Focus on Quality

In almost every Call Center including Focus Services, there is a team of specialists in the area of agent feedback.  This team is called the Quality Assurance Team. The Quality Assurance Team records and monitors the calls that the agents on the floor participate in.  They then grade the employees on specifics that occurred on the call.  Once these statistics have been scored, the team then provides feedback to the agent that performed the call.  Once the feedback is given to the agent and the meeting is concluded, the Quality Assurance Team takes this information and provides it to upper management.  For the team of Quality Assurance Specialists, the most difficult task of all is providing feedback to the employees in the call center.  Focus Services had been reviewing ways in which one may effectively provide the feedback to make it easier on both parties – the one giving it, and the one receiving it.

Sometimes getting a score from your respective QA is subjective. To be fair to both Quality Assurance Specialist and agent, a team compose of Quality Assurance Manager, Training & Development, managers, supervisors would listen to the call and would calibrate it.  It is imperative that all these departments are there so they could do necessary steps on things that they need to work on to improve Quality.

This will be done randomly or if an employee insist that it was a good call. I have noticed, in my many years working in a call center, that many times the members of management will start to forget about the most important members of the call center – the agents taking and/or receiving the calls. This has a negative impact on the work environment in the call center and should be avoided at all costs. While you may not be able to change the mentality of the management team, you are perfectly capable of changing your own mentality. You should remember, each day that you arrive at your desk, that the agents that take and/or receive the calls that you monitor, are the most important part of your company – apart from the customers. You should learn to value the agents, and in return, they will value you and your opinion. When you provide feedback to employees in the call center, if they feel that they are valued and respected, they will be open and receptive to what you have to say.

The next important step in providing feedback to the employees in the call center is to ensure that you gather their input on their performance. Give them an opportunity to get their feelings out about their performance. You may find that there is a learning gap and you may be able to help. I have seen and monitored many Quality Assurance Specialists as they have given feedback to agents, and I have seen a severe lack of consideration as far as what the agent has to say is concerned. I have seen cases where, during feedback, the agent has attempted to speak their concerns, and the Quality Assurance Specialists literally interrupts and is quickly to add, “This is just the way it is”. Allowing the agent to speak during your feedback session is one of the main keys to communication and resolve when it comes to improvement in the workplace. It is vital that you allow some time to chat with the agent and let them give you feedback as well, which leads into my next suggestion.

Each time that we monitor an agent and provide them with feedback, We would give a questionnaire to them and ask them to fill it out. We tell them that they are not required to write their name on it. We want them to be as honest as possible without worrying over their jobs. We then request them once they’re done, to give the answered questions to their Team Manager and instruct them to make a copy for themselves and give the other copy to management. This would ensure that the management team knew what the agent thought of the QA performance and that if there was an issue they could hold be accountable to uphold the suggestions and responsibilities as posed by the agents.

Questions like:

1) Are you monitored on a daily basis?

2) Do you receive feedback from your supervisor or QA?

3) Is the Quality Assurance Agent positive and respectful when they give you feedback?

4) What are the weaknesses of your Quality Assurance Agent?

5) Do you have any comments or suggestions so that we could improve  our Quality Assurance Specialist and Quality Assurance Department?

This is a sample only on some of the questions on the questionnaire form. Not only did this help the Quality Assurance Specialist on their self-improvement, but also it allowed management and agents to work together with Quality Assurance Team in an effort to maximize everyone’s potential within the company and made feedback more constructive.

Agents who have low QA scores should require to undergo a retraining program, a prescription period or nesting period ( weeks or a month) to improve their scores, with the supervision of Quality Assurance Specialist. These agents will be monitored on a daily basis and will be given feedback by their respective Quality Assurance Specialist.

If you are assigned to provide feedback to employees in a call center environment, and take these tips and apply them, you will see a change. The agents will become more receptive to their feedback. The management team will start to see a change in their call stats each day, and you will make a difference.

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People and a sense of purpose is the way towards Success.

 

I always believe our Company’s achievement was done by an attitude of teamwork, a common purpose, hard work and unending dedication to achieve our goal no matter what.

But I always believe that one of the most important ingredients of achieving success in life – the power to connect. I have always believed and focused my message on the importance of Attitude in creating SUCCESS. Through the years, we’ve also learned that while attitude is where it all starts, “connect” carries attitude out into the world.

