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Posts tagged as:
In today’s post, Jake Fegan shares some of his insights on coaching Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) and using the LAMA technique.
Now we want to hear from you.
What is your coaching style? How does it help your CMEs grow and build stronger relationships with your customers and your customers’ customers?
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How do you manage a Contact Center that focuses on building relationships and having productive conversations. Julia Busto, Director, Contact Center Results, shares some insights on how Incept does it and what makes us so special.
How does your Contact Center strengthen relationships with your customers and your customers’ customers?
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At Incept, the most important part of the day for our Contact Center is coaching our Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs). Steve Kieffer, Program Results Manager, shares some insights on how we coach our CMEs at Incept.
Now we want to hear from you. What is your coaching style? How does it help your CMEs grow and build stronger relationships with your customers and your customers’ customers?
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Most companies focus their efforts on teaching specific job details and responsibilities when training a new employee. At Incept, we approach training with a focus on welcoming new team members into our company culture. By creating an open and comfortable atmosphere we empower each new Conversational Marketing Expert (CME) to be at their best from their first day on the job.
Once our new team members know they’re a part of the team we focus on learning step by step how to have productive conversations by using techniques like role-playing in the classroom. From there it’s a short, natural (although sometimes uneasy) step to having conversations with real donors and customers on the phone.
Because our employees come from a variety of sources (many of them are referred by current members of the Incept team) we think it’s critical to make them feel welcome to our culture. An employee who feels like they’re on the outside looking in is a lot more likely to go looking for work elsewhere than one who feels like they belong.
Interested in becoming a part of our team?
Interested in putting the Incept Team to work for you?
If so, visit our website and Let’s Talk…Results.
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Employee referral programs or incentives are a common theme these days.
Some are successful, and others are not. Few people ever dig deep enough into them, though, to truly understand why their program is successful or not. Typically, if the program is successful, the company just enjoys the successful recruitment avenue. If they are not successful, most companies either throw more money at them or just abandon the program altogether. Either way, it’s critical to understand why a referral program is working or not, as the story tends to tell quite a bit about the organization at the ground level.
At Incept, we have found employee referrals are critical to our growth and recruitment success. This is true for several reasons. Referred employees are typically higher performers, have better attendance, and stay with the company longer – thus reducing our cost per graduating employee. In addition, employee referrals have a positive impact on morale. As documented in multiple polls conducted by Gallup, having a best friend at work increases employee satisfaction and morale.
We all know increased satisfaction and morale lead to increased productivity, and increased productivity leads to increased profits. Sounds like a winning combination right? At Incept, we have found employee referrals to be the most cost-effective channel for recruitment. Despite the large payout that a current employee receives for bringing a friend to Incept, this channel still remains one of the lowest cost per acquisition methods we use.
The referred candidate already knows about the company and the job, but the best part is they know about it and understand it from the perspective a person that is in the same role they will soon be in. They get the unfiltered story about our management team, our Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs), our policies, the type of work that will be expected each day, the way they can expect to be treated, and how they will feel each day when their shift is over. For us, at Incept, these things are awesome motivators for a new candidate to choose Incept over one of the many competitive contact centers in our area!
I can go on and on about the benefits of an employee referral program, but if you are having success with one you likely already know about most of them. What you really need to know is this: if your program is NOT working, then why?
As much as we would all love to believe that it’s all about the money, the simple fact of the matter is it’s not all about the money. If you are attempting to build a full staff of productive employees and your only hook is compensation, you will likely end up paying a lot of money per hour to people for very short periods of time! Instead of investing all of that money in signing bonuses and higher-than-standard wages, invest some of those dollars in a basic health check on your current staff.
Find out if they are happy. Do they enjoy the work they do each day? Does it make them feel fulfilled? Do they feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves? Do they understand what your company’s mission is? Do they know why their job is important? How do they feel about their managers? Do they feel as if they have all the tools necessary to do a good job every day? Do they feel like anyone at your company cares about them as a person? Do they feel like there is room for advancement or any benefit to achieving their maximum potential in their current position? The questions could go on and on, but the point is simple: if your organization is not healthy, no matter what you do with your employee referral program, it will never show the success you need from it.
