Working Remotely: Keys to Success

September 3, 2010 — Jay

Working remotely has emerged as a popular trend as companies look for ways to cut costs, incentivize employees and become more flexible. If you have ever considered working remotely but questioned or doubted your ability to remain productive review the following tips which have helped me personally remain active and engaged while situated almost 2500 miles away from Inova’s corporate office.

  • Pretend you still commute to the office every day: Just because your daily commute now consists of walking down the hall, doesn’t mean your daily preparation for work should change drastically. Set a schedule and stick to it. Wake up with enough time to get ready, eat breakfast and take care of whatever would normally be required before work.  If your day begins at 8 am I can guarantee a wake up time of 7:55am will not be a successful routine.
  • Dress for Success: Yes, your work attire is now probably a lot more relaxed, but that doesn’t mean you should take pride in the fact that you wore a robe until quitting time. My suggestion is to maintain a balance, never become so relaxed that you subconsciously lull yourself into a state of complacency.  Be comfortable, but maintain a level of personal professionalism.
  • Stay Engaged with your Coworkers: A major drawback to working remotely is the loss of the daily face to face interaction with coworkers (some people may argue the opposite). Stay connected, use chat, email or even call your coworkers when you need a quick break.  Just because you are sitting in your office alone doesn’t mean you are alone. Create your own virtual water cooler.
  • Separate your work space and your personal space: If you are working from a home office, make sure that office has a door or some form of separation from the million other things going on in your life. Pretend you aren’t home, close the door, ignore the doorbell and any other distractions you wouldn’t encounter if you were actually at the office.  This advice will also enable you to reject any of your spouse’s requests to perform household chores during the workday.
  • Take Breaks: It’s counterproductive to force yourself into a non-stop work cycle. If you need a lunch, take it. You’d take a quick break at the office, refill your coffee or stop by someone’s cube for a quick chat, don’t chain yourself to your desk.
  • There is an adjustment phase: It may feel strange at first and you may need some time to adapt but you will figure out a routine that works best for you. Give it time.

Of course these steps are not foolproof; working remotely is just not an option for some of us. For everyone else the above mentioned tips should be a nice starting point. A remote workforce is a prevailing trend nationally and if you are fortunate enough to have the option…consider it.

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Human resources. No Comments »

No bonuses? No problem…Low-cost ways to motivate employees

September 2, 2010 — Maureen

Like many companies, Inova Solutions has had to tighten its belt during the recession. But that doesn’t mean we’ve taken our eye off the ball in terms of employee retention. Attrition costs companies a considerable amount in lost productivity, and the process to rehire can often be lengthy and expensive as well.

For these reasons, our management team has made it a priority to keep employees happy, even if monetary bonuses aren’t in the cards right now. So what can a company do to improve employee morale on a small budget? We recently formed a committee to discuss just that. Here’s what we came up with:

  1. Listen to your employees. Sometimes just giving people a forum to voice their concerns or suggestions is enormously cathartic. It is good to know that the powers-that-be hear you and plan to address the issue. Even if the answer is “no,” it is better to have the question raised and addressed publicly so you can explain the reasoning behind a particular policy. At Inova, we’ve chosen to create an anonymous online suggestion box to suit this purpose. And to discourage non-constructive criticism, we’ve established one rule: If you make a complaint, you have to suggest a resolution (no “complaining just for the sake of complaining” allowed). Then, our CEO will address some of the suggestion box items at our quarterly company-wide meeting.
  2. Feed the masses. Food is the universal motivator, and our committee decided that holding regular events with food will bring everyone together and give us something to look forward to. This doesn’t have to be expensive – last month we offered a pizza lunch and the month before a bagel breakfast. It didn’t cost the company much, but it was much appreciated.
  3. Recognize unsung heroes. While bonuses and prizes are great to receive, the best part about a recognition program is often simply the fact that someone noticed your hard work. To ensure that those getting kudos aren’t just the managers’ favorites or those with quotas, we plan to open up our program to the whole company, inviting anyone to nominate a colleague for recognition. Thank unsung heroes at a company meeting and let them know how much you appreciate their commitment. It will mean a lot to the recognized employees, and may even motivate others to go the extra mile.
  4. Casual Friday. At Inova, we’re lucky enough to have a business casual dress code already, but companies that require suits and ties, take notice. Your employees hate it. And as long as you’re not meeting with clients, why not encourage the team to dress down one day a week (or every day)? It won’t cost you a dime, and it is great for morale.

These initiatives work at our company partly because they are employee-generated ideas. “Mandatory fun” initiatives doled out by management can sometimes be counter-productive, so how about forming a committee of employees to take this on instead? Our committee consists of representatives of different departments across the company and it has worked great for us so far.

