“The interaction with the customer seems more sincere and in the majority of the calls I come across more as myself. I don’t know how many times people have said, ‘I appreciate you listening to me.’ I have stopped making offers that are not appropriate. I am not begging them to stay anymore but my save rate has gone up dramatically.”
    - Retention CSR

“Keep focusing on the call flow… many reps have seen a 30% improvement on their save rate since they have started using it…. So learn it, love it, and make it your friend.”
    - Retention Coach

"The only way it will be successful is to invest at least as much time as we have in the pilot. It can’t be rushed. It’s a different mind set that changes the way you think so you can’t rush it."
    - Customer Service Coach

As you may or may not remember you sat with me a few months back when the Program was beginning to develop. I was absolutely blown away by the training. I went into the classes with high expectations based on the results that I saw from our sales representatives.

"The program that was presented to us far exceeded my vision for the end result. The time and effort that you and your colleagues must have put into the development was very visible and much appreciated. I feel that the tools that were provided will undoubtedly prove to be extremely useful to everyone who makes a commitment to the process. The presentation of the materials was also amazing. I have never been a part of such an experience (I say experience because that is truly what it was). There was a lot of information provided to us and yet never once did I feel overwhelmed. Thank you!"
    - Customer Service Representative

“We’ve always had a great leadership team here at [outsourcer]. But the [retention queue] project has enabled us to get better collaboration from people in different roles – quality coaches, trainers, supervisors and team leads. As a result, our agents are getting better coaching more often and that is what is improving our performance as a site.”
    - Outsourcer Site Director

“What I feel is the most beneficial part of the [coaching process] is, the agent and the coach have a very clear and specific understanding of where that agent’s strengths are and, how they both intend to proceed in building upon the opportunities identified”.
    - Retention Coach

I just wanted to let you know how great it has been to be apart of this project. . Being a veteran on the phone and doing my second "tour of duty" in customer retention, I was ready to get my resume together.

"This project has made my job so much more enjoyable. I don't hate coming to work! I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate all your hard work and motivation."
    - Retention CSR

“I’ve noticed myself in a better mood, and happier with the new call flow. I still have bad calls, but I tend to be a lot happier on the phone right now.”
    - Retention CSR

“After my team received numerous 100 scores from QA I went and asked them if they were giving 100s to everyone on the pilot for some reason. They said no, every CSR had earned those scores.”
    - Retention Coach

“I wish I’d gotten you the other day. No one was trying to understand what I was saying until I got you.”
    -Customer from Des Moines, Iowa, speaking to Retention CSR

“Agents are excited about their job once again. It's new and challenging for them. They're sharing ideas on the floor regarding what works during different calls.”
    - Retention Coach

“Agents feel more confident that they can handle the customers’ issues because they are listening to the customer instead of concentrating on locating and verifying the account at the very beginning of the call..”
    - Quality Assurance Coach

“The caller asked me if [we] had changed the way we take our calls. I told her that we always try to do our best for our customers. She said she could tell the difference immediately, and that it was the best conversation she had had all week! She was going to broadband and I saved her with [an up-sell].”
    - Customer Retention Coach

I put the coaching skills we learned to work and my first coaching session was with an agent who is strong willed and set in their ways. At first, she was very keen on stating why the call flow didn't/wouldn't work for her. We talked about how the process might influence her calls and how certain parts could affect both her and the customer positively. It enabled her to gain an understanding of what certain parts of the process meant and why each was there.

Using questions to explain why each behavior was important worked! What I noticed initially was how much quicker it was to identify where the agent felt uncomfortable. Delivering more specific positive feedback had an immediate affect on the agents’ attitude towards coaching. When they hear, "this is what else I think you did well..." they literally do a double-take. At the end of the first coaching session, the agent had a very different impression of her abilities and her attitude towards the whole process.

My second coaching session was from the opposite side of the spectrum, with an agent who was very quiet. Again, the method allowed me to provide much more detailed, actionable feedback. By engaging the agent in a conversation about the call it allows them an opportunity to take it in a direction they want.

When the agent tends to move towards the negative aspects of the call, I like telling them to stop, that I want to know what they did well. It sets such a tone for the rest of the session.

What I feel is the most beneficial part of the whole thing is, the agent and the coach have a very clear and specific understanding of where that agent's strengths are and, how they both intend to proceed in building upon the opportunities identified. In both these sessions and each one since I have implemented the follow-up action plan. The feedback I've received back from the agents has been good so far. One statement echoed by all of them has been that they like the habit-building aspect of it. It allows them to see when they use it and relate that to the call outcome.

Client: major telecommunications services provider
Objective: improve save rate

Matt Hawk consulted with a client marketing specialist to increase the save rate for the telecommunications services supported by her team’s call centers, which were both operated by near-shore outsourcers.

While the client had already successfully increased retention rates from the teens to over 20 percent, they were unable to reach their goal of retaining a third of their customers. “It’s like weight loss. The last five pounds are always the hardest for anybody to lose. That’s the situation we were in when we called Matt,” she said.

Over the course of developing customized onsite training for 800 save agents and line managers, Hawk and his team identified which of the call center’s existing staff were consistently delivering the highest numbers. Then, they developed best practices based on behaviors they observed. “It was about, ‘Here’s what the top sellers in your center, with your product, and with every challenge that you have are doing that gets them 15 or 20 percent higher scores than the rest,’” she said. As they were developing the skills-based training, the client's retention marketing team developed a complementary “branded customer service” approach with plenty of supporting collateral to add momentum in the sites.

