Expert Advice for Measuring and Improving Employee Engagement

Learn more about Clio, 2017 ICMI Global Contact Center Awards Winner for Best Contact Center Culture

“I have worked in Customer Support for over 15 years in various roles and call centers. Clio's culture is like no other I have ever experienced. Everyone thrives as a team and works together to ensure we get the work done. Being a frontline agent can be difficult, but everyone in Support does the job and always with a smile on their face. Other call centers I have worked for was all about measuring metrics. Although metrics is an important aspect at Clio, the number one priority is making sure we are providing an effortless experience for our customers. Providing an effortless experience is always front of mind for all the agents which makes the agent feel empowered which is a win/win for all those involved. Clio embraces individuality, encourages an open mindset, and trusts that the agents are doing the best for the customer. Everyone feels appreciated and feels like their feedback is truly heard. It’s so nice to know we are not just a number and that we are all contributing factors to the company’s success. These are some of the reasons why I find Clio's culture to be top notch and bar none the best I've ever worked for!”

     -Leslie Sto-Thomas, Senior Customer Support Specialist at Clio

Happy agents make happy customers. Right? That’s what the team at Clio firmly believes, and it shows.

Winner of the recent ICMI Global Contact Center Award for Best Contact Center Culture, Clio is leading the way regarding employee engagement. Their executive team has noticed, the ICMI judges noticed, and Jeff Toister even highlighted the Clio Support team in his latest book on contact center culture.

“Clio’s support and success teams have championed a customer-first mindset that has taken root throughout the organization and become a fundamental underpinning of our corporate values and culture,” says Clio CPO and Founder, Rian Gauvreau. “ Their dedication and partnership in customer success have helped to foster genuine empathy for our clients and a deep sense of passion and purpose towards our mission to “transform the practice of law, for good.” Best of all, our support and success teams love their work, and model a sense of humor, energy, and engagement that’s truly infectious.”

How do they do it? I asked David Perry, Customer Support Manager at Clio, to share more about their approach. Read on for insider insight you can apply to your employee engagement efforts.

EM: How has your contact center’s culture translated to an improved customer experience?

DP: Everyone has been through the experience of calling a contact center and hearing the dread in an agent’s voice. Conversely, we have all had the experience of calling a contact center and having an agent that very clearly loved their job and was genuinely interested in helping you. That’s what our clients get every time they call! Our agents are engaged, they are passionate, and they love what they do - and that shows in our results!

In the past, we have tracked Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and more recently, we moved to Customer Effort Scores (CES), we have seen very positive results. We turned on CSAT in April of 2014, beginning with an 85% rating. With increased employee engagement (as listed above), a focused mission statement and development of staff through clear career pathing we saw a direct reflection in our CSAT. By the time we turned CSAT off in December 2015, we had attained a 96% CSAT rate. We enabled CES in January 2016, and our average score since implementation has been 6.0 and 5.7 based on the two questions posed in the survey. Additionally, we recently hit a high point of 6.4 and 6.1 with a steady increase month over month for the last seven months.

Outside of the metrics, CES and The Effortless Experience concept has revolutionized how our staff goes about their daily duties, and how our departments operate as a whole. Effortlessness now plays a large part in our internal thinking. Embedding the idea of effortlessness into our operations has allowed us to design processes that benefit both our customers and our employees. As an example, through process redesign, our Technical Escalation Team was able to reduce time spent reporting issues to our Development Team by 80 percent. Reduction in reporting time leads to faster turnaround rates and a more effortless experience for our clients.

EM: How has your contact center’s culture positively impacted recruiting, hiring, and retention?

DP: Clio’s hiring brand is mainly centered on culture - at hiring fairs, recruitment drives, our amazing corporate culture is a crucial piece of what we offer to potential staff. Conversely, that culture is what keeps staff at Clio. While the company leads the way concerning cultural mandate, our contact center is always iterating on it. We have established ourselves as cultural frontrunners in the organization at large.

Our professional development program is a trailblazer in the organization. Our leadership team, in collaboration with our People Operations Department, constructed leveling documents highlighting a Support Agent’s journey along “The Clio Path.” These materials create a clear and concise roadmap for development for each agent, encouraging professional development, project management, and improvements to departmental procedures.

Empowering our agents has had a tangible impact on longevity— our healthy attrition (internal transfer) rate for 2016 sits at 18%. Even the external turnover is positive in its own way - we have had contact center staff that have left Clio to go back to school with the express goal of returning to the company.

EM: How does your contact center measure employee engagement?

DP: We address employee engagement in various ways, some traditional, some less so.

Firstly, our People Operations Department releases a departmental engagement survey allowing our management teams to understand the engagement levels of our team better. This measures how the team feels about their role and responsibilities, how they feel about the company and how they feel about the level of involvement from management. This is a crucial tool for measuring employee engagement at Clio. We recently conducted one such survey, and the Support Department scored 81% engagement! We also had a 100% participation in the survey! The participation rate in and of itself is a great indicator of the level of engagement that our staff feels in the day to day operations of the company.

Beyond engagement surveys, we have slightly less traditional ways of measuring staff engagement. Over the last year, we have isolated areas of growth that our contact center could benefit from; this includes, but is not limited to, improving bug reports to Development, peer-to-peer mentorship programs, engagement of remote staff and building out a value-add initiative to help our clients get the most out of the product. This resulted in the creation of squads across the contact center, each squad taking on a different end-goal. We have seen fantastic results from these squads, including approximately 50% increase in subscription upgrade conversion as a result of our value-add program. These “Support Squads” are crucial to the development of our department and show a dedication to departmental growth from our contact center team.

We hold training sessions on a weekly basis. While these courses can be product related and geared towards improving staff efficiency, at times, they are team driven, designed and implemented. We have remarkable participation from our employees; they are truly engaged in becoming a part of driving the future of our Support organization. The consistent involvement in these training sessions from our staff is a huge indicator of top tier engagement and ownership in the growth of our Contact Center.

Lastly, on the social side, our team holds monthly outings for the entire contact center. This can be as simple as having a drink on the company, going go-karting or going out for a bite to eat together. We can firmly say that every person in our Contact Center has participated in these events. Some of our most well-attended outings are ones that happen within the confines of the office. While this is a great testament to how welcoming and inviting our office space is, it is also a good sign that our team is not running for the door when their shift ends. We have built a community at Clio, and people want to be a part of it.

EM: What are some unique recognition techniques your contact center uses?

DP: Despite being in a static office environment, we have many different forms of positive reinforcement. We invested in a large prize wheel. Anyone in the contact center can nominate their peers to step up to the wheel and spin for a prize. This is fantastic on the spot recognition that is driven by the entire staff, leaders and frontline agents alike. We also have “Killing It Awards” which are used to recognize truly above and beyond behavior. Anyone can put forward Killing It nominations, and the prize usually comprises of a gift card and some public recognition. The last level of awards we hand out regularly are “Owl Awards.” This is based on of Clio’s “Draw the Owl” value and is presented to someone that has truly lived up to the Clio company values while executing on their daily tasks. Like the rest of our recognition, anyone can put forward a nomination.

Want to learn more about Clio? David Perry recently spoke on an ICMI webinar. Watch the on-demand version here.