Our attitude comes from our ability to connect with ourselves, our goals and most important, with other people. We succeed through relationships with people. Nothing in this world was ever created, built, produced, acquired, or utilized without the support of other people. In today’s interconnected world we lived in, most companies understand that the best way to get results comes only through bringing people together. When our business connects, it’s easier for companies or businesses to weather the ups and downs of the business cycle.

Connected employees are likely to go the extra mile. Connected customers mean referrals and brand loyalty. But to create meaningful and lasting success, people and companies must create that emotional links not only with each other but also with a strong uplifting purpose. We believe that making that connection between people, performance and purpose can be achieved clearly and simply. When you create and sustain the power to connect, your success is not only possible but virtually guaranteed.

The drive to connect is innate in us. Physical connection like a child to a mother, and our need for emotional connection is just as important, if not more important for our very survival. We will do almost anything to feel linked to someone else. When we connect, we have the power and drive. When we feel disconnected, there is a sense of apathy, a sense of something missing, and a big part of our motivation and inner drive disappears.

Today’s day and age, it seems we’re more disconnected than ever from much of our world. We rarely connect face-to-face, even voice to voice, anymore without some kind of electronic device being use. We use e-mail, fax, IM, text messages, teleconference, or voice mails. We often shop online and spend most of our free time playing online games or channel surfing in front of our TV. When we’re in public we’re either plugged in to our iPods and listening to music.

We don’t even bother to connect with our families, friends and people standing in front of us because we’re too busy with our gadgets. This electronic connection makes us feel as if we’re connected or linked to other people, but this can cause a kind of emotional vacuum.  It’s like eating in a fast food restaurant. It may taste good for the moment, but it will not nourish you in the long run. Nothing can replace for a real meal. In the same manner, all this electronic talk cannot take the place of the deep personal bonding that we human beings long for.

I read a story about a married couple whose neighborhood area lost power one night during an earthquake. They describe how they both, and their children left their various computers, TVs, and gadgets and came together in the basement. With nothing else to distract them, they all started playing board games by candlelight. In that short time, we made what I called a soul deep connection,said the husband. It was strong, positive, and was based on shared emotions. We all both felt better for having spent time in each others company. When we connect, it doesn’t just makes us feel good, it makes us do better. I have found that our success and fulfillment in life are tied to the quality of the connections we are able to make.

They spent the whole night laughing, talking, singing, dancing, sharing about their lives and had a marvelous time. The family connected on a personal level. We all want to connect in that way, regardless if it’s with our families, our team, our co-workers or our customers.

We always have that chance and opportunity every day to connect and experience that joy and happiness that comes with it. I love people, and I love hearing their own life stories. There’s almost always something wonderful to be discovered about each human being we encounter.  When we connect to positive emotions, to amazing people, to great companies and causes that makes a difference, then we are more likely to achieve great things and feel great while doing so. We have to choose who, what, why and how we will forge the connections in our lives. We have to make sure the things we choose to put our passions into are worthy of us.

“My family brought me up to always look for the best in other people. I love other people, I love spending time with people, I love learning from people. “ – Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group.

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What Social Media Does Best?

The best way to explain to management , your team or your family what social media does, why it’s different than the old way people used computers and the web, and why people are spending a lot of their time about it, here are some thoughts to begin with. Looking at it from a business point of view, but you will find these apply to nonprofits and other organizations as well. Further, social media isn’t relegated to the PR teams and marketing team only. It is a bunch of tools that can be applied throughout businesses, in different forms.

Blogs allow chronological organization of thoughts, status, and ideas. This means more permanence than e-mails. While Podcast (video and audio) encourage different types of learning. Social networks encourage collaboration, can take the place of intranets and corporate directories, and can promote non e-mail conversation channels.

Social networks can pull together like-minded people around shared interest with little external force, no organizational center, and a group sense of what is important and what comes next. While Social bookmarking means that the entire groups can learn of new articles and other Web properties instead of leaving them all on one machine, one browser, and for one human.

Blogs and wikis encourage conversation, sharing and creating. Social networks are full of prospecting and lead generation information for sales and marketing. Social networks make for a great avenue to learn and understand the mind-set of the online consumer, should that be of importance or value to you.  Online versions of your materials and media, especially in formats that let you share, mean that you’re equipping others to run with your message, that should be important if you are a marketer. Online versions of your materials and media are search-able, and this helps Google to help you find new visitors, customers, and employees.

