{"id":13646,"date":"2020-07-20T09:01:49","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T08:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/?p=13646"},"modified":"2020-07-20T09:01:49","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T08:01:49","slug":"dont-imprison-your-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/blog\/2020\/07\/20\/dont-imprison-your-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t imprison your agents!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instead….establish a culture of employee engagement | Seb Clarke at QStory<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am at an age when suddenly life has become serious. Up until now life has been school, friends, social life, fun, study and experience. I have enjoyed evening talking with friends and planning the future, we have speculated about where we will be in ten years and we have laughed together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We are now entering a time when study has finished and we are gradually all finding our way into jobs. There are still holiday plans and events to attend, but now we need to fit these around work demands and finances.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I met up with an old friend of mine recently. We sat together after several months apart due to the lockdown and over the first cold beer in a very long time, served in our favourite pub, we caught up on the last few months.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She had been struggling to find work during 2019 and had moved from one casual job to another. She had been a waitress, a barista, bar staff and a receptionist. When COVID-19 lockdown happened these opportunities were immediately closed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She was fortunate to secure a job in a contact centre and she told me about her experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The statement that stood out to me and sticks in my memory is this \u201cIt is like being in prison!\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Prison<\/strong>! What could she mean?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She described how on the first morning they were told to sit in a room while they were instructed as to what was expected from them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She was in the room with four other people. All at a similar age, early 20\u2019s and all feeling lucky to have found work during such a tough time in the economy. Nervously they chatted and shared names and social media profiles as they waited for the days work to begin<\/span><\/p>\n

Suddenly the door was shoved open and a man who looked busy but determined marched in. He was the team leader designated to welcome the new starters and give them their instructions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He opened a notebook and after some basic introductions, he began. \u201cYou must be here and logged into the system at 8.30am sharp. You have a target number of calls to make that will be tracked daily and it is essential you meet these objectives. Your break times are fixed and lunch is staggered to ensure we always have cover on the phones. The priority is that you deliver on service levels.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

My friend was shocked. She had rarely experienced this level of intensity and focus. It felt to her like they were no more than numbers, voices on the phone required to complete the mission.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

She had completed three interviews, including a long meeting with the recruitment agency in order to secure the job and had passed the phone skills assessment. It had taken her approximately 6 weeks to get this job and within 30 minutes of starting she was starting to regret it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She described to me how she was feeling. \u201cI had been looking forward to regular work, to the possibility of career development and having some money to pay for driving lessons and a holiday. After the briefing and induction I wondered if it was worth it. I had been used to an environment where I was made to feel important and here I certainly did not feel that.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

She has been at the centre for the last few months and of the five who started on that day, there are only three left.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Two people felt that they were unable to cope with the way they had been treated. <\/span><\/p>\n

One of them had been invited by parents to visit the family holiday home in Spain as the borders were opened. It was short notice, but they had submitted a holiday request on Monday for the following week. It transpired that by Friday they had still not received an answer, whether the leave had been approved and so they travelled anyway.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to my friend they simply sent an email on Monday to say they would not be coming back. They felt that the company did not value them anyway, so what did it matter?<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems that this type of experience is not unusual. Contact centres are notorious for high turnover of staff and for inflexible working practices. But does this need to be the case?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the costs on service levels, on recruitment costs and on time for training and induction by having such a high turnover?<\/span><\/p>\n

Surely investing in methods to better engage staff and to make them feel important will pay dividends? Other industries have shown that staff who are motivated and passionate are more flexible and supportive of the company and their customers notice.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It does not have to be the case that break times are inflexible. It is possible to allow staff to shift their break times so they can meet with friends. Automated holiday booking means that agents know if they can take leave or not, within a few seconds, and at no risk to the overall operation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this <\/span>video<\/a><\/strong>, you\u2019ll see the lifestyle benefits for agents who use QStory<\/a>. This is far from the prison style environment my friend described. Letting agents decide how they accomplish their work naturally leads to high engagement levels.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sounds futuristic right? It\u2019s not, it\u2019s happening right now with real-time automation. Our clients are already innovating in their workplaces with the ARTI software and establishing a culture of employee engagement in the call centre. Agents are empowered and valued all the while driving CX and boosting customer satisfaction. #FreeYourAgents<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Connect to Seb Clarke HERE<\/a><\/strong>
\nWatch the Agent Lifestyle Video HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n

#FreeYourAgents #WEM #QStory #Agent #App<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Instead….establish a culture of employee engagement | Seb Clarke at QStory I am at an age when suddenly life has become serious. Up until now life has been school, friends, social life, fun, study and experience. I have enjoyed evening talking with friends and planning the future, we have speculated about where we will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"industry":[],"class_list":["post-13646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13646"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qstory.ai\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=13646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}