Call centres are renowned for high staff turnover when compared to other parts of the same business and to other industries. Teresa Russell talks to the ATO and Vodafone – two organisations that have managed to reduce turnover and improve quality in their call centres
Call centres are renowned for high staff turnover when compared to other parts of the same business and to other industries. Teresa Russell talks to the ATO and Vodafone – two organisations that have managed to reduce turnover and improve quality in their call centres
All of our customer service staff are busy. Your call has been placed in a queue and will be answered by the first available operator.”Would you like a dollar for every time you heard a recorded voice say these words? We’d all be rich if that were the case. However, many organisations running call centres invest a lot more than one dollar per customer who calls.
Money is spent on recruitment, training and technology. The costs of poor customer contact are seen at the bottom line in lost sales and the loss of value added sales. When morale goes down, productivity goes down and staff turnover and workplace stress go up, compounding existing problems. Call centres are often the only interface a customer has with a company, so it’s vital to some organisations’ existence that it gets its call centre right.
In 2003, the Spherion Group surveyed 121 Australian and New Zealand organisations that operate customer contact centres. It found that 73 per cent said that turnover has remained the same or increased over the last two years, while unwanted turnover exceeded 25 per cent for more than half the organisations and 24 per cent of the companies had turnover exceeding 50 per cent. “Losing frontline workers creates cost and performance issues, and losing supervisors and other leaders compounds the problem,”the report concluded.
Why do employees leave these organisations? Employee loyalty has eroded with the new generation of workers who hold an average of 9.2 jobs between the ages of 18 and 34. Spherion’s research also found that “regardless of level – from executives to frontline employees – every organisation reported that the immediate leader was a factor in an employee’s decision to leave... only ‘pay’ emerged as the other factor consistently ranked in the top two reasons.”
Australian Taxation Office
Stewart Smillie has been working for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for 19 years and now runs its 13 call centres in his position as assistant commissioner, client contact capability. The ATO’s role has expanded over time from collecting government revenue to include providing government services such as family assistance payments. It underwent another huge change in 2000 when the new tax system (GST) was introduced. The ATO employs 22,000 people in Australia, with 2,090 working in the call handling environment. Of these, about 80 per cent of staff handle frontline calls and 20 per cent hold down support positions.
The ATO uses its call centres as primary entry points for staff. Unlike many other call centres, 18 per cent of people working in the client contact area have a tertiary degree. People work within the call centres for about 18 months (or one to one-and-a-half tax cycles), then move on to more complex positions within the organisation such as providing written advice or audit/compliance work. ATO call centres have an annual staff turnover of 35-40 per cent, but a majority of these people stay within the ATO, which has a staff turnover of three-and-a-half to four per cent each year.
“There is no doubt that that the quality of staff throughout the ATO has improved as a result of most starting out in our call centres. They are better rounded people who are slowly and methodically changing the culture of the organisation to one that is client-focussed,” says Smillie. The biggest intake for new staff is around April, when new recruits attend an 8 week induction program, seven weeks of which is devoted to product knowledge, but one week is devoted to what Smillie calls “soft skills” where recruits learn how to interact with people more effectively. This large intake covers tax time – the ATO’s peak period for inbound calls. Staff move on to other parts of the organisation after October the next year, leaving the call centres with appropriate levels of staff during its less busy times.
Because the ATO is a traditional public service organisation, one of the challenges it has faced with staff has been shifting attitudes to become more client service focussed. It has always provided attractive working conditions and has recently introduced a ‘Managing for Success’ program for its team leaders in which they are taught about staff and workload management. Smillie says a wellbeing program is currently in pilot phase and they are studying Heart Math (skills to deal with stress) and CEADTM FM (an environmental music and information system) to address call centre stress levels.
“One of the things that our staff understand is that, unless they want to be, they won’t be stuck in a call centre for the rest of their lives,” says Smillie. They work on a roster, which they get four weeks in advance and there’s also a long-term development program in place. These, along with the 18-month apprenticeship time in the call centre, contribute to a low wastage rate for the ATO.
Vodafone
A little more than two years ago, Vodafone Australia’s business was in a critical state. There were questions about its survival. At that time, it operated call centres in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart with staff turnover rates around 30 per cent per year. Debbie Howcroft, Vodafone’s director, brand and people, said that although it was before her time, the organisation was very political and bureaucratic and there was a lack of trust and respect.
Today, Vodafone Australia employs 1,300 people. It operates one purpose built, 600-seat call centre in Hobart that has a turnover rate of just 18 per cent (with a target of 12–15 per cent). According to Howcroft, one can feel the buzz and commitment of the team when you walk into the place. “It’s a great place to work – people are passionate about our customers, our brand, our values and our spirit.” So – what changed everything in two years?
A new CEO and executive team were appointed who were explicitly charged with changing the culture of the organisation. “The change in the call centre turnover can be directly attributed to living our new corporate values,” asserts Howcroft. Vodafone’s values are “fun, excellence, supportive, fair dinkum, hungry, gutsy and different”. Howcroft says that all staff participate in a four-day ‘values journey’. Additionally, the team leaders in the contact centre have undertaken a ‘Leadership in Action’ program and are now engaged on another course called ‘Generating Excellence.’ These courses are delivered and co-designed by outside organisations.
The Hobart call centre is arranged in pods of 8–10 workstations. Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank also have call centres in Hobart, so the decline in staff turnover has nothing to do with a lack of alternatives in the job market. The building contributes a lot to staff retention, according to Howcroft, combined with strong leadership and a fun, supportive culture. But that doesn’t mean the call centre is a perfect place to work.
“Rostering causes a lot of the problems, but what this really means is that work/life balance is the underlying issue. This is no different to other work environments,” says Howcroft. Another concern is getting the right balance between quantity and quality when it comes to measuring performance. Vodafone measures average call handling times, but factors customer satisfaction into the equation, rather than focussing on volumes of calls taken.
Another major issue is finding the time for training. Because a lot of the products are data-related, staff need intensive training. The four-week induction program concentrates on the IT systems and culture. Other methods employed for ongoing training include e-learning and on-the-job buddying.
There is no on-site HR person in Hobart. That position was moved to the firm’s corporate head office in Sydney. Howcroft says that the business operationsmanagers and line managers handle most of the HR work, supported by someone from head office who spends two days every two weeks in Hobart.
The best advice Howcroft has for HR managers, who want to understand how a call centre works is to actually go and talk to people in the call centre. “There is nothing like spending a day doublejacking (listening on a separate headset) to get to understand the call centre staff and the customer.”
Outsourcing call centres
A few years ago, a number of major global companies outsourced call centres to India, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. This provided significant savings in call centre payroll, tapping into a well-educated, multi-lingual workforce. But in many cases, due to poor leadership and a lack of a true customer service attitude in the local population, it resulted in bad customer service being delivered in a low cost manner. Companies such as Citibank, GE Capital, Dell and American Express have now repatriated some of their call centres.
Vodafone’s Hobart call centre is an inbound call centre managing customer care and service. The company never outsources this part of its business, although it will outsource outbound campaigns and some overflow that occurs after a specific promotion to its Australian partners. The ATO only locally outsourced some of the simple questions about GST during 2000, but now manages all inbound calls.
