Tag: Scaling for Peak Seasonal Demand

Mastering Online Community Safety 

Posted on by John Pompei

The Challenge

A global leader in the gaming and entertainment industry needed a content moderation partner to safeguard its massive online community. The client required a solution that not only mastered complex online safety policies and exceeded strict KPIs but also built a resilient team to support strategic global expansion. 

The Solution 

iQor launched a team in Colombia with a “people-first” culture, achieving unprecedented stability. We developed a collaborative train-the-trainer model to rapidly launch a second global site in the Philippines, ensuring operational and cultural alignment.

We implemented a robust QA calibration process, achieving full scoring independence and exceeding client quality standards within 90 days. We provided flexible staffing for additional languages, proving scalability and leading to a formal service expansion.

The Results 

• 200% Headcount growth in 12 months 
• 38% Higher efficiency than client’s target 
• 2% Voluntary attrition — exceptional team stability 

We quickly established a new benchmark for trust and performance. Within the first year, our success in exceeding the client’s quality and scalability expectations led to a significant expansion of the relationship into new languages and geographies. This solidified our role as a trusted partner in the client’s global growth strategy.

Ready to level up your player experience? Let’s talk gaming.

Designing Employee Training Programs to Build Human Connections

Posted on by Blake Graves

Background

This nonprofit health benefits company is focused on improving the health and lives of its one million members. It is nationally recognized in the United States as a leader for quality, customer service, transparency, and product innovation. As the fastest-growing healthcare plan in the state in which it operates, it is accepted by the majority of hospitals and primary care providers in its state. The healthcare company is committed to the community and focused on low overhead, cost savings, and personalized support, while offering a broad range of individual, family, small business, and large group plans. They also provide services to Medicare beneficiaries, placing a high priority on ensuring senior citizens receive responsive customer service that yields consistently high customer satisfaction rates.

The Challenge

The state health plan is committed to providing excellent customer service. Their internal agents deliver inbound and outbound customer care to the plan’s one million members. Determined to reach their average speed of answer (ASA) goals, they found they needed additional support to meet seasonal open enrollment demands and to help elderly Medicare customers get back on track when facing hardships.

They needed more cost-effective solutions to be able to ramp effectively with sufficient staffing levels of full-time employees (FTEs) during open enrollment. They also needed to ensure these employees were trained quickly and effectively with in-depth knowledge to provide personalized care to customers from a wide variety of backgrounds in an empathetic, understanding way.

Additionally, they sought support for accounts receivable management (ARM) and for  providing friendly reminders and solutions to help elderly customers retain their Medicare services when in the midst of hardship. The focus was on keeping customers satisfied and providing compassionate service responsive to their needs.

All in all, the company is in it for the long haul—they want to keep their customers for life and they know that hinges on providing excellent customer experiences with 100% satisfaction rates.

The Solution

iQor began working with the healthcare benefits company in 2012 with a team dedicated to providing empathetic outbound accounts receivable management support to help Medicare customers get back on track. The demographics of the customer service agents differed significantly from those of the customers they served. In order to provide the best customer service experiences, the agents needed to understand their customers’ needs. To this end, the iQor team proactively developed a multifaceted program to help agents understand and connect with older customers.

This approach yielded great success. After piloting outbound customer support for a year and consistently exceeding the healthcare benefits company’s expectations, iQor gained their trust as a valued partner in their customer service offerings. As a result, iQor transitioned to providing inbound customer support at a steady state and supporting seasonal ramps. This was the first time the healthcare benefits company had outsourced inbound customer service; iQor remains their only business process outsourcing (BPO) partner to this day. iQor provides inbound customer care on multiple lines of business with a steady state of FTEs that increases to more than 100 during open enrollment.

Implemented In-Depth Training

iQor created an intensive six-week training program to develop agents, focusing on complex content knowledge, compliance, and empathetic and personalized service. iQor excelled at training agents not only for steady state service needs, but also for peak-season ramps that required training more than 5x the number of agents so they could become experts. iQor exceeded the healthcare benefits company’s requirements for performance and did so at a lower cost than they could provide internally.

Established Frequent and Open Communication With the Client

Weekly and bi-weekly meetings with the healthcare benefits company provided an ongoing detailed analysis of operations, goals, and achievements. These meetings solidified iQor as a trusted partner in the healthcare benefits company’s success.

Created a Unique Community Outreach Program

In line with iQorian Values focused on giving back to the community and a commitment to truly understanding customer needs, iQor’s program leadership reached out to local nursing homes and senior centers so customer service teams could build relationships with members of the community and better understand their needs. Teams regularly participated in resident programs such as bingo, seasonal activities, dances, arts and crafts, and more. These partnerships heightened agent awareness of circumstances customers may be encountering and created opportunities for staff to learn firsthand about consumer struggles and needs. These activities built empathy and patience, showing agents why, for example, it may take longer to handle a customer call—plus they created long-lasting bonds for both parties.

