Now Is the Time to Invest in Your Call Center’s Future
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
Long gone are the days when all you needed was a telephone and a message pad to process calls. For decades call centers have relied on technology to increase efficiency and optimize results. And never has that been truer than right now.
Consider these four reasons to invest in technology for your medical call center.
1. Save Time and Increase Efficiency
Advanced technology can offer time-saving processes that will increase the efficiency of your staff. This means they can do more work in the same time or the same work in less time.
If this is the case, you can perform an analysis to calculate your payback period. This is a great approach to cost justify a technology investment.
2. Provide Additional Services
Older equipment can limit the scope of services you provide, but an upgrade may allow you to increase the scope of what you offer to your patients or callers. Again, you can calculate the payback period of your investment.
3. Go Online
Many older systems are premise based, making it difficult to have a distributed workforce or to establish remote work sessions. The present need for people to work at home may never go away, and this development has accelerated the trend toward work-at-home scenarios.
Your future may depend on having this flexibility, so make the move today to prepare for tomorrow.
4. Avoid Obsolescence
A final consideration is platform age. Sometimes you take a system as far as it will let you, and then it limits the service you provide to callers.
If you’re trying to operate using out-of-date technology, you may not be able to cost justify the investment by calculating the payback period or present it as a strategic move to prepare for the future.
But that doesn’t remove the fact that replacing an obsolete system is an essential move if you want to be a viable resource for your organization and callers.
Conclusion
Your call center may already have the best technology available. But remember that systems are always changing, and what’s best today won’t be the best tomorrow. Most call centers, however, have a platform with at least a few areas that need improving.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
What does your healthcare contact center stand for? How do you stand out in an industry with many options? Understanding who you are is the first step to determining your distinctive characteristics. But why does this matter?
This is important because when you have a unique quality then your stakeholders have something to rally around. They have a reason to be proud. Short of that you offer nothing to draw them in and keep them close. They have nothing to celebrate.
Though this most obviously applies to outsource call centers, it’s also applicable to in-house operations too. Here are some categories to consider.
Service
The first place most call centers look at to distinguish themselves is their service level. They often focus on quality service. Though there are many ways to define this, some look at customer satisfaction (CSAT). Most every call center claims to offer quality service. However, saying it and doing it are two different things. To trumpet service quality with integrity requires that a third-party confirm it. Self-pronounced claims of quality service mean nothing.
Aside from quality, other service level considerations might be answering calls quickly (average speed to answer: ASA) or handling requests on one contact (first call resolution: FCR). Other ways to stand out include a low error rate or around-the-clock accessibility.
Staff
A second area to consider is how you relate to your staff. Though few employees—if any—will say they’re overpaid or over appreciated, look at how you regard your staff. Employees who receive proper compensation and know how much they’re appreciated tend to work harder and produce better outcomes. The side effect of this is improved service to callers, as well as a healthier financial position.
In call centers, where margins are thin, leaders often struggle with their compensation packages. They know that a 5 percent increase in payroll can move a profitable (or cash-positive) operation into an unprofitable (or cash-negative) one. Yet others successfully apply the adage of “pay more and expect more.”
Not all approaches to enhancing the relationship with your staff, however, require a financial investment. Also consider intangible ways to stand out. This includes letting employees know how much you appreciate them, connecting with them on a personal level, and even taking a simple step of giving them a sincere “thank you” for their work.
Finances
A third area to consider is the financial aspect. Is your operation fiscally strong? A call center that produces consistent positive cash flow has long-term viability. This means they generate profits for their owners or are a profit center for their organization. They stand out. Having financial stability can permeate an entire operation with positivity.
Next, do you provide your staff with the best tools possible? Is their work environment something they’re proud to enter every day? Though these may not seem as relevant of a consideration to use to define your call center, they can be. Employees in a top-notch work environment will speak highly of their jobs and their employer to their families and friends. This can ripple through the local area, elevating the call center in the process.
Conclusion
Though it’s good to address all these areas and strive to make them as good as you can, it’s impossible to make everything a priority. Attempting to do so will cause all areas to suffer.