How about your company? Have you implemented any low-cost morale programs that have been really successful?

Posted in Human resources. No Comments »

The Science of Workplace Learning: Instructional Systems Design

September 1, 2010 — Kelly

As both a student and a high school teacher, I was often frustrated by the seeming pointlessness of much of the content I was expected to teach or learn.  If I didn’t understand the real world application or benefit of information, it was hard for me to be motivated to find ways to retain it, or to teach it to even more unmotivated ninth graders. I was thrilled, then, when I stumbled upon a graduate program that essentially taught me a more scientific approach to education.

The field of Instructional Systems Design (ISD) is a relatively new discipline, having developed during World War II when it became obvious in the military that learning needed to be systematic to guarantee ultimate efficiency.  Military training had specific learning objectives, and the training needed to be engineered so that trainees could be evaluated on their understanding and performance of those stated objectives.  Research, theory, and practical application led to the creation of an orderly process with measurable outcomes; the basic model for this approach is called the ADDIE model of instructional design.

The ADDIE model consists of the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of instruction.  While there is obviously more detail to each step than can be covered in one post, the ADDIE phases allow for careful analysis of learning needs, the design and development of course content to best meet those needs, implementation of the course itself and, finally, evaluation carefully calibrated to test the stated objectives.

Consider the positive impact that ISD can have on workplace training:

  • Often, the first phase of analysis may indicate that training may not even be the best solution.  This eliminates time wasted on unnecessary training and allows supervisors to identify the best way to address a performance gap.  (More on needs analysis some other time!)
  • The actual needs of the learners are the first consideration, so the course material and objectives are not randomly selected.  Content relevance is virtually guaranteed; both the instructor and the students understand the specific end goal of the learning.
    • A precise understanding of the learning objective focuses the training material to save valuable time in the training session.  The materials can also be carefully developed to guarantee relevance for the learners.
    • Retention and motivation are increased because the course material should be directly relevant for the learners.
    • Evaluation clearly pinpoints the success of the training and learner comprehension so additional measures can be taken as necessary to address specific gaps in understanding.

Now that I understand it, ISD seems to be the only way to approach any educational goals.  Many typical K-12, post-secondary, or corporate educational environments teach material rather arbitrarily, sometimes only because that’s always what has been taught.  However, the processes inherent in ISD ensure that there is a defined learning objective, that the course is designed with that end goal in mind, and that evaluation truly determines the learners’ understanding of the content.

Posted in Training. 1 Comment »

Motivating Call Center Agents with Social Media

August 31, 2010 — Camille

Social Media ChecklistI’ve been doing a fair amount of research lately on the various ways social media is used in the call center— common strategies and objectives, metrics, visibility, the whole nine yards.  I find it interesting that several years ago a select few companies dove right into using social media in the call center, in a no holds barred approach, while some are still sitting back and observing in terror (and of course all the stages in between). 

My research has shown me that one of the biggest fears call center managers, supervisors and executives seem to have is agents getting carried away with social media tasks and either not focusing on their customer service jobs (and instead checking in with their friends and tweeting nasty messages about supervisors) or putting out incorrect information that harms the brand.

While it’s true that not every Joe Schmo should be trusted to respond publicly on the internet to your customers, using social media as a motivational tool for agents that have consistently provided outstanding service should alleviate these fears.  Just like you wouldn’t hand the keys to your new Jaguar over to your 15 year old neighbor, you shouldn’t hand the “keyboard reins” over to every agent in your call center.

Focusing on agents who have proven they provide outstanding customer service, via phone or chat, will help you select the right people to be social media ambassadors in your center.  “Promoting” these customer service representatives to be your online brand ambassadors will motivate all your agents to provide outstanding customer service. 

Your new online brand ambassadors (fancy new job title optional) have already shown they know how to handle customers in a positive manner, now you just need to train them to translate those skills to the wide world of social media.  Be sure to work with your HR, marketing and public relations departments ahead of time to have rules and guidelines in place to cover everything from appropriately responding to negative feedback (especially being cautious of the tone your response projects) to whether agents can take time to use social media for personal use at work.  Make these guidelines (and the consequences if they’re broken) very clear to everyone that will be providing service and support through social media.

Just remember— it takes time to perfect new processes, but don’t let this deter you from diving in and experimenting until you get it right.  Who knows, you may end up setting the standards for your industry and having a blog post written about you on InsideInova.com one day!

How has your call center approached social media?  What rules and regulations have you put in place for agents that use social media for service and support?

