hello i'm bruce belfiore and i'm here with pam roddy senior director of contact center
operations at maximus boston to talk with you about ongoing management issues as we move through
the coveted pandemic pam rodney has over 20 years of experience in the contact center field and both
in the private sector and the government sector both domestically and internationally so she
brings a lot of experience and a lot of good tips and insights she was also one of the panelists
on our coronavirus town hall that we had earlier this year and which you can find on our website if
you're interested in taking a look at that so many of those the insights from that town hall came
from pam so it's really great to have you with us pam thanks bruce it's a pleasure to be here
we just finished recording a lively informative call talk podcast cast episode on this topic
which you can access via the link below this is what i call a video call talk caramel that hits
some highlights of the call talk podcast so pam there were a lot of really good points made during
the call talk podcast uh we talked about a bunch of different things including uh the importance
of the people process and technology so i was wondering if you could just kind of reprise for us
some of the things that you talked about with regard to adapting a former in-office operation
which your operation was totally in office downtown boston beautiful location end view uh
but you know where people had to come in on public transportation sure bruce um so as you said as we
as we look at any of our operation i always look at the three pillars of people process
and technology so of course at the heart of any call center are our people and one of the
things that we understand about the remote environment is that people really need more
communication and interaction than they had even in the office so how do you do that and
so what we really spend some time bringing in and establishing as our normal operating procedures
is these commun daily communication methods with supervisors and their agents and really
based on a communication plan where you touch base every day with your staff
you have more frequent team meetings and you use your tools like chat and virtual
meetings to really ensure that you are giving the people the feedback and that they need to
still be part of that team and be productive some of the things that you learned from the
people process and technology review that you did could you share those with us because there's some
i think real jewels in there that could help our audience uh with the things that they face today
sure so there were some really common threads about um what people need and they certainly need
more communication as we just spoke about and more recognition they have a real fear of losing touch
and invisibility so increase your recognition and awards and that's more shout out to team meetings
um look for how you can do rewards maybe you can't do a pizza party but you can send grubhub meals to
someone's home um you can have contests still and we sent out um backpacks full of personal safety
stuff you know hand sanitizer disposable wipes things like that that people were thrilled to get
grocery store credits is another thing that people have really recognized so increasing those rewards
the other thing is really important is to prepare your supervisors for this
yeah supervisors are always key so tell us what you did with them pam so just like you know
i've been watching i have a lot of friends that are in the education system and they've really
had to go back for retraining not that they didn't know how to teach but teaching in this environment
has caused them to pivot so it gave us pauses what do our supervisors need so we've brought them in
for more training some of them needed technology training they all did how do you run a zoom
meeting and that gives supervisors the confidence that they need to really be there for their teams
um we also changed our ratios we found that the 15 to 1 ratio that we've always
sustained was too large um so we brought that down almost by half with some of our teams
so one of the best investments that you can make in fact is to
decrease that ratio and make sure that there's more supervisorial support surveys and polling
in terms of your your people tell us about that it's been a really great tool you know um and like
anything what you need a full tool toolbox right to be effective so we talked to supervisors about
meetings about one-on-one even sending people chat um text messages good morning how are you today
but one of the key areas that we've gotten some of our most useful information is by doing surveys um
and that way we're able to really understand at the aggregate level what are the trends that are
happening that we need to address what are the most common issues and obstacles and then also
by polling people during like a town hall meeting you get immediate reaction immediate response and
the benefit is it keeps people engaged if they're sitting there you know and they're just listening
it's so easy to pick up your phone get distracted but if you're pulling people every few minutes
about what they're thinking um you get that initial reaction and you get a level of engagement
so a win-win there bruce yeah no important and so that means also it may have an impact on the
uh tool that you decide to use for those meetings because if you have zoom or something like that
with the pulling feature then you can utilize that you can bring it right in and as you say
uh it has the dual impact of keeping people on their toes because they never know if
they're going to be asked to do a polling thing right and on the other hand it makes them feel
part of the organization part of the meeting because they are
i know that you've used the csr task force actually for a long time and how does that really
come to the forum being been particularly useful in this period of time
a csr task force has been an invaluable component of our success as a call center
the voice of the agent the voice from that call center floor or now the virtual floor
has provided leadership with so much information and now more than ever um we've used that task
force to really keep us honest about are we communicating enough do you have what you need
and has ensured that there's a level of engagement with the csrs and they feel that they have a voice
at a time when things seem so out of control and chaotic so important to have that connection and
i know that you also have used the mentoring and buddy systems can you yes about that
so especially for new people you think about when you come in and we were in the office welcoming
people making them feel like what what is it to be part of our of a maximus um team so now um we've
we've been trying how do we continue to do that and giving a new agent um a veteran agent to be
their buddy and their mentor and to help them along those first critical three to six months
is so important and they're going to share things with each other that they wouldn't necessarily
