Recently I read an article in the New Yorker that really resonated with me as a trainer and coach. In the article, entitled “Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you?,” surgeon Atul Gawande, M.D. wrote about what inspired him to ask a colleague to coach him in the operating room (despite the fact that Gawande is a highly accomplished, respected surgeon with excellent patient outcomes), and what he learned about the value of coaching in the process. He admitted that patients might not feel very assured knowing their surgeon has a coach. After all, shouldn’t a surgeon’s medical training, experience and proven outcomes be enough? But after reading the article, I think I will seek a physician who has a coach the next time I need to have surgery!

Dr. Gawande’s interest in coaching began with tennis. He thought he’d peaked at the game at age 17, but three years ago he worked at a club with a coach for just a few minutes on his stance and added ten miles per hour to his serve. “I was serving,” he wrote, “harder than I ever had in my life.”

The experience prompted him to ask himself why it seemed unthinkable for a physician to pay for coaching in the operating room on surgical technique. Would doing so improve outcomes or reduce post-op complications?

First, he thought, he’d look into the concept of coaching in general. He ended up confirming my views on the effectiveness of coaching—whether you’re an athlete or a call center representative, a performing musician or a teacher, a writer or a surgeon. It really makes a huge difference.

The good doctor did some research on coaching, coaches and people who have them.

What you want to do yourself

He saw what most consider obvious—the value of coaches to athletes. But he also discovered that coaches are much like good editors, after reading about Maxwell Perkins, editor for authors including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. He found that one author said Perkins gave writers confidence in themselves and what they were writing. Gawande quoted another writer as saying about Perkins, “He never tells you what to do. Instead, he suggests to you, in an extraordinarily articulate fashion, what you want to do yourself.”

Gawande learned that violinist Itzhak Perlman has a coach—his wife—and that she is his “extra ear,” hears elements of his playing that he can’t, and helps him accurately assess what he’s doing. The doctor spoke to world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming, who said she works with her vocal coach in 90 minutes sessions several times per week, and that professional singers refer to coaches as “outside ears” that are truly invaluable.

Then he looked at the results of a five-year study of teacher skill development in 80 California schools. The research showed that after workshops alone, teachers took their new skills to the classroom just 10 percent of the time. Those who had practice sessions, demonstrations and feedback in addition to workshops took what they learned to the workplace less than 20 percent of the time. But when coaches came into classrooms following workshops, the adoption rate rose to more than 90 percent. More importantly, the students of the coached teachers performed better on tests.

What makes a good coach

Next Gawande consulted Jim Knight, director of the Kansas Coaching Project at the University of Kansas, about what makes a good coach. He learned that good coaches set clear goals, break tasks into steps, and make the person receiving coaching “visualize, verbalize, and write the idea.” They also engage the team member to help set the coaching direction, because the team member knows better than anyone what he or she is having problems doing. Additionally, according Knight in the article, good coaches:

• “Speak with credibility.”

• “Make a personal connection.”

• “Focus little on themselves.”

• “Listened more than they talked.”

Gawande concluded that “good coaches know how to break down performance into its critical individual components,” noting that legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden “even had his players practice putting their socks on,” he wrote, because, “wrinkles cause blisters. Blisters cost games.”

Practice is essential in any endeavor, and I agree with the research Gawande cited in his article, that elite performers “must engage in ‘deliberate practice’—sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires.” This is why I always follow up the training programs I deliver with coaching that includes intensive practice that helps team members “keep the change” and sustain improved results.

Two of the points in the article that resonated most with me were that:

• Coaches achieved successful outcomes with a variety of approaches, but the most common one “is just conversation.”

• Coaches need to “get out from in front of the white board and walk among the students.”

In call centers, I call the second activity “hot laps,” making the rounds on the floor several times per day to interact with and coach agents as they work.

Based on what he’d learned in his research, Gawande eventually decided to try coaching for himself. He enlisted a retired general surgeon, Robert Osteen, as his coach in the operating room.

Exhibiting many of the good coaching traits cited in the New Yorker article, Osteen was highly effective for Gawande in the very first session. “That one twenty-minute discussion gave me more to consider and work on than I’d had in the past five years,” he wrote. “Yet the stranger thing, it occurred to me, was that no senior colleague had come to observe me in the eight years since I’d established my surgical practice. Like most work, medical practice is largely unseen by anyone who might raise one’s sights. I’d had no outside ears and eyes.”

Osteen continued to coach Gawande for months after the initial session, and Gawande reported that his complication rate, already low, has gone down. He also made an observation about relying on modern technological tools. “In the past year, I’ve thought nothing of asking my hospital to spend some hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the surgical equipment I use, in the vague hope of giving me finer precision and reducing complications. Avoiding just one major complication saves, on average, fourteen thousand dollars in medical costs—not to mention harm to a human being. So it seems worth it. But the three or four hours I’ve spent with Osteen each month have almost certainly added more to my capabilities than any of this.”