Posted in Social media. No Comments »

Real-life applications for Inova’s products, part 1

August 27, 2010 — Mari

At Inova Solutions, we hear stories every day about how customers are successfully utilizing our real-time reporting solutions to solve their operational problems. Thought we’d share a few with you. (I’ve omitted the companies’ names for privacy purposes.)

1. One of our customers is a major player in the financial services industry and a longtime Inova customer. They utilize our agent desktop application in one of their business units.  They had previously been using Lotus Notes for sending messages to the agents, which they replaced with Inova Marquee. They did a test to compare the effectiveness of each messaging system, and the group using Inova Marquee for messaging achieved 75% compliance in four minutes, while the Lotus Notes group took 18 minutes to achieve the same compliance level.

This company sees such value in our system that they plan to add another 2500 desktop applications this year.

2. Another one of our customers is in the healthcare industry, and sought out Inova Solutions to capture and consolidate real-time information from their ACD and help desk systems. They utilize four output formats:

  • Multi-media output to four large screen monitors via Inova Broadcaster.
  • An XML file to allow statistics or text to be posted on their company intranet.
  • Inova Marquee for statistics to be displayed on desktops.
  • Email output channel for special alerts.

This is designed to relieve the Help Desk of repetitive calls by posting system outage info to the company’s intranet. This improved Help Desk Service Level for mission-critical applications. It also provided consolidated information from multiple systems to aid in management decisions.

3. A company that specializes in business outsourcing came to us because they were growing and adding more agents and clients. The ability to manage agent adherence in real time was critical to moving forward with productive growth.

We recommended our Broadcaster and Performance Tracker applications, which pull call statistics from multiple Avaya switches as well as Oracle Call Center Anywhere and their internal database. Inova then displays this data on flexible dashboards and large screen displays in their command center.

The Broadcaster screens alert workforce managers to problem areas and the Performance Tracker dashboard allows them to drill down to view more detail and isolate the issue. This allows workforce managers to address adherence and service level issues proactively and improve their own productivity by managing by exception.

4. Another prominent Inova customer is an innovator in outsourced contact management solutions. The goals of their call center automation project were to dramatically reduce costs by eliminating a costly manual alert process between HQ, WFM, and call centers, and to enable cost reduction via offshore monitoring and communication tools.

This customer chose to deploy the Inova LightLink real-time reporting system in upward of six call centers. LightLink captures real-time telephony and CRM information from their Avaya, CRM, and Data Warehouse systems. An automated email system sends targeted alert and status messages based on the compiled data to workforce managers. The captured information is also monitored and displayed on large screen LCD monitors in the Command Center and on LCDs and LED displays in the call centers.

Additional benefits were:

  • They leveraged previous investments in state of the art technology in telephony, CRM, and workforce management.
  • They are able to centralize and standardize their operations.
  • They achieved visibility across programs and call centers.
  • They are now able to communicate effectively with targeted groups.
  • They had the choice of different formats (LCD screen, web, mobile device, wallboard, etc.) to meet their specific needs.

These are just a few examples of our successful customers. More to come.

Posted in Business, Customer service, Digital signage, Installation, LED displays. No Comments »

For Good Measure: A Comparison of Call Center KPIs and Call Center Metrics

August 26, 2010 — Tom

A 2006 research report from Inova Solutions shows that while nine out of ten call center managers find that call center KPIs better their centers’ performance, less than half of them have a keen understanding of how to choose KPIs to measure.  Is service level (ASA) king?  What about abandonment rate; isn’t that a key indicator of customer satisfaction?  Throw in oldest call waiting, average handle time, and calls waiting for good measure (no pun intended).  Before you know it, your KPIs are managing you, rather than the other way around.

What’s the disconnect?  A typical call center is awash in data.  A single automatic call distributor (ACD) is capable of generating enough raw call center data to fill a typical telephone book in a matter of months.  As more technology products and databases flood the center, more data becomes available.  Before you know it, information overload arrives.  Is the problem merely a matter of data overload?  It’s imperative for call center supervisors (and their bosses) to understand the difference between call center metrics and call center KPIs.

Metrics are broad measurements.  A metric that translates process improvement into dollar impact is the financial metric, just as a number that defines service level is an indicator of call center operational effectiveness.  Although call center metrics may in fact be of interest, they’re of less importance than call center KPIs.

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that gives an indication of performance and can be used as a driver for improvement.  It’s a metric that is related to a target value.  KPIs show the ratio between actual and targeted values.  All KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs.

