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1 The Channel For Industry Information large organizations will block employee access to social media sites by 2014, compared with 50% in Organizations are clearly seeing the value of software for collaboration and networking. Internally, contact centers can adapt social networking tools such Take the Multichannel Metrics Survey APR 2013 It s Time for Collaboration in the Center Embrace the value of social knowledge sharing and crossfunctional collaboration. By Susan Hash Social networking is transforming the way employees learn, share and work. In a few short years, organizations have evolved from wanting to restrict employees use of social media in the workplace to embracing its capabilities for connecting, communicating and knowledge sharing. In fact, according to Gartner, the number of organizations blocking access to all social media is dropping by about 10% a year. The research firm estimates that fewer than 30% of as file sharing, blogs, forums, wikis, microblogging and instant messaging to provide agents with access to upto-date information, internal resources and expertise. Yet it s important for business leaders to keep in mind that collaboration is really about 03 Social Media Technology Connects the Contact Center By Ken Barton For those of us who like welldefined boundaries, social media is problematic. As individuals, we may prefer to keep our Facebook friends separate from LinkedIn connections, but folks tend to cross-pollinate. As contact center professionals, we may prefer people use traditional forms of contact to request assistance, discuss issues and air grievances, but customers may choose to express themselves in public forums. And if marketing or public relations rule the social media roost, the company may not leverage all the available technology and associated processes to engage the contact center consistently when its skills and expertise are needed. Although much has been written about social media and its applicability to the contact center, a lot of folks have opted to or have been forced to sit on the sidelines. It s time to get in the game! Unlike other channels, we don t get to decide whether customers use these channels to communicate with (or about) the company. They make that choice. It s up to us to join with our colleagues across the 32 Greening the Center By Jay Minnucci As an industry, we have much to offer our communities and the global world of business. Our leadership in customer service practices and technology is a cornerstone of our value portfolio, but it is by no means all we offer. Employment, and lots of it, is another example of a benefit tied to contact centers. Convenience is yet another benefit, as the time we save our customers can be put to use elsewhere in their lives. To our value portfolio, we need to add our contribution to the environment. That may sound like a stretch as a value, and to some it may seem too unimportant to mention. Regardless of your personal position on the environment, though, it is becoming increasingly important to the world at large. As a major employer and a point of interaction for millions of customers daily, our impact on the environment is substantial and is felt in three ways: As an industry in general As a place where employees congregate daily As an occupier and builder of commercial office space Impact as an Industry We are an exceptionally large employer, and despite all the focus and the gains made in at- 20 Attrition-Proof: Why Onboarding Matters Home Working Lessons Learned: Yahoo and Best Buy Send Em Home! Or Not Antisocial Media in the Call Contact Center! Sponsored by USAN Become the Leader Your Contact Center Deserves 5 Factors Driving Adoption of Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions Sponsored by Connect First College Hunks Hauling Junk Change Management for Initiative Success Moving at the Speed of Business: The Agility of Cloud-Based Customer Service Sponsored by incontact Providing Quality Service: Words and Phrases to Avoid A Contact Center and College Cooperative Model p08 p10 p12 p14 p16 p18 p22 p26 p30 p36 p38

2 With Verint solutions, CredAbility can better leverage its client service staff and help more people get back to financial stability. How can we help your enterprise? National credit counseling agency CredAbility is using Verint workforce optimization software to leverage its client service staff more effectively. The result? Reduced overtime and costs, along with increased utilization of its service representatives by 15 percent in six months helping the non-profi t organization get more people back on their feet fi nancially. It s another example of a solution built around the needs of the customer. Learn how Verint solutions can help bring Customer-Inspired Excellence TM to your enterprise. Call VERINT or visit verint.com/excellence. Results may not be typical. CredAbility is a registered trademark of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta. Copyright Verint Systems Inc All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

3 01 It s Time for Collaboration in the Center people working with people. Making sure that your organization s business policies and practices are not impediments to collaboration can be a challenge. Most organizations do not collaborate effectively across functions, says Randy Emelo, president and CEO of Triple Creek Software, which provides enterprise knowledge sharing software. There is usually good collaboration within functions or business teams, but they re not connected, so information is self-sourced and self-referenced from a functional or team perspective. Hierarchical organizational structures create a barrier to knowledge sharing, he adds. For instance, consider how internal budgeting practices often prevent employees from one business unit from directly accessing employees from another unit because those managers have to account for their staff s time. Other systems, such as performance management, also tend to be functionally focused with employees viewed as segmented populations, rather than performing as a collaborative unit, Emelo explains, adding that: Many organizations approach knowledge sharing as something that they need to constrain versus unleash. Randy Emelo president and CEO, Triple creek software Moving Toward a Boundaryless Organization In a typical organization, knowledge is scattered, existing in disparate systems (e.g., CRM systems, social web systems, content management systems, etc.) and in the heads of your employees and in their teams. Creating a collaborative environment is a cultural transformation for most organizations, says Adam Mertz, senior director of product marketing for Jive Software, a leading social business platform. It is changing entirely the way that companies are working, and the way that people are connecting, sharing and learning, he says. It s about leveraging tools and technology to help transform your culture so that people are sharing and you are collecting that knowledge. But transforming a culture is not a one-time initiative. It s a journey one that doesn t happen overnight. Rather, it starts with a vision, strategy and roadmap to reengineer the culture, Emelo says. This involves identifying where your largest knowledge constraints are, as well as the largest knowledge needs within your organization. Consider where you have employees who are suffering from lack of productivity and who are moderately disengaged, he says. Those are typically your biggest need areas. A good place to begin to deploy collaboration tools is with the onboarding process, says Mertz. For instance, a traditional onboarding approach for contact centers involves a few weeks of instructor-led training to teach new-hires about the different systems, products, processes, policies and procedures. It s a one-way feed of information that is generally forgotten once new agents are out on the floor and taking their first calls. To develop a collaborative approach, think beyond the instructor-led training, Mertz says. Instead, make it easier for those new-hires to connect to the experienced service reps who have been there awhile. A social collaboration solution allows internal experts to blog about and share their knowledge, start discussions and give status updates so that knowledge is ultimately spread across the team. Features like trending topics also help new agents to see what the major issues and top discussions are so that they know where to direct their self-study time. Social Learning Drives Engagement Ongoing employee development is a key component of a collaborative workplace. Social learning, in which employees learn from each other, can not only expand employees knowledge, but improve engagement and job satisfaction, as well. The benefits to the organization are significant. Social learning centers on information sharing, collaboration and co-creation, according to Tony Bingham, president and CEO of the 04 PUBLISHER Linda Harden linda@contactcenterpipeline.com EDITOR Susan Hash susan@contactcenterpipeline.com FOUNDING ADVISORS Lori Bocklund Strategic Contact Jay Minnucci Service Agility EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD William Hartline Springs Window Fashions Tiffany LaReau Human Numbers Scott Murphy ERS of Texas Daniel Ord Omnitouch International Vince Pepper BCBS of Michigan Paul Stockford Saddletree Research Willie Tang Broad Vision Consulting Sue Weaver Jitterbug CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Mike Aoki Ken Barton Crystal Collier John Goodman Susan Hash Jay Minnucci Jack Stephens PUBLISHING GROUP Inc. Patrick Barnard Eric Berg Robb Duke Jim Grace Maggie Klenke Michele Rowan Paul Stockford DESIGN DIRECTOR Mark Knight mark@contactcenterpipeline.com TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR Steve Harden steve@contactcenterpipeline.com Print and Online Advertising Inquiries: advertise@contactcenterpipeline.com (443) PIPELINE PUBLISHING GROUP, INC PO Box 3467, Annapolis, MD (443) Contact Center Pipeline is published 12 times a year by Pipeline Publishing Group. Subscriptions start at $59 per year. Print and Electronic subscriptions available. To subscribe or renew subscription, go to Customer Service and Change of Address For service, please call (443) or info@contactcenterpipeline.com. For 24/7 service, visit our website at Publisher is not responsible for the editorial content of Contact Center Pipeline. Views expressed herein are those of the authors and sponsors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the ownership or management of the newsletter. Copyright 2013, Pipeline Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of Contact Center Pipeline in whole or in part is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from the publisher. Printed in USA using paper from responsibly managed forests and recycled plastic. Please recycle all mail packaging. CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS APR 2013 Contact center pipeline 3

