Call Center Excellence
1 Nov, 2008
By: Linda Driscoll-DobelTo celebrate excellence in the call center environment, a special awards program was established by Call Center IQ, and the crème of the crop responded. Submitting companies included Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 organizations that dedicate themselves to superior thinking, creativity and execution across the full spectrum of call center functions. In keeping with Contact Professional’s commitment to honoring and highlighting excellence among contact professionals, we are highlighting this award’s honorees in an effort to help others emulate some of their practices and theories.
As mentioned, the Excellence Awards are designed to honor, recognize and promote call centers that demonstrate true best practices in the call center spectrum. Leading organizations were identified and assessed by a group of call center experts and leaders. After accurate and objective evaluation of the true effectiveness of top call center programs, winners who displayed true best practices in each category were chosen.
Call center leaders and organizations were honored at the Gala Dinner and Call Center Excellence Awards Ceremony, held June 24, 2008 during the 9th Annual Call Center Week in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The prestigious awards were grouped into eight categories, with the winners and first-place runner ups as follows:
Best in Class Call Center (over 200 staff)
- Winner: CVS Caremark
- Runner Up: Whirlpool
Best in Class Call Center (50-200 staff)
- Winner: Mass Mutual Financial
- Runner Up: LeasePlan USA
Best in Class Call Center (under 50 staff)
- Winner: Albridge Solutions
- Runner Up: City of Minneapolis, 311
Call Center Leader of the Year
- Winner: Whirlpool
- Runner Up: Albridge Solutions
Best Use of Voice of the Customer
- Winner: Horace Mann Insurance Companies
- Runner Up: Cross Country Auto
Best Call Center Culture
- Winner: Whirlpool
- Runner Up: CVS Caremark
Best Use of Technology
- Winner: Whirlpool
- Runner Up: Albridge Solutions
Best Performance Leveraging the Customer Experience as a Strategic Business Driver
- Winner: NCO Customer Management, Inc.
- Runner Up: Mass Mutual Financial
Contact Professional magazine’s editorial staff thought our readers could benefit from reading more about what these companies do that makes them award worthy. So we posed a number of questions to the winners to determine just that. We are happy to say that five of the top winners --- Whirlpool, CVS Caremark, Mass Mutual Financial, Albridge Solutions, Inc. and NCO Customer Management, Inc. --- graciously took the time to answer our questions so we may share their practices with you. Following is a sampling of their replies.
Contact Professional (CP): One of the criteria for receiving a Call Center Excellence Award was to honor an innovative call center solution, or an innovative individual. What do you feel made you stand out from the rest of the applicants?
Mass Mutual Financial: beyond the tactical improvements to service, technology or processes, our focus is on creating a culture of empowerment, driven by performance and accountability. It is our belief that when our employees feel empowered and are in a supportive culture where they are motivated to perform their best, our customers benefit from exceptional service.
CP: How did you achieve this?
We have done this by incorporating a unique approach to creating work schedules. Many call centers create work schedules based solely on seniority; the longer you are in the call center, the better your work schedule. We believe that performance should drive work schedules and have created a Performance Based Scheduling (PBS) system where measures like Quality, Adherence, After Call Work, Attendance and Seniority will be weighted and will determine schedule. Those with the higher rankings earn the schedule of their choice for one quarter. Each quarter the process starts over again, allowing for folks to work on development areas.
From Whirlpool: Whirlpool Corporation uses several innovative solutions to help make our eXperience centers stand out. For example, we work hard to ensure our employees are empowered with in-depth product knowledge and the skills to handle customers the right way and address any customer opportunity before they handle their first call. Through the use of enhanced technology, calls we receive are virtually routed to the appropriate areas for timely sales or service resolution. This has helped dramatically improve our customer focus and satisfaction.
CP: How did you achieve this?
Aligning people, processes and technology is critical. For the past several years, we have focused on ensuring that the right people are in the right positions and have the technology they need and are using consistent processes to best serve consumers. First, we structured a virtual environment to better accommodate our customers’ needs. We then defined the processes to support that environment and implemented the right technology. With the people, processes and technology aligned, our North American eXperience centers are better positioned to increase customer and employee satisfaction.
Albridge Solutions, Inc. said: The firm’s commitment to service, from the time of its founding, is a core distinguishing factor in Albridge’s success. The organization rapidly evolved from a young “start-up” company to a well-established, industry-recognized service firm in just five years. During the early growth period, Albridge’s management team recognized the benefits of investing in experienced personnel to speak with clients, advanced training to develop service professionals, as well as implementing best-of-breed technologies. These decisions were made with the expectation that the investments would result in even more accelerated growth, with service as a key differentiator.
CP: How did you achieve this?
First we made the case to senior management and the sales team that the investment in the call center and our client services team would deliver a return on investment. This was based on the fact that Albridge’s technology is competitively sold on the service we provide, not just the technology product. The service became a key component of the overall value within the sales process.
Second, we spend a tremendous amount of time hiring the right people. Approximately 20 percent of management’s time and even part of our current Service Professionals’ time is focused on interviews. The client service team is not a “What’s your balance?” call center. Client contacts are conversational by design and enable our Service Professionals to identify multiple cross- and up-sell opportunities. Additionally, multiple issues can be addressed on one call, versus multiple repeat calls.
Last, we continuously evolve based on our client’s feedback and their needs. The team is restructured periodically to allow for more support of critical client service needs. This can range from expanding support hours to adding more specialized support teams.
CVS Caremark Customer Care told us the following: The CVS Caremark Customer Care approach to how we hire, retain, communicate with and schedule the workflow for our team members make us stand out from our competition.
CP: How did you achieve this?
Our organization has evolved from a temporary to permanent hiring model. As a result, we ensure we have the right talent in place by hiring employees onto the team and aggressively managing surplus for non-peak periods. We also developed new hiring profiles for our call center representatives, providing both a higher quality of customer service representative to help our customers, as well as making CVS Caremark’s call centers a preferred place to work in the markets we serve.
We have improved our scheduling process for team members, ensured we offer competitive wages in all of our markets and changed our focus from traditional call center metrics to an emphasis on coaching behaviors using the latest technology and systems. In addition, we revised our training model to ensure a stronger emphasis on specific job-related issues and customer service skills and provided an improved on-boarding experience for our new employees.
Finally, over the past year we integrated the legacy CVS PharmaCare organization into the new CVS Caremark culture so we can provide one consistent experience to all our customers.
As a result, scores for the call center team within our internal employee Engagement Survey in 2007 were among the highest in the company, even surpassing most industry benchmarks. We made sure that we followed up on these results, completed the implementation of action plans resulting from the employee Engagement Survey, and re-surveyed our employees at the end of 2007.
NCO Customer Management, Inc. does some great things as well. Here’s what they told us: We believe our ability to listen to our client, gain a picture of what they envision and provide the proper solution was a big part of our success. Our ability to think outside the box and provide innovative options and alternative solutions also was a factor. Overall, our flexibility and scalability to provide a huge ramp in a short timeframe — without sacrificing quality — set us apart.
CP: How did you achieve this?
We leveraged the experience of our management team and program personnel to not only perform up to our client’s high standards, but exceed those expectations. We also utilized our network of contact centers to provide the client with geographic locations that were appealing and offered an intelligent and diligent workforce for the contact center.
Contact Professional hopes you found inspiration in these answers.
