Special Report: Employee Engagement

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It is easy to mistake “employee engagement” as the softer, more philosophical cousin to “workforce
management.” Whereas workforce management pays specific attention to performance, workflow and operational
efficiency, employee engagement involves less overtly quantifiable factors like emotional
sentiment.
In truth, “employee engagement” is also a fundamental, results-oriented element of the contact center operation. It
carries specific ramifications for the contact center’s short- and long-term success.
It is not simply a “nice to have.” It is not simply a feel-good, “Kumbaya” component of business
management. Employee engagement, rather, is a direct driver of a contact center’s ability to successfully satisfy cus-
tomers and achieve desirable business outcomes.
One may use fun, informal initiatives to engage employees, but employee engagement is definitely not “just for fun.”
The stakes are far too significant to treat employee engagement as anything other than a cornerstone of the custom-
er experience strategy.
This special report investigates the crucial customer experience tenet that is employee engagement.
It explores the five ways employee engagement shapes the health of the customer experience function – and, really,
the overall business.
It does not, however, merely trumpet the importance of employee engagement. It also reveals a myriad of best prac-
tices for optimizing employee engagement.
Employee engagement is indeed a need-to-have. This report ensures that the employee engagement
strategy you implement will be best for your employees, managers, customers and, ultimately, bottom line.

Great contact centers require great people. Great people flock to great environments. Great environments are
therefore the hallmark of great customer experience functions.
Indeed, a contact center environment that is welcoming, engaging and predicated on agent satisfaction will attract
the best possible contact center agents. It will enable the contact center to recruit talented, high-potential employees
who are capable of wowing customers in the short-term and leading the organization to greatness over the long-term.
Organizations recognize this from a philosophical standpoint. In a recent CCW Digital survey, contact center leaders
identified “culture” as the #1 way to recruit better talent. They know that in order to recruit the best and brightest
contact center talent, they need to offer the kind of environment in which high-caliber talent would want to work.
There are numerous ways to leverage employee engagement as a recruitment tool.
Prioritize agent satisfaction: Agent satisfaction cannot be viewed as an abstract concept. It must be viewed as a key
performance indicator.
Because it attracts great talent and then empowers that great talent to optimally perform, a great contact center
environment is a legitimate asset to the business. Agent satisfaction is a great way to measure the value of the
environment and thus a valuable way to assess the health of the overall contact center operation.
Agent satisfaction also pays dividends when it comes to recruiting. In addition to making the contact center appealing
to new talent, a high degree of agent satisfaction will likely translate into agent advocacy. Agents will rave about the
company to friends, family and online job communities, and their word-of-mouth will attract desirable employees.

Demonstrate engagement during recruitment: It is
important to remember that job interviews are a two
-way street. The company is evaluating the
candidate, and the candidate is evaluating the
company.
Mindful of the latter reality, successful organizations
will showcase their agent centricity during the
recruiting process. By getting to know the
candidate’s individual quirks, giving the candidate the
opportunity to shadow the job for which they are
applying and answering questions with complete
transparency, the organization will be demonstrating
its commitment to employee engagement. It will
show that it values the agents as individual team
members rather than seat fillers. It will project a
welcoming environment.
Hire based on cultural fitness: The compulsion to
impress prospective talent does not, however, mean
the organization should forfeit its own right to be
picky when it comes to new hires.
Instead of hiring out of a desperate need to manage
workflow, the organization must ensure it hires based
on fitness for the business, its customer base,
its organizational culture and its long-term vision.
In doing so, the organization will cultivate the kind of
workforce that will perform well, strengthen the
sense of community within the contact center and
stay for the long haul.
We rarely hire anyone who has call
center experience. It's not what we're
looking for - these aren't regular call
center reps, where you can pickup the
phone and read a script. We use
customer service as a differentiator,
and we like those with retail,
face-to-face and military backgrounds.
—Ed Ariel, ezCater
All valuable in their own right, these tenets also send
a favorable message to future hires. It will signal that
the company’s contact center is a great place to
work.
The very idea of recruiting based on culture, in fact,
sends a favorable message. It lets the candidate
know that the role for which he is applying exists
within an engaging community.
Involve agents in the process: Customer
management thought leaders routinely tout the
importance of taking a role in the recruiting process.
The nature of the contact center is too high-stakes
and too specific to leave in the hands of a general
recruiting team; it needs to involve the voice of the
contact center.
The need actually runs deeper than some contact
center representation. It is important to actually
involve agents in the process. By involving agents in
the recruiting process, the organization ensures it is
accounting for the day-to-day reality of the contact
center role and not simply hiring based on “theory.”
It also sends the message – both to existing
employees and prospective ones - that the voice of
the agent matters.
“Happy customers = happy agents.”
The iconic contact center adage may be an
oversimplification, but it is still accurate in spirit.
There is an undeniable correlation between agent
happiness and customer happiness.
For starters, happiness is an infectious quality.
Agents who are content are more likely to convey a
gleeful disposition when communicating with
customers. That joy translates, helping to diffuse
hostility from angry customers and increase
happiness from neutral or content ones.