Social networks contains a lot of information about your prospective new hires, your customers and your competitors. While Blogs allow you to speak your mind and let the rest of the world know your thought processes and mind-sets. Podcast are a way to build intimacy with information and can reach people who are trying out new gadgets, like droids, iPhones, iPods, gadgets from Apple, Zunes and many more.

Tagging and sharing and all the other activities common on the social Web mean that information gets passed around much faster. Human aggregation and mediation improves the quality of data you find and gives you more “exactly what I was looking for” help. Innovation works much faster in a social software environment, open source or otherwise. Conversations spread around and people likes to feel heard. What else does social media do best?

Blogging is understanding what people think of you. If you cannot learn from your critics, where are you getting all your advice? Only from fans who raves about you? One important tip about blogs is just don’t post press releases and marketing junk into your blogs. No one will read them, and things will go poof quickly.

Try keeping your blog open to more than just pitching yourself, your organization, and your services. It’s your place, so you can do what you want, but if it’s just a big fat ad, it will get boring, fast. Sounds like there are lots of negatives about blogging stuff, huh? There are lots of ways to make a bad first impression.

Blogging, when you are comfortable with it, is a great way to keep your audience in the loop about what matters to you. It’s a great way to represent your organization. It’s a wonderful way to share information back and forth, especially once you have started learning from experiencing other people’s blogs.

To be continued. See you guys on my next post.

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Highly Successful Companies Attributes Success to its Corporate Culture.

Strong company cultures can be positive and an asset or it can be negative or a liability. If the company’s values are constructive and support its goals, then having a strong corporate culture is an asset. It is defined as a functional culture. If the company’s values are negative or dysfunctional, then having a strong culture will be a liability.

The culture at Ford Motor Company in the late 1960s and 1970s is a good example of a dysfunctional culture. The informal corporate culture at Ford was captured in a statement often made among its employees: “If you can get it to drive out the door, we can sell it!” This was not a formal corporate pronouncement, of course, but a statement often heard and prevalent in conversations around the company. It contained an implicit disrespect for the customer and suggested that working to achieve high quality products was not that important.

The lack of focus on quality and reliability was also reflected in how customers talked about the company. Many customers said Ford stands for “Fix and Repair Daily.” Which is very negative of course. Ford later made the pronouncement that “Quality is Job One” – a clear response to the damage that had been done to its brand.

Unfortunately, it took some time to overcome the perception of poor quality in the customer’s minds. This is an example of a strong dysfunctional culture in action.

In contrast, the Four Season Hotel chain is a good example of a strong functional culture with respect to customer service. The Four Seasons trains its employees to stop what they are doing and escort “guest” to their desired destination whenever the latter ask for directions to someplace in the hotel. Employees live the culture of excellent customer service, and customers see it in action.

A culture can also be weak and functional, or weak and dysfunctional. In companies with weak functional cultures, employees behave in a way that supports achievement of company goals, but there is no overall understanding of the company’s true personality because the culture is not being actively managed. Employees may understand that the customer is important, but they may have quite different interpretations of how to treat the customer. To overcome this problem, people must be trained or told how to treat customers under various situations.

What is presented in a values or culture statement is not necessarily what the real culture is within a company. The real culture, by contrast, consists of the values, beliefs, and norms that actually influence employee behavior. A company can state that it values treating all employees as “assets” but then fail to invest in their development. A company can talk about its most important assets as being its people, but then treat them poorly. These are example of lack of alignment between the stated and real cultures.

Culture is very important to all organizations. If managed correctly, culture might well be the ultimate strategic asset and competitive weapon for most companies. Corporate culture has a big impact on organizational performance. Culture affects goal attainment. More specifically, companies with strong cultures are more likely to achieve their goals than those with relatively weak cultures.

So called strong culture organizations are thought to have a high degree of organizational success because of a believed link to motivation. An increasing number of highly successful organizations have, at least in part, attributed their success to effective culture management. Among them are Starbucks Coffee, Google, and Walmart, to cite just three.