4 03 Feature Article It s Time for Collaboration in the Center American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and author of The New Social Learning. It helps people to become more informed, to gain a wider perspective, and to make better decisions by engaging with others. How can you apply social learning in a contact center environment? A solution like Triple Creek s River enterprise software allows agents to create their own knowledge networks by engaging in and building learning connections. As Emelo explains: Employees decide which topics they re interested in or those where they need more support, knowledge or information. Then they tap into the social resources (internal experts) that are available, and create their own connections and their own learning engagements (which has specific goals and objectives) based on their high-interest topics. They can also join topics that other people have created and have made publicly available. For instance, if an agent wanted to learn more about how to handle difficult customers, he would join an engagement with other peer practitioners who are sharing their experiences about how they re handling difficult customers. Engagements may also include advisors who have more advanced experience and who are willing to point the agent toward additional resources. Advisors help to keep the conversations positive and productive. A great bonus for contact centers is that social learning takes the pressure off managers and supervisors to be the chief developers of their staff, Emelo says. Using social learning systems, people can develop themselves through their connections, and the manager can focus on managing their resources, projects, workflow and the performance of their people. Emelo adds that providing employees with the opportunity to take charge of their own career development and giving them access to adequate feedback and knowledge resources to perform their duties increases employee engagement in fact, Triple Creek clients typically see double-digit increases in employee engagement scores. Internal Collaboration: ROI Can Be Substantial While staff learning and development capabilities associated with collaborative environments can greatly improve employee satisfaction and engagement, company executives will likely be more interested in the productivity gains and cost savings. According to research by McKinsey & Co., the average knowledge worker wastes 28 hours Adam Mertz senior director of product marketing, Jive Software per week collaborating, searching for information and using . The report found that social technology provides a 20% to 25% improvement in productivity in effect, giving workers a full additional workday of value per week. These results were supported by an independent research study conducted by a top-three global business consultancy that looked at the impact of Jive s social platform, says Mertz. Companies reported a 15% increase in worker productivity and a 4% increase in topline revenue, according to the research. The productivity increases that led to the topline revenue growth were attributed to a 34% decrease in time spent looking for information, a 16% reduction in meetings, and a 21% reduction in workload. Cost savings and increased revenue can also be tied to collaboration around specific events, such as product launches. The typical approach to launching products is to send an to the contact center with product information that the agents need to read. That may be followed up with instructor-led training presented in person or over WebEx. Instead, a product manager can write a blog post about the new product, and customer service agents can post their questions and feedback in real time, says Mertz. He points to T-Mobile as an example. In the past, when launching a new phone, T-Mobile would give the phone to their service reps to test and then would try to gather their feedback. It was a time-consuming process. In a recent product launch, they used a Jive internal social platform, which they call T-Community, for reps to post questions and issues and share their thoughts. They were able to collect much more feedback, more quickly, in such a way that they were able to quickly incorporate it and move up the release date, which increased revenue, he says. They made modifications before rollout that saved millions of service calls. External Collaboration Fosters Brand Loyalty Just as internal knowledge sharing provides the potential for long-term positive impact, external collaboration with customers has been shown to foster stronger relationships, increase revenue, cut support costs and enhance brand loyalty. Many organizations today engage their customers through online communities, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and online forums. By allowing customers to share their knowledge and support each other, contact center support staff can then focus on the more advanced issues. While some customer communities are open to everyone, others have private areas where customers can create a support ticket or ask questions. To ensure that customers are connected with the appropriate resources to answer their questions or resolve their issue, Jive for Customer Service has a built-in case deflection workflow. As the customer types his question, the solution provides a spotlight search that highlights all of the conversations, questions and knowledge base content items that relate to the issue. The customer can click on these to read further and see whether his question has been answered. If not, he can continue searching or continue to create the support ticket. By helping customers to find answers to their questions and issues faster, companies are saving costs and delighting customers, says Mertz. What types of savings are companies seeing? They can be fairly substantial for highvolume organizations. Take McAfee, for example. The antivirus software and computer security company has been leveraging Jive for several years both inside the organization for their customer service reps, as well as externally to collaborate with customers. McAfee s external customer support community has been highly successful at engaging its corporate customers: It averages 2.6 million unique visitors each year, and has 100,000 registered users, 58% 06 4 Contact center pipeline APR 2013

5 You are cordially invited to attend the first annual ICMI Global Call Center Awards Dinner Tuesday, May 14, 2013 ACCE Conference & Expo Seattle, Washington 6:30 PM With noted host, Danya Steele This event will celebrate award honorees and finalists from across the world and recognize leadership, vision, innovation and strategic accomplishments within the contact center industry. Join us and network at the most prestigious ICMI Global Call Center Awards Dinner to celebrate excellence with the finest call centers and customer management professionals in the world. $150/Seat - Table Pricing Also Available Reserve your seat for the Awards Dinner at icmi.com/awardsdinner Cocktail Attire