Without neglecting any of these considerations, however, strive to elevate one above all others. Let this become the distinctive characteristic that your call center is known for and celebrated. This will help you stand out among all others and have a lasting impact for all stakeholders: your callers, your employees, and your organization.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Discover How to Effectively Work in a Home Office, Whether Long-Term or Short-Term
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
I recently celebrated twenty years of working from home. For the first year I divided my time between my home office and a traditional office. I followed that with a couple more years that included travel. But for the last sixteen years I’ve worked exclusively from home. It’s an ideal arrangement, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact, I doubt I could ever return to a job that required me to go into an office to work each day.
Here are some of the key considerations to make a work-at-home scenario a success.
Workspace
A key element to effectively work from home is to have a dedicated workspace you can call your own. For me, an unused bedroom became my office. When I’m in my home office, I work. When I leave, I stop.
But not everyone has a spare room they can take over. If that’s the case, can you carve out a corner in another room? Can you make a room multifunctional, where it works as an office during office hours and serves as family space the rest of the time? Regardless, the goal is training yourself so that when you go to your office—whatever it may look like—you’re conditioned to work and not do anything else.
Distraction Free
Having a workspace without distractions is ideal, but it’s not always feasible. In that case, the goal is to reduce distractions is much as possible. Remove everything from your home office that you don’t need for work. This includes televisions, radios, and books. Delete games from your computer, as well as other programs that don’t facilitate work.
Many home workers buy a white noise machine, turn on a fan, or listen to instrumental music so they can tune out household activities that may occur as they’re trying to work. If you have an office door, close it. Post office hours in your work area. Then enforce them.
Expectations
Establish expectations with family and friends. When I began working at home, I told our young children that until 5 p.m. they were not to interrupt me for any reason unless they were sick or bleeding. That did the trick. Other family members were a bit harder to train, but the point is to insist that your family and friends respect your time in your home office as sacred and not assume you’re available for nonwork activities. This also means not answering your home phone or taking personal calls while you’re working.
Routine
Just as when you work in an office location and have a series of steps you do before work and after work, do the same for your home office. Though it’s quite feasible to do so, don’t work in your pajamas. It conditions you to not take work seriously or put forth your best effort.
Also, don’t eat meals or snacks in your office. Eat breakfast before you arrive, enjoy supper afterward, and leave your office for lunch. Doing so promotes focus, priority, and professionalism.
Tools
An effective office requires tools. First up is a fast and stable internet connection. I can’t think of a job you can do from home for long without internet access. Get the best that you can afford, and don’t let online access hinder your success when you work from home.
A slow or buggy computer is another detriment. Every second of delay or frustration at your computer provides time you’re not being productive. The seconds add up to minutes and minutes add up to hours. Again, get the best computer you can afford. Install all the same programs on your home computer as you have at the office. Don’t skimp.
Also look for tools that you may not use in your workplace office, such as Skype or Zoom so that you can connect with your coworkers as needed.
Schedule
If you’re work-at-home situation is direct contact center work, then your scheduler will tell you when to work. Easy-peasy.
For everyone else, establish your own schedule, just as you would in a workplace setting. You start at a specific time, end at a specific time, and take time out for lunch and breaks. The rest of the time you should be in your office working.
The converse of this is outside of your work schedule you should not be in your office working. This takes us to the final consideration.
Balance
We often talk about work-life balance. Though always a critical consideration, balance looms as an even bigger concern when you work and live in the same place. This means segregating your work from the rest of your life, even though both happen at the same location. Some people prefer the word compartmentalize: to place work in one mental compartment and your home life in another.
Action Steps
If you suddenly find yourself working at home, put these tips into practice as soon as possible. Then you will experience a successful, enjoyable, and effective situation.
If you’re planning to one day work at home, put these steps into place before you start. It will make all the difference.