Google, the undisputed leader in the Internet space through its search engine technology. Its continuous development of that technology is the talent and creativity of its people, which in turn is influenced by the company’s culture. Google is the best companies to work for, and this attracts talent-a truly virtuous circle.

Having recognized the importance of corporate culture. They instilled three distinctive core values:

1. Don’t be evil

2. Technology matters.

3. We make our own rules.

The first value refers to integrity and fair treatment of customers. We never manipulate rankings. Our users trust Google’s objectivity, and no short-term gain could be ever justify breaking that trust. The second value, concerning technology, is self explanatory.  The third value, about Google making its own rules, refers to various unorthodox practices. 

In his book The Wal-Mart Way, Soderquist attributes the company’s success to its culture, which is labeled “The Wal-Mart Way.” As he states it, “The Wal-Mart Way is not about stores, clubs, distribution centers, or computers. These tangible assets are all important ingredients in the company’s business plan, but the real success is about people.” It is about how Walmart treats its people and customers.

The culture of Walmart consists of three key values.

1. We treat everyone with respect and dignity.

2. We are in business to satisfy our customers.

3. We strive for excellence in all that we do.

These values are the cultural foundation of Walmart.

Let’s take a look at Focus Services. Bacolod City is one of the homes of Focus Services international facilities. Focus Services is a privately owned call center service provider, specializing in multi-product telesales and customer relationship management. Founded in 1995 with two employees, Focus Services has grown year over year by building strong, collaborative and effective vendor relationships with clients across multiple industries. Currently, Focus has over 3,000 employees working in 8 Focus facilities, both domestically and internationally.

Focus Service Culture consist of three core values:

1. People – We Challenge and Train, Instill Ownership and Discover Potential.

2. Partners – We Focus on Transparency, Flexibility and Performance.

3. Community – We have responsibility to Mankind and Work to Improve their lives.

Focus Services does not only offer job advancement and training for its employees but also scholarship and tuition reimbursement for those who want to continue and finish their studies or take up other courses.

I’m very proud to be a part of the culture here, said Liljenquist. We hope we fit in nicely, we think we do, and we really appreciate the hospitality that everyone has shown us, he said. Focus Direct customer service agents are very diverse, talented multi-taskers and are very equipped in handling different accounts at the same time. We take pride in that, said Liljenquist.

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Corporate Culture an Invisible Asset and Strategic Weapon

How does a little company headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, become one of the largest retailers in the world, with more than $400 billion in sales?

How does a small company in Texas with all the cards stacked against it, whose business plan was created on a napkin, grown into one of the largest and most profitable players in its market?

How does a company with an odd, non business like name come out of nowhere in the competitive environment of Silicon Valley to challenge the behemoth Microsoft and replace it as the leader in the Internet space?

How does a company with a dominant market position (more than 42 percent market share) fall from grace over a period of twenty years and face the abyss of failure?

The answer in all these cases, is attributed to something that is very real but invisible to the naked eye. It is not magic but something that, under the best of circumstances, works much like organizational magic. The answer is the invisible asset or liability of Corporate Culture.

In the case of the little company from Bentonville, Walmart has grown to be a retailing giant. Walmart former CEO, Don Soderquist, attributes its success to the company’s culture. Similarly, both Howard Schultz, founder and chairman of Starbucks Coffee Company; and Howard Behar, former President of Starbucks International, have attributed their company’s astounding success to its corporate culture rather than its coffee.

Starbucks Coffee has grown form just two retail stores in Seattle to more than twenty-five hundred stores worldwide. Starbucks views culture as a critical factor in the organization’s success. Specifically, the company’s paradigm is that “the way we treat our people affects the way our people treat our customers, and in turn, our success.” This belief has led the company to a number of human resource practices that are designed to enhanced people’s feeling of being valued by the company.

They all recognize that corporate culture has been a key ingredient to success and the ability to remain profitable, even in the face of challenges. The company from Silicon Valley with the odd, non business like name of Google has become the leader in the Internet space through its search engine technology. However, a key to the continuous development of that technology is the talent and creativity of its people. The secret of Google’s success is its way of turning its employees into an extraordinarily creative team. Google attracts its talent because of its culture. As a result of its corporate culture, Google is recognized as one of the best companies to work for.

Like bacteria or X-rays or other invisible phenomena, corporate culture is real but difficult to observe. In spite of this invisibility, it has a profound impact on organizational success and failure. It can be an asset or a liability.

