Not only have you got strict deadlines to meet, but whatever you do has to be financially sound and has to work ? imagine the headlines it could create if you didn?t. But in the rush to ensure that the technology and the systems are in place, it can be very easy to overlook the most important aspect of a well-run, successful contact centre ? its staff.

Commercial business is finding it increasingly difficult to hire the right calibre of staff for its contact centres these days, and yet it has the advantage of being able to offer a wide range of fantastic perks, from discounted produce to staff gyms and swimming pools.

So how can the public sector even begin to compete? There simply are not the funds to offer the type of tangible benefits that are available in the commercial sector ? some councils are no longer able to justify offering free parking to employees, let alone discounted council tax bills.

Recruiting for public sector call centres is indeed a formidable challenge, and adding the need for internet and web access makes it even more difficult. Yet with careful planning, a further move towards business practice, and some forward thinking HR policies, you could become an employer of choice within your community. Here?s some ideas to set you on the right path.

What can your contact centre do for you?
The first step is to take a long, hard look at why you are establishing a contact centre. Yes, you need to meet Government targets. Yes, you?d love to win Charter Marks for offering outstanding customer service.

Going a step further, you need to give members of the public ? your customers ? the opportunity to get in touch with you whenever, wherever and however they choose to, and to provide them with outstanding service.

But try taking it even further than that. What do you ultimately want and hope to achieve by offering such wonderful customer service?

Only by looking at the bottom line can you work out what you need your contact centre ? and therefore its agents ? to do. Set out your key performance indicators, and work backwards to establish how you can achieve them.

Once you have done this, you should have a clearer idea of what you need your agents to do. This means you will know what core skills they need to bring to the job, and what training you need to offer them.

Key Performance Indicators
Working out your Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, can seem extremely daunting at first, but can be relatively easy to achieve if you take one step at a time.

Look at how you currently measure the success of your contact centre. Maybe you judge it by the number of calls taken, the call length, the number of calls lost, the cost of each contact, or perhaps a combination of these factors?

Similarly, examine how you measure the success of the team members. The number of calls taken and their average length are common factors, as too are the time available for work and their sickness record.

But in today?s customer-focused market, where the client is king, the VALUE and the QUALITY of your agents? contribution needs to be quantified. Your customers are not interested in whether you pick up the telephone 2 seconds faster ? though of course they don?t like to be kept waiting ? what they want is an excellent service where their needs are met, or better yet, surpassed.

Consider some or all of the following:

Monitoring customer satisfaction level
Reductions in call levels (This illustrates that repeat calls have been avoided),
Number of compliments or complaints received about the service you offer

Improvements in payments of arrears, or any similar financial indicator

Looking at your KPIs should also highlight some of the ?softer? competencies your agents need. For example, they need to be not just friendly and helpful, but also adaptable ? technology, particularly internet technology, changes rapidly. In the public sector, they will probably need a greater than average amount of patience and thick skin too!

Thomson Case Study

This case study demonstrates the value of focusing the recruitment process on the key competencies and requirements.

The Challenge:
To recruit 190 Sales Advisers plus 24 Team Leaders for a new centre in Glasgow
To recruit blind (without mentioning Thomson Holidays!)
To have the staff in place within weeks of starting the project
Thomson Holiday?s previous recruitment experience showed that:

20% of all new recruits failed training
10% of staff then left within 6 weeks of going on the phones
To find 190 Sales Advisers we therefore needed to recruit 250 staff to cover 30% attrition.

Recall devised and ran a high impact advertising campaign, and then developed assessment processes focused totally on the key features of the role:

excellent customer service awareness
the ability to sell or influence
PC literacy

Recall handled over 2,000 telephone applications in the first three weeks of the campaign and invited 500 to assessment events in the first month.

250 starters
ALL passed the initial training
Only 1 person left within 6 weeks of completing training
Conversion of calls to sales was 7 times higher than other sites

A tremendous success for Thomson Holidays and a flying start for the new Contact Centre.

Matching Staff to Contact Centre Requirements

Once you and the contact centre team are clear about the success criteria for your operation, it?s a short step forward to identify the competencies required to deliver it.

Typical competencies for contact centres are:

Good spoken communication skills,
Written communication skills,
Customer service experience/awareness,
The ability to solve problems
Rapport building
Ability to use a computer

You are likely to have other competencies in mind too, but do try not to be too ambitious in your demands. If you are looking for an agent with all of the above, plus a working knowledge of the field in which you operate, you are going to find it extremely difficult to find new employees.

