The Blue Collar Call Center Chapter One: Background

 Chapter One: Background

“Exceptional customer experiences are the only sustainable platform for competitive differentiation.”

 – Kerry Bodine

First, we have to ask ourselves, why a book on Contact Centers? There’s really not that many of them, and with the exception of maybe a couple, they are dry tomes of archaic knowledge, boring and monotonous, tedious to read, and only contain a few nuggets of applicable, actionable knowledge. In other words, they’re useless snooze fests.

Second, we have to ask ourselves, why, specifically, a book about plumbing and HVAC Contact Centers? This is even more niche.

The first question, we already answered. There needs to be more, period. They need to be more accessible. They need to be easy to read. They need to be fun to read. If they’re not… What's the point? 

“Oh, here is a 600 page textbook! Have fun!”

Let’s change that.

The second question, well, that deserves a longer answer. 

The Trades is one of the most important industries in the world. Full stop. People would get sick, fun old diseases would come back, and people would literally be swimming in their own… yeah… without plumbers. People would either roast to death or freeze to death if there were no HVAC systems or HVAC technicians to work on them. Without the trades, life would be savage, unforgiving, gross, sad, and short.

The plumbing or HVAC Contact Center is the overlooked part of many (most) companies. Marketing and revenue generating service techs normally get all the shoutouts and praise. 

“Look how great our marketing is! Look at all these calls we’re getting!”

“Look at all this revenue so-and-so is generating! Amazing!”

Meanwhile, the Contact Center Agent is in the corner (or let’s be real, on the phone) with an eyebrow raised.

Sure, marketing rocks. Tons of leads, minimal cost. But someone has to convert those leads into appointments.

Someone has to get both the Comfort Advisor and the Customer together.

Otherwise, all that money spent on marketing goes to waste, and nobody wants that.

Your rockstar unicorn sales guy can’t really sell much if they’re not being dispatched appropriately.

It can be argued (easily) that the Contact Center is one of the most important aspects of your company. 

You’re only as good as your Contact Center.

If your Contact Center isn’t converting leads into appointments, or isn’t converting many leads into appointments, what are you doing? What are they doing? Most of the time, low conversion or booking rates are not the results of a poor employee. It's the result of a poorly trained employee.

It could very well be a bad hire or a bad fit, but 80% of the time, low conversion rates are a sign of low training frequency, or a weak training program.

So we’ll talk about that. A lot about that, actually.

Now, where do I get off? What makes me able to write a book about this? I’m glad you asked.

I have been in the Contact Center world since I was Seventeen years old. Not to date myself, but that’s about twenty-five years and counting. That’s a long time. I’ve been everything from data entry to CSR, Agent Helpdesk, Quality Assurance, Trainer, Team Lead, Floor Support, Floor Supervisor, IT, Manager, and everything in between. If a Contact Center has a role, I’ve probably done it. I’ve even been a Game Master. That’s right, a Game Master. That was a very nerdy Contact Center for a very nerdy product. Also, a lot of fun.

What I like to do, what I’m best at, and what my Contact Center passion calls me to do is to train. And train a lot.

I started at Rooter Hero Plumbing & Air in the spring of 2012 as a part time evening CSR after moving to California, so that my wife Gohar, could be closer to her family while her uncle battled the latter stages of Lou Gerhig’s disease. Even with all the Contact Center experience I had, I took an entry level position. Why? Okay, necessity. But also, I am of the opinion that anyone who heads a department should at the very least get experience as an entry level employee in that department.

How do they know what it’s like if they don’t? What better way to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the department and the team than being in the trenches, even if it's only for a few weeks?. 

I moved up from part time evenings to full time days, then into a Lead position, then left the company to help run a Contact Center in Utah for a very well known internet company. I put in a month's notice, trained a couple of replacements,and made sure that everything was good.

I came back two years later as a, you guessed it, evening CSR.

But it was such a different place than when I left.

Morale was gone. The team's cohesiveness was a distant memory. Call outs were rampant, A couple of the Contact Center staff would sneak out, or flash passing cars from the windows. People were cursing on the Call Floor near open mics. It was bad, to say the least.. The cost of disengaged employees and a decimated culture.

Training was now done by sitting a new employee down next to someone to watch them for a couple of hours, and then being told, “alright, your turn!” Shadowing is a great tool, and should be implemented in training, but to have that be the only training? No. Not ideal. 

Not ideal at all.

I approached the manager and asked what I could do to help. 

After some hemming and hawing, I was asked to listen to calls to see where any deficiency lay. So I did some digging. And oh boy, I’m glad I did. It turned out the guy who had had a 100% booking rate for years on end, and had won several awards, plaques, gift cards, accolades, you name it (and who the majority of new hires were made to sit with) had a booking rate closer to 60% than 100%, and really poor customer service skills to boot. That was it, I had to do something.

When I turned my findings in to the manager, he thanked me and nothing was done. That was rough. The agent still reported a 100% booking rate and continued to be rewarded for it.

So, I started to utilize my downtime. Since I was working nights, and back then the call volume would die down after Six or Seven o’clock, I built a training manual and curriculum. The manual itself clocked in at around forty pages with scripts, rebuttals, probing questions, policies, procedures, etc.

I presented it to the manager and got the green light to execute. (Honestly, I’m not sure what would have happened if I had been told no)

From there I trained (and still do) every single new hire that comes into our Contact Center. It’s rewarding, it’s fun, and it’s the single best thing I can do for the department and the company. My title went from evening CSR to Trainer. And man, did we train. New employees, existing employees, returning employees. I even implemented a QA system, which had never been done in this Contact Center.

I got promoted to Lead, then to Client Care Supervisor, to Call Center Manager, then to Contact Center Manager and Director of Social Media. I now oversee the entire Customer Service division, including the Contact Center, the Client Resolutions team, the Social Media team, and the Hero Helps (our community aid and outreach program) team. I also facilitate and host the company’s Book Club, and I could write an entire book on the benefits of that. Hm. A book on company book clubs… hmm.

I am in direct control of training Contact Center employees and do CX (Customer Experience) training for all employees. And if that doesn’t impress you enough, I host the Rooter Hero Plumbing & Air Podcast called HeroTalk, and host my own podcast called Caffeinated CX. 

The training curriculum and some good hires (we’ll get into that, too) boosted our booking rate from the high 70’s/low 80’s to the high 80’s, and finally to the mid 90’s. The cool thing is, it’s replicable. 

Feel free to use this book as you see fit. Mark it up. Highlight. Underline. Write in the margins. Dogear pages instead of using a bookmark. Photocopy it. Scan it. Scratch out bits you don’t like. It’s all good.

So, without further ado, let’s start the book.