Defining KPIs for contact centers involves weeding through the raw data – the metrics – and identifying the actual indicators that are tied to corporate goals.  This top-down approach ensures that contact center KPIs are directly related to pre-established goals and objectives.  The next critical step is to set performance targets for each KPI.  Performance expectations should be expected to fluctuate over time; this is not a set-it-and-forget-it exercise.  Adjusting internal targets as time progresses is critical, as market, economic, and performance conditions can drastically affect call volumes, caller expectations, and customer experience.  Call center KPIs are not to be considered moving targets, but rather validated metrics that represent where focus is required on an ongoing basis.

With more than a quarter of a decade in optimization strategies for contact centers benefiting from real-time visual reporting, Inova Solutions maintains an industry-leading team of technical professionals that can help your contact center identify, define, and implement key performance indicators.  Give us a call at 866.686.8774 to learn how our professional services team can help.

Posted in Call center KPIs, Customer service. No Comments »

Utilizing digital signage for corporate communications

August 25, 2010 — Tara

Inova Solutions tends to market and appeal to the call center industry. With our ability to display relevant and dynamic KPIs, we have a satisfied customer base who understands the value of our products. Over the past few years of training our customers, I’ve noticed a trend in seeing LightLink (our core middleware product) expand from the call center to other departments. Human resource departments have become increasingly interested in LightLink once they see it in action. Once the main infrastructure is in place, adding additional clients is just a matter of getting the hardware in place and making sure there are enough licenses. In fact we’re doing a major overhaul of our own system at headquarters to include non-helpdesk content.

Like a lot of companies, Inova Solutions has LightLink installed to deliver KPIs to our helpdesk and sales teams. However, recently we re-organized the office and a lot of our OnTrack LED wallboards were moved as departments shifted throughout the building. Many of these boards simply didn’t make it back up. Recently, a committee within the company decided that it would be great to get these and some Broadcaster LCD displays up around the building to display more than just helpdesk and sales information. As a result, I’ve found myself working with staff members who traditionally knew very little about what our software is capable of.

In working with Human Resources, we were able design displays that communicated events, announcements (birthdays, babies, nuptials, etc.), policy changes, and employee-generated media. Folks can submit pictures and short videos of their vacations and accomplishments outside of work. Quite a few employees spend time on the road selling, installing, or training our products, and many of us like to document the places we’ve been. Sharing these experiences with the rest of the company has increased cohesion.

What are some non-traditional ways can you think to use LightLink?

Posted in Digital signage, Human resources. No Comments »

Recommended reading for HR professionals

August 24, 2010 — Darah

In the spring, I got sucked into a really good book that was 900 pages! Turns out this tome is part of a series comprised of eight installments – each of which is 900 pages long. By the time I got to book 4, I was ready for a break.

I had lots of work-related books and magazines stacked high on my desk so I figured it was as good a time as any to make a dent in that pile. First I skimmed all the Human Resources magazines. They are good for an interesting article here and there but nothing you can really get excited about reading. Let’s face it – summer reading material has to be more interesting than taking a nap or it will lose every time.

The next selection in the pile was a book called Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. I read a few chapters and learned a lot but it was a bit too much like a text book for my summer reading tastes.

The selection I finally decided on was Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. Wow, what a page turner! Not exactly a steamy romance novel, but a quick read for sure.  In the book they focus on Results-Only Work Environments or ROWE™ and how this concept was implemented at Best Buy. To sum it up, in a ROWE, people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done.  ROWE is total freedom to adjust your workday to fit your life, not the other way around.  Sounds radical but makes a lot of sense!  There are no more vacation or sick days, no more 9-5 schedules, no more sitting at your desk when you have delivered all your deliverables.  The book covers everything from why ROWE teams are good and how they change the workplace to testimonials from employees in ROWE departments.  There is even a “How ROWE Are You?” quiz in the appendix.

Our management team is reading the book and will be discussing ways to implement ROWE at Inova Solutions.  Stay tuned and I will let you know what we decide and how it goes.  In the meantime, grab a copy of this book and consider it for your company!

Posted in Human resources. 2 Comments »

Developing User Stories, Part 2

August 23, 2010 — Steve

Working with user stories in developing our products for the call center and mass notification markets has brought more focus to software development at Inova Solutions.  When a user story has been defined, estimated, and prioritized, the development team can pull the story into a development iteration and begin work on it, with the goal of completing that user story in its entirety during that one iteration.  This means each user story must be small enough to fit into one iteration’s worth of effort (usually one team of five to nine people working for one to four weeks).  How we develop a user story to get it into shape to implement in a single iteration is the topic of this and the next posting.