Shifted the Customer Interaction Focus Away From Being Time-Sensitive and Toward Building Caring Relationships

Because of the elderly customer demographic, KPIs like average handle time (AHT) were less important. Instead, customer service agents needed to talk to the consumer slowly and perhaps loudly so they could fully understand and appreciate the service and solutions being provided. Agents learned to take their time with customers, in part because they may be the only person the customer talks to that day. Program agents were also trained to understand the individual and unique challenges many of the consumers may be facing, including heart conditions or arthritis that could impact the speed of their interactions or how challenging it may be to hold the phone or write notes.

Implemented a Focus on True, Meaningful Customer Service and Compliance

The iQor team covered all angles of training and ongoing coaching to ensure agents were equipped to provide personalized, empathetic service to a niche customer base. The teams also placed a high level of importance on compliance, ensuring all endpoint security measures, training, government regulations, and healthcare guidelines were followed.

The Results

iQor implemented a budget-friendly, results-focused customer-care solution that included weekly and bi-weekly touch-bases with the client. The iQor team worked closely with the healthcare benefits company to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and to establish procedures for following up with customers that may need additional support.

iQor’s actions resulted in improved scores that met and exceeded operational goals. The KPIs for the different lines of business reflect differing results based on the needs of the customers for each program.

Expanded Engagements With Nearly Identical AHT

Total call volume jumped 45% from 40,000 to 58,000 while AHT stayed nearly constant, demonstrating consistent support.

Exceeded Medicare Quality Score Goals

The program team generated a 1% improvement in the Medicare Quality Score.

Excelled at High Quality Ratings

The team supporting the individual plan surpassed the quality experience goal by 7% and the quality technical goal by 8%.

While the metrics matter, there’s one true measure of overall success: client and customer satisfaction. iQor has provided exceptional service and earned its place as a loyal and trusted partner of the healthcare benefits client for more than a decade. iQor teams are truly committed to providing exceptional service that makes employees and customers smile.

Part 2: Recruiting, Three Pillars of Seasonal Staffing in the BPO Industry

Posted on by Blake Graves

For most businesses, it is a normal expectation to bring in extra support for seasonal staffing. This is especially true for call centers that need to increase staff to meet the demands during peak holidays and event-driven periods. But for this hiring process to be successful, companies need the right combination of technology, people, and recruiting and training strategies so they can manage high call volumes without sacrificing quality or their bottom line. 

In this three-part blog series, we dive into the details of what the right combination of tools, people, and strategies looks like so you can partner with your next BPO partner with confidence.  

In part one, we focused on CX technology. In part two, we’ll dive more into hiring, training, and retention strategies.

This blog post shows you:  

  • Best recruiting techniques to find the best-fitting employees fast 
  • Best training strategies and tools to increase speed-to-proficiency 
  • Innovative retention strategies for contact center employees  

Let’s dive in. 

How to Recruit, Train, and Retain Employees for Busy Season Contact Center Staffing

To bring in as many candidates as possible, your BPO partner should be able to recruit as many qualified call center agents as possible — fast.

Recruiting: When you need to hire right and hire fast

Go Big on Referrals

By far, the biggest candidate pool for iQor comes from employee referrals. Referred employees are more likely to stay throughout the season — and longer– because they know what’s needed and expected.

Year-round, we encourage referrals through our Talent Referral Incentive Program (TRIP). TRIP is a unique rewards program that provides employees with cash incentives for bringing in employee referrals.

Referred employees can account for as much as 60-70 percent of our seasonal hires for seasonal events. Some of our programs will hold “resume parties” where employees invite their friends and family members to see what iQor is all about.

Here are three other ways iQor hires right and hires fast: 

  • Leverage Pool of Candidates and Social Channels. At iQor, we draw upon our existing pool of pre-qualified candidates and our recruitment automation platform. We use social media channels like Facebook to find and engage candidates automatically. We build relationships with our employees so many come back year after year while others to continue working. So when one client’s peak season ends, iQor is able to allocate employees to another client who is in need of additional support.
  • Automate Pre-Screening. From there, we send an automatic mobile link for our customized pre-screening questionnaire. If the candidate meets the criteria, our recruiter reaches out to them within the hour via text message and phone call. 
  • Track Candidates Like They’re Your Best Leads. One key difference in our recruiting process is that we track candidates like we would sales leads. We then staff our recruiters accordingly to contact every pre-screened candidate and ensure we get them set up for interviews as soon as possible. 

