If you are responsible for hiring and retaining employees, or for helping your staff to reach its full potential, you need to be aware of the “Gallup Q12“. The Q12 is a set of 12 questions designed to measure employee “engagement” with their jobs. The Gallup organization defines “engagement” as working with passion and feeling a profound connection to the organization. Engaged employees are the ones who drive innovation and move organizations forward. “Disengaged” employees are the opposite. They are so unhappy in their work that they spend a good deal of their time undermining the efforts of their peers and poisoning the atmosphere with negativity.
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Here’s why you should care. In a study of over 1.5 million employees in the United States, Gallup discovered that only about 30% of the workforce was “engaged”. Nearly 20% were”actively disengaged”, and more than half (54%) of employees were “essentially checked out…. putting in time.”
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Can we afford to have 70% of our workforce so dissatisfied with their jobs that they are no longer even trying to contribute or do their best? According to a recent poll of 2,600 workers conducted by web portal Yahoo, almost half (47%) of your employees are are actively looking to find a new job in the next 12 months. Unless you really believe that Jet Engine Staffing (stuff em in the front door, burn them up and spit them out the back) works and are unconcerned about the enormous cost associated with turnover and low worker productivity, the Q12 is worth becoming familiar with. And putting to use.
In a July 7th article in the Wall St. Journal, authors Jonathan Whitaker, M.S. Krishnan and Claes Fornell discussed the results of a study they had done examining the impact of offshore outsourcing vs outsourcing to domestic service providers on customer satisfaction. Their conclusion? Customers dislike both about equally. The study analyzed results from 150 North American companies over the eight years ending in 2006 and showed that, as a group, those companies that outsourced their customer service function saw a drop in their customer service scores (American Customer Satisfaction Index). The decline in customer satisfaction was about the same regardless of whether companies outsourced domestically or overseas.
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Much has been made of the negative impact of offshore outsourcing, usually proposing that language and cultural differences are viewed unfavorably by North American audiences. The Whitaker, Krishnan, Fornell study suggests that such factors are overdone and that there is no measurable penalty for shipping your service operations to Bombay rather than to Des Moines. There is, however, a “significantly negative” impact to outsourcing this function at all. The study suggests that the average decline in a company’s ASCI score was associated with a 1% to 5% drop in its market capitalization (stock price for a corporation). That is a pretty steep price to pay for the cost savings expected from outsourcing.
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The authors do not conclude that outsourcing of the customer service function is without any benefit, pointing to the considerable cost savings that can be achieved. But they note that few companies re-invest any of the the savings back into improved customer service or even into reducing the price or improving the quality of their products. Instead the savings are usually pocketed as additional profit. The real benefit to outsourcing, they suggest, is the opportunity it creates for companies to devote at least some of the savings to upgrading their customer service. And they suggest several areas in need of an upgrade.
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Among the suggested improvements? Upgrading CRM systems so that agents (wherever located) have accurate and up to date customer information; giving the customer service agent the skills and authority to make decisions on the spot to best assist customers; taking full advantage of support technologies such as remote systems control and online chat. They also suggest the outsourcing of some “back office” functions offer cost savings similar to customer service outsourcing, but without the negative impact on customer satisfaction.