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Article : Leveraging Behavioral Profiling To Effect Bold Change

Management guru Tom Peters once observed that "All bold change is the result of a hundred thousand tiny changes that culminate in a bold product, procedure or structure." He's right about the fact that tiny changes can add up to make a big difference.

However, when these changes stem from a single strategic focus, the results are even more powerful. And when these changes also involve people – how they are recruited, selected and then motivated on the job – the impact on an organization is both profound and enduring. Job satisfaction grows. Productivity increases. Customer service improves. Profits soar.

As a former contact center executive and a current member of Drake International's Contact Center Practice, I have seen organizations achieve these dramatic results time and time again. In this article, I will explain how any contact center can do the same.


Bryan Roby
Drake International's Contact Center Practice


I know that contact center leaders today face a myriad of new strategic choices. Which new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software package is best for my center? Should I consider providing sales and service over the web? Do I need a new technology platform?

Fundamentally, however, the biggest challenge facing contact centers has remained the same. That challenge revolves around a contact center's most valuable asset – its people. How can I attract and select the right type of agents for my operation? How can I ensure that my customer sales and service reps are satisfied on the job? How do I make sure that I provide the right incentives? How do I keep my agents happy, productive, and committed to my organization?

For many contact center leaders caught up in the maze of new business pressures, leveraging their human assets remains an elusive art. Most continue to rely on their gut instinct when it comes to people. Sure, any contact center leader knows the type of skills they need in an agent. Any leader also knows the knowledge required of their agents. But, the motivations of individuals and why they behave on the job in a certain way, remains a mystery.

A proven method helping to solve this mystery is through the science of behavioral profiling. In this article, I will share with you how behavioral profiling works throughout the cycle of human management activities. I will also describe this science in the context of the workforce optimization process developed specifically for contact centers. My aim is to help you see how you can maximize the full potential of your human capital by taking small steps along the path of a single business vision. I will also show you how these incremental improvements can engender the bold change that leads to breakthrough results.

Leading change and managing complexity
According to a recent management update from Harvard University, the costs of turnover to a contact center can be staggering. Let's say you have 100 employees with an average annual salary of $25,000 and your turnover rate is 30 percent. Based on the Harvard formula, you can then expect to spend $1.5 million every year just to maintain the status quo.

However, in today's highly competitive contact center environment, simply maintaining the status quo is a recipe for failure. Success depends not only on creating positive changes in the way you attract, recruit and keep talent, but also on being able to move quickly and strategically to meet new challenges. Achieving this brand of success requires both leadership and managerial acumen.

As John P. Kotter elaborated in his landmark Harvard Business Review article "Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership is about coping with change… Leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment."

In short, a contact center manager must be able to simultaneously lead change and manage complexity. Given the vital role of human capital in this equation, meeting this challenge begins and ends with creating, building and reinforcing an effective and efficient contact centre team.

Workforce optimization
Workforce optimization aligns a contact center's human capital – including the competencies and effectiveness of its agents and managers – with the contact center's business vision and strategy. The goals of the process are to enhance workforce productivity, morale and retention, to improve quality and customer satisfaction, to increase market share and to reduce the costs associated with recruitment, hiring and training.

The result of workforce optimization enables contact center leaders to both simplify their human resource management and effect productive change. The process consists of a set of gap analysis, strategy formulation, and behavioral profiling tools that focus on measurable results.

Fundamentally, workforce optimization is about human capital engineering. It begins with a careful assessment of the contact center's mission and objectives. Then it drills down into the competencies required of agents and managers to create comprehensive employee profiles.

These profiles are then further enhanced through scientifically proven behavioral assessments. This assessment process recognizes that effective contact center professionals offer much more than simply the right skills and knowledge for the job. Effective contact center professionals exhibit the right behaviors and motivations on the job as well.

This comprehensive portrait of the ideal contact center professional for a particular position in a specific center becomes a powerful tool for enhancing all facets of employee strategy and planning – from recruiting and hiring, to management, to team development and performance improvement.

Leveraging Behavioral Profiling Up Front
As most contact center leaders will agree, finding the right contact center agents for their particular operation - already a major challenge - is becoming increasingly difficult. How can a contact center leader ensure the right professionals are selected for the right position? How can a contact center leader make sure that their organization attracts hires and keeps the right people?

Of course, this "Ideal Contact Center Agent Profile" outlines the knowledge that agents must have to be effective in their jobs as well as the skills required for various positions such as computer literacy, learning and problem solving ability, sales aptitude and so on.

But, unlike most other job profiles, it also identifies the behavioral patterns necessary to succeed in a particular job and work environment. To identify these behaviors, it first taps into the knowledge and experience of "job experts" – managers and supervisors who understand the difference between effective and ineffective performance and behavior in a particular position. These experts complete the job profile survey, weighing the ideal behavior and activities required, according to both their importance and frequency for success on the job.

Second, the top performers in that position complete this same survey. The survey results obtained from both groups are then compared for consistency by the software, which then generates a "success job profile" template. This template, which is virtually free of individual bias, details the core competencies, behavioral traits and success factors required for peak performance in that specific job.

Equally vital, this job profile outlines the key behaviours necessary for extraordinary results. It determines exactly how current top performers are achieving their successes (in contrast to low performers) and enables a contact center leader to instantly assess whether a potential candidate is capable of achieving the same success.

