Call Center Philippines

What role can incentives play in motivation enhancement?

Incentives can go a long way in making agents feel valued and part of a winning team. Incentives come in many forms:

• Sales Incentives: Give your agents a commission for closing sales or achieving other business successes.

• Bonuses: Whether cash, gift cards or prizes, bonuses recognize agents who have reached a performance, attendance, job-anniversary date or other critical milestone.

• Contests: Sales organizations often use contests to reward individuals who meet specific performance goals. The approach works just as well in a call center.

• Intangible Rewards: Agents who meet minor performance goals can be rewarded with time for playing computer games, an extended lunch break or a preferred parking space.

• Promotions: A prestigious job title like “Senior Support Agent” costs nothing yet tells the individual that their experience and performance is valued by the organization.

• Career Guidance: Besides a better job title, top performers should be rewarded with career track incentives, such as additional training opportunities and work responsibilities. These actions will assure your highfliers that their productivity is leading them toward greater opportunities within the organization.

Incentives aren’t the only way of motivating agents, but they’re powerful tools that when carefully applied can be used to build a more productive work force.

How do I know what agents really want?

The best way to know what agents want is to listen to what they have to say.

This can be accomplished through surveys and focus groups that enable agents to vent their complaints and express their needs.

Be sure to include a cross-section of all agents in your outreach initiatives: new hires, veterans, high-performers, laggards, the disgruntled and the jubilant.

What effect does call-center culture have on agent motivation?

Agents take their cues from call-center bosses. Managers and supervisors who appear tired, distracted, angry or bored are hardly great motivators.

Building agent enthusiasm requires a management team that’s involved, responsive, and ready to take on projects with energy and enthusiasm. Bosses should exude excitement over small success and acknowledge agents’ contributions.

Will better morale automatically lead to lower turnover?

Enhanced morale can reduce staff churn by increasing satisfaction. Few agents will leave a job simply because a competitor pays 25 or 50 cents more per hour.

On the other hand, low turnover isn’t necessarily indicative of a productive work force. Underachieving agents may feel perfectly happy in their work and not be tempted by greener pastures, particularly if they believe their jobs aren’t at risk.

Call-center managers must recognize the difference between agent satisfaction and complacency, and be willing to weed out low-scoring agents despite the potential negative impact on staff churn.

When it comes to call-center agents, morale and motivation are closely interlinked. Morale is the enthusiasm agents have for their work. When agents feel valued and satisfied, those emotions tend to be reflected in their performance and they become motivated.

What is the best way to boost agent motivation?

There is no one “best way” to increase motivation. Morale plays a big role. The four basic areas that affect agent motivation are:

• Physical Environment:
  • Is the call center located in a safe neighborhood?
  • Is the facility clean and well organized?
  • Is it modern and attractive?
  • Is it sufficiently heated and cooled

• Working Environment:
  • Is the furniture and equipment in good working order?
  • Do the fixtures support the agents or work against them?

• Intellectual Environment:
  • Do the agents have the training and coaching they need to do their job?
  • Are call-center rules logical and well stated, or just a hodgepodge of decrees that have accumulated over the years?

• Emotional Environment:
  • Are supervisors responsive to agents’ questions?
  • Are they supportive in tough times?
  • Do they admit mistakes?
  • Are they flexible enough to bend the rules in extraordinary situations?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the government will be able to realize its dream of providing more decent and high-paying jobs for the Filipino people now that the international businessmen have recognized the capability of the Philippines to become a developed country in the near future.

Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila, on the other hand reported to the President that the Philippines ’stood tall’ in front of top businessmen of the world who recognized the Arroyo administration’s efforts to bring back the positive momentum of the economy.

Secretary Favila said the international community, especially top businessmen, acknowledged the growing economy of the Philippines under the Arroyo administration.

As a result of this, Favila said the Kenneth Tachman, CEO of Teletech, a leading business process outsourcing company in the world, had the intentions to expand their business in the Philippines.

Teletech is planning to establish five new call centers in the country. DTI is eyeing Camarines Sur in Bicol, Valencia town in Negros Oriental, Dumaguete City and Davao as new locations for Teletech’s expansion program.

Teletech is also planning to buy an island in the country to be developed as a tourist resort after learning that tourism is one of the biggest income earners of the Philippines.

Aside from call centers, Favila told the President that Prakash Hinduja, who owns big businesses in India and is one of the top 1,000 corporations in the world, also expressed his strong intention to expand his call center operations and establish a manufacturing company in the country.

Managers just hate it when their agents can’t “overcome” objections.

When writing an article many years ago about “Overcoming Objections,” it occurred to me that customers do not like salespeople who make them feel wrong or stupid. Agents are trained in pointing out how wrong customers are. What’s wrong with this picture?

Sadly, some salespeople think it is their job to point out the mistakes of the customer, declare the stupidity of what the customer is thinking and then when the agents don’t “win,” they lose their self-esteem and wonder why they can’t succeed in “overcoming” objections. As leaders, why don’t we fix this?

When salespeople lose confidence in themselves, they start making up reasons why customers don’t want to buy and managers pull their hair out .

Agents need to learn what works and what doesn’t work when the customer says “no” or “maybe.” Sometimes no means no.

Here are the Ten Things to Remember About Overcoming Objections:

1. Know the difference between a “no” and “I’m not sure.”

• Be sure your agents know if the customer has a different opinion or a serious money problem.
• You must fix the real issue, not just brag and “overcome” it with clever words.

2. Be prepared for the top-four objections.

• Money: The price is too high, the payments are not easy, the shipping is too expensive.
• Need: The customer has too much product or it doesn’t fit the customer’s needs.
• Time: The time isn’t right, later is better, sooner is worse.
• Person: The last encounter with an agent was not a happy one.

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The Economics of Customer Relationships

The great balancing act! Many companies are dealing with what appears to be conflicting issues. How do you determine the correct balance between the handling of customers effectively and maintaining appropriate services levels.

To effectively design your service level and customer experience, you need to understand the financial drivers behind your service level performance. It is imperative to understand what the value of each relationship is, as well as the costs of complaints. Serving different customers differently is another critical principle to maximizing your customers’ relationship value.

This session will focus on identifying the key financial drivers of customer relationships and how to apply them to design an optimal customer experience.  The webcast will include results from the latest CEM benchmark study regarding organizations understanding of the economics of relationship driving their business.
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Most organizations understand the importance of obtaining feedback to gain a true perspective of how well they meet their customers’ expectations. However, interpreting survey results and using that knowledge effectively is often difficult. Doing this successfully requires a deeper understanding of the context in which a customer’s responses were given.

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How to Improve Your Agent Retention:

Effective Best Practices to Reduce Agent Turnover

There is no single reason for high turnover in contact centers. Common reasons include; schedule poor relationships between agents and supervisors, incorrect hiring decisions, lack of career path, poor skills development, and the list goes on. Some of these are just a contact center fact of life. Contact centers can be stressful places to work, and many of the agents are a flight risks to start with. Moreover, the sheer volume of hiring all but guarantees that a large percentage of bad hires will slip through the cracks.

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Callcentres.net is launching the 2008 Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report.

First published in 1997, the Asian Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Report has become the definitive Asian contact centre industry reference.

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How to Turn First Calls into a Relationship

FREE Live Webinar on Wednesday, March 12, 2008
11 AM PST (2 PM EST)

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Kineon Walker, Citrix Online

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