In a very real sense, corporate culture can be thought of as a company’s “personality.” Every organization, regardless of size, has a culture that influences how people behave, in a variety of areas, such as treatment of customers, standards of performance, innovation, etc. Culture is manifest almost everywhere in an organization. It is reflected in the words and language people use in communicating with one another. Culture is also manifested in the artifacts that are in or on display in the company’s facilities. Everything in an organization contains a cultural message, whether explicitly intended or not.

In brief, culture is manifested in everything from the cultural statements on posters to the furnishing of the office and to the art that adorns the walls. Sometimes, the culture of a company is obvious and clearly visible, as in the treatment we receive as customers and the artifacts we see that support this focus on customer service.

We always believe that, if corporate culture is managed correctly, culture might well be the ultimate strategic asset and competitive weapon for most companies.

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Memoirs of a Call Center Agent

I remember my first call center experience, waking up in middle of the night just to go to work, bringing along a hoodie to keep me warm. I have to walk two blocks from my place to get a ride. I can see myself walking in our isolated dimly lit road. Our neighbors are mostly asleep now or in their rooms watching TV or reading. I took a small pack of crackers in my pocket and tried to nibble them as I hurriedly quicken the pace of my walk so I would not be late for work.

We will be on training for two months they say, first two or three weeks would be English training, and the rest would be product training and buddy-up with tenured agents before we start taking calls with minimum supervision.

It was a big adjustment for me working at night, so most of the breaks would be spent napping inside the call center sleeping quarters. Ours is like a refugee camp, people sleeping everywhere in small mattresses and no pillows so you have to make your own, like fold a jacket perhaps or your bag.

First few months were terrible. We call it the adjustment stage in which our body clock is still adapting in staying up all night till the wee hours of the morning. I passed the three months training course and started taking calls. It was fun and scary at the same time. Customers shouting at you with their problems and some would say thanks for assisting them and being nice. I had one American customer same age probably as me, a Vietnam war veteran, he was talking funny, must be smoking marijuana while talking. He kept saying, “man you’re good man, I really appreciate you helping me man. Man I want to talk to your sup and tell them how good you are man”. We were talking for half an hour already. I told him no need. Then we bid farewell and he hang up. For the past several months of calling I never had a sup call. Probably, because I was working already with big Multi-National companies before for 20 years and that gave me an edge compare to the young ones fresh from college. Most of my team mates keep raising their hands asking for a supervisor or asking for help.

My supervisor saw that I was the odd man out. He thank me for that, and told the rest of our team how tiring and frustrating it can be taking sup calls and talking for hours with the customer.  One day, my supervisor told me the company is looking for a product trainer and he endorsed me to the office. I passed the trainer exams, interview and the mock-training in front of management and co-trainers. 

I have been working in call centers for almost 6 years hence, my disappointment in the way the calls are being handled in some of our local call centers. Being able to give the best service possible to my international clients I would expect to be given the same preference in my own country, the Philippines. The most important rule is to set the customer’s expectation. Do not make promises that you know you cannot keep. Never make promises that will put your company’s integrity to a test. Remember you are your company’s front liners. Whatever you say over the phone will make a lasting mark to the company’s clients. I love providing my customers good service hence, I only say what is right and if it is something I am not too sure of I tell my customers that I will have to place them on hold for a few minutes while I verify the information for them.

Honestly, your customers would appreciate being given the correct information. By setting their expectation and providing other possible ways of resolving their issues you are in fact making sure your customers feel important as you give credence to the company who hired and pays you to provide excellent customer service.

Let’s all put ourselves in the shoes of our customers always. Remember, after our shifts, we too are customers and expect the same kind of service from our providers.

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Are we hiring the right people?

What are the biggest challenges facing today’s business leaders?

What challenges these leaders the most?

Is it the need for capital to feed their fast-growing companies? Or maybe the changing pace of technology makes it hard for them to keep up?

Well, neither the need for capital and the fast changing pace of technology is correct. Organizations biggest challenge is getting the right people. The least challenging issue is dealing with changes in technology. Many companies are technology oriented, so it’s fairly easy to see why changing technology presents the least challenge for them. However, hiring the right people is still pretty foreign territory for many entrepreneurs, as well as for many leaders in large corporations.

