Pyjama-clad workforce for call centres

Some call centres now understand that to keep staff you have to treat them well, writes Fiona Smith.

Next time you get on the blower to your phone provider, forget worrying about whether the person you are dealing with is in a call centre in sunny Bangalore - you might be talking to a woman on a farm in rural NSW, taking calls at her kitchen table while the kids are at school.

Call centres are finding it harder than ever to recruit people and staff are leaving at an unsustainable rate. So one operator, SalesForce Australia, has launched a pilot program to get people to work from their homes. All they need is a suitable computer, a headset and access to broadband.

When Di Slaven decided it was time to go back to paid work, the choices in rural Wingham were stark: it was the abattoir or nothing.

She had moved to the NSW town, 331 km north-east of Sydney, from Newcastle six years ago as a single mother of three sons, looking for somewhere that was safe and affordable to bring up her children.

Slaven has years of experience in customer service and legal conveyancing, but that didn't count for much in Wingham. Luckily, she has made it into SalesForce's work from home program.

For Slaven, 47, the program is a godsend. "Jobs are not thick on the ground here," she says.

She works from 4pm to 9.30pm during the week on a telecommunications account. Sometimes she also works Saturdays, if she can fit it around her sons' sporting commitments.

"You can sit here in your pyjamas and work, which is great," she says.

The program went "live" in April and employs only "dozens" of people so far, but SalesForce CEO Kevin Panozza says the potential is unlimited, restricted only by his ability to convince clients that their data is safe (with the latest technological solutions) and the quality of service will not suffer.

He quotes the experience of US airline JetBlue, where all the reservation agents work from home: "The reason that has been so successful in the US is because of the quality of the people involved."

In traditional call centres, fewer than 25 per cent of agents would have a tertiary degree, but about 80 per cent of agents working from home have degrees, he says.

"They are getting a very highly qualified, very committed, professional workforce working from home," Panozza says.

JetBlue says as soon as the airline offered work from home, productivity rose 25 per cent.

Teleworking is allowed at only 10 per cent of call centres in this country, but is growing quickly, up from 4 per cent last year, research analyst Callcentres.net says.

Tara Lister, in the Victorian border town of Gunbower was so enthusiastic about the SalesForce project she managed to complete the nine-hour online training in one session.

Lister, 33, came with a wealth of experience, having spent 11 years working for GE Money in its call centre before moving back to her home town two years ago for the support of her family after the birth of her son. "Here, you can milk cows or work in a cheese factory," she says. She works around the needs of her son, putting in a minimum 10 hours a week.

SalesForce has an exceptionally low staff turnover rate of less than 10 per cent - against an industry average of 22 per cent (34 per cent for larger centres) - but Panozza says recruitment for the "bricks and mortar" centres is harder now than it has ever been for the company.

At any one time he could be trying to fill hundreds of vacancies.

Yet hundreds of people have sent in their resumes in the hope of securing a work from home position.

Despite the talent squeeze, Panozza says he is not seeing much change in the management practices of his competitors.

Far too often, he says, the industry makes news for its "sweatshop" conditions.

"There's too much focus on people being rostered at that desk, on that phone, for those hours . . . and if you don't, you'll get penalised," Panozza says.

He says it is crazy that marketing departments spend millions of dollars trying to get customers to call them, then when they do, the call centre agents are required to get them off the phone as quickly as possible.

He says SalesForce's efforts to have an engaged and highly effective workforce (the company has won an award in the prestigious Hewitt Associates Best Employers four years running) are sometimes frustrated by the key performance indicators insisted upon by client companies in their service agreements.

This can mean it is impossible to get the agents away from the phone for training or the one-on-one fortnightly meetings with supervisors that are intended to make sure everything is going well.

Call centres should focus more on the quality of conversations and customer relationships, Panozza says.

"If call centres don't change, customers are going to become disillusioned," he says.

Niels Kjellerup could not agree more. The senior partner at consultancy Resource International, maintains a website (www.callcentres.com.au) with hundreds of free articles and resource material that he hopes will help call centre operations worldwide lift their game.

He says about 50 per cent of Australia's call centres have unacceptable management practices, such as timed toilet breaks and excessive pressure on call times.

Kjellerup says staff turnover of more than 5 per cent is not acceptable.

Callcentres.net says it costs about $10,000 to recruit and train each new person.

Kjellerup says call centre clients and those that have in-house call centres should compare their turnover with the rest of the industry.

"If it is higher, then you know the management practices are not good," he says. "When the turnover rate gets to 15 per cent, we call it a galley slave operation."

Kjellerup says he knows of two call centres in Brisbane that meet world-class standards. The Brisbane City Council call centre, with about 180 employees, allows its people to do whatever it takes to resolve a call.

"They will not hang up on you; they will not transfer you; you will absolutely get an answer," he says.

"What is amazing is that it is such a nice place to work that nobody wants to leave."

The Qantas call centre in Brisbane has such a good reputation it has between 150 and 200 unsolicited applications for jobs every month, he says. "Do they have problems getting staff? Not at all."

Kjellerup says the staff are paid bonuses, are shown appreciation for a job well done and are seen as a good recruitment pool for the rest of the organisation.

A recent report for Kelly Services by Callcentres.net says the happiest and most stable call centre agents are likely to be women older than 40 years.

Director of Callcentres.net, James Organ, says older people have more empathy when dealing with people who are experiencing problems with a service or product.

"In an ideal world, you wouldn't have many young blokes because they don't stay very long and they are not as customer service oriented," he says.

The biggest gripes by employees are likely to be, in order, pay and incentives, a lack of flexible working conditions, unreliable or old-fashioned technology and ineffective communication from management.

Organ says that of those people who quit, only 30 per cent would go to another centre.

"Working in a call centre is not considered a career, but it is a very good training ground for customer service, and good if you are a student or a mother returning to work," he says.

CALL CENTRES AT A GLANCE
Number of centres:  3850 in Australia
Growth rate:. 13.5 per cent annually
Customer contacts handled by call centres:. 74%
Call numbers:  70 per person/per shift (inbound)
Last year:  74 per person/per shift (inbound)
Average talk time:  253 seconds (inbound)
Last year:  236 seconds
Base salary:..$40,749
Last year: .$38,436
Calls monitored per agent each month:  6
How long they stay: .33 months (full timers)
Staff turnover:..22% (34% in large centres)
Source: Callcentres.net

Published: 31 July 2007