Steve Ellis, Senior Director of Customer Service at EyeMed provides call center leadership for the company’s 30 million members. Under his leadership, the company was able to realize $4 million+ savings due to process improvements.
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Ellis joins CMIQ reporter Shawn Siegel to share some of his acquired wisdom:
How have you adapted your workforce strategies to match different generational needs?
The majority of our workforce is full-time. However, we do offer a number of flexible schedule options to meet the diverse needs of our associates. Associates can work 4 x 10, 4 x 9 and 4 hours on the fifth day. We also have offered "dream" schedules, where reps name their own schedule and we do our best to match these requests with our operational needs.
Which is the most important customer service metric for you?
Our research and experience tells us resolving the customer’s issue has the biggest impact on customer satisfaction. We measure a variety of other customer service attributes, however we have found what our customers care about the most is having their issue resolved.
What is your philosophy about motivating and measuring employees?
We have a philosophy to set clear expectations for our associates and then inspect what we expect. We have a great deal of fun motivating our associates by recognizing their successes in a variety of formats. We recognize our associates for their process improvement suggestions, that improve our customers’ experiences or make us more cost effective. We recognize our associates that receive praise from our customers for their service excellence and we have lots of other ways to recognize both teams and individuals for outstanding performance. One of our more popular recognition events is our "quality car wash" challenge, where our leadership team washes the cars of our agents with the highest call quality. We also have luncheons, a "Wall of Fame" and regular monthly meetings where associates are recognized for their successes.
How do you convince executive leadership that customer service is not just a means to band aid problems, but a key component of business strategy?
Our executives have a great understanding that customers who are very satisfied and engaged are more loyal and willing to do business with our company.
What will the call center of the future look like?
Engaged, virtualized, connected, vibrant, a great place to work.