Award Winning Contact Centers – demonstrating that Employee Satisfaction drives Customer Satisfaction

Mike Desmarais, President, SQM Group

Sarah Kennedy, Partner, SQM Group

SQM Group awards excellence in customer and employee satisfaction for the contact center industry. SQM benchmarks over 150 contact centers each year. Based on the contact centers benchmarked by SQM since October 1, 2001, SQM recognizes the top performers in the following 4 award categories:

1.   Highest Customer Satisfaction = Sears Canada

2.  Highest Employee Satisfaction = Canadian Tire Financial Services

3. Service Quality Excellence =  Bank of Montreal          MasterCard

4.  Service Quality Management = Sears Canada

Definitions of the Awards…

1. Highest Customer Satisfaction Award:

This award recognizes the contact center with the highest customer satisfaction ratings. 91% of Sears Canada’s customers who used their contact center are totally satisfied with their experience.

2. Highest Employee Satisfaction Award:

This award recognizes the contact center with the highest employee satisfaction ratings. 78% of Canadian Tire’s Financial Services employees are totally satisfied working at the credit contact center.

3. Service Quality Excellence Award:

This award recognizes the contact center with the highest combined customer and employee satisfaction ratings. Bank of Montreal MasterCard has the highest overall ratings for customer and employee satisfaction.

4. Service Quality Management Award:

This award recognizes the contact center for having the best labor cost for delivering a high level of customer satisfaction. Sears Canada has the best labor cost to customer satisfaction ratio.  The SQM Awards are based on ratings compiled from customer contact surveys completed within 1-3 days of the customer’s transaction with the contact center and from contact center Customer Representative (CR) employee surveys. SQM uses a common survey for both customer and employee surveys. The award winning contact centers are true winners in the eyes of their customers and employees.

About the Award Winning Contact Centers…

Sears  Canada has 1450 mostly part time CRs with contact centers in Belleville, Regina and Montreal. Sears contact centers handle inbound calls for orders of catalogue sales. They achieved the highest customer satisfaction in our benchmarking study last year with 91% of Sears Canada’s customers who used their contact center being totally satisfied with their experience. Sears also has an extremely low percentage of call errors as evidenced by the highest first call resolution level in the SQM study at 92%. A high level of first call resolution has been key to Sears success in many areas including a low number of customer call backs due to improper order handling and the lowest cost in our benchmarking study for a contact center transaction.

Sears focuses their CR training efforts on service, sales and software applications, and the CRs feel well prepared to handle orders and sell Sears products.  Their efforts are rewarded with contests, such as prize draws and performance based scheduling. 

The supervisors do an excellent job of providing constructive feedback and improvement suggestions and they are seen by the CRs as being approachable, supportive and having good people skills.  Notably, they spend 85% of their time coaching CRs, compared to our benchmark average of 50%.  Furthermore, the call monitoring and coaching process is perceived as a positive learning experience that helps improve performance and sales.  In an average performing center it is frequently the call monitoring and coaching process which is cited as one of the key dissatisfiers.

Sears has a unique scorecard goal setting and performance system.  Each CR has on-line access to their own monthly scorecard which details their performance and rolls up to team, department and business.  This keeps the whole team totally focused on their goals and the organization’s success through customer service.

At Sears, policies and procedures are clearly documented and consistently applied with CRs being kept well-informed through daily e-mail and an on-line bulletin board. CRs are empowered to use their own judgment and discretion when making decisions on behalf of their customers.  These decisions are supported by their supervisor, contributing to the CRs feeling valued and respected – a universal driver for employee satisfaction.

The bottom line is that Sears Canada, with a staggering call volume of 24 million calls, executes the basics of operating a contact center extremely well. Their first quartile employee satisfaction results point to an empowered workforce who are able to focus their efforts on resolving the customers’ issues. Sears have created a strong support system, bringing all the information that the CR needs to the desktop. Combining this strong system with an empowered workforce who can translate this to and for the customer, has gained them first place in both our Customer Satisfaction Award and our Service Quality Management Award.

Canadian Tire Financial Services credit contact center has 93 mostly full time CRs based out of Welland, Ontario. The credit contact center handles inbound and outbound collection calls. The credit contact center has the highest employee satisfaction in our benchmarking study this year. 78% of Canadian Tire’s Financial Services employees are totally satisfied working at the credit contact center. The majority of these calls are about late payment issues, which is one of the most difficult and emotionally draining calls a CR can have. So, to achieve world-class employee satisfaction in a credit contact center is an even more outstanding achievement. The vast majority of other credit contact centers we have surveyed have had CR satisfaction significantly lower than our benchmark average. Canadian Tire’s achievement is further emphasized when taking into consideration that they have consistently had the highest employee satisfaction ratings since SQM implemented the benchmarking study 6 years ago.