He also observed that, “with a diploma, a few will achieve sustained mastery; with a good coach, many could,” he wrote. “Coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society.”

No surprise, more proof

None of what Dr. Gawande learned about the value of coaching surprised me. I’m just delighted about what it confirms. It’s simply more proof on top of the results I’ve seen in coaching in my daily work as a trainer and coach, such as:

• An authorized reseller for major cable companies increased its closing ratio by 13 percentage points and its multi-product sales by 14 percentage points.

• By making just a few changes in agent behavior and coaching to them, average agent sales per day moved from $800 to over $2,000 in one 400-seat contact center, adding millions to the bottom line.

• Outbound sales associates are generating between $25,000 and $35,000 in advertising revenue each month in a multimedia sales center.

• A company increased its vendor transfer rate from three percent to 25 percent. At $5 per transfer, it meant millions to the organization’s bottom line.

• A major high-speed Internet provider increased its saves rate on inbound cancellation calls from 49 percent to 62 percent.

• A newspaper publisher boosted its average EZ Pay conversion on inbound calls to six percent. This also was a multimillion-dollar ROI.

• An outbound retention group now gets 3.4 saves per hour per rep on requested permanent stops, up from one save per hour per rep before training and coaching were implemented. That’s a 240-percent increase.

What would sustainable results like these—results that prove the value of and high return on investment from coaching—mean to your organization?

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America using his company’s exclusive Quality Conversation approach. He is also a principal in RCDA’s subsidiary, QCS, LLC (www.qcsims.com), which builds customized video game simulations for training contact center and other sales agents on The Quality Conversation.

If any industry has live video conferencing technology ideally suited for call center training and coaching built in and ready to use immediately, it’s the cable industry. However, cable companies have hesitated to use remote live video for training and coaching because they’ve been concerned it’s not as effective as in-person training. The problem is that in-person training, particularly when flying trainers, coaches and consultants in to off-shore call centers, is much more expensive. The good news is that I’ve led video-based coaching training programs with resounding success for an offshore call center serving a major cable provider—all from the company’s headquarters in Atlanta.

How our live video sessions worked

Virtually all of the tactics I’ve used to lead classes in person work exceptionally well delivered by live video. In my video-based coaching training, 64 offshore participants (supervisors, managers, sales leads and QA personnel) attended two sessions lasting two hours each. We spaced the sessions a month apart.

In the first session, we showed the participants how to get their agents to transition service calls to sales. We covered a five-step skill transfer process and how to get agents to ask great discovery questions as part of what we call The Quality Conversation, a proven methodology for driving revenues higher. We showed them how to conduct Quick Laps, a method for making the rounds on the floor and speaking to each agent three or more times every day to keep them pointed true north. And the session included all participants writing down, signing and dating a definitive commitment to apply what they learned.

In the second session, participants began by reporting on how they met their commitment. We then reviewed the skill-transfer process and showed participants how to help their agents overcome objections. The session covered the power of using what we call cushion statements in answering objections, and we taught around answers to common objections. Then, as in the first session, the participants wrote down, signed and dated another commitment to take what they learned and use it on the job.

Clear, immediate and tangible results

The participants’ reports on how they met their commitments illustrate with tangible results the high effectiveness of remote live video training sessions for this offshore contact center and the major cable company it serves.

• Overall, agents became comfortable and successful transitioning to sales after being coached by their newly trained supervisors.

• One participant used Quick Laps after a session to move her team from 50% below goal to 50% over goal.

• Another used skill-transfer to move an agent from 27% of goal to 71% of goal. Still another took an agent from less than 16% of goal to nearly 78%.

• An agent who was achieving only 10% of goal and lacked self-confidence boosted performance to four sales per day.

• Working on transitioning to sales, a coach helped an underperforming agent climb to between three and five sales per day.

• An agent with a 0% ask rate moved to 50%, thanks to the supervisor applying what we taught during the video sessions.

• Another supervisor had an agent who struggled with overcoming objections. Using what she learned in our live video training, she worked with the agent, who went on to win six sales the next day.

• An agent who had trouble rushing into giving the price worked with a participating coach and won 15 sales the following week.

What would it mean to your organization if your off-shore call centers, or for that matter your call centers across the U.S., could turn results around like this at the lower cost of remote live video coaching training?

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America using his company’s exclusive Quality Conversation approach. He is also a principal in RCDA’s subsidiary, QCS, LLC (www.qcsims.com), which builds customized video game simulations for training contact center and other sales agents on The Quality Conversation.

Contact centers universally seek engaged and empathetic conversations with their customers, especially when they are upset with service or want to cancel their service or subscription. Good listening skills are of course crucial to the discovery of what is really going on with the customer. Asking relevant questions and listening to the answers are skills that come naturally to some, but many need coaching, training and encouragement. As their skills develop, agents gain confidence and experience the benefits of satisfying customers and the organization. While these skills can be taught, they are best acquired with practice and feedback from customers and the organization.

