Increased Revenue from Your Contact Center? "Chaulk" it Up to Employee Engagement

David Chaulk, COO for Brand Developers Limited, joined Call Center IQ’s Shawn Siegel to discuss employee engagement, staff churn and the future of the contact center space.

You will next see Chaulk at the 8^thCall Center Summit, at which he joins an elite list of innovative speakers. Check out the agenda for more details.

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Shawn Siegel, Call Center IQ: Can you discuss how Brand Developers Limited increased sales by focusing on employee engagement?

David Chaulk, Brand Developers: One of our more recent ‘employee centric’ initiatives has been to involve agents in the design of training and incentive programs. As a result, we’ve had much more buy-in from the agent force which has led to more engagement with both training programs and incentive-based sales campaigns. Our training is now leading to real behavioral change and our sales per agent has increased by 68%.

Siegel: Do you think staff churn is still a major call center issue? What strategies have you employed to stop the rollover?

Chaulk: It’s a huge issue. Recruitment and training costs are a drain on profit and call center leadership has to spend a disproportionate amount of time getting new staff up to speed. It’s tough to improve when you’re constantly starting over again (unless you’re John Calipari and the UK basketball team!). We’ve realized that our top 50 agents, who represent about 20% of our sales force, largely determine our success or failure so we focus most of our retention effort on them. We’ve tried to make it difficult for them to leave by insuring that they’re very well rewarded, involved in the decision making process of the call center, given work schedules that enable good life balance, provided with the kind of training that will improve them, not just as agents, but also as people and offered enough variety to avoid boredom and burn out. In the last year we’ve lost less than 10% of that group.

Siegel: How do you go about representing the contact center in the boardroom so that key persons are fully committed?

Chaulk: I’m lucky in that I sit in the board room. I have a regular voice at the senior leadership table. In the years before that was the case, I learned to stop boring and confusing the check writers and decision makers with jargon and metrics that meant nothing to them. Call centers have a plethora of metrics and KPIs – many of which have, at best, tenuous links to an organization’s financial success. You must link your needs with either increased revenue / margin or reduced cost. If you don’t they glaze over. If you do, you get their attention and, hopefully their commitment.

Siegel: Looking towards the future, what trends excite you about the future of the contact center industry?

Chaulk: A number of things. In this part of the world, at least, there’s a reversal of the outsourcing / offshoring trend. More companies are seeing value in keeping the call center operations at home and in the family. Secondly, most good operations that I’m familiar with have realized that every customer contact can be a revenue opportunity. That fundamentally changes the way we look at customer care. Thirdly, I think we’re learning to use the call center and internet channels in partnership, not as discreet channel silos. Finally, thinking organizations are understanding that quality is more important than mindless quantity. This enables the call center to provide meaningful, valuable customer interactions instead of just being a number driven meat market.