6 04 Feature Article It s Time for Collaboration in the Center of whom self-resolve issues within the community. The impact on the contact center? Call volume dropped by 26%, even while the number of customers grew by about 5%. In addition, call handle time decreased by 3.1%, first-call resolution increased 17% and call escalations declined by 30%. Overall, the center s call costs were reduced $2.6 million per year. Collaboration Across Devices In addition to collaborating internally and externally, the ability to communicate and share knowledge with customers across devices is key in today s mobile business environment. And with an increasingly mobile workforce, internal experts need to be accessible to contact center agents wherever they are. Customers want collaboration experiences to be available on any device, anywhere, says Sajeel Hussain, VP of product management and marketing for Thrupoint, a provider of WebRTC innovation to enable business applications with real-time communications capabilities including voice, video, IM and presence on mobile and desktop platforms. While workforce mobility and the BYOD (bring your own device) movement are fast-growing trends, a major obstacle for organizations is developing applications that can run smoothly and securely across devices and operating systems. Thrupoint s approach allows voice, video and messaging capabilities to be embedded within an organization s existing application or web portal with policy and security, so that the collaboration experience is seamless to customers and employees. How might a multi-device service experience work? Let s say a customer is browsing on a financial services website, whether on a smartphone, tablet or desktop browser. The customer is interested in certain products, but has questions and wants to speak to someone. He can click a button to launch a video interaction with a contact center agent. The agent may need to pull in a specialist or product expert to answer the customer s questions, so she uses enterprise social media software to locate the appropriate specialist. The product expert happens to be on the road, so he joins the video conference via his smartphone or tablet. Customer service reps, internal experts and customers can easily connect and have a video conference on existing applications, with all parties on different devices and without having Sajeel Hussain VP of product management and marketing, Thrupoint to launch a WebEx session, Hussain says. It is a seamless collaboration. No clients needed; interworking with existing devices across all mobile platforms. Driving Employee Adoption Today, technology platforms and tools for enterprisewide collaboration are efficient and effective, but your people are the key to making it all work. While your employees may be fully utilizing social networks in their personal lives, changing the way that they approach their work, and getting them to share their knowledge especially if your organization has functional boundaries requires an effective user adoption strategy. As mentioned earlier, using collaboration tools during the onboarding process is an effective way to ensure that new-hires are sharing and connecting from Day 1. But what about your existing employee base? If your organization is going through the necessary culture shift to break down barriers, you will need to incorporate a change management initiative that both educates and promotes the benefits of the tools. The majority of service staff want to provide a great experience for their customers. Understanding how the tools that they re using to stay connected in their personal lives will help them to be more effective in their jobs is an important selling point, says Jive s Mertz. People have fundamentally changed the way that they connect, share and learn outside of work. If you can draw that correlation to how we re changing the way that we are connecting, sharing and learning while you re at work that it s similar to how you live your life outside of work and it s going to be better, easier and more fun for you a lot of people are receptive to that message, more so than three or four years ago when social networking was new. In addition to the communication component, Mertz recommends applying gamification concepts to help drive engagement whether it s for an external customer support community or you want to encourage your support reps to start leveraging it. For instance, for new-hires, you can create missions that they have to perform, such as comment on a discussion, create a question or read a knowledge base article. Once they ve performed all of the missions, they receive a badge. Giving them fun ways to engage works remarkably well, he says. It s amazing what people will do for badges or credit. Many employees will see the opportunity to learn and develop as an incentive, adds Emelo. This also provides contact centers with a way to meet their staff s most critical needs, which will help to retain experienced agents. The social contract between employer and employee has changed, Emelo states. Employees will stay with the organization as long as the organization allows them to develop their marketable skills. Learning and collaboration is critical in this era of free-agent workforces. Although it typically flies in the face of current organizational practice, where we try to manage and limit who people are contacting or who they re sharing with, the exact opposite is what is needed to engender loyalty. You will retain your top agents as long as you allow them to pursue some of their own interests while they re accomplishing and performing the current roles and responsibilities that the organization has given them. Susan Hash is the Editor of Contact Center Pipeline. on Twitter twitter.com/susanhash susan@contactcenterpipeline.com (206) Contact center pipeline APR 2013

7 NORTHEAST CONTACT CENTER FORUM 12 TH Annual Vendor Expo SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE JOIN THE LARGEST CONTACT CENTER EVENT IN THE NORTHEAST TUESDAY, JUNE GILLETTE STADIUM WHY SHOULD YOU ATTEND? Industry specific interactive workshops Exhibitor showcase featuring the latest contact center technology and services Keynote speaker Network with other contact center professionals from New England Tour Gillette Stadium JUNE 4 TH Early-bird registration before April 30, $100 (After May 1 ST, $125) REGISTRATION INCLUDES: All interactive workshops Keynote presentation, Think Differently: Unleash Your Inner Creativity Exhibits, featuring the latest industry technology and service offerings Behind the scenes tour of Gillette Stadium (Home of the New England Patriots) Continental breakfast and three course, plated lunch REGISTER NOW at