share with um a supervisor or at a town hall um so it's it's um it's a best practice and you can
do it virtually and and honestly i think it's even more important in the virtual environment
especially for new people yeah so i mean we obviously we talk about when somebody comes in
during a normal period of time for onboarding open arms right you should be welcoming with open arms
make sure that they feel that they're part of everything here you can't do that so it's got to
be more open communications open uh electronics open electronics instead of an open arm
arms and that that's what you have to do and it's important on the the acculturation part
too because uh you know really you're setting the table and you and i have talked about how
video for instance that uh basically you may want as a contact center manager to come up with a new
uh onboarding video that really hits home on things that you talk about during onboarding but
with a remote type of situation need to be really put on the table very clearly uh set the table
with your values with your uh mission statement with the things that are important to you
and just so that when somebody comes away from that onboarding video or videos they have an idea
of what it is that you are expecting from them and what the they can expect as being part of
your organization and then the things you do you know you have to walk the walk and talk the talk
but you've already set the table and it makes it easier that's right so important and we've taken a
fresh look at those videos and we've also enhanced the amount of videos that are available to people
so we've really loaded up um our um remote learning so that and put fun things in there
too like videos about you know how do you working from home and and just there's a lot of stuff out
there that you can pull into your own catalog that really just enhance that whole experience
so a whole section just on wellness for example um so that we're we're walking um the talk
about we care about you as an individual and here's a whole bunch of stuff about wellness
right and i understand that you even have uh meditation sessions we do so it's important to
engage people in things other than work socially so scheduling um the opportunity to join social
sessions like a meditation group or a club online like a book club um has been has been important as
well other things that you've talked about too is the uh importance of workforce management
and making sure that they can introduce the flexibility that may be needed now in terms of
uh your children and as well you know taking care of older parents that sort of thing because you
those older parents who perhaps were going off to the community uh center uh on a daily basis
aren't anymore because of fears of covet so really the so many people's worlds have been
turned upside down what are what are some of your thoughts on that the things you've done
yes so more than ever people need structure they need to know what's expected of them and that
they're and they and that gives us all a sense of normalcy but on the same time they need more
flexibility than ever because of all the things you just mentioned so the wfm tool and really
understanding um the functionality that these tools have and it may be time to even
ramp up because what they can do is they can allow you to give people flexible work schedules
and yet still manage your capacity and so without a robust workforce management tool you're not
going to be able to balance both the individual flexibility but also make sure that you're meeting
your of course your customer demand we've had a lot of people reduce their total hours of work
um but i'd rather have um people for 30 solid hours than to expect people for 40 hours and have
really um you know high absenteeism or low productivity so reassessing that and your
workforce management tool can really do that call forecasting is really challenging right now too
a lot of the call trends the time of day people call the frequency of which
um very great big variations yes no we find that people want to talk to us about
those issues too in terms of the workforce management and the intraday things and
the uh issues that come up with okay so we have uh made these adjustments which means that we had to
bump a whole lot of people from their coaching sessions because they had to be on the phones
and now manually we have to do all this other stuff well there are
you know solutions ways of uh helping that and actually doing a lot of good things for your
your people and for your workforce management functions so uh and what about knowledge
management you were mentioning that as well during our uh call talk episode yes so hopefully people
have um established a a good knowledge management system because if you're remote you really need
that and if not it's never too late um you know there's great tools out there now that can take
information and put it into electronic formats really quickly but we've enhanced that since
we went remote with a virtual agent um type of feature so we um our csrs are all participating
in a chat every day with their supervisor it's their way to ask questions to escalate calls
but the supervisors were finding it overwhelming with the amount of
questions they were having to answer so that what the virtual agent does is it automatically
interfaces with our knowledge management center and answers those questions for the csr and shows
them exactly in the knowledge management system where where they can find that information so
you know kind of teaches them to fish a little bit rather than just handing it to them freeze our
supervisors up and um not not a huge investment when you look at the value that you get from it
are there any other final considerations you'd like to share with us before we wrap up this
this call talk caramel no just um i think overall people are falling into a couple of
different camps there are people that really like working from home and doing well there
and are hoping that they can sustain it but there are other people that are struggling and
um they're finding that it's that it's isolating um and that they miss the office environment or
that they just um for whatever personal reasons and so it's really important to understand what
camp people fall into and to um they're going to need different things from you um to be productive
in at home whether it be a temporary situation or permanent well very good thank you so much
for uh staying on and doing this any final things you'd like to say before we say goodbye to our
our audience not that i can think of other than um don't be afraid to ask people what
they need it's overwhelming for all of us right now but don't don't wait to find out what people
need or feel like that you have to wait till things are at a certain level of stabilization
ask often and and you know don't feel like you have to be perfect either
nobody out there is doing this 100 perfectly right now we're all learning as we're going
absolutely okay thank you very much thanks bruce
you