Does having people skills help management with hiring? According to studies, apparently not. It turns out that only one emotional skill was related to a CEO’s confidence in selecting people-flexibility. Leaders who are more adaptable find that hiring the right people comes easier. One of the advantages of being flexible is that it allows you to look beyond a fixed idea on of who should get the job. It also opens you up to hiring people who are totally different from yourself.

Too often we surround ourselves with people who are similar to us. Selecting people with different skills, strengths, interests, and opinions can be good for the organization. However, we do want people who share the organization’s core values and attitudes. Shared values-such as customer focus, integrity, doing quality work and loyalty-are the glue that keeps the organization functioning well.

But being different in other areas-ways of problem solving, past experience, personal strengths, and skills makes the organization stronger. Being flexible allows you to separate you own strengths and weaknesses from those of the candidate and let you be more objective in selecting what you really need-not just what you like.

An article that focuses on managing in the new millennium recommends:

While the tendency is to hire similar types of people, the manager who is helping to build a high-performance organization will hire a heterogeneous workforce. This manager fights the temptation to hire everyone who is just alike. Instead, hiring those with complementary skills enables the unit to be more creative and accomplish more.

An effective team is heterogeneous in nature. That is, the team is composed of members who have a variety of broad-based skills. This ultimately enhances the team’s task performance and improves its decision-making ability.

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Why is motivation an important key to success.

Motivation theorist can be divided into two types: needs theories and process theories. Needs theories describe the types of needs that must be met in order to motivate individuals, while process theories help managers understand processes they might use to motivate their employees.

Most of the widely known needs theories was developed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. He stated that people have needs that drives them to perform. In order to meet their needs for food, shelter, positive self-esteem, or even higher values of self-actualization, people will work. It is through their work they help accomplish these personal goals.

Work motivators have been identified and studied with the needs framework. These include the effects of offering good wages, improving work conditions, job security, changing the nature of the work, and providing greater variety of work. Other programs have looked at the value of raising an employee’s status in their work group, encouraging them to feel “in” on what’s going on, improving relationship with supervisors and associates, providing more freedom or less supervision, recognition for work done, and more opportunities to show initiative.

Still other studies have gauged the impact of providing opportunities for advancement, winning personal loyalty, utilizing tactful discipline, implementing better grievance procedures, assisting with personal problems, and enhancing the organization’s ability to provide visible results of work accomplished.

Process theories, focus on methods or procedures that can be implemented to motivate employees. These theories tend to focus on people’s commitment to setting and achieving goals within the organization relative to how well they feel they can accomplish them. By giving employees control over their work, this research supports the idea that people are committed to achieving these goals.

Motivation in the workplace is a set of energetic forces that originate both within as well as beyond an individual’s being, to initiate work related behavior, and to determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration.

This definition is both psychological-looking at the direction, energization, and regulation of behavior-and takes into account the work environment, such as characteristics of the job itself, or working conditions. These factors create the force that is necessary for motivation.

How can an organization increase inborn/intrinsic motivation? There have been a number of prescriptions our company does to increase our employee’s intrinsic motivation.

1. We give our employees ongoing feedback. Let them know how they are doing,  where they are performing well and where there is room for improvement. This are done in brief conversations or on a formal basis.

2. We provide opportunities for growth & development.

3. We offer flexible schedules. We know that time is an important commodity for  people today. by giving our employees the opportunity to juggle their time around critical personal, family events and responsibilities, you will increase their work motivation.

4. We emphasize personal accountability. Self-management is highly motivating. Most people will work harder for their own sense of accomplishment than they will because “management told me to do it.”

5. Providing an open & trusting environment. Fear and mistrust are negative motivators.  They keep people on their toes, but do not produce the best work. Having an open and trusting environment encourages more creative approaches to solving problems and healthier teamwork.

6. We involve everyone in decision making. In today day and age, no one likes being told what to do. By involving our employees in decisions that involve them, you are much more likely to get buy-in for your initiatives. You may even get some creative ideas along the way. Employees in the front lines may know about certain impacts of decisions that management may not be aware of.

7. Ask employees what motivates them. We won’t really know what our employees want unless we ask them.

8. Celebrate employee and company success. Let us not ignore or forget about accomplishments. It’s important to recognize successes, whether individual, team, or organizational. We let everybody see that hard work is being recognized.

