The people portion of the process, strategy, technology, and people roadmap is a principal component of a contact center’s productivity equation, particularly as it relates to driving the strategy. Any successful contact center understands that true effectiveness depends on its employees. However, it is so easy to lose sight of this fact because continuous cost pressures can cause contact center executives to inadvertently view their agents through the same “efficiency” metrics of scientific management models. As obvious as it may sound, people are not machines, and the adverse effects of over-using metrics in this area include job dissatisfaction, low morale, and increased attrition. At BCE Elix, we recognize the importance of your most valuable resource. We also know that to drive your contact center strategy, you need the right people with the right skill sets in the right roles to deliver the right information. Therefore, our suite of strategy engagements includes modules that focus on the human element of moving an organization forward, most importantly through change management and all the training that supports it.

Change Management
Training
Agent Performance
Coaching/Development
Employee Retention

We at BCE Elix have firsthand experience of contact centers; therefore, we don’t offer theory, but practical, transferable learning—beginning with our change management module. Every BCE Elix engagement includes a focus on change management. Our advisors have survived these growing pains and can offer objective, proven, experienced advice.

Building on this, our offerings include simulated job training environments with experientially based exercises for enhanced realism, an unmatched coaching and development module that coaches to behavior without being punitive, and enhanced overall agent performance. The focus is on results through people—your people, your results, and meeting your goals.

Our unparalleled experience in contact center issues also helps us attract top talent. BCE Elix has an inside track to contact center executives who can step in at a moment’s notice should one of your leaders be absent for whatever reason. The Interim Leadership program is an amazing way to capitalize on a wealth of knowledge without the customary long-term commitment or expense.

In short, no one else in the industry can offer the same quality of service as BCE Elix. Our services are grounded in personal experience to shorten your learning curve and help you meet your goals quicker.

In the contact center world, change is guaranteed. Since it can’t be avoided, organizations would do well to embrace it, learn how to manage it, and make it work for them. Knowing how to manage that change and having the tools to influence and support it are paramount. With this in mind, change management can be defined as a process whereby management acts as the settling influence amidst the uncertainty of the unknown. They are the calm and steady force needed to help employees cope, buy in, accept, and move forward with the new way of doing business.

Benefits

• Learn how to adapt to change
• Plan with human beings in mind
• Understand that change cannot be forced or imposed
• Turn change from a threat to an opportunity
• Defend against downsizing and budget cuts

In its simplest form, training is the systematic and planned process of developing knowledge, skills, and attitudes for the desired outcome of a skilled behavior and/or increased knowledge. Training is used in organizations to move employees towards predetermined organizational goals and objectives. To be truly effective, training should be a continuous cycle, not a one-time event, that is woven into an organization’s culture. In the constantly changing environment of the contact center world, ongoing training becomes even more important.

Benefits

• Become a strategic and competitive arm of your company
• Make your contact center work for you through investment in agent and management training
• Use training to bring planned strategies, processes, and technology initiatives to fruition
• Align training to the key performance objectives of the contact center and the corporation
• Create new business opportunities, increased customer and employee loyalty, improved productivity, maximized agent and contact center performance, strengthened customer relationships and, ultimately, increased sales

Agent performance is the means by which an organization develops and sustains competitiveness and profitability through its people. It is an understanding of how individual roles and responsibilities relate to the overall strategy and performance goals of the organization. An important component of this performance management process is the development of employees’ work-related skills, knowledge, and experience in order to drive company strategy.

Benefits

• An effective agent performance strategy is required to be able to have the right call directed to the right agent with the right skill set at the right time to deliver the right information
• Agents know what is expected of them and that they will be given the right training and the right tools to make it all happen
• Agents know at all times how they are performing in relation to the expectations set for them
• Agent performance is a systematic and continuous process that involves several components, beginning with a prevailing change management strategy and supported by proper role definition, ongoing training, leadership, coaching, and effective quality monitoring
• Agent performance creates a workforce that is aligned to a common set of goals that improve bottom-line results

Once an agent has completed his/her initial training—or any training—coaching makes it real. Once the agent is in the workplace and handling customer contacts, coaching can use daily events—brought to light through quality monitoring—to manage performance effectively. For BCE Elix, coaching is an ongoing process of setting expectations, inspecting what you expect, analyzing performance, and then coaching to knowledge, skill gaps, and behaviours.

Benefits

• Establish a workforce that consistently moves towards the achievement of every organization’s goals of increased productivity, an improved overall customer experience and, definitively, sustained improvements in revenue
• Use our performance model of Expect, Inspect, Analyze, and Coach
• Give your agents and employees the opportunity for enhanced performance, future advancement potential and, consequently, improved overall job satisfaction
• Create a definite win/win situation for everyone involved through proper coaching

One of the greatest challenges in the contact centre today is the retention of good people on an ongoing basis. Having the right program in place to ensure you are maximizing the effectiveness of your efforts from the time you plan to hire people to fill the roles to the time you “on-board” them, along with training, support, and ongoing development can significantly affect your employee attrition in a positive way! Our employee retention program breaks down your recruitment process into phases, or employee moments of truth. These phases have each been proven to have their own effect on retention from an employee lifecycle perspective. We focus our efforts on increasing your success in each phase with proven success along the way. Speaking of success, organizations who have worked with members of our team in this area have seen employee turnover drop from 50%+ in the first 90 days to less than 25%! These results speak for themselves! Whether you manage your own recruitment or outsource the selection process, our employee retention program is flexible enough to work in both environments.

Benefits

• Use retention techniques to increase the effectiveness of your recruitment process so all of those who accept an offer actually join your firm
• Create a culture that employees want to be a part of
• Show employees that THEY are the ones who make a difference
• Know how much turnover is really costing you at all points in the process, from interviewing to day 365
• Become an employer of choice

For more information, you can either fill out the information request form, or email Erika Van Noort.