In our work for over 10 years helping contact center agents boost revenues, we’ve been very successful using an approach we call The Quality Conversation. It is highly effective, but it requires a commitment of time, effort and money to teach. However, by using 3-D animated gaming simulations for contact center training, we’ve been able to help agents find the true reasons for customer concerns, and subsequently offer solutions that satisfy and retain the customer. The animated game makes the training experience fun for the agent. This resonates with the agent and deepens their knowledge and understanding of how to speak with customers to reconcile their differences.

Clear and measurable gains in Detroit

For example, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press newspaper contact center experiences newspaper delivery complaints as well as calls to cancel or downgrade subscriptions. By building on their customer care basic training program with the use of animated game simulations, they have increased their cancellation saves rate by 33 percent. Agents have fun learning and deepening their conversational skills. They test themselves and learn from their “mistakes.” When they engage in a Quality Conversation that satisfies customers, they are rewarded with the satisfaction of performing at their best.

Supervisors and company leadership report that they are also very pleased with the simulations.

They found that agents left on their own to play the gaming simulations remain deeply engaged and achieve a higher saves rate on average. Additionally, the newspapers hired new employees who never had traditional training and coaching, and when they began the gaming simulations, they increased their saves rates by an average of 22 percent—and in one case 50 percent!

One of the most interesting things about the Detroit case was that saves rates spiked from 22 percent to 34 percent after the traditional training and coaching workshop. But by about three weeks after the workshop, the saves rates began to dip down—very typical after a training program without intensive follow-up coaching, because agents tend to forget their new skills and return to old habits.

Now it is important to note that many companies face a fiscal problem when comes to contact center training. They allocate dollars for the training programs themselves, but tight budgets often prevent expenditures on critical follow-up. This is especially true for small contact centers that only have 10 to 15 agents. Gaming simulations provide a solution to this problem.

Reversing a post-training slide, driving sustainability

In the Detroit case, two good things happened. As mentioned, the contact center implemented gaming simulations. Immediately the slide reversed and results returned to their post-training levels. So clearly these applications drive sustainability. Second, the gaming simulations only cost about $45 per agent per month. That’s the cost of acquiring one new subscriber, so one save paid for the application. The total increase in saves in Detroit delivered a large return on investment.

We believe that these results indicate that gaming simulations can deliver comparable ROI in virtually any industry that relies on customer contact centers for customer service, sales and retention.

Here’s an example of how 3-D animated gaming simulations work. From individual computers, agents log on and engage with a virtual customer on the monitor. In the gaming simulation, the virtual customer has called in to cancel a subscription and talks with the agent, who can respond by clicking on one of several choices. Each choice takes the agent to a new screen, the virtual customer’s next reaction, and additional response choices that will lead to the save or the sale—as long as the agent follows pre-programmed best practices. Incorrect answers receive increasingly negative responses from the customer, ultimately resulting in a cancellation and upset customer.

The gaming simulation keeps score based on correct and incorrect responses and how long it takes the agent properly resolve the issue or secure the save or the sale.

Customizable, scalable and social

The best gaming simulations are in 3-D animation instead of 2-D. They are customizable and scalable to any contact center and industry as well as its Service Level Achievement or contact quality standards. They are also social, allowing users to play against themselves as well as other players in an environment of cooperative competition for the good of the organization and the individual. As game play progresses, each level presents a more challenging real-world contact center experience for the agent. This includes simulated distractions such as sidebar conversations with other agents, background distractions on the customer’s side of the line, or having a supervisor take over a call to save the customer from canceling. Each response or lack of response to a given scenario by the agent results in point calculations and coaching tips.

These gaming simulations also track key metrics related to revenue growth and game usage. They can issue badges to players based on successes and increasing levels of difficulty, and they can display achievements in the contact center on a leader board.

We have one note of caution, however. Many developers are gaming companies that are content neutral. It is critical for contact centers to work with a developer that brings demonstrated experience in getting strong sales and retention results for businesses and high ROI. They should have robust instructional design and a history of generating measurable results and ROI with their curriculum in addition to gaming development expertise.

At work and on their own time

Since the gaming simulations are web-based, agents can log in on the Internet to play from any computer—and they do. We’ve seen agents so engaged and having so much fun with the games that they are motivated to play not only onsite during training, coaching sessions and periods of slow contact volume, but also on their own time at home. What’s more, the games are perfect for contact centers that have home-based agents.

Why do gaming simulations work?

Our secondary research shows a significant pre-existing general interest in gaming. In the United States 183 million active gamers spend an average of 13 hours per week playing computer or video games. Accordingly, we believe contact centers have a marvelous opportunity to tap into the energy and the talents that these gamers use to master Guitar Hero, to harness the motivation that they have for organizing complex raids and quests in multi-player online games. This level of commitment gives contact centers a powerful tool for increasing employee effectiveness.