9. We offer interesting work assignments. It can be quite exciting for someone to receive a special assignment. It could be working on a new initiative, a special project, or with an important client. We believe that when a company doesn’t have a lot of room for vertical growth into management positions, special assignments can be used as an opportunity to stretched an employee’s skills. It takes them out of the daily routine and provides new challenges. 

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What should be a Perfect Call Center Environment?

A fast way to get an idea of their corporate culture is to hang out in the company parking lot in the morning and late afternoon, when people are coming to and leaving from work. It sounds weird, but you would be surprise how much you will learn watching people strolling or walking to and from work. How do they look when they are arriving? Excited, animated, or as if they’re walking into a minefield or funeral? And after shift, is there a frantic exodus out of the place, or do workers stroll out in small groups in no hurry to leave? How do they look after putting in a day’s work? Wiped out or energized and excited?
Some companies are the standard bearers and trendsetter of their industry. Do not overlook the prestige in working for a company that was a first or that has a lock and key on a certain market. A growing number of small companies, for example, have created powerful little niches that they dominate. There is something to be said for getting in on the ground floor and hanging out with innovators. Most industries are smaller than you realize. Word, good or bad, travels fast.

Many companies boast reputations for hiring only the very best. To find such people, they use recruiters to comb college campuses throughout the country for the top-of-the-class kinds and employ executive search firms to lure high performers away from competitors. They’re not wrong thinking that creativity is contagious, triggering fierce competition among workers. In situation like this everyone wins. The company gets high-quality products and employees are inspired to do their very best work.
Economist are not taking it lightly when they say that training is a critical key to a successful career. It does not matter whether you train yourself or find a company offering sophisticated training programs, the idea is to stay razor-sharp so you’re on top with the latest trends, technology, and thinking.
In an ever-changing and inconstant high-speed economy, you’ll benefit by working for a company committed to training and educating its employees. The American Society of Training and Development says that training is more critical than capital resources. In the past only big companies offered workers expensive training programs. Now small and midsize ones are offering a variety of programs that range from on-site courses to opportunities to get bachelor’s, master’s, even doctoral degrees. Naturally, you owe the company a few years of dedicated service. No matter how you see it, you’re coming out ahead. When you tack the cost of schooling and a benefits package onto your paycheck, you will find you’re doing far better than you realized.

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Focus on Building a Reputation

There are very few things that can give you sustainable competitive advantage.

It is not Price, not location, not expertise, and certainly not legislation.  But Reputation is one.  When all else is gone, reputation stays.  A business like Focus Services needs to care about its reputation.  Actually, all of us, whether employer or employed should also care about our reputation too.

There is this old Chinese story happened over a thousand years ago, and it’s worth retelling it.

There was this old rich official who owned huge tracts of land.  The old rich official asked his assistant to go collect the rent, and then buy him something that he still did not have.  What do you give a person has everything?

The assistant went to visit the farmers, and then proceeded to burn the collection receipts.  The old official was flabbergasted, and told the assistant that he absolutely was reckless.

A month after the official went to visit his land, he was greeted by huge cheers by the farmers in gratitude for his kind consideration to waive that years rent.

The old official then understood what the assistant meant.  He had everything but the reputation and goodwill of his tenants.  For him who had everything, he lacked a good name.

It would have been great if reputation can simply be bought.  Sometimes, it can.  The reason why reputation is so valuable because it needs a lot of time, dedication and sacrifice, to develop a reputation for trust and reliability.  However, once developed, it can give back many times over.

The Chinese have a saying.  “The tiger will leave its skin, but for people, the only thing you will leave when you are dead is your good name.”

Food for though: What have we done to improve our reputation lately?

Does the company have a soul? No joke.

Corporate culture describes an organization’s personality, its corporate should, as what it stands for, addressing morals, ethics, or principles.  A growing numbers of consumers and job-searchers want to know what the corporate stance is on the environment, recycling, child care, health care, you name it.

Gone are the days when companies cared only about making and marketing a product.  For example if we talk about Focus Services, you think not only about outsourcing, call center, customer service, marketing, but also about scholarship, school tuition reimbursement program (employees can work and study at the same time), part time job, charity programs, fun environment and much more.

A company’s corporate soul may be a big issue and something to think about.

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