Once the candidate finishes the final round of interviews (in-person or virtual), they are extended an offer. In combination with our private cloud technology, this recruiting system instantly allows your company to ramp up agents in any location. 

iQor deployed this methodology for our eCommerce client and successfully hired 1,500 customer support experts in just two months. 

Training: Proactive Development of Next Generation Leaders to Support the Influx of Seasonal Hires

Around two to three months before a seasonal ramp, iQor begins developing high-potential frontline agents for leadership roles. These new leaders will serve as team leads, trainers, and subject matter experts to provide additional support for the large number of new employees. This helps reduce burnout, mitigate stress, and aid in speed-to-proficiency as employees dive into a call center environment experiencing some of the busiest times of the year.

Some of our award-winning leadership development courses include:

  • PeaQ Performance Qoaching (PPQ) training. PeaQ is a coaching leadership workshop that aims to coach and develop current iQor leaders with a focus on driving team performance and positive engagement in both physical call centers and work-at-home environments. Participants learn how to identify and coach to an agent’s root cause behavior using multiple techniques.
  • sQholar program. The sQholar program is a series that provides a clear path to leadership roles through training and skill development. sQholar’s are trained to be supportive, they learn how to build trust and provide constructive feedback which will result in less turnover, increased retention, and highly engaged team members leading to higher Net Promoter Scores, client satisfaction and increased ROI.

Retaining: Seasonal Contact Center Employees 

Now more than ever, employees expect more from their employers. So, reducing turnover will take more than a few performance-based incentives – it’s going to take an employee-centric approach that celebrates successes, promotes transparency, and shows proof that the company values and appreciates its workforce. 

Here’s what we found are four sure-fire ways to increase retention for peak seasonal staffing: 

Use employee-centric data analysis 

At iQor, we track retention by many attributes, including recruiter, lead source, work type, geo, and many more, to analyze winning retention combinations and where we can tweak areas for success. Our recruiting teams also employ a simulation and talent prediction toolset better to understand a potential recruit’s strengths and characteristics. We have found that better hires coupled with increased employee engagement result in improved retention.  

We utilize a recruiting analytics tool to enable operations and human resources to report on each recruiting source, applicant, hire, and retention rate at 30 and 60 days, by location and the program. Sites identify successful recruiting sources and will target future recruiting dollars in those areas. This analytics tool allows us to predict future turnover to take proactive steps to improve retention and identify our best employees for better-targeted marketing. 

Celebrate success 

We celebrate employees’ achievements and top performers through regular events such as giveaways, contests, and celebrations to foster a team spirit and create positive energy. We also incorporate retention bonuses and provide extra resources to support resources through their coaching and development. Currently, we host our global iQor Recognize Awards, where employees and leaders can nominate fellow iQorians throughout the year for their exceptional work and achievements.

One of our favorite ways to connect with employees is through our Engagement Champions, who plan and lead activities that engage and recognize employees. These individuals are outgoing, charismatic types that help energize teams, reduce stress, and create a welcoming environment through acts of kindness and genuine care.

Surveys 

Surveys are great tools for gauging contact center agents’ level of satisfaction and helping you find out the best ways to improve their work environment. 

Every week, we survey every employee through our employee portal with a simple five (5) – star question “How’s life for you at iQor?” The results are confidential and roll up to provide each line of business a score between one and five. The trend enables us to measure the impact of change and identify opportunities for more engagement and retention. 

Keep work-at-home an option 

According to Gartner, seventy percent of customer service and support employees want to continue to work at home (WAH) at least once a week after the pandemic ends. Despite growing concerns for the future of organizational culture from some service leaders, Gartner’s data indicates that WAH has not posed too great a challenge to organizational culture. In fact, most customer service employees who work remotely say that organizational culture has remained relatively unchanged – and more than 7 out of 10 think it’s improved since their shift to WAH.  

At iQor, our work-at-home solution allows the onsite experience to be easily mirrored at the agent’s home and improves agent performance and retention. 

Finding the best-fitting employees fast, building a solid talent pipeline, and retaining employees throughout the busy season can be a challenge. Organizations need to go beyond the standard practices and start using automation, data, and employee-centric strategies to better impact their contact center operations. If you’re outsourcing seasonal staff during peak times, look for a partner that can imbed this mindset across recruiting, training, and retention strategies so that you can navigate spikes in customer care volumes with confidence in your teams and your bottom line. 

Are you ready for the next big holiday or promotional event? Let us help you optimize your seasonal staffing needs with digital tools and irresistible people to give your customers the best experience.   

Learn more about iQor’s seasonal staffing solutions.