Let’s be honest—the vast majority of contact center agents put in their time in exchange for a paycheck. The challenge for contact center leadership is to tap into the creative energy of their people. They need a way to engage agents to provide customers with a world-class experience and to add value to the lives of the people who work for contact centers.

The affinity that millions of Americans have for playing video and online games shows up in contact center classes. A show of hands during a recent training and coaching session revealed that more that 80 percent of the class members play video and online games regularly.

The short story is that call center agents as a group—many of them younger people for whom gaming is a part of everyday life—are teeming with motivation to play video and online games. Contact centers will do well to tap into that powerful motivation. In fact we believe it is the responsibility of leadership in contact centers to do so for the good of their organizations’ bottom lines.

To be sure, we’ve seen the effect of gaming simulations first-hand. Agents send us a very powerful message when we see them so engaged in this type of training that they’re not even aware of their surroundings. It is very likely that this is the future of learning.

We believe it is time to benefit from the interest and engagement in online and video games by using gaming simulations to teach contact center agents the skills they need to become even better at their jobs. We should gamify key metrics. The net result will be more engaged workers and dramatic performance increases.

Backed by research

Here are some research findings on why gaming simulations work:

• People like playing games—they find them fun and engaging. Fifty-five percent of respondents in a recent survey said they would be interested in working for a company that offered games to increase productivity.

• A study conducted by U.S. Department of Defense found that trainees gain higher confidence in applying learning from training sessions on their jobs when training is gaming simulation-based.

• A study in the United Kingdom showed that a game can influence positive social behavior. In other words by using gaming simulation to learn contact center best practices, agents are going to become nicer people (and consequently happier and more rewarded) in all aspects of their lives.

 A growth industry

Forrester Research, Inc., shows that providing gaming simulations for employee learning is a strong growth industry. Forrester calculates that American businesses are spending $100 million per year on employee learning games. They project that this spending will grow to a whopping $3.2 billion by 2015.

Bernard Suits, the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Department of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, wrote the following in the introduction to Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal:

“It is games that give us something to do when there is nothing to do. We thus contact games ‘pastimes’ and regard them as trifling fillers of the interstices of our lives. But they are much more important than that. They are clues to the future. And their serious cultivation now is perhaps our only salvation.”

We’re not sure if game play will be our salvation, but we do believe it is a powerful tool in helping contact center agents be all they can be.

Learn more about how Robert C. Davis and Associates can bring Interactive Call Center Games to your organization.

Founded in 1977 and based in metro Atlanta, RCDA helps customer contact centers across North America add millions of dollars to their bottom-line results through its training, coaching and consulting programs based on its exclusive Quality Conversation approach to handling customer service, sales and retention contacts. The approach is based on a robust contact flow that leads agents through five steps—Greeting, Discovery, Solution, Offer and an assumptive Close—that address customer wants, interests and needs and establish emotional connections with customers and show genuine interest. Quality Conversation Simulations, LLC, an RCDA subsidiary, develops the kind of gaming simulations described in this article. More information is available at www.robertcdavis.net and www.qcsims.com or contact Bob Davis direct at 678-548-1775.

Gary Evans is President of International Media Consulting LLC based in Reston, VA, and he has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Washington, DC, chapter of SOCAP. More information is available at www.imediaresults.com.

Note: A condensed version of this article was published November 29, 2012, by The International News Media Association (INMA) on www.imna.org.

Survey says customer churn is high, but clearly preventable

The eighth annual Accenture Global Survey results released December 5, 2012, revealed a tremendous opportunity for sales and service organizations across the board. The survey had two major findings. First, in 2012 one in five consumers switched companies they buy from such as wireless phone, Internet service and retail organizations. This is up five percent from the previous year. Second, and herein lies the opportunity, 85 percent of consumers say the companies could have prevented them from switching had they done something differently. And best of all the respondents—more than 12,000 in 32 countries—specified what “something differently” means.

Churn factors

Sixty-seven percent might have stayed if their issue had been resolved during the first contact. Fifty-four percent said being rewarded for doing more business with the company could have saved them from switching. And 78 percent said they switched because they are likely to move to another provider over broken promises—when the customer service experience is different than what the company promised at the beginning. Other factors that make customers more likely to bail include:

• Having to call customer service more than once about the same issue (65 percent of respondents)
• Unfriendly agents (65 percent)
• Long hold times (61 percent)

Three sectors had the biggest jumps in customer defections. Wireless phone providers saw churn rates rise five points from 2011 to 26-percent. Internet service providers saw 23 percent of their customers switch, up four points from last year. And retailers said goodbye to 22 percent of their customers, up six points from 2011.

How to deliver the difference

In working with customer contact center organizations across multiple industries throughout North America, I’ve found out how to deliver “something different” and save many more customers from quitting. It’s called The Quality Conversation.

The Quality Conversation is based on a robust five-step call flow—greeting, discovery, solution, offer and close. The greeting is enthusiastic, assures help, and shows clarity of purpose and a great attitude. From the beginning, agents show genuine interest in the customer and establish an emotional connection.

