Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 2
Frustration: The Silent Killer
The Bernette financial call center culture is the envy of the industry. Turnover is low. Nearly every employee believes in the mission: They’re helping people buy homes, helping busi-nesses serve their communities, and helping families achieve their dreams. Customer surveys invariably show that Bernette customers are overall “very satisfied” with the help they get when they call or e-mail. Questions get answered. Problems get resolved. Customer service representatives are viewed as help-ful, knowledgeable, and friendly.
By and large, Bernette call center employees are engaged and committed to the success of the organization. But is engagement enough? Let’s look at the situations faced by the employees we’ve met so far.
Lauren made her mark on the call center by figuring out a better way to forecast scheduling needs. She is self-motivated to be efficient and effective. Solving a vexing problem is its own reward for her. She wants to work in a challenging environment that allows her to continue to be successful. If her current employer doesn’t offer one, she is confident that another em-ployer will.
Lauren’s boss, Beth, recently witnessed the departure of a long-term, highly valued executive at the bank. And she knows she might lose another valuable employee, Lauren, unless she can open up the flow of information and get the resources that
Lauren and her direct reports need so that they can continue to do their jobs well. Beth is also grappling with the situation faced by Bob, the customer service rep with the highest custo-mer satisfaction ratings but the slowest completion rate. She is having trouble getting approval to transfer Bob to the mar-keting department, where he’ll be a better fit and continue to make a valuable contribution to Bernette.
Stacy is a long-term Bernette employee who is struggling with scheduling issues. She isn’t getting the information she needs from Lauren so that she can schedule reps for optimum results.
And Bob is in a job that doesn’t make the best use of his capa-bilities.
All these employees are motivated and want to succeed.
They all have a high regard for the bank’s leaders and believe in the bank’s mission. They want to “do more with less” just as they are being asked to do. But due to constraints in the work environment, they can’t, and that has them feeling frustrated.
This isn’t a case of temperamental, indifferent, or intellectually challenged management. Bernette has a well-earned reputation for being a great place to work. Its executives are known as competent and caring individuals. But the organization, like many today, is undergoing change. It’s growing, organically and through acquisition, and its senior leaders are focused on man-aging expenditures at a time when the bank’s costs are increas-ing faster than its revenues. As popular as they are with call cen-ter employees, the bank’s senior executives might not sense the frustration of the reps who can’t do their jobs without the right tools, or of the supervisors who can’t manage the call center as effectively as they once did.
The irony here is that the more loyal and engaged employees are, the deeper their frustration will run in the face of obstacles.
Simply put, they are frustrated because they care.
This book is focused on employees who are engaged, motivated a and loyal—who aren’t ready to give up—but who are experiencing frustration on the job.