When done right, working at home can increase productivity, decrease stress, and improve your enjoyment of your work. Though you might now be working at home as a temporary solution to a problem outside your control, you might find the results so beneficial that you want to turn working at home into a permanent scenario.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Take Steps to Meet the Healthcare Needs of Your Healthcare Call Center Staff
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
I enjoy going to the zoo with family. We go several times each year. A special bonus are those opportunities to interact with the zookeepers and learn more about the animals under their care. During a recent visit we had the privilege of an extended discussion with one of the caretakers after she tended to the zoo’s three lions.
She shared insider information about their feeding, their training, and their healthcare. After covering the extensive medical care these three amazing creatures receive—the testing, monitoring, medication, and access to specialists—she grew momentarily somber. “They receive much better healthcare than I do.” We sadly nodded that we understood. Then she perked up and resumed telling us about these animals that she so clearly loves.
I wonder if a similar thing happens in our healthcare call centers. Do employees hang up from a phone call and shake their heads in dismay, muttering “That caller receives far better healthcare than I do.”? I hope not, but I fear it’s true far more often than it’s not.
It may be understandable for this to happen occasionally, but it’s inexcusable if it happens often. This needs to change. Take steps to better meet the healthcare needs of healthcare call center staff.
To expect workers in healthcare call centers to serve patients and callers with excellence, they must first have a good perspective for them to work from. This includes providing healthcare workers with adequate healthcare coverage and services.
Falling short of doing so handicaps them from performing their jobs with distinction and serving callers with appropriate empathy. It would be like making restaurant staff work on an empty stomach but expecting it to not impact their patrons’ experience.
Call centers invest money on ongoing agent training, coaching, and quality assurance programs. Make sure to also invest in call center staff’s healthcare. This will help ensure that they better connect with the people they talk to on the phone, without negativity and resentment showing through.
A key aspect of enabling call-center staff to best meet the healthcare needs of callers is to start by making sure you best meet the healthcare needs of your staff. If you find yourself needing to make changes, you may not be able to fix everything all at one time. But you can move in that direction. Start today.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Let Your Call Center Employees Know You Appreciate Their Work
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
We just celebrated Thanksgiving in the United States, which is a time where we typically reflect on what we’re thankful for—when we’re not scarfing down a holiday feast.
Do you let your staff know you appreciate them? I’m sure you’ll say yes, but what will they say? I’m not being critical, but I am seeking to prompt some deep consideration into how you thank your staff.
I suspect you’re already making a list:
You provide employment, a paycheck, and a decent compensation package
You send a Thanksgiving card, note, or even a small bonus
You give them a frozen turkey or gift card
You serve a Thanksgiving meal for those who work on Thanksgiving
You pay a bonus for those who work over the holiday weekend
These things are great, but your staff has grown to expect them. These efforts at indicating gratitude, while appreciated, don’t convey that you’re truly thankful for your staff and the work they do throughout the year. If they are to realize that you appreciate them, you need to find a better way to say thank you.
I once had a boss who personally gave me my paycheck every week. Though a man of few words, he would hand me my check, look me in the eye, and say “thank you.” He did this for all twenty to thirty people in his department, without fail, every pay period.
That was thirty years ago, but I still remember it as if it just happened. Though he was a hard man to figure out and often frustrating to work for, I had no doubt that he appreciated my efforts. His periodic, heartfelt thank you kept me motivated, even though his management style sometimes grated on my soul.
If your efforts to thank your staff fail to communicate your appreciation, it’s time for a different approach. Why not try handing each employee their paycheck, looking them in the eye, and saying “thank you.” And if your operation is too big or your staff schedule is too varied for you to do this, do it for your direct reports and encourage them to do it for theirs.
Though thanking your staff on Thanksgiving is a great start, personally thanking them every pay period will make an impression that lasts.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Today’s employees, especially Millennials and even more so Gen-Z, want employment where they can make a difference by having a positive influence through their jobs and their work.
Through Each Call
Starting at training, and reinforced on a regular basis, help employees see how each call they take makes a difference. This difference can positively impact both the caller and the person, department, or recipient of the transaction or information.
This way they’ll have dozens or even hundreds of opportunities each day to make the world a little bit better. Over the course of a year that’s thousands or tens of thousands of small but meaningful positive interactions to help impact their world in a positive way.