8 Management ROI Pipeline SPECIAL SERies Part 2/5 Attrition-Proof: Why Onboarding Matters The first impression we make with our staff has a lasting effect on attitudes and behaviors. By Eric Berg, Doherty Customer Contact Solutions Does your culture say Welcome or Please leave? A few months ago, I was onsite at a call center as temporary employees were arriving for their first day of work. As soon as they got to the front door, it was apparent to me that attrition was going to be high. How could I predict high turnover before the new agents were even on the job? The situation revealed itself two different ways in the first hour: 1. The manager had asked the new employees to arrive by 8 a.m. to start their day. One by one, they arrived on time, only to sit waiting in the building s lobby until 8:35. The trainer hadn t arrived yet! The message from management? Our time is important. Yours? Not so much. 2. Once the trainer was in the building, he rushed the new agents to the training room and proceeded to lecture them on the importance of arriving on time every day. After all, absenteeism and tardiness were the main reasons for termination. Message? Do as we say, not as we do. Sure enough, that particular call center struggled with attrition for several months before they finally took action to improve their onboarding process. The actions they took empowered managers to reach out to new-hires in meaningful ways that inspired feelings of trust and loyalty, even on Day 1. But, first, let s look at the ripple effects of poor onboarding practices. The Cost of Attrition According to Response Design Corporation, the average contact center spends $4,000 to hire a new agent and $4,800 to train them. It s easy to imagine that, in smaller call centers, a high turnover rate can mean the difference between profitable and unprofitable. But, wait there s more bad news. The Long Shadow of Attrition While it has always been costly to have uncontrolled attrition, it s never been so easy to get caught in a turnover tornado. In this day of social media and the ability to voice one s happiness (or discontent), people immediately communicate their experiences with employers, companies, products, friends or anything else that comes to mind to everyone they know. Their impression is often immediately validated by all their online friends and, potentially, prospective candidates. One disgruntled and well-connected employee can severely damage your reputation and your workforce and in less time than it takes you to get home from the office. Some employers respond to this very real threat by enacting punitive social media policies and adding Facebook Cop to their list of responsibilities. Not only is that a futile and unmanageable exercise, but it s an HR headache and does nothing to promote your business or build your reputation. Is there a better way? A Process and Workplace to Be Proud of (and Brag About) As employers in the contact center industry, we know that our agents attitudes and behaviors have a direct impact on each center s success. We also know that we seem to have more than our share of absenteeism and attrition. There s a good reason why the late Stephen Covey was fond of saying, Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. Is it reasonable to expect employees to approach a call with joy and enthusiasm when they are getting a clear message from management that they are unimportant? See Your Center Through Your Agents Eyes That first positive impression we make with our employees has a lasting effect on their attitudes and behaviors, which, in turn, affects the center s culture. Before onboarding your next set of hires, take a look at your organization through their eyes. What is the culture and environment they re entering? Will they be supported in their desire to be successful on the job? Is it clear they re valued as important members of the team? When they go home after their first shift, will they tell their friends about their new role and that they re proud to be working there? Remember, most employees want to do well at their work and enjoy it. They understand that it makes the day go faster to be engaged with and contributing to the goals of the group. Here are a few things I have done to encourage those feelings of belonging and to ensure that the employee s initial experience is a positive one. 1. Roll out the red carpet literally. In one of my previous contact center positions, I went to a carpet store and bought a red rug that I put at the entrance to the training room. Every new-hire was required to walk the red carpet into the training room. Sure, it was corny, but it was also a great ice-breaker that made the employees realize we were trying to create a special experience for them. Perception can be a powerful thing. 2. Give them energy. I have always provided food for my call center agents. After all, sustaining contagious enthusiasm is hard work! Doughnuts are a great way to sugar them up and get the energy in the room going, but I also provide healthy options like granola bars or fresh fruit to prevent an energy crash when the sugar wears off. And, of course, I always have bottled water or beverages available. Having these items around can help people stay focused, and also shows 8 Contact center pipeline APR 2013

9 Visit contactcenterpipeline.com to view/download the first article in the series Onboarding them you care. 3. Make it social. Remember that, when onboarding, you have a room full of people who don t know each other. The first weeks can be intimidating and opening up is difficult, even for some of the most outgoing agents. Plan an exercise that allows the call center reps to get to know one another, perhaps a team-building activity or game. By getting to know their fellow trainees, agents can build bonds with their coworkers and, thus, there will be a greater likelihood of remaining an employee through the training process and beyond. This isn t just wishful thinking Gallup polls consistently find that employees who have close friendships at work are correlated with higher customer engagement and higher profitability. In fact, having a best friend at work is No. 10 in their list of 12 key dimensions that describe great workgroups. 4. More about introductions. Put some thought into your one-to-one introductions behave like you would if you were hosting a dinner party and share something you know about the people you re introducing. For example, instead of Joe, meet Sharon, say something like, Sharon has been here for two years and she s a passionate racquetball player. And Joe comes to us from Company X, where his role was Y. The benefits to this practice are considerable. For one thing, you ve demonstrated that you know something you can share about your employees as people off the clock a very valuable investment in retaining them. 5. Drink the Kool-Aid. Brainwashing is a good thing! Well, let me explain further. We need our newest employees to start drinking the Kool-Aid and realize that they have a great job at a great company. That means the first day is the best time to brag. Talk about your company s successes, benefits, opportunities and culture and don t forget to mention the rewards and incentives for the contact center team. 6. Stop and say hi. Want to make your new employees feel valued? Have your executive or leadership teams stop by on the first day to introduce themselves. Feeling like a number is a big reason for attrition, so this presence can Training On the Floor Reduce Your Agent Attrition have a great impact on new employees. Plus, new employees will likely feel more comfortable approaching leaders with ideas and issues if they ve already met. 7. Do it every day. Although first impressions are critical, we need to make the employee experience a positive one every day. Ask yourself, If I were a new employee here, would I brag about the training? The supervisors and trainers? The culture and company? If the answer is unclear, it s time to make a change. The Cost of Effective Onboarding The best part about implementing a strong onboarding program is that tips 3 through 7 are 100% cost-free, and tips 1 and 2 are negligible, especially compared to the cost of losing a trained employee. Onboarding is a crucial part of an employee retention program, but it is not an expensive part. This is a no-brainer onboarding costs are greatly outweighed by benefits. Supervisor Training Applicant Process The Takeaway No matter how many years someone has been bringing home a paycheck, the first day of a new job is a big deal. As an employer, it s also the perfect time to demonstrate the enthusiasm and graciousness that you expect your employees to show to your customers and prospects. Give your new employees a reason to be excited and share all the details of their first day, and their partners, spouses, friends and families may become your new candidates assuming you ever have any openings to fill. Eric Berg is the Director of Doherty Customer Contact Solutions. An 18-year veteran of the contact center industry, Eric also serves as Treasurer of the Midwest Contact Center Association (MWCCA) and on its Board. eberg@dohertycontact.com APR 2013 ContactCenterPipeline.com 9

10 Home Working Home Working Lessons Learned: Yahoo and Best Buy Home working continues to grow and deliver high value in organizations that provide well-defined expectations, job matching and strong cultures. By Michele Rowan, At Home Customer Contacts Yahoo and Best Buy recently announced that they were pulling back on their home-working programs. Like many others around the world, I have taken a keen interest in understanding their reversed positions and the impact their decisions may have on the customer contact environment. Neither company has had much to say publicly only small bits of information have been released. What we have seen is an outpouring of opinions and deductions from researchers, analysts, reporters and specialists who have either worked in, or have closely followed the explosion of U.S. work-at-home initiatives during the last decade. To frame the growth of telecommuting, a quick look at the facts: U.S. Census Bureau data released in March reports that some 13.4 million people were telecommuting in 2010, a rise of nearly 25% since When we include employees, contractors and business owners who work from home a minimum of once a month, the estimate expands to 33.7 million, per the Telework Coalition. Gartner estimates that, by 2016, 63 million Americans will telecommute. The service sector, particularly customer contacts, has experienced unprecedented growth and returns from home working, as evidenced in recent research by At Home Customer Contacts. In a 2013 benchmarking survey, participants reported that an average of 20% of their current customer contact populations were home based, and the plans were to double the mix of home-based representatives by year-end 2014 (see Figure 1). High Returns in Customer Care, Mid- and Back-Office Processing The survey participants were asked about the high-value results that they are experiencing from home working. And they are, indeed, reaching far beyond relief from unnecessary investments in real estate, as businesses recover from the recession and continue to expand their services: 74% of participants reporting improved attendance of home workers vs. brickand-mortar staff 64% reported improved employee retention 58% reported productivity improvements 45% reported seasonal staffing improvements 38% reported intraday staffing improvements (see Figure 2) Marissa Mayer of Yahoo indicated that speed and quality were sacrificed when people worked from home. Best Buy stated in February that their ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) was fundamentally flawed from a leadership perspective. It s no secret that both companies have struggled with their market positions of late, and are taking various steps to revive their standings % of CC Team at Home 2014 % of CC Team at Home 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 0-20% 21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81% + 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 0-20% 21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81% + U.S. Utilization Doubles in Contact Centers: Figure 1, Above 10 Contact center pipeline APR 2013 DATA SOURCE: at home customer contacts 2013