Once you have done your health check, spent the necessary time to make the adjustments you find are necessary, and invested in your current staff, you will find that your employee referral program begins to work. You will also find that you can likely spend less money on your referral program and net even better results from it. When your employees are happy and believe in your company, they are eager to recruit new employees for you. After all, who doesn’t want to help out a friend with a great job? Now it’s up to you to turn your company into a place that is considered great.
Image Credit: ClickMail Marketing
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Using conversation to recruit a blood donor for an appointment is more of an art than a science. You cannot just assume that you have found the method most effective to recruit donors and then stick with it for all donor types.
Just as it is critical for a blood center to know the type of blood they need, it’s critical for a donor recruitment professional to understand the type of donor they are speaking with and cater the conversation to that donor and their situation. There are parts of a recruitment conversation that are consistent regardless of the type of donor you are speaking with, like your intro and your closing statement for an appointment, but all of that conversation that occurs between the intro and the confirmation should be tailored to your specific donor type.
When speaking with a current donor, acknowledging that they are a regular donor, using language that lets them know you know they are familiar with the process, and acknowledging past donations and loyalty programs (if the blood center offers them) are all important parts to strengthening the relationship. If you are speaking to a lapsed donor, it’s critical to try to understand why they are a lapsed donor. What caused them to stop donating? At one point, they were donating, and now they have stopped. But why? If you really want to have a true conversation with that lapsed donor, you must understand why they do not donate now, and attempt to overcome that hurdle before you just try to push them into an appointment. Asking the right questions, asking them the right way, and then responding appropriately are key components to having a productive conversation with a lapsed donor.
A conversation that will drive meaningful results and strengthen the relationship between that donor and the blood center is always the goal. When a lapsed donor knows you are truly interested in them as a person and truly interested in helping them, they tend to be more willing to listen to your pitch and more willing to roll their sleeve up and try donating again. After all, at some point in time, they understood the benefit of donating and believed in the cause.
With a staff of real Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) and extensive recruitment training, you cannot only keep recruiting your current donor base with success, but you can reactivate your lapsed donor base and begin immediately putting more blood onto the shelves.
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I wanted to take a moment to share several, quick coaching tips to help everyone in their calls this week. Hopefully you can implement them and see better results:
Hopefully these tips help you in your calls, and if you have questions about anything, make sure to see a coach or supervisor!
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A few years ago, I had the opportunity to hear Joe Gibbs (three Super Bowl titles, NASCAR Championship team owner, and two-time NHRA Pro Stock team owner) speak for an American Teleservices Association (ATA) conference where he talked about leadership. Coach Gibbs explained that three things were expected of leaders: communicate expectations, provide training, and hold people accountable. He took exception to the Peter Principle, saying that people don’t typically fail because they rise to a level that’s above them; it’s usually because leaders fail to provide adequate training.
Coincidentally, Incept undertook a branding initiative about a year ago with the objective of becoming a world-class organization. In setting that compass, Incept committed to a “listen before we lead” approach with both our clients and our employees. So, as part of this initiative, we asked our employees a series of questions aimed and defining our roadmap to become world-class in our service. Can you guess what they told us? Their feedback indicated a thirst for training, knowledge, and growth. No big surprise there, right?
In turning that feedback into something actionable, Incept’s Live The Brand oversight committee developed a service standard: “With education, constant improvement and growth are expected.” With every service standard, there should be a definition, so the committee went on to create the definition: “As we pursue our goal of becoming a world-class organization, we recognize that the continuous training and development of all employees is key.” And in order for us to truly live our brand, the committee created these actions:
Providing the tools and resources is a significant undertaking. Consequently, we formed a subcommittee entitled: Learning Never Stops. Current Learning Never Stops subcommittee members include Incept’s CEO Sam Falletta, Conversational Marketing Expert Zev Rosenburg, Program Results Supervisor Allison Legg, Shift Supervisor Amber Nelson, and VP of New Client Results Jim Beuoy.