Next, the agent engages in full discovery to understand the customer’s wants, interest and needs. This involves asking the right questions to understand the customer’s true reason for canceling  often not the first reason given. The agent listens, restates and assures help, draws out hidden concerns, isolates primary concerns, finds areas to add value, and bridges to a solution.

With proper discovery the right solution presents itself and strikes a chord with customers because it ties product or service benefits with their wants, interests and needs. This opens the door to a compelling offer and closing with an assumptive approach.

High return on investment

Implementing The Quality Conversation requires culture change, training and coaching and buy-in at all levels of the organization. Is it worth the investment? Here are just a couple of examples of how effective this process really is:

• A major high-speed Internet provider increased its saves rate on inbound cancellation calls from 49 percent to 62 percent.
• An outbound retention group now gets 3.4 saves per hour per rep on requested permanent stops, up from one save per hour per rep before The Quality Conversation was implemented. That’s a 240-percent increase.

Bucking the trend

What would numbers like this mean to your organization?  Based on first-hand experience I know. You’d buck the trend indicated by the Accenture survey and boost your customer retention and revenues significantly. And remember a long-standing rule of thumb: It costs significantly less to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one, even with all the switching that’s going on out there.

Lower Your Churn Rate Today

RCDA Can Deliver Results for Your Organization to Reduce Customer Churn. Spend time with Bob to see how improving your churn rate is possible this year.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America using his company’s exclusive Quality Conversation approach. He is also a principal in RCDA’s subsidiary, QCS, LLC, which builds customized video game simulations for training contact center and other sales agents on The Quality Conversation.

DETROIT — Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA) has helped the Detroit Media Partnership contact center increase its saves rate by 33% by launching a training and coaching workshop that includes a new web-based 3-D animated gaming simulation developed by Quality Conversation Simulations, LLC, a subsidiary of RCDA.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RCDA (Press Release) – June 15, 2012 – The workshop, entitled “Saving Subscribers with The Quality Conversation,” trains and coaches contact center agents and supervisors on RCDA’s exclusive Quality Conversation approach—long proven to dramatically improve customer retention, service and sales results in contact centers. The QCS gaming simulation takes the approach a step further with an engaging, animated and multimedia process that builds the user’s mastery of The Quality Conversation.

From individual computers, users log on and engage in The Quality Conversation with a virtual customer on the monitor. In the gaming simulation, the virtual customer has called in to cancel a subscription and talks with the user, who can respond by clicking on one of several choices. Each choice will take the user to a new screen, the virtual customer’s next reaction, and additional response choices that will ultimately lead to the save (preventing the subscription cancellation)—as long as the user follows the principles of The Quality Conversation as the gaming simulation progresses.

“The QCS gaming simulation keeps score based on correct and incorrect responses and how long it takes the user to conduct The Quality Conversation effectively and win the save,” said RCDA president Bob Davis. “It is a fun and engaging way to practice your new skills, compare your performance with other agents, and work toward mastery of The Quality Conversation process to retain subscribers,” he said. “What’s more, it delivers training in a fraction of the time of tradition training and coaching, and it’s very affordable. The cost is just around $45 per agent per month. That’s about the same cost as acquiring just one customer. If each of your agents saves two extra customers per month after using our gaming simulation, you are way ahead of the game.”

The application—customizable and scalable to any customer contact center and industry and its SLA or call quality standards—is social, allowing users to play against themselves as well as other players. As game play progresses, each level presents more challenging real-world, contact center experience for the user. This includes simulated distractions such as sidebar conversations with other agents, background distractions on the customer’s side of the line, or having a supervisor take over a call to save it. Each response or lack of response to a given scenario by the user results in point calculations and coaching tips.

The system also tracks key metrics related to revenue growth and game usage. It issues badges to players based on successes and increasing levels of difficulty, and it displays achievements in the call center on a leader board.

“And since the QCS gaming simulation is web-based, users can log in on the Internet to play from any computer,” said Davis. “And it is so engaging and fun, designed to motivate agents and other end users to play it not only onsite during training and coaching sessions and during slow call volume, but also on their own time at home.”

Founded in 1977 and based in metro Atlanta, RCDA helps customer contact centers across North America add millions of dollars to their bottom-line results through its training, coaching and consulting programs based on its exclusive Quality Conversation approach to handling customer service, sales and retention calls. The approach is based on a robust call flow that leads agents through five steps—Greeting, Discovery, Solution, Offer and an assumptive Close—that address customer wants, interests and needs and establish emotional connections with customers and show genuine interest. More information is available at www.robertcdavis.net/process and www.robertcdavis.net/quality-conversation-simulations-llc/.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Baton Rouge, La., RCDA subsidiary Quality Conversation Simulations, LLC, can deliver a unique gaming simulation experience for any industry. Its focus is to provide fun, challenging and rewarding interactive gaming experiences for players with one idea in mind—to build simulations that change behaviors to produce positive results. The company has a team of talented writers, designers, developers and consultants who work with clients to maximize employee performance using a customized, engaging gaming simulation. More information is available at www.qcsims.com.

