad ones. In addition, there were incredibly difficult calls coming in that referred to events surrounding the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

Earlier work shows an emotional spillover between home and work for employees. Results of this study suggested that problems at home do not necessarily lead to problems at work. It was found there was more evidence of enrichment--where positive emotions from home spilled over and caused people to be more engaged with work. Negative emotions also spilled over and caused people to be more engaged with their work. Employers fear spillover from home will cause workers to be disengaged, but people try to escape from a negative experience by throwing themselves into another role.

Preliminary results of an insurance company call center research showed that worker' moods coming into the job surface throughout the day. If workers arrived in a positive mood, they were likely to stay that way and the same held true if they arrived in a bad mood. As for the contagion effect of customers, there again appears to be spillover, but more for positive interactions than for negative ones. Employees are skilled and able to segment that away from themselves, but they let in the positive if the customer is cheerful and happy?Perhaps it's a coping mechanism.

In focus groups, call center workers routinely say the hardest part of their job is that they know how to help the customer, but do not have the authority to take action, such as waiving a late fee. This forces the customer to get angry enough that he or she asks to speak to a person who has authority. It's incredibly frustrating for the initial call center representative.

Call center processes and operations should be better designed to anticipate callers' needs and make sure those calls are routed most effectively to people who can actually help the customer. In the command and control model, in essence you set it up so that the customer has to get angry or upset with you before his or her issues can get resolved. You're signaling to the customer that talking loudly and screaming gets you what you want.

With the increasing use of foreign call centers, U.S. workers can feel even greater pressure, which then leads to burnout. Only a small percentage of these workers are in a union. With technology, a flick of a switch can move their jobs away. Workers say that they are afraid to complain for fear of being let go.

Hiring and training

According to one executive with a large human resource company and a consultant to several large call centers, it is important for companies to stick to the fundamentals when hiring and managing call center employees. First, companies must understand their own organization in order to select the right person for the job. If you focus on understanding the job and build a selection system, you want to start with the biggest impact and build on that. For example, companies should consider whether the job opening is team-based or individually oriented when drafting selection criteria. It makes a great deal of difference what product people are supporting.

You should be cautious in the practice of moving customer service representatives into sales positions in which people who are courteous and friendly may be uncomfortable selling. In addition, an overemphasis on courtesy can be damaging. The danger is you have people with great courtesy and presentation on the phone and they give bad information all the time. Studies urge employers to create ways to measure and evaluate their call center hiring. Call center managers, should focus on many metrics. Shouldn't you do the same thing for the selection process? We probably know the manager that consistently makes the best quality hires. You should, and you can, measure that.

Culture fits, and misfits

A noted senior research consultant at an international consulting firm in the northeastern U. S. suggested companies make a better effort to hire employees who will fit into the culture of their organization. Call centers typically experience a 30 percent annual turnover in employees.

Companies should develop measures to test for organization fit in hiring new employees. In the business world a lot of people assume they know fit and talk about fit, but they really don't put a lot of research rigor around it. They use a lot of subjective techniques. They say, 'My gut [tells me],' or 'My sense is.'

Companies can use front-line managers to develop a set of "descriptors" defining the company's culture. For example, one descriptor might be the word "predictable" --defined as an environment in which representatives know what to expect day to day. In a research project, one researcher used 54 descriptors to create profiles of 11 companies that were matched against 360 employee responses. The employees were grouped into seven categories assessing the level of cultural match. Of the employees who were an extreme mismatch, only 11 percent were still on the job a year later. Of those with a very strong match to the organization's culture, 81 percent were still at their jobs a year later. Of those in the middle of the spectrum, with a moderate match, 68 percent were on the job a year later.

The moral of the tale is that in an applied sense the person-organization fit was a significant predictor of turnover.

Lately, companies have begun placing more emphasis on better hiring practices, coaching and training (for both agents and supervisors). They've also begun clarifying career paths for their employees along with giving customers an opportunity to evaluate their experiences with call center staff. The feedback from this latter initiative is then shared with call center agents to help them build an emotional connection to both the company and its customers.

Companies are adopting approaches that give them more direct and immediate feedback from customers. Not only does this provide positive reinforcement from customers, but it also enables companies to pinpoint improvements that create job validation and satisfaction for employees.

Historically, contact centers have been viewed as production facilities and cost operations. This view is changing, and more companies are focusing on customers and on retention efforts. At the heart of these efforts is a solidly working contact center.

If you want to know more about developing a person-organization fit for your organization, contact MuRF Systems, Inc. and let our consultants help improve your retention metrics.