11 Cost Improvement Realization Real estate and related Attendance Employee retention Productivity improvements Peak or seasonal staffing improvements Intraday staffing improvements Equipment Performance management efficiencies Training efficiencies 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% High-Value Results Experienced from Home Working Figure 2, Above So that much, we know. At Home Customer Contacts has partnered with 500-plus companies in the past three years that have experienced tremendous returns in employee satisfaction, talent acquisition and retention, as well as the host of additional benefits listed above specifically in the functions of customer care, mid- and back-office processing. Three consistent, affirmed factors for homeworking success are as follows: 1. Job Match Highly transactional jobs including voice, nonvoice, mid- and back-office processing are among the largest populations of home workers, and deliver the most compelling, incremental performance gains over any other work category. Welldefined expectations, metrics-driven performance checks, and desktop technology that furnishes clear visibility of production to both employees and to the business take the guesswork out of speed and quality deliverables. 2. Employee Match Hiring the right people for home-based positions is essential to a program s success. Self-starters who have full understanding of and/or experience working in a more isolated environment are top candidates. The business responsibility is to thoroughly assess for competencies required to fulfill job requirements, including those distinctive to home working. Evaluations tools include psychometric testing balanced with behavioral interviewing, complete background screenings and job skills assessments. Companies with consistently high yields in home-working programs make careful investments in the matching process on the front end. 3. Company Culture Both in house and at home, organizations are charged with establishing intense employee connections to their businesses that s what makes it all go. This includes processes, practices and leadership that furnish clear on-the-job support, creating a work experience that promotes wellbeing, and designing a landscape that inspires achievement of both work goals and personal best through a level of discretionary effort. Organizations that have to count on sustained productivity from a lean work force may experience problems with employee engagement. And when engagement starts to decline, companies become susceptible to measurable drops in productivity, customer service, absenteeism and turnover. What impact have the Yahoo and Best Buy actions had on decision makers in the customer contact arena? At Home Customer Contacts surveyed 200-plus leaders in mid-march 2013 with questions aimed directly at the vulnerabilities that Yahoo and Best Buy may have been experiencing with home working: 96% of respondents reported that their home-working programs include welldefined performance expectations and highly visible results. 91% of respondents indicated that their organizations have strong company cultures and sustainable employee engagement. 96% of respondents reported that the Yahoo and Best Buy reversals hold little, if any, influence on their current or future state of home working. In conclusion, there is strong evidence to support that customer contact leaders are taking the lessons learned seriously, and rightfully so. But they are not headed back to cubicles any time soon. Michele Rowan is President of At Home Customer Contacts and former VP of Performance Management for Hilton Hotels. She has worked with over 500 companies across sectors in homeworking implementations. mrowan@athomecustomercontacts.com The At Home Strategies for Success Workshop Series covers these topics in great detail. In an intimate setting of only 40 participants per workshop, members hold deep-dive discussions into areas highly impacted by home working, sense-checking their current strategies, and shaping nextgeneration vision. For more information, visit: APR 2013 ContactCenterPipeline.com 11

12 The View from the Send Em Home! Or Not The at-home contact center agent strategy continues to gain industry momentum. By Paul Stockford, Saddletree Research Having agents work from home is not a new concept in the contact center industry. The idea first made headlines back in 1999 when start-up airline JetBlue created a lot of buzz with their virtual customer service center comprised entirely of agents working from home. Back in those dark days, it required a lot of expensive, proprietary equipment to allow an agent to work from home, not to mention a decidedly progressive management mindset. Today the technological barriers for at-home agents have been all but eliminated. Just about every person who wants it has broadband access to the home. Voice can be delivered to the home over these broadband lines or via the traditional public telephone network. Computers are relatively inexpensive and plentiful and there are currently approximately 1.1 wireless communications devices for every man, woman and child in the United States and all its territories. In other words, there are now more wireless communications devices than there are people in the U.S. population. Customer service professionals have recognized this proliferation of technology and it has translated into a growing number of contact center agents working from home. Research that my company, Saddletree Research, conducted in conjunction with the National Association of Call Centers (NACC) at The University of Southern Mississippi revealed that the majority of U.S. contact centers, 52%, have some portion of their agent population working from home today. We found this to be a somewhat surprising result given that, generally speaking, when you think of the hip, progressive industries that support innovative personnel policies, the contact center industry isn t usually at the top of the list. It is important to add the qualifier that, although the majority of the industry supports home agents, most of the contact centers with at-home agents have only a small percentage of their agent workforce functioning from a home office. In fact, of all contact centers supporting at-home agents the majority, 54%, have less than 10% of their agents working from home. This clearly indicates that the industry is ready to test the idea of having agents work from home, but the commitment by most contact centers is limited. The data we collected indicates that the athome agent experiment, if you will, is working. For example, of all contact centers with at-home agents in 2012, 70% stated that they intend to increase the number of their at-home agents in Less than 3% indicated that they would be bringing their agents back into the brick-andmortar contact center. Generally speaking, there is market optimism regarding at-home agents, but there are also challenges ahead. The first, and probably most formidable, challenge is finding the right people to fill those at-home agent positions. At-home employees require particular work and personality traits, such as being self-motivated and possessing a strong work ethic. My longtime colleague Kevin Hegebarth of HireIQ ( clarified this challenge for hiring managers. According to Kevin, The profile for home agents tends to be significantly different than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. They tend to be older, have more college education and many have had some management experience. They are often new/single parents, have other jobs and are looking to augment their income without the burden of another commute, or have physical limitations that make it difficult for them to leave the house. They also may not specifically be looking for a call center type job, so traditional methods of attracting brick-and-mortar agent candidates won t reach these valuable workers. It is also important to make the interviewing process easy and convenient for these nontraditional prospective employees. While the at-home contact center agent strategy seems to be gaining industry momentum there is an astonishingly opposite phenomenon occurring in some segments of the high-tech industry. In February of this year, Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer effectively eliminated the work-at-home program that Yahoo began in 2005, and which included 15,000 employees by The program was purportedly eliminated in an effort to get Yahoo employees to work together in a collaborative effort. Apparently more than one Silicon Valley company is bucking the work-at-home trend as Google also discourages its employees from working at home. Best Buy has also joined the ranks of large companies that have done an about-face on their home-worker policy. I agree with Kevin Hegebarth s assessment of the situation. As he said, I think home agents will likely remain immune from the pullback we re seeing from Yahoo and Best Buy. Their focus is on employees whose main interaction is with other employees, where proximity is an advantage. However, a home agent s interactions are with those external to the organization where proximity has little, if any, bearing. That said, it still takes a unique kind of person to excel at being a home agent. I find it rather ironic that fast-moving, ultrahip, cutting-edge Silicon Valley companies are becoming increasingly old school in their work strategies while the staid, conservative contact center industry is embracing the latest employee management trends. While they re bringing employees back into the office, we re sending employees home to work. I guess we re more hip than I thought we were. Paul Stockford is Chief Analyst at Saddletree Research, which specializes in contact centers & customer service. pstockford@saddletreeresearch.com (480) Contact center pipeline APR 2013