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By Bob Davis
(As published in the June 8, 2012, edition of the bi-weekly e-newsletter of the Contact Center Association, CCA Insider)

There are 183 million active gamers in the United States, who spend an average of 13 hours per week playing computer or video games. Imagine tapping into the energy and the talents that these gamers use to master Guitar Hero or to harness the motivation that they have for organizing complex raids and quests in multi-player online games. With this level of commitment, we would have a powerful tool for increasing employee effectiveness.

For over 10 years my company has helped call center agents boost their effectiveness. We have been very successful using an approach we call The Quality Conversation. Our approach in the past has been to teach the quality conversation techniques in a classroom setting, followed up with desk-side coaching. By using 3-D animated gaming simulations for call center training, we have been able to help agents improve their results for a fraction of the cost of conventional training programs.

A 33-percent gain in Detroit

For example, The Detroit Media Partnership newspaper call center has increased their saves rate by 33 percent by launching a training and coaching workshop that includes a gaming simulation component.

…Newspapers around the country get many cancellation calls per day. A 33-percent increase in performance brings a huge ROI to the paper when you consider the lifetime value of these subscribers.

These are difficult calls for the agents to handle. Many times the subscribers are upset and are canceling over a “final straw.” To save these subscribers, the agent must engage in a Quality Conversation. Teaching first line agents to hold these quality conversations, showing that they have a genuine interest in the customer and creating an emotional connection by asking great questions, is not an easy task. Teaching these skills in a game simulation is an effective and innovative approach.

Here is an example of how it works. From individual computers, agents log on and engage with a virtual customer on the monitor. In the gaming simulation, the virtual customer has called in to cancel a subscription and talks with the agent, who can respond by clicking on one of several choices. Each choice takes the agent to a new screen, the virtual customer’s next reaction, and additional response choices will lead to the save or to the sale—as long as the agent follows pre-programmed best practices.

The gaming simulation keeps score based on correct and incorrect responses, calculating how long it takes the agent properly win the save or to make the sale.

Customizable, scalable, social

The best gaming simulations are in 3-D animation instead of 2-D, and are customizable and scalable to any call center and industry and its SLA or call quality standards. They’re also social, allowing users to play against themselves as well as other players in an environment of cooperative competition which is good of the organization and the individual. As game play progresses, each level presents more challenging real-world call center experience for the agent. This includes simulated distractions such as sidebar conversations with other agents, background distractions on the customer’s side of the line, or having a supervisor take over a call to save it. Each response or lack of response to a given scenario by the user results in point calculations and coaching tips.

Gaming simulations also track key metrics related to revenue growth and game usage. They can issue badges to players based on successes and increasing levels of difficulty, and they can display achievements in the call center on a leader board.

At work and on their own time

Since the gaming simulations are web-based, users can log in on the Internet to play from any computer. I have seen agents so engaged and having so much fun with the games that this motivates them to play it not only onsite during training and coaching sessions and during slow call volume, but also on their own time at home. It is perfect for call centers that have home-based agents.

Why does it work? Here is some research:

• People like playing games—they find them fun and engaging. Fifty-five percent of respondents in a recent survey said they would be interested in working for a company that offered games to increase productivity.

• A study conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense found that trainees gain higher confidence in applying learning from training sessions on their jobs when training is gaming simulation-based.

• A study in the United Kingdom showed that a game can influence positive social behavior. In other words by using gaming simulation to learn call center best practices, agents are going to become nicer people (and consequently happier and more rewarded) in all aspects of their lives.

Bernard Suits, the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Department of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, wrote the following in the introduction to Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal:

“It is games that give us something to do when there is nothing to do. We thus call games ‘pastimes’ and regard them as trifling fillers of the interstices of our lives. But they are much more important than that. They are clues to the future. And their serious cultivation now is perhaps our only salvation.”

I am not sure if game play will be our salvation, but I do think it is an important tool in helping call center agents be all they can be.

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Founded in 1977 and based in metro Atlanta, RCDA helps customer contact centers across North America add millions of dollars to their bottom-line results through training, coaching and consulting programs based on an exclusive Quality Conversation approach to handling customer service, sales and retention calls. The approach is based on a robust call flow that leads agents through five steps—Greeting, Discovery, Solution, Offer and an assumptive Close—that address customer wants, interests and needs and establish emotional connections with customers and show genuine interest. More information is available at www.robertcdavis.net/process. More information on RCDA’s subsidiary, Quality Conversation Simulations, LLC, which develops the kind o gaming simulations described in this article, is available at http://robertcdavis.net/quality-conversation-simulations-llc/, or call Bob Davis direct at 678-548-1775.

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My company—Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA)—was working on a culture-change project in a client’s customer contact center, and a quote from Emerson kept going through my head: “Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.”