Try to list the competencies required under two headings:
Essential ? staff MUST have this experience, skill or attribute to do the job.
Desirable ? ideally, successful staff would have this experience, skill or attribute, but if they haven?t it can be incorporated into an initial training programme.

An example of this is customer service experience. Ask yourself whether your staff must have solid experience in this field, or is it sufficient to look for people who have a good understanding of excellent customer service.

The competencies you list under desirable can also form the basis of your training programme. You shouldn?t have to incorporate keyboard skills into your training programme, for example, but you may want to include customer service skills.

Making full use of the internet in your training schemes can prove extremely useful ? not only are you taking full advantage of resources that are already there, but it also helps your agents to become more accustomed to the net.

Another useful tip when training is to leave the technological parts until last ? that way agents can see how the technology will help them to perform their job, rather than struggling to place what they are learning into context.

Finally, you will also need to decide how and when your agents will handle the different types of queries. For example, some contact centres have dedicated telephony agents and a separate team to handle written correspondence. This can make recruitment slightly easier in that the agents do not each need a broad range of skills. However it can lead to less efficient use of staff time ? if your telephones are going through a quiet period, what do the agents do?

Other contact centres look for agents who can work with all media. Some split their day 50/50 between internet correspondence and telephones. Others take it as it comes, which can be a distinct advantage if dealing with clients who are, for example, calling to chase up an e-mail.

Attracting the ideal candidate

You have now identified the KPI?s or success criteria for your contact centre, crystallised the competencies you are looking for and are now ready to recruit? how do you attract your new staff?

If you plan to advertise, think about the type of person that you are looking for and target the message accordingly, using the right media and message for that person. Use the advert to paint a picture of your organisation, the role, the environment and the benefits so that the candidate is clear about the opportunity on offer. However, it must be kept simple ? the role of the advert is to provide a tempting ?taster? which will whet potential candidates? appetites.

Tailor your selection process to enable the essential competencies to be evaluated as quickly as possible. This will save both you and the candidate valuable time and money.

For example ? why not take all candidates through a telephone interview first so that you can evaluate their spoken communication skills? If they are going to work in a contact centre these are absolutely critical to their success.

Those who pass the first stage of the process will need further assessing to determine their suitability for the role. Recall always advise the use of a structured competency-based interview, along with role play exercises, written and E-mail exercises to let the candidate demonstrate their skills in a practical format.

Don?t forget that you are also ?selling? your organisation to the candidate, and bear this in mind when organising assessments. For example, including a tour of the contact centre and introducing them to potential colleagues could help cement your candidates? desire for the job.

Case Study: ntl:

The Challenge:
ntl: decided to set up a 800 seat on-line contact centre in Swansea to service their new internet offering. All staff needed to be both PC literate and familiar with the internet. ntl: chose Recall to handle the entire recruitment process for the centre from the advertising campaign through to job offers.

Over 830 candidates called in the first 36 hours after the advert ran. All candidates were telephone screened for the following:

Customer service awareness
Flexibility of working to cover 7 day operations from 7am to 2am
PC literacy

PLUS Internet experience

Successful candidates were then invited to assessment events including:

Competency-based interview including coverage of PC and internet experience,
Technical test to assess PC and internet knowledge,
Telephone-based role plays to demonstrate customer care skills and internet knowledge.

Candidates had to be successful at all exercises to receive a job offer. In the first 2 weeks of the project:

1800 applicants were telephone screened
440 candidates attended assessment events
284 job offers were made

Staff retention ? how can the public sector compete with money-rich businesses?

The issue of staff retention has been a source of on-going debate in the call centre world for years now, and definitive answers are still hard to come by. But given the financial constraints placed upon the public sector, you are going to find the issues of motivation and benefits even more of a challenge. Perks in the business sector these days can include a workplace gym and/or swimming pool, subsidised canteens, discounted company products (eg clothes, holidays, etc), alongside more mainstream benefits such as pension and private health care.

When it comes to tangible benefits offered in the public sector, a touch of imagination may be called for. Local councils, for example, may be able to offer perks which cost very little, but which may mean a lot to staff. For example, you could introduce an incentive points scheme. Staff would earn the points as reward for good performance, and could then ?spend? them on a variety of items. These could include fitness sessions at the LA sports centre, plants from the council nurseries, free parking for a month, a prime seat/position at a council-organised event?? The list is virtually endless, and using the resources you already have means such a scheme will cost little to run.

