EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT METHODOLOGY

We and many other researchers have proven the link between employee engagement, customer experience and operational efficiency. The debate has now moved on to the “how” of engagement rather than the “why”. Our approach to optimising employee engagement is, paradoxically, not based on improving engagement per-se but rather creating an environment where:

• Employees understand and are aligned to the company’s goals and objectives.
  
• Employees can shape and influence the work they undertake and the way it’s done.
  
• Customer service culture is embedded into the DNA of the operation.
  
• Wasted effort is minimised and the service operation is efficient and effective.

This is because engagement cannot be developed, sustained and optimised by a focus on engagement alone – it comes from being part of a winning team where the focus on success pervades the whole operation.

Our approach for implementing employee engagement initiatives always starts with a Purpose Statement. We usually develop this from four perspectives as illustrated by the example below:

The benefits of this Purpose Statement cannot be overestimated as it’s the first step in building cultural and organisational alignment plus it provides front line staff with a very powerful device to challenge misaligned behaviour or fragmented processes.

Having developed clarity of purpose the next step is to understand the key organisational and agent competencies required to deliver effective and efficient customer service. Our research has shown that quality of the customer experience is dependent on the customer getting what they wanted from the call – this accounts for between 30%-40% of the experience. The remainder is all down to the soft skills of the agent and their ability to connect with their customers and make even routine or transactional calls easy and hopefully enjoyable. Most organisations focus their training effort on the “task” element of the call, which is important, but it is the “spirit” in the way the call is handled that will lead to happy customers and fulfilled employees.

Once agents have mastered the art of “winning conversations” the next step is to ensure there is a management regime in place to sustain and support front-line staff. One of the very powerful innovations we observed was through a client who had introduced peer-based call monitoring. This was introduced on the assumption that agents only really learn from experience of other agents, as it is them not their team managers or quality coaches who handle calls!

Putting it all Together
The following diagram is an overview of the framework we use to increase engagement and improve results. We have a robust employee engagement questionnaire that has been developed explicitly for the contact centre environment. We combine the engagement scores with customer experience and operational efficiency data to develop a model that predicts the impact of a percentage change in engagement on customer experience and the bottom-line results.

Once the link is proven the next step is to develop the business case for action and the operational change programme required to maximise the targeted business outcomes of operational efficiency, customer experience and employee engagement.
We produce a “glide-path” for our clients that show the impact of the interventions upon the business outcomes so that progress can be tracked and certainty of outcome is significantly increased.

Example
The following chart shows the improvement on several aspects of employee engagement that were achieved over a two week period by one of our clients. There was also a corresponding improvement in customer satisfaction and first call resolution. This was achieved by following theses four simple steps:

1. Developing an operational purpose statement.
2. Translating that to “purposeful” behaviours and the art of “winning conversations”.
3. Developing a sustaining environment that places more responsibility and control in the hands of the agents.
4. Developing a realistic “glide-path” that leads to improved performance, experience and agent enjoyment and fulfilment.