That infectious quality also positively impacts the
internal contact center environment. Happy agents
are friendlier, more collaborative agents. Friendlier,
more collaborative agents create a more welcoming
environment inside the contact center. That
welcoming environment yields agents who are better
at interacting with customers, in essence continuing –
and reinforcing – the “happy agents = happy
customers” idea.
Happiness also leads to more investment from
agents. Agents who like coming to work – and like
the company for whom they are working – feel a
greater desire to perform.
They will care beyond the extent to which they are
required to care. They will see merit in wowing
customers rather than simply serving them.
Agent happiness is not simply a goal for “happiness’
sake.” It is a ticket to a stronger, more efficient, more
productive contact center operation.
Employee engagement can – and, in fact, must –
overtly involve initiatives to create happier, more
satisfied agents.
View agents as people, not performers: Monitoring
performance is important, but it cannot be the only
thing supervisors considers when evaluating agents.
They must also focus on the agent’s happiness in the
role. What aspects of the job are creating
enjoyment? What elements of the job are producing
frustration? Just as an organization attempts to
remedy inefficiencies, it needs to fix problems that
are leading to dissatisfied agents.
Don’t fear fun: “Work hard, play harder” is not a
realistic notion for many businesses. Allowing some
opportunities to “play” absolutely should be. An
organization should never de-emphasize
performance, but it should provide agents with
opportunities to break from the monotony and enjoy
coming to work. This should include informal team-
building activities, competitions and any other
gestures that communicate a concern for the warmth
and joy of the atmosphere.
Redefine the notion of “work”: Beyond its
impracticality for a financially driven environment,
the “work hard, play harder” mantra sends the wrong
message. It suggests that work is the fundamental
opposite of play.
That need not be the case. Employee-centric
organizations are committed to making work more
enjoyable. They incorporate gamification and
incentive programs that add a fun, competitive
element to daily tasks. They offer opportunities to
break from the monotony by performing other tasks
or shadowing workers in other departments. They
adopt flexible scheduling and work from home
approaches to keep agents as comfortable as
possible. They make work as enjoyable as it possibly
can be.
Invest in people: In order to fully enjoy the work
environment, agents need to feel valued in the
environment. They need to know that the
organization cares about them specifically; they need
assurance that the organization is not simply looking
to fill seats.
Proof of this “investment” may come in the form of
upgrades to the contact center environment.
Modern computers, comfortable desks and pleasant
atmospheres go a long way in showing that the
organization wants to do right by its agents. It may
also involve leadership development and
career-pathing; an organization doing everything in
its power to keep agents around probably cares
about those agents.