Another critical success factor was getting the outsourcer site managers to agree to budget offphone time for agent coaching after the initial training. “In one location the site director told us that, considering the productivity hit required to implement the program, we were only going to get ‘one chance’ to get it right,” said Hawk. The site director’s leap of faith paid off. 10 weeks after launch the teams had improved their up front save rate 17%, which translated into millions of dollars ROI for the client and productivity bonuses for the outsourcer.

According to the client, you need an unshakeable commitment to follow-up coaching to make a project like this successful. Reluctance to spend money on training doesn’t make financial sense. “What does it cost to not do it? What does it cost to not have a well-trained sales staff?

Topic: Customer Intelligence Implementation
Partner: Major information technology consulting firm
Client: Major pay TV provider.

While working on a project for a major pay TV provider, customer intelligence guru Alex B. had lined up state-of- the-art technology to bring customer information to the desktops of the call center agents in the company’s retention queue. In the process, agents benefited from customer-specific information so that they could tailor their offers. What remained was someone to train them on how to communicate that information…that’s where RSI came in.

“RSI delivers that training – the best term I’ve heard for it is, "The Last Mile,” said Alex. “You’ve done your information work, and now the last thing you have to do so you don’t suboptimize all those efforts is make agents really articulate and effective with customers.”

RSI’s role in the project not only rounded out Alex’s hi-tech solution, but his 60-agent call center pilot program generated money that helped to sell the larger customer intelligence project. “He increased the retention rate of the pilot group by 10% within a very short period of time,” said Alex. “When you project that across the whole agent population and, it’s real dollars we are talking about.” Alex attributes a lot of the success to working with RSI's Matt Hawk. “He’s a seasoned veteran – he understood the needs of a large project like we were doing and he fit right in both with the client and with our team.”

Alex had strong words of advice for anyone trying to increase customer retention. "You’ve got to use RSI. It’s a no-brainer,” he said. “Listen to them and do an ROI; based on the results, even in a conservative business case, it’s going to pay for itself.”

Topic: Achieving consistency in the contact centers
Client: Major internet provider

Jim C. was working as a line manager in a call center operated by an internet services provider when Matt Hawk arrived to improve call flows and customer- agent interactions. The changes ultimately represented a massive shift for agents who were used to working on the fly.

“It was kind of a cowboy mentality. Everybody got to do it anyway they wanted to. There was not a consistent call flow,” he said. “The paradigm shift was made much easier by the fact that the call flow did in fact make their jobs easier, and it did make them more successful, but it took us a little bit of time to convince them of that.”

According to Jim, save rates were already near 40%, but customer satisfaction had a long way to go. Matt and his team were able to turn the C-SAT around while also improving save rates almost 50% over time.

“Once we had standardization of the calls and we had much better treatment of the people calling in and that improved retention rates,” Jim said. Not only were customers happier, but agent turnover slowed as stress decreased and bonus payouts increased.

“As a result of everybody having a consistent plan, it made the job easier,” Jim said. Though the call center saw immediate results with the implementation of the new call flow, a relentless commitment to follow-up was required in order to guarantee long-term success.

In the end, the client’s commitment to the training and follow-up translated into significant dollars in bottom-line earnings - money the company would not have seen otherwise.

Topic: True empathy increases company’s bottom line.
Client: Major telecommunications provider
Objective: Increase both customer and sales agent retention.

Sandra R. had her hands full. The service delivery manager couldn’t tell who was more unhappy in the retention queue of her call center, the customers dialing in or the agents who took their calls.

“They would get discouraged after they were yelled at by the customers,” she said.

A rock-bottom customer satisfaction score and an unimpressive save rate finally prompted the company to do something.

“Thank God Matt came along,” Sandra said. “Morale went up right away. The agents were able to calm the customers down. They stopped yelling at them so much which made their jobs a lot more fun.”

As the training took hold, several things happened at once. The division’s save rate shot up 15 points and employee attrition diminished significantly. Customer satisfaction, once only 60%, increased to 90% and has stayed there. And all of it, according to Sandra, was the result of the company’s improved communication techniques. “We always talked about having empathy for the customers,” she said, “but how do you coach to that? Now, true empathy was actually happening on the phones.”

The agent-customer relationship wasn’t the only one that improved. During the course of the training and follow up mentoring, coaches learned to change their approach with agents, too.

“We stopped talking about numbers and we started talking about the behaviors of the consultants on the phone,” Sandra said. “The coaches were out there finding ways to help the consultants instead of yelling at them.”

Topic: Education and training lead to skyrocketing quality
Client: Major communications provider
Objective: Improve save rate and standardize call flows in over 12 call centers

Robert T. was a retention project manager for a major communications services provider. The provider’s call centers lacked standardization in every sense. The various call centers even used different metrics to measure save rates. The challenge was not only to improve retention but to get everyone on the same page.

“We were all over the board, but they were able to come in and create a structure that you could attach any kind of marketing product or quality metric to,” Robert said. Because coaching is a process, success didn’t happen overnight. The standardization of a dozen call centers and training thousands of agents to a completely new call flow required time and commitment. But the ROI speaks for itself. In Robert’s estimation, increased sales, retention, and other quality improvements added millions of dollars annually to the company’s bottom line.

“The quality metrics alone skyrocketed. They were able to improve performance and the residual effect [of the training] was improving quality to a degree that the company had never thought possible,” Robert said.

Retention rates and standards are important, but according to Robert, the most important contribution of the project was the training provided not just to agents on the floor but to managers as well.

“They can speak with people from the Ph.D. level down, and everyone respects and takes note of what the trainers are saying. They provide continuing education at all levels. You just can’t put a price tag on that.”