Part I

Part II

In Part I the importance of employee retention was discussed and this discussion continued in Part II. In Part III will conclude with the 7 keys to help retain employees.

THE IMPORTANCE OF OPEN COMMUNICATION

Companies spend a great deal of time and money on customer communications, and they do not give employee communication the same respect. Employees should know everything your business shares with your customers, and more. You must communicate openly, honestly and often with your employees. When you are measuring their customer service performance (or any performance for that matter), let the employees know ahead of time what you expect of them, how you will measure it, and what the rewards and consequences will be based on achievement.

Make promises to employees that you can keep. You would never overpromise and underdeliver to customers. Do not do it to employees either. Remember that satisfaction and loyalty are based on credibility and trust. If you develop these, you will create high levels of both employee and customer retention. If you break the trust, you will break the bonds that emotionally tie people to your company and create turnover.

So make sure that you communicate openly, honestly and regularly about everything. Also, listen carefully to what employees have to say. Just like customers, their feedback is invaluable.

7 SERVICE KEYS TO EMPLOYEE RETENTION

We have come a long way in convincing you of the importance of treating employees as primary customers in order to ensure their retention. It is not about programs and it is not all about financial rewards. Employee retention is about a philosophy that call center managers and their companies must have. It is the primary focus of the talent acquisition and management approach. Getting top talent into the profession is important, but not as important as keeping it. Here are 7 keys to servicing employees so they stay with you longer.

1. Managers must be servant leaders. The relationship between the manager and the employee is of paramount importance for employee retention. The manager must treat the employee with respect, recognize and appreciate the employee’s contributions and be of service to the employee in the same way that manager would serve a customer. Internal customer service (managers should constantly ask “what can I do for you?”) helps managers be better servant leaders and motivates employees to stay longer.
2. Serve the employee by improving the person/job/task fit. Just because an employee has a degree or experience in the field does not mean that employee can perform well in a given job. There are various selection criteria and job-related competencies that must be identified before a person should be offered a job. Call center managers must be familiar with job profiling, candidate profiling and competency modeling. Once they develop these skills, they can make better hires. And usually, better initial hires turn into long-term employees.
3. Provide challenges. Employees, and people in general, love challenges. They want to be tested and to find out how good they really are. Give your employees the opportunity to test themselves. Challenge them to solve problems, to innovate and create, to make the department better, to serve each other and customers better. Along with these challenges, help them develop the confidence they need to be top performers. This confidence will see them through stress, adversity and other difficult times. It will also empower them to be peak performers much of the time. The psychological rewards they receive from succeeding at these challenges will motivate them to stay with your company.
4. Provide opportunities for advancement. Many managers think about this key as it relates to job promotions. Look at it in a more global perspective. Advancement for one employee may mean something different than for another employee. Advancement can mean a graduate degree, continuing education, cross-training, greater work/life balance, or something we have never even thought of. The only way to find out is to ask the employee. Once you have this answer, you will be doing the employee a great service by providing those individualized opportunities for advancement.
5. Help them make an impact. People want to know that what they do for a living matters. They want their jobs to have a positive impact on people, places or things. Managers have to show employees that their jobs do have a positive impact, that they do make a contribution to a customer’s satisfaction, and that they are important to the overall success of the company. When an employee takes initiative, help that employee see how that initiative positively impacts the overall department or company. The more you reinforce the benefits of the impact they make, the more they will be psychologically loyal to you. This will result in greater employee retention.
6. Provide service that satisfies each individual employee’s needs. While customer service is sometimes generic, employee service must be customized and individualized. You must learn exactly what each employee needs from you and then provide it for him or her. This is 1:1 employee service at its best. Every one of us requires that our needs be satisfied before we can move on to other things. When someone helps us satisfy those needs, we feel compelled to reciprocate. This builds a loyalty link between two people or between a person and their employer. And we already know that the stronger the loyalty link, the better chances we have for increased employee retention.
7. Make employee service a priority process. Internal customer service must be an all the time thing in every company if they want to keep their employees. The employee comes first and the customer comes second. When you keep your employees happy and they stay with you, they go out of their way to provide great service to external customers. Whenever you begin to question the importance of employee service, remember that it not only costs 5-10 times more to acquire a new customer as it does to do business with an old customer, it also costs 5-10 times more to replace a valuable employee than it does to work to keep that employee.

It would be nice if these recommendations came with a guarantee that they would work. They don’t. That’s because people are involved. When people are involved, there will be multiple possibilities that can occur. But, you can maximize your potential for employee retention by making it an ongoing process, serving your employees as you would your external customers, and focusing on keeping the back door closed. Talent management and employee retention are everyone’s responsibility.

Richard F. Gerson, Ph.D. is the President of Gerson Goodson, Inc., a Clearwater-based marketing consulting firm specializing in customer relationship management, sales performance improvement and employee development and retention. The company works with clients to develop relationship marketing programs that increase sales while simultaneously retaining profitable customers through the creation of a powerful CRM strategy. Company: Gerson Goodson Inc.