Recently a North American financial services company used a technique when they were ramping up to staff three new contact centers. The project leaders knew the types of skills and knowledge they needed in new recruits. But, given the magnitude and importance of this project, they wanted more of a guarantee that they would recruit and select the right kind of agents.

Their top performers as well as their low performers were surveyed to generate typical profiles of both types of agents. When the two profiles were compared, it provided this company with a complete picture of the behaviors they wanted and didn't want in their new agents. As a result, the company was able to select new recruits more carefully and to dramatically cut down the amount of time they initially anticipated they would need for interviewing. The three new centers were completely staffed in record time.

Effecting Positive Change
Effective hiring is the first step to improving teamwork, to manage performance, and to enhance the communication skills of agents and managers.

Many contact centers I work with have profiled all of their agents and managers. Once these profiles are completed, a complete communication report to strengthen interpersonal interaction – both from a management to staff perspective and on a peer-to-peer basis.

This helps agents to better understand how their personal communication behavior affects their relationships with their bosses and co-workers and how they can improve their communication skills.

By the same token, managers can better understand their employees' needs and get direct feedback on their ambitions and expectations. The system also helps to identify opportunities for greater communication and encourages and guides employees to develop their skills to the fullest. Ideally, team members re-do these profiles every three to six months to assess their progress in improving team communications and overall job effectiveness.

The Team Expert complements the Management Expert, but is more closely focused on direct team analysis. It can help determine the stage a team has achieved in its development. For example, management research has identified four primary stages in the formation of successful groups: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing.

All professional teams need to reach the performing stage, but it is important to allow enough time for team development within each stage. Teams that attempt to leap from forming to performing without taking the time to recognize their differences (storming) or to build their team processes (norming) are likely to perform poorly and to encounter conflict situations among team members.

By helping the contact center leader and team members to identify their team development stage, leaders and team members know what behaviors will help the team to grow and to achieve better results on an ongoing basis. Contact center leaders can also evaluate their team in terms of the "mix" of behaviors and communication styles of its individual members.

Team members also gain a better awareness of any "gaps" in team performance and communication at an early stage. They discover new ways of understanding each other to achieve new heights of team effectiveness and synergy.

Lastly, behaviour profiling is extremely effective in all aspects of performance management. For example, managers can use it to help eliminate the bias and subjectivity inherent in traditional performance review techniques.

Since all team members are evaluated according to scientifically determined performance criteria, this system is very fair. That fairness lends great credibility to the performance review process. Contact center agents are thereby more encouraged to use the profiling to recognise gaps between their own performance and the expectations of their manager and colleagues. The 3600 feedback review process available within the Performance Expert module further encourages agents to improve their performance.

Specifically, behavior profiling measures how associates adjust their behaviors on the job in response to job expectations, roles, responsibilities and work environments. It outlines the job related behavioral adjustments needed to ensure that each associate is successful. As such, it provides an effective tool for contact center leaders in coaching, managing and motivating individuals to perform to the best of their abilities.

Many contact center leaders are now leveraging behavior profiling to aid in employee career development and/or succession planning as well. I recently worked with an international airline company that wanted to ensure that it consistently promoted people from within its contact center. Behavior profiling provided them with an accurate picture of the behaviors needed to excel in positions with more responsibility and authority.

As a result, their agents knew which behaviors they needed to strengthen to advance to the next level. By the same token, the company was able to build more effective career development plans for their agents. Now, their contact center leaders understand and appreciate the behaviors their agents need to succeed in positions with increased responsibility and authority. They have more insight about how to train and coach their top performers to advance in their careers.

Fundamentally, the aim of behavior profiling is to ensure that the right person is in the right job. Being the right person in the right job with the right expectations and motivations breeds self-esteem and job satisfaction. Agents are happier, more productive and they are more likely to stay with a company – all of which inevitably leads to increased productivity and better bottom line results.

Ensuring enduring results
To be sure, behavioral profiling can help to drive positive change throughout the human capital development cycle – from attracting and hiring the right people in a scientific way, to helping employees to perform and grow to their full potential, to assisting managers in understanding their employees and how to improve team effectiveness. However, to fully take advantage of its benefits, behavioral profiling, like all other human resource management activities, must be aligned with corporate strategy and vision.

Suppose your contact center grows to include web-based customer services. Suppose your company enters a new line of business. Suppose you acquire new customers with new expectations. Your ideal agent profile may change. You might have to rethink the type of incentives your center provides to motivate staff. You might have to attract and hire a different type of agent or train your existing agents in a new way.

My point is that behavioral profiling is not a static process. Behavioral profiling, like business itself, will always be in constant flux. Aligning your business vision and strategy with your systems for selecting, hiring, and training people, including behavioral profiling, requires a considerable investment.

It will take time and effort. But, along the way, you will have new ways to deal with the inherent complexity of managing your human capital. Along the way, you will encounter dozens of tiny changes. And along the way, these changes will add up to bold change – the positive, enduring change that all leaders hope to achieve.


About the Company
Founded in Canada in 1951, Drake concentrates on solving business problems. They start by analyzing business needs and pinpointing how Drake can best help to achieve an organization's strategic intent. Operating in 11 countries around the world, they conduct needs analysis, visioning sessions, and understand business requirements to help improve the productivity of organizations.

Today's Tip of the Day - Keep Cost In Perspective

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Published: Wednesday, November 6, 2002

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