13 INDUSTRY WEB EVENT Tuesday, April 30, 2013, 11:30 AM EDT / 16:30 BST Making the Business Case for Moving Your Contact Center to the Cloud The shift to the cloud makes sense for many contact centers, but does it make sense for yours? The growth of the cloud contact center is nearly ten times that of the premises-based sector, but do the benefits of the cloud justify a shift for your business? In this web event, sponsored by Interactive Intelligence, industry experts will provide a framework for making the business case to move your contact center to the cloud. Discussion points will include a deep dive into the benefits of the cloud, how to develop a realistic total cost of ownership comparison, the vendor selection process, the five cloud contact center items you should not compromise on, and how a move to the cloud can improve the overall experience for your customers. Regardless if you have a ten-agent center, or tens of thousands of agents spread around the globe, this web event will help you determine if the cloud makes sense for your business. To register visit SPONSORED BY deliberately innovative

14 Sponsor Spotlight Antisocial Media in the Call Contact Center! By Jack Stephens with Robb Duke Way back in 2010, if we needed to contact a company, for any number of reasons, we probably called them. Sometimes we might have sent an , or maybe we even clicked into a live-chat session. Regardless of how we contacted them, unless we were serving ourselves with an automated system, on the other end of those communications was a call center agent. Or should I say contact center agent? After all, communications options have proliferated well beyond the simple phone call. Lately, social media has become the channel du jour. But is there a contact center agent on the other end of these communications, too? Is anyone listening? Or responding? What began as a way to keep up with friends and families, and to support favorite bands or sports teams, social media has taken a dramatic turn and has made a huge impact in the business landscape. On a massive scale, companies are now adopting social media as way to engage and service customers and prospects. Early adopters created a Facebook page, LinkedIn profile and Twitter handle. Maybe they even assigned someone to occasionally monitor those new channels. But with legions of users and new social portals appearing seemingly daily, from established providers like LinkedIn and Twitter to newer players like Instagram, FourSquare and many, many more, social interaction management has become more complex and important than originally envisioned. Today, crossfunctional teams from marketing, operations, e-commerce, IT and customer service departments, with varying skill sets and opinions, are converging to figure out how best to utilize these new portals to customer interaction. There are now even executive positions, like Chief Social Media Officers, overseeing these initiatives. Astonishingly, many companies are neglecting social media. A study by A.T. Kearney found that, of the top 50 brands, 56% did not respond to a single customer comment on their Facebook Page in In addition, Maritz Research reports that brands ignored 71% of customers complaints on Twitter. And, 55% of consumers expect a response the same day to an online complaint, while only 29% receive one. Do these same companies let the phone ring without answering? Do s pile up in their inboxes, remaining unread while service levels plummet? Do they ignore walk-in customers patronizing their brick-and-mortar facilities? If they do, those habits won t be repeated for long. According to Gartner, by 2014, organizations that refuse to communicate with customers by social media will face the same level of wrath from customers as those that ignore today s basic expectation that they will respond to s and phone calls. For organizations that use social media to promote their products, responding to inquiries via social media channels will be the new minimum level of response expected. Is it apathy that causes this non-response? Or confusion? Do these companies think the channel is a passing fad? Maybe these anti-social offenses were unintentional communications lost through the cracks due to the novelty of the social mode? If there is to be a challenge in integrating social media within the contact center, it shouldn t come from the human element. That s the easy part: Make sure that there is a human being on the other end of that customer connection. Don t ignore tweets and wall posts. The right approach to social media integration for contact centers will likely include selecting agents based on their familiarity with social culture, tools and processes. Successful integration will call for effectively revamping training programs to educate agents and supervisors. A social-centric call center will have rules and guidelines that hold agents accountable, with a standard of measurement for agent performance. Traditional contact centers measure agent performance on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like Average Handle Time (AHT), Average Speed of Answer (ASA), Adherence Rate, Average Talk Time and Abandon Rates. These metrics and feedback from Voice of the Customer (VOC) initiatives, all of which measure service, quality and effectiveness, can also be applied to social media interactions. Sure, social media is shiny and new, and maybe even complex in certain scenarios. But if Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like are integrated as just another channel among channels, they can be operationalized, measured and perfected to drive efficiencies, service levels and revenue. Jack Stephens is a Senior Sales Executive at USAN with more than 15 years of strategic solutions sales. For the past decade, Jack has focused mostly on the Healthcare industry, but his contact center-focused journey has included call center management, outsourcing services sales, technology sales and administration, and collections program management. Jack has developed a fascination with and a deep understanding of social media, mobile and other multichannel customer engagement strategies and techniques for companies in healthcare, financial services, utilities and BPOs. Robb Duke is the Director of Marketing for USAN. Since 1999, Duke has worked in the customer contact industry overseeing marketing and business development activities for software firms and service providers. He has written numerous articles, white papers and case studies about multichannel customer communications, engagement strategy and technologies, and optimization solutions and best practices. Visit for more information 14 Contact center pipeline APR 2013 Sponsored by USAN

