With declining job satisfaction comes the risk of increased turnover and all of its well-documented costs:

• Increased hiring expense
   
• Decreased productivity
   
• Increased absenteeism
   
• Wasted training dollars
   
• Decreased safety
   

Improve satisfaction and retention; improve profitability.

The Harvard Business Review reports that a five percent increase in retention often results in in a 10 percent decrease in costs and productivity increases ranging from 25 percent to 65 percent! As an individual business, it may help to learn what produces job satisfaction. The correct answers are not always the obvious ones! Take this quiz to see what you know about producing job satisfaction:

Mark these statements as True or False.

1. Level of compensation is the most important factor in job satisfaction.
    
2. Self-esteem produced by the workplace ranks very highly in determining satisfaction.
    
3. Match between employee occupational interest and job requirements does not count for much in measurements of satisfaction.
    
4. Flexible work times rank low on the overall scheme of job satisfaction.

Check your answers in the box below.

How well did you do? What can you do to improve employee satisfaction in your business? Ideas:

• Make repetitive tasks less boring.
   
• Provide workers with responsibility as well as the authority to accomplish it.
   
• Look past formalities and establish genuine growth paths for all employees, not just executives.

With a little work and creative thought, even employees with low morale can become motivated, enthusiastic and satisfied in their jobs!

Why are businesses of many types looking to call centers for their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functions? According to industry guru Nadji Teherani:

• They can usually do a far more efficient job of marketing than an in-house department can.
   
• Most are equipped with more high-technology than in-house companies, thus the client can expect far superior results at lower cost than purchasing the equipment for themselves.
   
• Since teleservices is the only thing call centers do, their core competency generates leads, builds databases and supports sales, e-commerce and customer relationships.
   
• Call centers perform sales, marketing and customer service functions at a fraction of the cost to an in-house company, simply because the agency can spread its costs across its client base.

As long as call centers meet these expectations, growth seems inevitable.

CHALLENGES:
Frieda Barry, Executive Director of industry group CIAC (Call Center Industry Advisory Council), points out, “With the explosive growth of call centers, the absence of qualified individuals is hurting recruiting efforts and the ability of call centers to operate at an optimum level.  The need to have individuals that are competent to hit the ground running is ever pressing. Until now, very little has been done to validate the call center profession or to promote working in call centers as a credible career choice. The industry...is also hindered by negative perception of call centers...as telemarketers.”

She adds, “Working in a call center is not viewed as a legitimate career.  Most people end up working in a call center while waiting for a perceived better job to come along.  Rarely when you ask a person what profession he/she will pursue do you get the response: I want to work in a call center."

• Call center employees are the face your company turns toward your customers. They are a critical element in building a trusting, long-lasting relationship with those customers.
   
• Labor is the number one location factor for call centers, simply because the quality and skill of the staff making and receiving calls is a huge determinant in the facility's success.
   
• FedEx—The company wants customers to use the Web for customer service because it costs less. But if it cuts back on real people, customers could get angry. So it spends $326 million a year on call centers.
   
• HR professionals constantly seek the most efficient ways of deploying their call center capabilities. These efficiencies include flexible workforce solutions that focus on staffing, training and retaining quality call center personnel.

And, that last item includes the next big challenge: You’ve hired them, can you keep them? As call centers have looked to rural labor markets for their locations, the inelasticity of those markets has come back to haunt them. In New York, when you fire someone or they quit, your universe of potential applicants shrinks by a millionth. The same action in Pocatello, Idaho might reduce it by a few hundredths. Do this a thousand times a year, and Pocatello is out of applicants!

MetLife offers these call center turnover stats:

• 187 percent for outbound selling centers
   
• 97 percent for inbound/outbound centers
   
• 78 percent for team/group managers
   
• 73 percent for entry level representatives

And, if they don’t quit—but don’t show up? MetLife cites absenteeism at the 30-40 percent daily level!

• New hire failure rates running as high as 85 percent in the first month
   
• High training costs followed by very early on-job failure
   
• Difficulty recruiting for specific evening and weekend shifts
   
• In some locations, an inelastic employment pool

In addition to these familiar problems, client demands may cause very rapid fluctuations in required headcount; a client’s promotional campaign, for example, may require an immediate increase of 50 percent in agent counts, but a similar percentage reduction three weeks later. If other client workloads do not take up the slack, a round of layoffs becomes inevitable.

In an attempt to reduce the costly effects of these challenges and increase retention of newly hired call agents, the call center tested a strategic hiring system of assessments in a “funnel” model.

Prior hiring processes were a traditional combination of application, basic skills test, reference checking and two-level interview.

In the funnel model being tested, new job applicants complete the Step One Survey II™ (SOS2) assessment and the Customer Service Perspective™ (CSP) assessment at the time of application. The HR staff evaluates each application and the results of a basic skills test (keyboarding, computer skills). Based on this evaluation, candidates selected for interview are scored on the SOS2; those who qualify with scores above a criterion are invited to interview with HR staff. If recommended for continuation by the interviewer, the CSP assessment is scored. Applicants who match the relevant job pattern above a criterion level are invited to interview with a call center team leader, using the interview guide from the CSP as well as other interview questions. The combined inputs from the application, skills test, two assessments and two interviews are evaluated to select those who receive a job offer. While the new process appears more complicated, staff hours per hire have actually been reduced with use of the assessment criteria. Staff hours are now focused on fewer, more highly selected finalists.

During the study, client demands required a dramatic increase in headcount. In the original hiring system, this level of increase was always accompanied by an increasing level of turnover. The left-hand graph shows the effect of the hiring system on early job failure. The right-hand graph illustrates the success of the system over time; even while headcount levels increased, turnover declined and continued to trend downward.