Employee engagement drives performance, and not
simply by creating happy agents. It also helps create
productive ones.
By engaging with its employees, an organization can
understand the collective and individual strengths
and weaknesses of its team members. It can rely on
real insight – not merely guesswork – when
determining how to adjust training, change policies
and overhaul systems.
When an organization truly knows its employees, it
truly knows how to optimize performance.
In addition to giving leadership this invaluable insight,
a culture of engagement also motivates employees to
perform better.
Legitimate engagement from leadership conveys the
extent to which the organization values its
employees. When they know they are beloved – and
know they are important – employees have more
mental incentive to perform better.
Engagement also makes it easier to cultivate good
behavior. When properly engaging with agents,
leadership can ensure those agents understand the
true mission of the contact center. Be it fast
resolutions, relationship-oriented interactions or any
other potential contact center objective, an engaging
contact center environment ensures all team
members – from those on the front line to those in
the penthouse office – will be working toward the
same end.
Engagement also involves the creation of figurative
and literal incentive programs. These programs
simultaneously achieve agent delight (by offering
some sort of tangible reward) and favorable out-
comes (by tying the prize to the desired behavior).
There are several guidelines to which an organization
should adhere when attempting to inspire great
performance.
Evaluate – And Coach -- Based On Context: When
evaluating agent performance, many take the easy
way out – they look at raw scores. They issue
rewards – or share criticism – based on the deviation
between those scores and the desired outcome and/
or company average.
The more appropriate, more engaging path is to focus
on context. By evaluating interactions (either
through recordings, analytics or post-call insight),
coaches can determine why agents are scoring the
way they are.
In addition to creating a stronger bond between su-
pervisors and the front line, this approach will yield to
marked improvements in performance. It helps to
identify good behavior that should be replicated
across the contact center and correct problems that
need to be eliminated.
Promote a Sense of Partnership: Adopting a
community-oriented approach is not merely a “feel-
good” endeavor. It is a strategy for elevating
performance. Agents should be encouraged to
collaborate with each other in the name of creating
better outcomes for the customer and business. They
should also have an open door to share feedback
with and seek guidance from leadership.
Establish The Mission: Performance is a fluid,
subjective concept. To truly inspire performance, the
organization must define its mission – and ingrain
that into the contact center culture. It must clearly
define the difference between a good interaction and
a bad interaction as well as a high-performing agent
from a poorly performing one. Agents rely on this
construct as a model for their behavior, so it needs to
be accurate and clearly established.
"One thing I'm training our team to do is try
to make that connection...try to ask the right
questions, give them some solutions, and
also try to educate them on 'next time you
have this problem, here's how you can
resolve this issue,’” says Gerald Hastie of
Evernote.

“Once we do that, we’ve earned the right to
tell the customer, ‘hey, let me show you some
other features and functionality that may help
you do your job.’”
Stick To The Mission: The worst thing an organization
can do when it comes to contact center performance
is walk differently than it talks. If it, as an example,
defines customer satisfaction as its primary goal, it
should not prioritize metrics unrelated to customer
satisfaction.
It should not tell agents to do everything possible to
satisfy customers and then chastise them for
engaging in lengthy calls or giving out costly make
goods.
Agents will specifically look to rewards, positive
feedback and incentive programs to determine what
the organization really values; it needs to align with
the stated mission.
To achieve the ideal operation, Andy Hanselman
advocates for an UBER culture.
"When you start looking at culture, it's U - do I
understand, B - are systems and processes built to
reinforce it, E - are people engaged, empowered and
able to do it, R - are they rewarded and recognized
for doing it."
The reward element is a particular important
component.
“A great question to ask as a leader in your business
is what are people rewarded and recognized for?
“The problem in many businesses that the ‘reward’
for doing great work is you get to do more work.
“Mark & Spencer allows its customers to decide what
‘rewards’ a helpful call center team member should
receive for great customer service.”
“We engage them in the culture as quickly as
we can,” adds Ed Ariel of ezCater. “The
expectations are high, but they’re going to
paid more than a normal contact center
rep.”
Going forward, they know they can “ask for
many raises as [they] want,” but they also
know they’re “not going to [be successful
here] if they don’t help with operational
improvements.”
Employees are the ones on the front line. They are
the ones directly involved in interactions. They are
learning how customers are feeling, what customers
are demanding, which aspects of the journey are
working and which elements are broken.
They, quite simply, gather the insight needed to truly
elevate the customer experience. A business’ success
accordingly hinges on its ability to capture this insight
from agents.
Employee engagement helps an organization acquire,
analyze and act on this invaluable information.
Engaged employees understand the importance of
customer insights: Disengaged agents may approach
their role from a transactional perspective. Their job
is simply to address inquiries from customers.