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16 Performance Matters Become the Leader Your Contact Center Deserves Use emotion to motivate and inspire your agents to fulfill your service mission. By Mike Aoki, Reflective Keynotes Inc. How do you get people to do what you want? Why should they follow your lead? According to Daniel Goleman, author of the best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence, great leaders know how to influence their employees emotions. They know how to get people to rally around a cause. Data tells; emotion sells. Think of any great leader. They use emotion to motivate their followers and inspire them toward fulfilling a mission. When President John F. Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, he motivated an entire nation to reach for the stars. Even in a highly technical field such as computing, the best leaders appeal to their employees emotions. Think of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. He was renowned for being a demanding boss. But, he also inspired employees through his vision, commitment to excellence and desire to build cool products like the ipod, ipad and MacBook Air. Now you may be saying to yourself, I m the leader of a contact center. I don t have a great cause for my employees to rally around, like winning a war or putting a man on the moon. That may be true. But you can still give your department a mission. For example, Zappos, the online shoe company, has elevated customer service into a higher calling. They encourage their contact center staff to connect emotionally with callers. They want their agents to inject their own personality into each conversation, so the call becomes a relationship between two human beings rather than a company and a customer. As a result, they have some of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in their industry and a legion of loyal fans. Here s another example: Two men were laying bricks to construct a building. The first man said, All these buildings are the same. Who cares? The second man said, I am building a magnificent church that will become the cornerstone of my community for generations. I feel so honored just to be part of its construction! The first man had a job. The second one had a mission. Seven Tips for Connecting to Your Agents Emotions How do you give your contact center a sense of mission? How can you appeal to your staff s emotions? How do you motivate them to want to follow your lead? The following are seven tips to help you connect emotionally with your contact center employees. Have a clear-cut vision and constantly articulate that vision The Ritz-Carlton Hotel has a motto: We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. That is a simple expression of supreme service. But, it gives employees a vision of how they affect their customers. Notice there are no statistics in that motto. No mention of being 10% more of a gentleman than the competition. That is because a vision has to appeal to the heart to be effective. What is your vision for your department? In the contact center industry, goals such as, first call, final call, voice of the customer, service level, etc., are quite common. But, how can you turn those goals into truly heart-warming visions that inspire your staff? For example, We will heroically do everything we can to solve our callers problems the first time they call. Or, We will treat every customer as if they are our only customer. Use stories to connect emotionally Stories work because they appeal to the heart, not the brain. Listeners can more easily identify with someone s story rather than an impersonal statistic. Imagine being told, Our average handle time is up by 10 seconds. Would that make you want to become more efficient at handling calls? But, what if you were told, Sally Smith is one of our best customers. I m sure many of you have spoken with her over the years. Well, yesterday, she switched to the competition because she got tired of waiting to talk to a live agent. For a department our size, even saving a few seconds per call means we could have answered her inquiry and saved her from leaving. When you address your team at staff meetings, town halls, etc., use stories to connect with them. For example, at every State of the Union address, the president of the United States will usually mention a statistic, such as how many people graduate from college. Then, he will tell a story about one particular individual who became the first person in his family to graduate from college and how that helped him to get a good paying job and support his family. The data tells, but the story sells the idea. Motivate your team There are a lot of fancy buzzwords around motivation. But at its heart, motivation is very simple. It is about influencing people s emotions so they want to move forward. Think about your contact center. What would motivate people to care more about their jobs? What would cause them to become invested emotionally in their role? What does their job mean to them, beyond just a paycheck? 16 Contact center pipeline APR 2013

17 @mikeaoki Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States For example, my favorite bank has won a highly prestigious customer service award seven years in a row. They brag about it in their ads. Their employees also live it every day at work, trying to provide the best service possible. These employees are emotionally invested. They take pride in their jobs and seem determined to win this industry award for the eighth time. Build credibility by admitting the obvious If something is not working, you will lose your team s respect by pretending everything is fine. Think about it another way: You would never let your agents get away with stonewalling a customer or telling the customer that their problem does not exist. So treat your team the way you want them to treat customers: with respect and an acknowledgment of the obvious. Then, commit to finding ways to fix the problem. Or if you cannot fix it, at least acknowledge that you share their pain and understand their frustration. Early in my career, I worked as an agent in a call center (and they were called call centers not contact centers back then). The billing software we used was incredibly slow. That made our jobs difficult since we had to wait nearly a minute for the caller s account information to show onscreen. My coworkers and I were getting very frustrated. But, our director acknowledged the problem. She thanked us for doing everything we could to fill the dead air while waiting for the billing software to retrieve the caller s account. She also committed to working with the IT department to fix the problem. That honesty and commitment to giving us the tools we needed to do our jobs effectively earned her our trust. Build credibility by living up to your word (and never make promises you cannot keep) I saw a new CEO at a townhall meeting giving a speech to his employees. He told them they should not take higher paying jobs elsewhere because they had jobs for life at his company. Twelve weeks later, he laid off 10% of the staff! After that, no one trusted a word he said. He was finished as a leader because he had lost the trust of his team. Be someone your team can trust. Be someone they can invest in emotionally, because they believe you will live up to your word. Make it fun One of the best ways to inject positive emotion into a contact center is to celebrate successes. Post s from satisfied callers on the bulletin boards. Share stories of successfully handled calls during townhall meetings. Forward testimonials and complimentary s from customers. Work with your management team to create fun contests and incentives to motivate the right behaviors from your frontline agents because people become emotionally invested when they are having a good time. Make it family I worked with a company that began as a familyowned business. They had a tradition of giving a frozen turkey to each employee at Christmas so they could share it with their families. Years later, when the company had 3,000 employees, they still gave out Christmas turkeys to every employee. It was highly anticipated event. Not because we needed a frozen piece of poultry product once a year. But, because it made us feel like we were all part of a big family. The owner s emotional investment in us caused us to emotionally invest in the company. That is the kind of emotional leadership that inspires people to go the extra mile at work. Use these tips to help make an emotional connection with your team and become the contact center leader they deserve. Mike Aoki is a popular conference speaker and seminar leader. His company, Reflective Keynotes Inc. (www. reflectivekeynotes.com), helps organizations improve their sales, customer service and management skills. mike.aoki@reflectivekeynotes.com (905) ARTICLE ARCHIVE SEARCH CONTACT CENTER RESOURCES Search all past and current CCP ContactCenterPipeline.com Information available at your fingertips; search all CCP published articles Search by author, topic, or column to find what you need APR 2013 ContactCenterPipeline.com 17