In the Work Environment
Beyond each call, provide opportunities for employees to help make their workplace better.
This can include serving on an ad hoc committee, assigning them additional tasks that add value, and taking on special assignments to improve their work environment and better serve callers.
Even more beneficial is when they can work together as a team when making a difference.
Offer Volunteer Opportunities
Some progressive companies
include paid time for employees to volunteer at their favorite nonprofit. When
doing so, they perceive their employer as supporting the causes that they
support. They value their work more because of this.
Though it may not be feasible for
a medical call center to offer this benefit to every entry-level employee, this
paid volunteer time could be a perk for senior operators and those who advance
in the company.
And even if you’re reluctant to
provide paid time for staff to do this, you can still support their favorite
nonprofit in other ways. This could be as simple as offering them free
voicemail service to help facilitate their favorite organizations’
communication.
Provide Matching Donations
Other forward-thinking businesses
will match employee donations, usually dollar for dollar, to nonprofit
organizations. Usually they place a cap on total matching funds, but this may
be an unneeded precaution.
But if you’re just starting this program, having a donation cap may be an easy way to test its effectiveness and limit financial risk. You can always remove or increase the cap later.
Some companies have a list of acceptable recipients for matching donations, but this could irritate employees and cause them to resent the company’s generosity and not appreciate it.
The key is to join your employees
in supporting what they support. And when you do, they’ll be more supportive of
you.
Summary
Today’s employees want a job that does more than provide income. They want work that helps them make a difference in their community and their world. Give them these opportunities, and they’ll give you their dedication.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
With your employees learning enhanced work skills, don’t leave them frustrated by not providing the opportunity for them to apply what they learned.
Though this could relate to personal growth, it’s best to focus on job-related growth potential within your organization—and not force them to seek their own growth solutions someplace else.
As you do this, you’ll show them their potential for job enhancement. This applies for both their existing position, as well as advancement opportunities.
By sharing with them that they have a future at your organization and how they can get there, they’re more likely to stick around. Not only will you have retained a valued employee, but you will have prepared them to become a more essential member of your team.
Here are some ways you can provide employee growth potential for your staff.
Add Responsibilities
Each time your staff learns a new skill or acquires enhance capabilities, look for ways to incorporate these into their current position. Often you can accomplish this by adding responsibilities to their existing job description.
As they’re afforded opportunities that their peers don’t have, they’ll see themselves as more important and more integral to your call center.
This will increase their self-esteem, improve their work attitude, and enhance their job satisfaction. All these will combine to increase their tenure with your company.
Expand Position Scope
As they prove themselves capable by handling more responsibilities, they may be ready to take on an increased scope to their job. Look for ways they can be a call center agent and something else. This may be agent and shift leader, agent and backup supervisor, or agent and trainer.
Another option is for them to serve on an ad hoc committee or workgroup to consider new software, implement a new procedure, or overhaul the training manual. Though these are short-term assignments, success in these areas prepares the employee to take on more.
Promote to a New Position
Those who have proven themselves by taking on more responsibilities and increased the scope of their job, stand to receive prime consideration for advancement opportunities in your organization. Note that this could be within the call center or to another position within the company.
Don’t be selfish and try to keep your most talented employees in your call center. Each time they advanced to other company departments, you’ll realize the benefit of having a call center ally who understands what you do and can advocate for you.
Adjust Compensation
Sometimes asking an employee to take on added responsibilities or an expanded scope falls within their current pay rate. However, don’t be stingy. Carefully assess when it’s warranted to offer a pay raise, added perk, or compensation incentive.
Failing to do so will result in them being overqualified and underpaid. Then they become a prime candidate to leave your organization and go somewhere else. Don’t make that mistake.
Develop a Career Path
We’ve already addressed the idea of developing an employee career path when we talked about learning opportunities, but career path is also appropriate when discussing employee growth potential.
When doing so, it’s critical to provide a realistic timeframe for a prospective career path. This is because you don’t know when an existing position will become open or a new one will emerge.