The average Canadian Tire’s CRs length of service is 144 months compared to 36 months for our benchmark average.  So what is it that keeps these CRs coming back to work day after day and handling some very difficult calls?

Probably the most striking difference we see is the clear philosophy of “Customer for Life” which is a extremely high value across the business – and especially notable in the credit center at Canadian Tire.  This philosophy plays out in the process Canadian Tire uses as to when and how to call delinquent customers, as well as their whole soft skill approach in the live contact.  It also plays out in the financial success as a collection center.

The Credit contact center ensures that the CRs are properly trained to handle payment calls with a focus on handling difficult calls.  This is demonstrated from the customer’s viewpoint in satisfaction ratings that are in the first quartile for credit contact centers.

When we interviewed the CRs, they tell us that their supervisors are encouraging, supportive and that they value their coaching sessions as positive learning experiences.

The bottom line is that Canadian Tire Financial Services Credit contact center was able to achieve first quartile customer satisfaction for a very difficult call because they have world class employee satisfaction.

Bank of Montreal MasterCard has 275 mostly part time CRs based in Toronto and Montreal. The MasterCard contact centers handle inbound account inquires and sales calls. Bank of Montreal MasterCard has the highest combined overall ratings for customer and employee satisfaction in our benchmarking study which gives them arguably the best opportunity to sustain their high performance.

Surprisingly, Bank of Montreal MasterCard value their high turnover as a key to their success. Their   centers have a 38% annual CR turnover as compared to our benchmark average of 22%.  And they employ a disproportionately high number of graduates. 75% of the MasterCard CRs have some type of post secondary college or university education compared to 40% for our benchmark average. However, the vast majority of MasterCard CRs that leave the contact center go to other departments within the Bank of Montreal MasterCard division.  For Bank the Montreal, high turnover demonstrates that people are continually learning and achieving the expectation that was set at the beginning.  And for those that choose to stay in the contact center they are encouraged to continually expand their skills by handling more complex calls and peer coaching roles.

An expectation is set right from the beginning in the hiring process with a strong message of “we’re going to invest in you, and here’s what we’re going to do together”.   And the role of the CR is seen as part of the larger business, rather than a job at the Contact Center, which we usually see.   Naturally, their approach to career planning is formalized, well communicated and contains many options, so that even in a down-economy the CR can still feel there are places to go.

The CRs underscored this strength with their comments about being valued and appreciated, and being able to use their contact center experience to obtain other jobs within the MasterCard division.

Lessons Learned

In conclusion, it is clear from SQM’s research that the award winning contact centers have different and similar types of people, practices and policies that have made them successful. It is as important to realize that what works for one contact center might not work for another contact center.

However, there is one underlying pattern that is notable in the stories of our three winners, and that is simply, that high employee satisfaction is necessary to achieve high customer satisfaction. It is also important to mention that SQM research shows the more complex the call, the greater the impact employee satisfaction has on achieving high customer satisfaction.

An example helps describe the complexity factor…  When calling Directory Assistance, you might be quite satisfied with the call as a customer, and yet the employees at that center might have 3^rd or 4th quartile employee satisfaction.  In other words, the call is so simple and has been automated to such a large extent, that the “human factor” is almost immaterial to achieving high customer satisfaction.  By contrast, in situations such as loans being discussed, health claims, complaints, or late payments, how the CR handles the call, from the words they use, voice tone, knowledge level and their ability to resolve the call is absolutely critical to the customer’s satisfaction with that call.

So, coming back to our winners, in all three cases, high employee satisfaction enabled them to achieve high customer satisfaction and sales.

At Sears, their high employee satisfaction enables them to achieve world-class contact center customer satisfaction results at low cost. At Canadian Tire, their high employee satisfaction enables them to retain customers not only for the credit card side of the business, but also as shoppers in the retail part of the organization. At Bank of Montreal MasterCard their high employee satisfaction helps them properly serve the contact centre customers.

Employee Satisfaction is, in our view, one of the most important leading indicators for customer satisfaction.

Authors:

Mike Desmarais, President, SQM Group
(250) 260 3920
mike@sqmgroup.com

Sarah Kennedy, Partner, SQM Group
(519) 426 3454
sarahk@sqmgroup.com 

SQM Group
www.sqmgroup.com
(800) 446 2095