It was time for the all-hands meeting, and agents were arriving from every direction. From the north wing and upstairs they came, all gathering in the first-floor meeting center. I heard the chatter driven by the excitement that comes when agents have time off the phones, much like what children experience when they get snow day off from school. They all thought it was a celebration, and it was. But I knew that on this day we would drop the bomb that would truly make them do what they can.

I am, however, getting ahead of myself. The culture-change project started in earnest during September 2011. The goal of the project was to use a proven approach that I call the Quality Conversation to turn order-takers into consultative sales people. (Learn more about the Quality Conversation approach at www.robertcdavis.net/process.)

Before September, RCDA had completed a highly successful pilot program in the customer contact center with a small group of agents. They had increased their closing ratio on all calls by 13 percent and multi-product sales to single callers by 14 percent. We had won the hearts and minds of the pilot team, and in September we had started working hard to drive these sales increases across the entire enterprise.

We had conducted hundreds of hours of classroom training on the Quality Conversation so everyone would learn and master this process and its consultative approach to selling. We had spent thousands of hours coaching these skills for mastery and sustainability. Activities included running contests and providing rewards and recognition, and we were making progress on winning the hearts and minds of the agents enterprise-wide.

Although most agents had taken advantage of the training and coaching, many did not. At this point about 80 percent of the agents were following the process about 80 percent of the time. This was good, but not good enough. So we started a certification process with prizes and incentives to get certified on the Quality Conversation approach. During the first month we spent a great deal of time giving close guidance, coaching and feedback.

The standards for certification were high. As a result, only about five percent of the team became certified. At this point we had two choices—either lower standards or find something that, as the Emerson quote indicates, would make the agents do what they can.

This optimist became a realist. We decided that becoming certified would affect base pay. Agents who became certified would receive an additional $2. Those who did not would lose $2. This $4 per hour differential was significant, representing about 30 percent the agents’ base pay.

Failure not an option

We were, in essence, doing what the commanders of ancient Greek warriors did when they landed on enemy shores from the sea. “Burn the boats,” the commanders ordered. With no boats, the warriors had nowhere to retreat. There would be no turning back and no surrender. The warriors knew immediately that failure was not an option. The victory had to be won.

It was stunning when we made the announcement about base pay in the all-hands meeting. You could see in the agents’ faces that they did not consider it an acceptable option to lose $2 per hour. To them, failure was not an option. The look of determination in the agents’ eyes was the same as what must have been in those Greek warriors’ eyes. Their victory—getting certified and increasing base pay by $2—had to be won as well.

My team and I had never worked harder to win the hearts and minds of any team before we tied certification to base pay. This one bold move pushed the call center team from good results to great. Within the first week, nearly 100 percent of the agents were using the process nearly 100 percent of the time.

It would be easy to conclude that tying pay to performance is the only thing that is needed to turn a culture around, but we all know it is not that simple. We gave them the culture-changing tools first, and then used pay to drive the idea that failure is not an option. This is what drove the results over the top.

When Emerson said, “Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can,” he added, “This is the service of a friend.” So I did not feel so bad about effectively giving the command to burn the boats. With training and coaching followed by tying base pay to certification, we helped the agents do what they are capable of doing. In the end, that’s being a friend indeed.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscontactcenters.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

The call came into a cruise line’s customer contact center. The caller, an older man, was having trouble navigating the company’s web site. He wanted to know how to select the best stateroom to suit his needs. The agent was very knowledgeable, competent and enthusiastic. She answered all of his questions, yet she asked very few questions of her own. Believe it or not, she did not even get the caller’s contact information! Although the customer was more than happy with the help, to the agent this call represented just another shopper who might buy—and then again might not.

What’s lacking in most customer contact centers

My firm, Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net) has been working on customer contact center effectiveness projects for years, and few have represented more promise than the effort to turn shoppers into buyers in the cruise line industry. Yet as the industry makes the transition from dealing mostly with travel agents to dealing with consumers, the skill sets required to make this transition are lacking in most customer contact centers.

Transition phrases to take control of the call

The first step in turning shoppers into buyers is to take control of the call. The person asking the questions is in control. Use a transition phrase such as, “I would be happy to help you navigate our web site. So I can see what you are seeing, please tell me, which trip you are looking to take?” Let’s say the customer replies that he wants to take The Caribbean cruise. “The Caribbean cruise? That is so great! Have you ever been before?” Now the agent is in control of the conversation.

Making an emotional connection with the caller

I have written extensively on customer contact center agents holding what we call Quality Conversations with potential customers. One of the hallmarks of a Quality Conversation—and a critical difference between a customer service call and a sales call—is making an emotional connection with the customer. Use questions such as, “Are you celebrating something special with this cruise?” or “What was the best part of your last Caribbean vacation?” The customer will reply with something like, “Well, we really enjoyed seeing a double rainbow between the Pitons at sunset as the ship pulled out of port in Castries, St. Lucia.” At this point, you will have made that emotional connection.