Engaged agents appreciate the bigger picture. They
understand the importance of customer intelligence,
and they know that each interaction represents an
opportunity to collect this valuable intelligence. They
will approach interactions with an eye not simply for
solving the problem but for learning. They will pay
attention to customer sentiment and ask deep
questions.
Engaged employees feel empowered to share the
information: Knowing and acting are two vastly
different things.
Agents may philosophically understand the
importance of gaining customer insights, but do they
truly believe the information will drive action (and
improvement) within their contact center? Do they
know how to help facilitate that action?
Engaged agents definitely do, and they consequently
feel empowered to transform insight into results. In
addition to feeling motivation – if not pressure – to
collect information from customers, they are driven
to communicate that information to the right
business stakeholders. Knowing it will never fall on
deaf ears, they are confident communicating the
information to colleagues and leaders.
To gain this invaluable window into the voice of the
customer, organizations essentially need to garner
“investment” from their employees. They need to
ensure agents are aware of the stakes and, more
importantly, encouraged to take action based on
those stakes.
Engagement helps an organization create this sense
of investment. It gives agents a figurative seat the
table (if not a literal one). Employees feel as if the
company is their business and thus do everything in
their power to drive improvement. Their goal is not
to respond to customer inquiries but to turn
customer inquiries into a launching pad for customer
experience optimization.
There are several best practices for driving this
improvement.
Make “knowledge gathering” part of the process:
Whether it involves a rigid script or loose guidelines,
all agents are coached on the appropriate way to
handle customer interactions. This coaching process
– during the initial training and then in follow-up
sessions – needs to treat “knowledge gathering” as a
cornerstone of the process.
Speed and efficiency matter to customers, and agents
may not have the opportunity to ask lengthy surveys.
They should, however, pay attention to the direct and
indirect statements a customer makes regarding
sentiment. They should be able to identify patterns
in feedback and spot fundamental fractures in the
customer experience process.
Make “knowledge” a post-call priority: To the extent
that agents are tasked with post-call work, reporting
and interpreting customer feedback needs to be a
priority. The aim of post-call reporting should not
simply be to state what happened; agents must feel
accountable for revealing why it happened – and how
the customer reacted.
Create a feedback channel: Action speaks louder
than words. Do not simply tell agents that customer
feedback is appreciated; ensure there are clear
opportunities for them to provide the information.
“Customer feedback” should be built into all coaching
sessions with supervisors. Supervisors – and business
leadership – should frequently court feedback in
one-on-one and group settings. When leadership
shows agents it truly wants the feedback, agents will
truly want to provide it.
Act on feedback – and prove it: Again, action speaks
louder than words. No matter how much a business
“asks” agents to share feedback, the credibility of the
process hinges on proof that it is actually using said
feedback. The organization needs to routinely tailor
products, systems and processes to the voice of the
customer. When possible, it should openly credit the
agent(s) who shared the actionable information.

Agent attrition has become an accepted reality of the
contact center.
It does not have to be.
While some turnover is inevitable in the contact center (as
it is in all departments), it does not have to be as
problematic as it has become for so many organizations.
Contact center turnover is so rampant that it has become a
stereotype, and that is a problem for organizations.
High attrition hurts the internal and external perception of
the contact center.
Internally, it mars the image of the contact center.
Executives will see the department as the organization’s
“problem child.” Whether they specifically blame contact
center leaders or blame the inherent institution of the
contact center, they will not feel as confident investing in
the function. They will doubt its supposed ability to drive
legitimate value.
Externally, they will struggle to attract great talent. While it
is true that younger generations of workers appreciate
mobility and do not necessarily want to stay in the same
job for many years, all humans want to work somewhere
they are valued. High attrition – a sign of agent
dissatisfaction – sends a contrasting message.
The impact of attrition is not, however, restricted to
perception. There are some more tangible, direct
consequences of high agent turnover.
“A lot of our initiatives have come from
the front line, because who knows better
than those customer-facing agents what
are pain points for your clients,” says Lisa
Nance of Texas Capital Bank.
"We would ask them to tell us what
policies, procedures, forms and processes
not only make their job hard but frustrate
the client. Some of the
recommendations] were really easy
fixes."
Not content to keep the “voice of the
agent” inside the contact center, Nance’s
organization ensured agent feedback
crossed departmental lines.
“Doing some of those ‘education pieces’
was very important,” says Nance. “We
started to create liaisons and strong
relationships with other operations
partners...just helping them understand
that even if you’re not customer-facing,
you’re customer-impacting.
“That had a big impact” because
“sometimes those folks behind the walls
forget that there’s a client on the other
end of every request.”
"I'm always looking at ways to improve
the experience by listening to what cus-
tomers are saying and [also] listening to
what my folks are saying internally,” adds
Gerald Hastie of Evernote.

