What comes to mind when someone talks about a “contact center”? A loud, cramped room filled with people on headsets, taking one incoming call after another? Agents speaking to customers in a robotic, irritating tone? That may be the case for most contact centers, but not Centris Information Services.
Our fully bilingual agents, selective hiring process, and agent leadership development program, are just a few of the reasons why Centris is the call center of choice for our partners.
Work Culture & Leadership
For 20 years, Centris has worked to set itself apart from other contact centers. With its headquarters in Longview, Texas and major operations in Monterrey and Aguascalientes, Mexico, Centris management constantly looks for ways to combine both Mexican and American cultures into one dynamic environment. The friendliness and passion of Mexican culture mixed with American leadership techniques is the key to our success.
Also, the vast majority of our agents have previously lived in the United States for a substantial amount of time before working for us. This means our employees understand the language, environment, and culture when talking to American customers. There are no barriers when talking to a Centris agent, which leads to happier customers.
At Centris, we pride ourselves on our friendly and welcoming atmosphere. When a client visits the offices, they are encouraged to walk around and visit with any employees they’d like. This makes Centris unique.
Kevin Berchelmann, Centris Executive Team Member, says there are many cultural components that make Centris different than other competitors.
“It’s easy to look at the contact center industry and say they’re all pretty much the same. It’s all about location and pricing. Well that’s not true, there are other advantages to working with a firm like Centris,” Kevin said.
He explains the common misconceptions of what aspects make a contact center important. It’s about the welcoming atmosphere, not just what the business offers.
“For starters, the way people act and interact is hugely different. Our agents will stand up in their cubicle and smile and wave. If they have the opportunity, they will speak to you and ask if they can do anything to help. That is not common in most contact centers where they typically keep their head down and keep working.”
Centris’ welcoming environment to its clients is just one quality that sets it apart from competitors. How the employees at Centris benefit from this is just as significant, if not more.
Management at Centris Information Systems strongly believes in a positive work culture. A healthy work environment produces happier and healthier employees. According to research from the Harvard Business Review, the qualities of a positive workplace culture are:
- Caring for, being interested in, and maintaining responsibility for colleagues as friends.
- Providing support for one another, including offering kindness and compassion for when others are struggling.
- Avoiding blame and forgiving mistakes.
- Inspiring one another at work.
- Emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work.
- Treating one another with respect, gratitude, trust and integrity.
Applying these elements to Centris’ values, and even in any workplace, are important in keeping each employee’s professional, mental, physical, and emotional well-being in top shape.
A recent study proves that happier employees are more productive. The experiment showed that productivity increased by an average of 12%, and reached as high as 20% above the control group. Also, researchers tracked how “real-world shocks” such as mourning, family matters, or increased stress can decrease productivity for as long as two years.
Jorge, an Account Manager for Centris, applies this idea in the way he treats agents and supervisors.
“Every time I come in I do a touch base with each one of our employees about 2-3 times per day…that really creates a sense of family for every one of us, and it helps us get through,” Jorge said. “From my level it’s really with the supervisors making sure they have everything they need to work with their people.”
Increased disengagement is another major issue in high-stress workplaces, like call centers. In studies conducted by the Queens School of Business and by the Gallup Organization, disengaged workers had:
- 37% higher absenteeism.
- 49% more accidents both in and out of the workplace.
- 60% more errors and defects within the workplace that could negatively affect the quality of the company.
- Businesses that have high employee engagement enjoy 100% more job applications than organizations with lower engagement.
Some of the ways that Centris applies these principles within the organization are:
- Fostering social connections both internally and externally.
- Supervisors showing empathy towards their agents.
- Good teamwork between all employees.
- Encouraging the staff to talk to their managers whenever there is a problem.
Kevin also states that taking the time to develop the culture at Centris is important because it allows us as a contact center to succeed. That shows our clients that we can help their business succeed too.
“The culture of the company starts at the top, and it must remain consistent. Centris does that by continuing to develop our leaders, and the next generation leaders. The current supervisors train the agents while they are still agents into becoming future managers and next generation leaders,” Kevin said.
The evidence from this research are some of the many reasons as to why a positive work environment improves overall well-being, which then leads to success and a leadership mentality. Centris Information Systems does everything needed to promote good health along with positive work relationships. Which are vital for each person within the company to become a strong leader.
Lower Turnover Rate
Call centers have a reputation for a high turnover rate. It can be as high as 30 to 45 percent. Working as an inbound customer service representative (CSR) is a tough job. Dealing with different emotions from customers, managing high incoming call levels, and few breaks when lines are busy are some of the struggles agents in this field face on a day-to-day basis. However, Centris has successfully created ways to avoid this ongoing issue, which resulted in improved attrition rates.
Strong leadership development training and expectation setting for our agents at Centris benefited our company. We’ve seen a huge decrease in the employee turnover rate in recent years and a 100 percent promote-from-within rate. The first year after the start of our leadership development program, there was a 21-22% decrease in employee attrition. Less than three years later, Centris is at over 50% turnover reduction.
So, why should potential partners care about this?
First of all, it costs money to maintain a high turnover rate. It also costs more money to find and train new employees. This can be detrimental to the success of a contact center as growth becomes more difficult to achieve.
Secondly, customer satisfaction is lower when attrition is high. When callers have to deal with multiple representatives who are new and inexperienced, they are more likely to have a negative opinion of your company. You could lose them as customers. Additionally, overall workplace culture becomes more unpleasant, which leads to even more turnover.
Centris’ thorough leadership development training isn’t the only thing that helps keep the turnover rate impressively low, it’s also the main foundation of trust within the organization.
According to Kevin, trust is the foundation of leadership, a crucial element to have in order to obtain leadership positions within Centris. Centris considers trust to be broken down into three elements:
- Competency: Do we believe that you are competent to do the job the organization asks you to do?
- Integrity: Do we believe that you will do what you say you will do? Do we have evidence of that? Can we trust you to be honest?
- Compassion: Do we believe you care about others as much as you care about yourself?
What is a company without trust? If there’s no trust, relationships between supervisors and agents fail, which causes an organization to eventually fall apart. Staying true to the company’s core values is vital to Centris’ success as a contact center.
Final Thoughts
The combination of positive workplace culture, employee leadership development, and the foundation of trust are all essential aspects to the success of Centris. We believe fostering relationships both internally and externally helps keep us reaching our highest potential as a contact center. This shows in the way our agents are trained and treated, which carries over to how our partner’s customers are served. If our agents are happy, callers are happy. Maintaining a consistent level of all of these key elements are what sets Centris apart in the industry.
Let Centris Information Systems help your customers. Why would you pick any other contact center for your customer satisfaction needs?
