Trase Miller's Contact Center and the Ethic of Reciprocity
On Monday we begin our day by welcoming new team members to our family. This is a big deal to us. Our culture is special and specific. And our hiring process is rigorous. After about a month of training, these carefully selected professionals will be taking calls, solving problems and helping people with their vacation dreams. Many of the people that call Trase Miller participate in our client’s loyalty programs. So we always take extra time in our training process to discuss brand loyalty and address ways in which we as Customer Care Agents can affect loyalty.
Loyalty 360 is THE loyalty marketer’s association to which Trase Miller belongs. We glean insights from other members which consist of big brands and venders. And occasionally we contribute our insights. Recently Loyalty 360 asked Scott Bell here at Trase Miller to sit down for a few minutes of reflection. Scott reflected on new hires and the ethic of reciprocity (golden rule) to one of Loyalty 360 questions:
L360: The “cauldron” call for today’s marketing strategist is engagement. Define engagement and how your product can drive audience engagement?
Scott Bell: “Engagement is something that we pay a ton of attention to and something that we can make a profound impact upon. It starts with employee engagement and that can be a really tricky thing to affect in the contact center business. It’s well known that contact center turnover is high because of the (repetitious) nature of the job and pay scales that are dictated by market realities. We’ve been here since 1994 and our turnover averages out to around 10%. This is unheard of in the contact center world. Our current average tenure is 5.6 years and we have over a dozen people that have been on the phones for 15+ years. We have an engaged workforce that is carefully screened and selected (about a 6% hire rate of all applicants). And how do we achieve these higher employee engagement indicators? We do so with Golden Rule sensibilities. As managers, we treat our people like we want to be treated and they in turn treat the calling customer like they would want to be treated. Every day, we rally around our tagline of “we’re here to help you” which has become our company promise. So two more quick things we think about in terms of employee engagement. An "engaged employee" is one who is fully involved in and enthusiastic about their work. Engaged employees care about the future of our company and are willing to invest discretionary effort. Now about audience engagement; our service can and does drive audience engagement right from “hello”. We are onshore USA. We are maniacal about quality and training. And we are passionate about travel. When a customer calls because she is conflicted about how or to what destination to redeem her mileage currency, our agents can skillfully offer suggestions and advice. We have helped millions of people plan and book their vacations and customer satisfaction is very high because our people just get it right”.
Back to our new hires. A warm welcome to: Curtis B. Grace C. Pat C. Jessica C. Xavier D. Jerad H. Tom M. Kim R. Andy S. Justin W. You are an extremely special 6% and you have joined an extraordinary place of work. We’re delighted that you chose to join us and always remember that we’re here to help you be successful 24/7/365.