If you don’t include timing variability when developing a career path, your most qualified employees will grow impatient and leave if they don’t see things happening as quickly as they think they should.
Employee Growth Potential Summary
When talented staff sees the employee growth potential for their career within your organization, they are more likely to stick around so they can realize the possibilities. Most people don’t want to go through the hassle and invest the time to find a new job—unless you force them into it.
Don’t be the manager that causes your best employees to leave. This will hurt your operation and could end up benefiting your competitor.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Today’s entry-level workforce values jobs that allow them to grow mentally. Educational opportunities provided at work, or through work, help to better connect employees with the job they do, increase their job satisfaction, and lengthen their tenure.
Not only are learning opportunities a wise retention tactic, it’s also a smart recruitment tool. Many workers so value learning opportunities that they’ll take a lesser-paying job if it provides the chance to grow, versus a higher paying position that doesn’t.
Here are some learning opportunities that you can offer to your staff.
In-House Training
Delivering internally produced training to your staff is a cost-effective way to provide the learning opportunities they crave. This can be unstructured teaching offered as needed or more organized educational offerings. The best thing about developing in-house instruction is that you can tailor it to the specific needs of your call center.
Possibilities include one-on-one training, classroom scenarios, and management coaching. You don’t need to provide all these options or offer them to all employees, but the smart move is to offer some in-house training to those employees you want to keep or groom for promotion.
Local Seminars
More general business training is available in the form of local seminars. These are usually half-day or full-day events. And since they’re local, there’s little expense beyond the registration cost. Not only do these provide important skills your staff can apply to their work, it’s also a way to increase their job satisfaction and enhance their self-esteem.
Industry Events
Don’t forget industry conferences and conventions. These include both those that are healthcare related and those that are call center related. If they cover both, that’s a bonus. These opportunities, of course, are more expensive.
Registration for conferences and conventions carry a higher fee then local seminars, plus there’s also travel costs involved, which can add up. Therefore, reserve attendance at industry events for employees in management or on a management track.
Formal Education
Next on our list is post-highschool education, usually through college courses. Though this can be towards degree fulfillment, a better solution is to pick specific classes that will directly benefit your call center.
Be sure to look for opportunities to audit the class. Although this won’t result in any credentials for employees, it could reduce or eliminate the cost for the class.
For these last three options, formal seminars, industry events, and formal education, you may want to ask participants to report what they learned to their colleagues.
This has three benefits. One is that it reinforces what they learned. The second is that it allows others in your organization to also benefit from it. Third it enhances the employees’ self-esteem.
Develop a Career Path
To further enhance the value of these learning opportunities, integrate them with a career path for employees who you feel have the potential to advance in the organization.
This includes both those who you see in various future supervisory roles, as well as managerial positions and support staff functions. When employees see the potential that awaits them from these learning opportunities, they will stay with your organization longer and provide increased value while they’re there.
The Benefits of Providing Learning Opportunities for your Staff
Not only will these learning opportunities extend staff retention, they’ll also increase job satisfaction and improve performance. However, most importantly, as you train employees to do more, they become a more valued resource for your healthcare call center.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Spend More on Retaining Staff and Less on
Hiring and Training Their Replacements
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
We’ve looked at five tips to better retain call center staff. Agent compensation is first on most people’s list. However, it might not be the most important item, merely the one most cited. Pay rate alone isn’t enough to keep most call center agents happy and employed.
Other items factor into this equation. A related issue is benefits. Today’s workers expect more than decent pay. They expect benefits too. This includes part-timers. Yes, your part-timers deserve benefits. If you want to keep them, you better provide what they want.
Paid Vacation
Your agents work hard for you and your callers. They deserve a vacation.
This gives them a break from the routine of work, provides something for them to look forward to, and helps them recharge. A paid vacation is the top benefit employees seek. Be sure to provide it to them, both full and part-timers.
(As with all benefits for part-time
agents, make it proportional to the average amount of time they work. For
example, if they work twenty-hours a week, their vacation pay should be based
on a twenty-hour workweek.)