At Inova Solutions, our Product Owners work with departments throughout the company, survey the call center and mass notification marketplaces, and visit customer sites to come up with new product ideas and changes to our existing suite of products.  The Product Owner expresses market needs in terms of one or more user stories.  For major new features or changes there will be an epic story, encompassing the entirety of the new product or major change to an existing product.  The Product Owner then expands the epic into sets of user stories that describe the problem space that the new functionality will address.

Agile teams talk about the process for developing user stories in terms of the Card, Conversation, and Confirmation1.  Different terms are used on different teams, but these three aspects of a user story are common in the agile development community.

Card – A high-level statement of the user story, including the user by name, a statement of the problem, and why the problem needs to be solved, usually in terms of what the user will be able to accomplish.

Conversation – The Product Owner and the development team get together to discuss the meaning, intent, and acceptance criteria for the user story. The product owner will elaborate on the environment and conditions surrounding the problem and will state the intentions and objectives of the users and customers of the story.  The team will ask questions about the story and discuss approaches for possible solutions – but only in so far as to understand the user story; solutions and designs are not provided at this time.  Often the team’s questions can lead to changes in the user story.

Confirmation – The acceptance criteria specify how we’ll know that the user story has been accomplished.  When the acceptance criteria are verified as having been met, we’re confident that we’ve met the intentions and objectives of the story.

User stories are couched in everyday terms and in the business language of the user.  This encourages communication between the customer and development teams.  At Inova Solutions, our Product Owner acts as a proxy for our customers and is not a software engineer, so putting our stories into business language facilitates the conversations around user stories.  There are also software testing tools that allow for automating acceptance tests in business language so the Product Owner can participate in developing the tests (for example, FitNesse2).

If a user story statement doesn’t encompass all it needs to be useful at the high-level, that will usually come out in the conversation.  Questions will be asked that aim at putting the user story into context with the overall epic and the other user stories defined to meet the epic.  If a question or its answer reveals that the user story or the current set of user stories is incomplete in some way, the Product Owner can clarify the user story at hand and/or add new user stories to the project.  If the user story does cover the high-level need adequately but more details are needed, that, too, will come out in the conversation and more specifics can be added as acceptance criteria.

Next time, INVEST in user stories

References

1 Ron Jeffries, “Essential XP: Card, Conversation, and Confirmation,” XP Magazine, August 30, 2001
2 FitNesse (www.fitnesse.org)

Posted in Software development. No Comments »

More from Predictably Irrational: Social vs. Market Norms, Part 2

August 20, 2010 — Kelly

Previously, I discussed Dan Ariely’s research about social and market norms.  While it seems easy enough, in theory, to offer some social reward in a business environment to increase loyalty or morale, Ariely cautions about carelessly combining social and market norms.  Bringing market norms into a social situation can lead to outcomes that are uncomfortable to even think about:  he offers the example of finishing a lovely Thanksgiving meal with your extended family and then offering to pay your mother-in-law $300 for her efforts to prepare it.

However, it can be just as unfortunate to bring social norms into a market situation.  To illustrate this, Ariely asks you to consider the bank that has spent billions of dollars marketing the impression of a social relationship.  Customers join in to be part of the bank ‘family,’ but then a check bounces.  In a solely market relationship, there is a fee and the customer moves on because “business is business.”  However, in the social relationship that the bank has marketed, the fee comes instead of a “friendly call from the manager” and is “not only a relationship-killer, it’s a stab in the back.  Consumers will take personal offense.”

“In treating their employees—much as in treating their customers—companies must understand their implied long term commitment.” Not only can it be unwise to combine these two norms in a relationship between a business and a customer, but also between a business and its employees.  Think about the business that encourages high morale with an emphasis on the family atmosphere at the workplace…but then lays off employees due to budget cuts.  Once the social norms work their way deeply into the workplace, it’s no longer “just business” and a layoff becomes a very personal, and likely bitter, experience.

“When a social norm collides with a market norm, the social norm goes away for a long time.  In other words, social relationships are not easy to reestablish. Once a social norm is trumped by a market norm, it will rarely return.” Even more dangerously, once a social norm has been violated, it takes a long time to recover.   It’s harder to forgive and forget in a situation where you feel you were personally affronted.

Both in interacting with customers and employees, businesses need to carefully consider the integration of social and market norms, which goes back to the idea that “if companies want to benefit from the advantages of social norms, they need to do a better job of cultivating those norms.” Think about the integration of social and market norms, both within your workplace and with customers.  Are you swimming in dangerous waters by not truly cultivating a social relationship, or are you managing an effective balance between the two norms?

Posted in Human resources, Miscellaneous. No Comments »
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