When agents leave, they take knowledge, skills and
experience with them. More accomplished,
knowledgeable agents create better, more efficient
experiences for customers. They also improve those
around them – they are more valuable collaborators
and prime candidates for leadership roles over the
long-term. They are assets to customers and to the
customer experience operation; the business suffers
when they depart.
Their departure also creates a financial burden for
organizations, which need to spend more money (and
time) recruiting and training replacements.
Combating attrition is, of course, easier said than
done. Some of the culprits – viewing the “contact
center” as a job rather than a career, limited
compensation – are difficult to remedy at the drop of
a hat.
An organization must, however, ensure that it is
doing everything in its power to keep agents in the
organization. There are some best practices for
creating an atmosphere in which agents want to stay
for the long term.
Hire for the organization: If you hire “for the job,”
you end up with agents who merely see the role as a
job. Agent retention begins with people who truly
connect with the organization and its culture. Core
value testing, job shadowing and peer-value
interviewing are great ways to identify talent that
should stay for the long haul.
One-on-one mentoring – not training: Performance
is obviously a crucial motivation for coaching. It
should not, however, be the only motivation.
Coaching should also be an opportunity to establish
bonds with agents. It should be a chance to get to
know them as people – to find out what they value,
what they want to achieve and what will make them
happy in the organization. It should also involve a
career mentoring element, which simultaneously
demonstrates the business’ investment in its people
and makes people feel more loyal to the company.
Career-pathing and rotations: Stagnation breeds
attrition. In order to keep talent, an organization
must demonstrate the opportunity for the role to
grow and evolve. Those who aspire for a leadership
position should receive a transparent sense of the
trajectory (and coaching to help them along the way).
Those who simply want variety in their job should
have the chance to spend time learning and
performing in different functions.
Community-building: If agents like coming to work,
they are less likely to want to leave. Agents generally
like coming to work when they like the people with
whom they are working. Community-building is thus
a pivotal part of employee engagement strategy. An
organization should encourage informal
communication and networking inside the office. It
should also sponsor outings and community service
activities that bring employees together – and help
them identify those with common interests and
passions.
Not all agents are looking to mix their personal and
professional lives. Those who are, however, will be
infinitely more loyal to an organization where their
coworkers feel like friends.
While this section laments the importance of
retention, it is important to note that not all contact
center attrition is bad.

“Attrition isn't a bad thing - if it's the right
kind of attrition,” says Jesse Hoobler of Pitney
Bowes.
There are some people who are cut out to do
great things inside of the contact center, and
there are others who can't.
Having the right attrition - keeping the
people who are really differentiating your
contact center, while helping to turn over
those who are better-placed in other parts of
the organization or other businesses, that
type of attrition is good.
On the other hand, “when you've got your
best-and-brightest walking out the door and
moving onto
another company for another $0.25 or $0.75
per hour, that's where you've got a problem.
A lot of that comes down to the culture.
When you look at culture, all employees really
want the answers to three basic questions:
1) How does what I do matter to the customer
and to the company?
2) Am I being successful?
3) Will I be recognized and rewarded for
doing the right thing the right way?
If you boil those three, fundamental questions
down, it's really about developing an
engagement and an
empowerment culture. It's about making sure
your agents have clear and transparent goals - a
transparent scorecard for your agents. It's also
making sure that they feel empowered to make
the right decisions for your customers at that
point in time without having to go through
unnecessary bureaucracy.
If your agents feel empowered - that they can
control their success—you're going to drive a
stronger engagement model.

The idea of the “human connection” is a fundamental tenet of the contact center. Given that reality, it is thoroughly
unsurprising that agents are considered the heart of the customer experience function.
Most organizations understand and accept this reality at the abstract level. Abstract is not good enough.
To maximize the value of people – the most pivotal contact center asset – contact centers need to approach
employee engagement with a sense of resolve, a passion for precision and a commitment to results. It needs to be
treated as a legitimate business endeavor and evaluated for its ability to generate a legitimate ROI.
The aforementioned sections reveal five factors that will be directly defined by the company’s engagement strategy.
These factors are all important and, in turn, confirm the importance of employee engagement.
Incorporate fun into your strategy, but do not forget that employee engagement is a serious, crucial component of
your business.

Special Report: Employee Engagement

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Special Report: Employee Engagement