Again, we deployed our “listen before we lead” approach and asked the employees to provide specific subject matter for the courses. The interest was beyond our expectations. Employees quickly realized that by Incept investing in them, they would become better employees, become more engaged with the brand, and provide better service to our clients.
The Learning Never Stops subcommittee outlined a plan for ongoing education, determining which trainings are mandatory, which are optional and at what intervals they should be held. Topics vary, ranging from leadership to communication to personal well-being. Plans include training curriculum, performance management (formal and informal) and an advancement path for success both personally and professionally. The outcome is Incept University. It’s run like many universities in that there are requirements for acceptance, credits for successfully passing course assessments, and majors – which are career paths through various disciplines within the organization.
The concept of a corporate learning and development center, regardless of the title, isn’t something new. Even the concept of a corporate university has been around for awhile. So far, Incept’s appears to be a rousing success as employees frequently ask about timing of courses, how they can take corrective action on attendance and performance to become eligible, and other expressions of interest. Still, there could be challenges along the way. We’re interested in hearing from others about keys to success and potential pitfalls of corporate development.
What’s your experience been in launching and sustaining a “Learning Never Stops” initiative?
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I wanted to take a couple minutes to talk about my start and growth here at Incept.
I started on the phones mainly making calls to current and potential blood donors for various blood centers across the nation. I was inspired by the work I did, and I took it very seriously. I am competitive by nature, so I was always looking for ways I could do better and produce at the rate that many of the veterans were at that time. Everyone from fellow Conversational Marketing Experts (CMEs) up to the CEO was very helpful in encouraging my development.
Within two months of my first day of employment, I was asked to become a Coach and assist on the floor with developing and improving other CMEs. This brought on more of a challenge, as I now had to continue making calls myself in addition to coaching people on how to make their phone calls better. This was an interesting transition – mainly because I was low on the totem pole – being that I was to work with CMEs who had been doing this job for much longer than me. Again, I was shown how great of a place Incept is to work for as these veterans accepted and welcomed my help graciously.
Shorty after this, I was given smaller blood center campaigns to run operationally. After learning the complexities of operations and reaching and exceeding goals for our blood centers, I was eventually moved to the position I am in today: Program Results Manager. Through the hard work of everyone on my team, and my constant dedication, I am managing our largest client at Incept. I set up operational strategies for reaching our units goal along with our Client Results Team and our Technology Results Team. These strategies include but are not limited to scripting, time-of-day calling, specific CMEs used for specific campaigns, testing new ideas, managing Supervisors and Coaches that work directly with CMEs, and developing new strategies with the actual client through meetings and various other forms of contact. Every day brings a new challenge, but the success of my responsibilities is worth all the hard work.
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Recruiting blood donors can be a very challenging job, but the rewards save hundreds of lives every day.
I often think of what I could be doing with my education, experience and skills as a manager, if I was not working at Incept. I imagine that I could be working for a company that produces some sort of consumable product or provides a specific service. The main driver behind these types of companies would most likely be based on making money. I imagine that I would feel successful through creating more revenue for that company. Essentially, making more widgets than yesterday would impact the company’s worth.
However, my work at Incept has been completely different. Success is defined by reaching blood unit goals with community blood centers across the nation. Without the work we do at Incept, community blood centers that we work with would fall short in their efforts to supply blood to their area hospitals. Yes, it is true that many blood donors go in to donate on their own, but we encourage many more to schedule appointments and commit to saving the lives of patients in their local area.
When I leave work every day, I know I made a difference.
Everyone at Incept needs to think about that when leaving work for the day and when you come in for your next shift. Having an ultimate purpose is one of the most rewarding qualities you can gain in life.
Photo Credit: TopNews
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