Other incentive rewards could include an extra day or half-day of holiday leave, job share opportunities, or cr??facilities. Such benefits could make a huge difference when recruiting.

Many candidates, when asked, are looking for ways in which to develop their career. Training is always well received, as long as it is relevant and useful. Forging links with the local colleges to strengthen training opportunities could pay dividends in terms of staff retention.

If promotion opportunities are scarce, look instead at other ways in which the agent can move up a career ladder. For example, they may be able to become your centre?s expert in a particular subject, or perhaps they may like to coach others.

Take a look too at the culture of your contact centre. Businesses have found that the contact centre culture is very different from that within the rest of their companies, and the same should apply to your contact centres if you are to attract the right calibre of staff. Try visiting a couple of well-chosen commercial contact centres to see for yourself the different atmosphere that prevails, and try to recreate ? or better ? it in your own centre.

Borrow other ideas from the business sector. For example, fun days boost morale, and needn?t cost the organisation a penny. Recall?s own contact centre held a Valentine?s fun day last month ? poetry and other competitions were held, shortbread and hot chocolate were sold, and over ?90 was raised for our chosen charity. Those working in the centre felt good ? they had had a great day and had achieved something worthwhile.

Netiquette

Netiquette ? a new buzzword, meaning the art of using good manners when writing e-mail, and using other forms of internet communication.

Apparently, many people tend to forget their manners when dealing with other people over the net. It all becomes so impersonal that there is no longer any need to be polite, or even just reasonable. Of course, this is not the case ? you have to watch your ps and qs even more when on the net, especially when dealing with customers.

There are a few golden rules which, when adhered to, should make web contact with customers far easier. Pass these on to your agents, and your web service should be hard to fault.

1. Most people view e-mails as being fast, and expect a quick response. Do your best to meet or even beat their expectations by replying as soon as you can.

2. Ask yourself, ?Would I say this to this person?s face??. If the answer is no, then don?t say it in correspondence!

3. Anything you write down is PERMANENT! Not only that, but it can be distributed around the world at a frighteningly fast speed. Don?t commit to anything in writing if it may come back to haunt you.

4. Ensure that the information you give is 100% accurate. Wrong information can spread like wildfire over the net, and could well cause more problems.

5. Keep replies to queries clear, concise and easy to understand.

6. Follow basic e-mail rules. DON?T USE CAPITAL LETTERS ? it?s the on-line equivalent of shouting. Keep correspondence as formal on the net as you would on paper, including salutations and providing your name and job title at the end. Use a plain font and background for ease of reading. Don?t use abbreviations ? just because you know what those letters stand for it doesn?t mean your reader does. An extra tip ? smilies can be very useful :-) as long as you only use this example (others can imply sarcasm and other inappropriate emotions!), and use it sparingly.

Planning ahead

Staff turnover in contact centres is often far higher than in other departments, and to keep on top of things you need to be several steps ahead.

Many business are still making the common mistake of recruiting piecemeal for their contact centres. In other words, they recruit one or two people every week as and when they are needed. This has proven to be an ineffective and time-wasting method of recruitment. The HR department spends a disproportionate amount of time recruiting instead of working on strategic issues, and the calibre of recruits suffers.

We advise a pro-active recruitment strategy, whereby you work out in advance how many staff you are likely to need over a certain period ? say, a quarter ? taking into account attrition rates and any growth plans. A proper recruitment campaign is then run to take on the total number of staff needed for that quarter.

This strategy allows more effective use of recruitment advertising budgets and a wider choice of candidates. It enables use of assessment centres, at which candidates can go through a series of effective role-play exercises. Although it requires a more concentrated period of recruitment, it also means that HR personnel can have weeks at a time to devote to other areas of their job.

Be imaginative, and don?t be afraid to steal ideas!

In essence, research and innovation is the secret behind successful recruitment for public sector contact centres. Research what you want to achieve, and how you are going to achieve it. Research how the business sector is attracting and retaining new recruits for contact centres. Adapt, adopt and improve upon their ideas, and don?t be afraid to try something new. By borrowing ideas and coming up with innovative schemes of your own, your contact centre will thrive ? and your next problem will be finding space for all those Charter Mark and Best Practice certificates!