Paid Time Off
Next up is paid time off. This includes sick days and personal days. Ideally, we want healthy employees who don’t get sick and who schedule their appointments on their days off. But this isn’t always feasible.
Failing to provide paid time off could result in an agent coming into work sick or not attending to some important personal issue, which could have negative consequences later.
Retirement
Though not every employee thinks about retirement, some do. And for those who do, it’s of critical importance. They want to take control of what their retirement looks like, and that means planning for it now, regardless of how far away it is.
Be sure to offer them the option to set money aside now for their retirement.
Continuing Education
Next up is the ability to pursue ongoing education. As with retirement, this isn’t a benefit that most people seek or will use, but for those who want it, it could make the difference between them quitting or staying.
Tailor your program so that it provides value to participants and to your organization too. Also include a reasonable precaution to avoid abuse, but be fair. An employee with the opportunity to learn more, will provide more value to your organization and be more loyal.
Healthcare Coverage
The last significant benefit is healthcare coverage. Healthcare coverage is a growing concern for people in the United States. The cost rises and the coverage shrinks.
Yet being in the healthcare industry, we’re in the unique position to help our agents with decent healthcare coverage, or at least we should be.
Conclusion
When it comes to retaining call center staff, don’t skimp on benefits. Offer them paid vacation and time off, retirement and continuing education options, and healthcare coverage.
This will increase their loyalty to your organization and decrease the likelihood of them leaving your call center for another company that does provide these benefits. Just as with compensation, the cost of providing benefits concerns most managers.
The key is to offer what you can without jeopardizing your organization. But if you think you can’t afford to offer benefits, the reality is that you can’t afford not to.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
Don’t Brush Aside the Importance of Providing Appropriate Call Center Agent Pay
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D.
In my article “Ideas to Better Retain Call Center Staff,” we looked at five tips to improve call center staff retention rates. I first considered compensation, a topic of great concern for managers and which carries a critical consideration for call center agents.
Because of its complexities, it’s too easy for managers to shrug and say, “We’re doing the best we can. We can’t afford to pay anything more.” In fact, I’ve shared this sentiment with call center staff a time or two myself.
Survey Your Local Market
Several years ago, I consulted for a county medical bureau’s answering service. As I met with the call center agents, each one had the same complaint: “People working fast food make more than we do.”
After two days of repeatedly hearing this grievance, I did some research. I walked into the eight closest fast food restaurants and asked what their starting wage was. Each one paid less, often considerably less, than the answering service.
Armed with this information, I set about correcting the agents’ unchallenged misconceptions about their pay.
My research approach was a quick and easy one, and you may want to do a more thorough analysis, but the point is to survey your local job market to know where you stand. Then you can make informed decisions about what your agents should make.
Establish Your Compensation Paradigms
Another answering service I consulted for paid their agents comparable to the local fast food restaurants, which hovered near minimum-wage. I told the owner, “When you pay fast food rates, you get fast food mentality.”
This isn’t to imply criticism against fast food workers, because some of them do their jobs with excellence. It is, however, my intent to point out that taking an order for a hamburger isn’t on a par with handling a phone call at 3 a.m. from a hysterical first-time mom concerned about her screaming baby’s high temperature.
Decide what you want your call center agents to make in comparison to other area jobs. Remove the concern of what you can afford from this equation, and focus on what you should aim for instead.
Make Expectations Match Compensation
At this point, I doubt you’ve decided you’re paying too much. Though you could have concluded you’re paying your agents an appropriate hourly rate, you more likely determined that ideally you want to pay them more.
But don’t make the mistake of increasing your starting hourly pay, without making a matching adjustment to increasing your screening processes, employee expectations, and desired outcomes. Pay more and expect more.
Conclusion
Making a significant change to agent compensation is one of the most terrifying decisions to make when running a call center. Trying to make huge adjustments too quickly could produce devastating consequences.
Instead determine where you want to get to, plan how to get there, and implement it with care. Over time, make incremental steps to what you pay, what you expect, and what you get in return from your staff.
As you do, you will improve agent retention and increase quality, along with enhancing your employees’ attitude and workplace environment.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.