18 Sponsor Spotlight 5 Factors Driving Adoption of Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions By Patrick Barnard The recession continues to drive organizations in a wide range of industries to migrate their contact center systems to the cloud. According to DMG Consulting, more than 18% of all contact centers in the United States will be cloud-based by 2015 and the firm cautions that this is probably a conservative estimate. Download To dowload Executive Guide to Cloud-Based Contact Centers visit: Patrick Barnard is a freelance technology writer for cloud-based contact center technology provider Connect First, where he also contributes to the company s blog. He previously worked as Group Managing Editor for TMCnet, where he covered the contact center industry, and also has served in editorial roles for Customer Interactions Solutions magazine, Multichannel Merchant magazine and Operations & Fulfillment (O&F) Advisor. pbarnard@connectfirst.com DMG Consulting s Executive Guide to Cloud-based Contact Centers, sponsored by contact center technology firm Connect First, breaks down the major factors driving adoption of cloud-based contact center systems. Let s take a quick look at a few of the major ones: Fast deployment and low implementation costs As mentioned, cost is the primary driver for adoption. Today s cloud-based contact center systems can be deployed in a matter of days, sometimes hours, as all that s needed are the computers and a high-speed Internet connection (depending on the number of seats, a vendor-owned appliance may need to be deployed on the customer s premises). This means organizations avoid having to make a large upfront capital investment in new equipment and network architecture. Because the software is delivered on a subscription basis, organizations don t need to pay for multiple licenses, they simply lease the software on a pay-as-you-go or subscription basis. Reduced maintenance costs Since cloud-based software is delivered as a managed service, the vendor takes on responsibility for application performance, including maintenance of equipment and network infrastructure. For this reason, today s cloudbased solutions significantly reduce the strain on company IT departments. Because the software is delivered on a subscription basis, the cost of the service can be represented as recurring line item in monthly expense reports. This is in contrast to on-premises systems, which can result in major financial surprises when a piece of equipment fails or something else goes wrong. Extreme scalability Because the software is hosted in a virtualized data center where there are presumably ample computing resources, organizations can rapidly scale up or scale down the number of call center agents without having to invest in new equipment and software licenses. This is a huge advantage for seasonal merchants and other businesses that experience annual spikes and lulls in call volume. With the on-premises model, a company has to invest in enough servers and software licenses to cover peak volume, but during the lulls these resources sit in the server room, underutilized. In this regard, cloud-based systems are more cost-effective. Instant Access to the Latest Technology This is a huge advantage, especially for smaller companies with limited IT budgets. With the cloud model of delivery, organizations can gain instant access to the most advanced and up-to-date contact center technologies. This is a key consideration for organizations seeking to shorten technology refresh cycles to stay ahead of competitors and deliver the best customer service possible. Upgrading on-premises systems requires investment in new equipment, software and sometimes network infrastructure, which can result in increased costs and potential disruptions to service. Whereas with cloud-based systems, all upgrades, releases and patches are delivered automatically, without the need to involve internal IT staff. Ease of Integration with Existing Systems Today s cloud-based contact center systems with their open APIs also enable organizations to get more mileage out of their existing on-premises systems. Sometimes an organization simply doesn t want to let go of its legacy order management system or workforce management system. With today s cloud-based systems, an organization can deploy just the core contact center functionality and take a hybrid approach when it comes to integrating ancillary systems such IVR, WFM, CRM and reporting. Conversely, a company can easily make the transition all at once and immediately benefit from the reliability that a unified system can deliver. 18 Contact center pipeline APR 2013 Sponsored by Connect first

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20 Agility Factor Greening the Center Investing in environmental design benefits employees, customers and the community. By Jay Minnucci, Service Agility 01 home agent programs, most of our employees drive to an office every day. Lots of driving, lots of traffic, lots of emissions. That s not very green, but no less so than any other major white-collar industry. What differentiates us, though, is the impact we have on our customers. Doing business with a contact center means little more than picking up a phone, sending an , or initiating a text-chat session. Without our services, customers are forced into other options. Yes, some of them will be able to transact business simply by using the Internet. Others, though, will not have that luxury. They will need to visit a store, an office, a branch or some other physical outpost that offers the service they need. In the 40 or so years of our existence, the number of trips we have eliminated is incalculable. Whatever the number is, even the lowest of estimates will show a substantial net positive impact on the environment. Small Things That Add Value Where people congregate, opportunities exist to support environmental programs. Some contact centers have realized this and have initiated programs to take advantage of it. In the consulting trips that I ve made to contact centers in recent years, I have noticed the following: Dead battery collection (and proper disposal) Cell phone and other used electronics collection and disposal Parking spaces for low-emission vehicles Accommodations for biking to work (secure parking areas, showers, etc.) Low-flush toilets Removal of paper towels in restrooms Many of these practices are still more the exception than the rule. Yet they are easy to implement and have little to no cost attached to them. For those reasons, I suspect they will catch on quickly and be considered the norm in the next five to 10 years. The State-of-the-Art Green Contact Center Contact centers are no different than any other industry in the evolution of the physical plant that houses our employees and equipment. Every year every day, in fact advances are made in the construction of commercial (and residential) buildings that make them more environmentally friendly. Fully capitalizing on the opportunity is no small task, as it requires more money and far more effort to build according to the latest green codes. Constructing a state-of-the-art green contact center is exactly the choice made by Nationwide Insurance in San Antonio. In operation for over a year now, their center is at the leading edge of environmental design. From the initial planning stages of the 290,000-square-foot facility, the decision was made to build a center that would meet and go well beyond LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification. According to Travis Hodges, the associate vice president of sales for Nationwide, this meant an excavating and outdoor design process that: Left 40% of the 34 acres of land untouched green during and after construction Preserved 44% of the trees originally on the property Connected graywater collection with irrigation systems for landscaping Provided for special parking for up to 89 low-emission vehicles The attention to the environment continued with an internal design that includes: Task lighting complementing overhead lighting with dimmers Automated window shade mechanisms that react based on the weather Showers for those choosing to bike to work Low-flow sinks and toilets Elimination of trash cans at desks, opting for centralized collection instead No paper towels in restrooms And while some may associate green with compromise (think small, funky-looking hybrid cars), that is clearly not the case here. According to Travis, Nationwide s facility in San Antonio is the first commercially fortified building in America, capable of withstanding natural hazards like wildfires, hurricanes and windstorms that would damage other facilities. It is all done with a clean, comfortable design that makes for a pleasant work environment. The Payoff Clearly, the environment makes out better when organizations choose to implement some of the green practices described here. But is that enough? Contact centers exist to serve customers, ultimately for the good of the organizations that employ us. Whatever value you may personally place on environmental issues, there needs to be some payback for the effort for any green movement to hit a critical mass. If you think in terms of return on investment, it becomes easier to analyze the possibilities. Many green practices collecting batteries and other electronics, encouraging fuel efficient transportation, reducing or eliminating paper towels, for example involve little to no investment from the organization. At a minimum, these practices strengthen our organization s position as a good corporate citizen, and most would agree that is enough to justify a very minor investment. What about those big-ticket items, though? 20 Contact center pipeline APR 2013