Centrinex’s Call Center Agents Have the Right to Pursue Happiness and Job Satisfaction

Call center work can be rewarding, fast paced and satisfying. An eight-hour shift can go by quickly. As far as jobs go, this one has lots of opportunity to advance. But without the right culture in place, like all jobs, it can become a means to a paycheck, which leads to restlessness and searching for something more meaningful. Since we spend one-third of our days at work, a culture that supports and encourages job satisfaction is important to and good for both employee and employer.

Creating a sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction doesn’t happen by accident. It must start at the upper levels of management and run through the entire organization. Recently, Centrinex’s management team penned and adopted what we call our own internal Bill of Rights. It is designed to add value to our call center agents’ lives both inside and outside of the workplace.

Centrinex’s Bill of Rights is posted at all of our entrances and throughout the facility to remind our call center agents of our commitment to their happiness and sense of job satisfaction. And, they go a little like this:

1. Introduction to a Corporate Environment & Professionalism
   • How you present yourself and your work
   • Defined boundaries, rules and regulations
   • Adherence
   • Act and speak appropriately
2. Empathy
   • Patience
   • Take time to listen to a co-worker’s or customers trouble, offer advice where needed and if appropriate
   • Customers who are experiencing a hardship or frustrated by not getting the best answer
   • Lend a hand when possible
3. Productivity
   • Utilize a check list to assure all duties and projects are accomplished
   • Use your time wisely to produce for your team and the client
   • Visibility to help foster a solid work ethic
   • Minimize down time and maximize output
   • Actively working
4. Accountability/Ownership
   • Honest and reliable
   • Accountable for your time and work
   • Follow procedures
   • Own up to mistakes and the outcome and learn from them
5. Teamwork & Collaboration
   • Get and offer input to the team to reach department goals
   • Pull together to help out other team members
   • Play a part in the bigger picture
   • Learn to voice your opinion appropriately – is it my turn?
6. Time Management
   • You manage the day instead of the day managing you
   • Being on time, being early
   • Accomplish projects prior to due date
   • Punctuality
7. Effective Listening
   • Listen before speaking
   • Listen to coaching feedback
   • Ask probing questions for more detail
8. Conflict Resolution
   • Find and reach a solution together
   • Learn to de-escalate highly emotional situations
   • See different perspectives
   • Find common ground, negotiate, and compromise
9. Multitasking
   • Organization (workflow, desk, etc.)
   • Be able to adjust the plan when the day requires it
   • Step in when and where you are needed
10. Cultural Diversity
    • The call center is a melting pot of this country
    • Clients, co-workers, consumers– take pride and try to show it off
    • Respect others and their views and backgrounds

Not only are these “rights” displayed around the Centrinex offices, but also, they are a part of our training process. New hires are asked to rank these “rights” in order of importance to them. Our management team reviews how they were prioritized to create a tailored plan that helps new employees improve weaknesses and put their strengths to best use by helping others who see those strengths as their weakness. As time goes on, the flexible plan changes to match where employees are and where they want to be.

At the end of the day, the Bill of Rights supports our culture in which people and their happiness matters. Centrinex is a place where work is more than just a paycheck, it’s a place where people learn and grow in ways that improve both work and personal lives.

If you’re looking for a career at a call center where job satisfaction matters, learn more on our careers page.

Measuring our Contact Center’s CSRs’ Satisfaction

When it comes to gathering the opinions of customers and employees on any number of things like satisfaction with service or jobs, ideas for improvement and more, all too often we take the long way to get to the point.

A Contact Center’s Performance is Only as Good as the Team Behind It

August kicks off Centrinex’s “What’s My Story?” extravaganza

Behind every high-performance company stands (or stood) a leader (or group of leaders) whose victories (and failures) make it what it is today. Take the late Steve Jobs for example.

Maximizing CSR Productivity With Checks & Balances

An extra five minutes at break time. Ten minutes late returning from lunch. It doesn’t seem like 15 minutes is a big deal. But when you’re paying customer service representatives (CSRs) to man a call center by the minute, those extra minutes add up quickly. Every minute CSRs are not on the phones is a minute lost, but paid for. Imagine 900 CSRs taking an extra 15 minutes a day. That’s 225 hours of paid time not worked. Every day.

How do contact centers ensure CSRs are working when they are supposed to be working? For smaller contact centers, monitoring time is an easier feat. For large call centers like Centrinex, keeping tabs on nearly 1,000 CSRs takes having managers and processes in place. It also requires a serious focus on establishing expectations and a system of checks and balances.

Here’s how Centrinex monitors your CSRs

Our call center executives and managers set clear expectations from the start. Should a CSR habitually arrive late to work, return late from lunch or breaks or take extra time away from the phones, the issue is addressed immediately. Otherwise, it appears that we’re giving our permission to take extra time throughout the day.

With nearly 1,000 CSRs on the call center floor, it’s impossible to keep tabs on everyone’s schedule. Rather than managers wondering where a CSR is at any given moment, we post schedules at each station for each person. Rather than ask another CSR where someone is, we can look at the schedule and know for certain.

Centrinex partners with a third-party that conducts regular spot checks. This company analyzes our CSR time reports using a workforce management solution. Any time discrepancies or abnormal trends are reported and immediately discussed with the CSR.

Our CSRs are always logged into our phone system or our clients’ websites. The system and sites allow for tracking time down to the second. Reports are run and time spent on various tasks is assessed. This not only helps us train our CSRs on productivity, but also provides a granular view of how much time is spent on specific activities.

Effectively monitoring time boils down to having solid checks and balances in place, then quickly addressing any issues that surface. Centrinex protects our clients’ spend by spending our time and resources on tracking where CSRs are and what they’re doing.

It’s a fine line between being overly watchful, which can make CSRs feel as though they’re not trusted and providing a comfortable work environment where CSRs want to stay. Given our low turnover rate, we’ve mastered how to make CSRs accountable in a fair way.

Controlling Costs with Continuous Call Center Queue Management

Ensuring your contact center’s flexibility, value and ability to meet agreed upon service and call metrics is largely dependent on continuous queue management. When your outsourced call center correctly manages staffing versus call volume, your value from the relationship increases while costs are kept in check.

Playing by the FTC and CFPB Rules is Good Business

The one and only way to avoid legal trouble is playing by the FTC and CFPB regulations. More important, lenders must choose their vendors, including contact centers, very carefully as their actions and center policies are directly related to your compliance. In other words, if your contact center is not in compliance, neither are you.

The U.S. Postal Service Has Nothing on Our Contact Center

So we have all heard that the postal service delivers through sleet, ice and snow. But here at Centrinex, we can do those postal carriers one better. Our outsourced contact center is designed to survive even if our facility is leveled. Really. Leveled. Like to the ground.

It’s 3:00 AM…Do You Know Where Your Call Center is?

Instant connectivity and information access. Getting what you want when you want it isn’t a matter of being self-absorbed anymore. It’s simply part of the times in which we live. The regular 9 to 5 no longer exists. Your customers are doing business outside of normal business hours today, and the trend is here to stay.

Hiring Temps Versus Recruiting

Weighing in on the Great Staffing Debate: Hiring Temps vs. Recruiting

First, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room, shall we? The contact center industry is a transient one in which customer service representatives (CSRs) move from one center to the next in search of better pay and hours. That being said, Centrinex is fortunate to have a remarkably low turnover rate thanks to our motivating managers, opportunities for advancement, training, pay and fun work environment.