Qualifying the customer

It is also essential to qualify the customer for time and commitment. Every caller represents a certain level of opportunity. Quality questions will help uncover how much opportunity each customer brings you, and how immediate that opportunity could be. Ask questions like, “When are you planning your next vacation?” or “When do you plan to make your decision on this trip?” These questions are critically important because the answers let the agent know where the customer stands in the buying process.

Understanding the customer’s buying process

Additionally, agents must understand the customer’s buying process. To do so, ask questions like:

• “How long have you and your wife been considering this cruise?”
• “What other cruise lines are you considering?”
• “What do you like most about our cruise line? What do you like the least?”
• “How will you go about making your selection process?”

Many agents try to avoid these questions because they like to avoid conflict. But these questions are an essential part of the Quality Conversation—and turning shoppers into buyers—because they show customers that the agent is genuinely interested in them. Agents who ask these questions show that they’re on the customers’ side and want what is best for each customer.

The Quality Conversation defined

Overall, I define the Quality Conversation as a meaningful and mutually rewarding dialog that occurs when a person takes and clearly conveys a genuine interest in another individual’s wants, interests and needs. It goes beyond building rapport to make an emotional connection and establish real trust. And The Quality Conversation is essential for any cruise line that wants to turn shoppers into buyers in the customer contact center. To learn more about the Quality Conversation—and the results it has driven for companies across a full spectrum of industries—visit www.robertcdavis.net/process/ and www.robertcdavis.net/results/ for more information.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscontactcenters.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.

Imagine the typical exchange between an agent in a cable company’s customer contact center and a subscriber who has called in with a billing question.

Agent: “It will be my pleasure to help you with your billing questions! While my computer pulls up your account information, may I ask, what is your favorite cable program?”

Subscriber: “You’re going to laugh, but it’s ‘Billy the Exterminator.’ I have gotten addicted to that show!”

At this point, the agent and the subscriber have a little laugh together, and in so doing they form an emotional connection. This is the beginning of what I call The Quality Conversation, an interaction that has the potential to become not only service delivered (the question answered) but also a new sale.

Of course it is possible today for a subscriber to have a satisfactory customer service experience without having an emotional connection with the agent. Often companies use technology to automate transactions, getting the job done without any kind of interaction between two human beings. Some might argue that this gets the job done effectively, and that an emotional connection really isn’t necessary.

But virtually every service call is an opportunity to transition to a sale, provided that the caller interacts with an agent who makes an emotional connection through The Quality Conversation. The challenge is that doing so requires proper training and coaching for the agents.

For the last 10 years, my company—Robert C. Davis and Associates (RCDA)—has provided training and coaching to empower agents to have Quality Conversations, and the results in revenue growth and customer retention for our client companies have been truly exceptional.

For example, using RCDA’s Quality Conversation approach to sales, an authorized reseller for major cable companies increased its closing ratio by 13 percentage points and its multi-product sales by 14 percentage points.

What is The Quality Conversation? I define it as a meaningful and mutually rewarding dialog that occurs when a person takes and clearly conveys a genuine interest in another individual’s wants, interests and needs. It goes beyond building rapport to make an emotional connection and establish real trust. And The Quality Conversation is essential for any cable company that wants to transition service calls into sales via its customer contact center.

Now it is true that many providers handle routine service calls online or through interactive voice response (IVR). This makes it even more important for your agents to be able to have Quality Conversations with customers, because the calls that come through to agents involve more complex issues that are more difficult to handle. On these calls, establishing an emotional connection with the customer is essential for there to be any real chance of transitioning service calls to sales.

Let’s look at the elements of The Quality Conversation:

• An enthusiastic greeting with an assurance of help.

• Full discovery. This allows the agent to fully understand the customer’s situation and the products and services the customer currently uses. It also gives the agent with enough knowledge about the customer’s situation to discuss additional products and services the company offers that will benefit the customer. The agent can dig deeper into existing offerings and broaden the conversation to include other valuable products and services that are likely to interest the customer.

• Genuine interest. Throughout the call, the agent shows a genuine interest in the customer, and this reaches right through the phone line to form that emotional connection.

• Customized solution. By listening to the customer’s wants, interests and needs, the agent learns enough to present a customized solution—the best match of products and services for that customer’s situation.

Using The Quality Conversation approach and making the emotional connection during the call establishes a strong rapport with the customer, who as a result is much more likely to accept the agent’s recommended solution. In other words, the close becomes virtually automatic.

While it is true that companies such as Amazon and Netflix offer competitive products that are appealing to cable subscribers, The Quality Conversation uncovers programming preferences like “Billy The Exterminator.” It reveals to the agent and the customer how the cable company offers the best value, the widest and deepest range of products and services, and the highest level of satisfaction. And it is a proven approach—with the power of an emotional connection—that will transition service to sales on call after call.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net), a consulting firm in Alpharetta, Georgia, specializing in improving sales, customer service and retention results in customer contact centers across North America. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), a highly specialized outsource customer contact center serving the needs of business clients across the country.