Blog

Why Grenada?

Grenada’s official language is English. The country offers an appealing mix of local culture and colonial roots. Also, Grenada is one of the highest visited countries for tourists with some of the world’s best attractions. For 2019 alone, the country recorded some 525, 452 tourists. In fact, Grenada offers the perfect nearshore solution since it is very accessible from anywhere in the world.

Further, the Government of Grenada is prioritizing the development of education, ICT, among others, to increase direct foreign investment.

Prior to the recent pandemic, the number of flights to Grenada had increased, as well as the destinations from where you can fly directly to Grenada. From New York and Atlanta, JetBlue and Delta Airlines offer daily flights. Also, airlines like Virgin Atlantic make it easier for visitors from the UK and other parts of Europe to come directly to the island of Grenada.

In addition to these, the country’s economy is one of the most stable in the region with a sustained 4.2 percent growth rate over the last decade, and the government remains committed to facilitating the growth and expansion of the BPO industry as it seeks to capture a larger market share.

Low Labor Costs

Investment decisions by offshore services companies are often highly influenced by the cost-saving impact, as BPO is a cost-sensitive business with increasing pressure on margins. Being a labor-intensive industry, the cost of labor is, therefore, crucial to any company in the assessment of new, potential investment opportunities. Grenada offers a significant wage differential compared to the United States of America and other countries.

Flexible Regulatory Framework

Flexible labor regulations are essential to BPO service providers, especially regarding shift work, 24 hours of operations, part-time and temporary work, among others. Regulations in Grenada are very flexible concerning hiring, redundancy, and working hours, compared to other emerging markets.

Low Operational Costs

The low costs for social security contributions and low office space costs, united with small telecoms costs, further strengthens the business status and compensates for the fact that the cost of electricity, at this point in time, is comparatively high in some countries. This is, however, changing due to the ongoing transition to renewable energy here in Grenada, thus reducing the energy costs significantly over time.

Now that we have provided you with some advantageous reasons why your company should invest in Grenada, what are you waiting for? Contact us so that we can help you to be number one and make your customers happy.

There is a famous saying that 80 percent of success is just by showing up. However, when employees fail to make an appearance at work, it can put a crimp in business operations. Moreover, absenteeism is a particularly acute problem in the contact center.

Studies suggest that the average contact center employee takes 7.4 sick days a year, and is absent 8.2 days per year. These unplanned absences add to business costs, may create new stresses for those who do show up for their shifts, may adversely impact a call center’s ability to meet its key performance indicator goals, and can lead to less than desirable customer experiences.

Here are some best practices to maintain and encourage attendance. Use these five steps to promote employee attendance at work:

1. Have a clear attendance policy

Clarity is critical when you create an attendance policy. It should seem straightforward, right? We usually think it is to show up at work on time. But the fact of tracking and fixing absenteeism can be confused. With your wide variety of responsibilities, it’s tough also to make sure that every agent walks in the door and goes to their desk at the start of their shift. When you set clear policies and have a standard, there aren’t any gray areas for your expectations on agents, and in fact, it can be better accountability for your entire team.

Consider monotony when setting your standards. Let your team understand what absences are excused and what is not. This way, it forms a guide for short-term and long term illness leave, or maternity, paternity, or unpaid leave? Further, you might want to think outside-of-the-box of the box situations.  You might have employees who need to leave to pick up a sick child at school. Or, they show up to work late because they had car issues on their way to work. Draw the lines where it makes sense for your team, and be open with your representatives right when you hire them about how your company deals with absence or tardiness. Then, hold your agents accountable. It’s up to you to implement your policy and make sure it’s adhered to. Establishing clear standards shows your agents that you are serious about attendance and that their time is valuable to the rest of the team and the company at large.

2. Offer incentives tied to attendance

You can help your employees care more about their attendance by binding incentives to attendance. This might be perceived as a surface-level solution, but incentivizing your employees to come to work on time is one of the first steps to decreasing absenteeism. Employees who are consistently late or don’t come to work as scheduled, shouldn’t get the same benefits as those who do, even if their performance is high. (Short and long-term incentives tailored with good attendance could help in this regard) If you have short-term, smaller bonuses for agents who have a particular issue with attendance, you encourage change incrementally. Don’t forget that they are other creative ways to do incentives. Some of these ways are movie tickets or a gift card. You can use typical prizes like movie tickets or a gift card. Rewarding consistent attendance is one of the simplest ways to decrease absenteeism and encourage your agents to respect your policies.

3. Combat stress. (Build a Healthy Environment)

Contact centers can be a stressful work environment at times. There are high standards for performance and constant positivity, the work can feel monotonous, and customers are often hard on your agents. If your contact center’s environment is stressful and intense, it should not be a surprise that attendance is an issue. Empower your agents to deliver quality service. Your employees want to come to work when work is a comfortable place to be. It’s crucial to build time into the workday for your agents to combat the stress of the job. They may need to take a deep breath or a walk around the office to get back on the grind. Or, they might need an extra 15 minutes on a break to vent frustrations. That would be okay as it would help your workplace to be happier one, and your agents would be more likely to be on time and ready to work and serve your customer.

At Qualishore, we can testify to the fact that making our workplace comfortable has shown that our agents are readily available to provide 100 percent excellent customer service and be on time.

4. Create employee schedules in advance

Part of keeping your agents engaged and attending work comes with how you communicate expectations. It is your responsibility to create schedules ahead of time, so your employees have sufficient time to make accommodations for the week. Acknowledge that your employees have lives outside of work that requires much planning, and respect their time off the clock. Whether your agents are on or off the clock, they are valuable to your company’s growth. Show them their time matters to the business by planning ahead.

Your agents need to know far in advance how to manage their time to have a sufficient work-life balance. Workplace engagement strengthens if you can think three steps ahead of the present. Stay organized, so you can plan schedules that are convenient for your individual agents’ lifestyles.

5. Allow for flexible schedules

Reduce agent absenteeism by implementing flexible schedules for your team members. You can let your agents create an ideal work schedule. This is something we do here at Qualishore, and it has shown to be effective. For example, if you put an agent who loves night shift on an early morning shift, it is most likely they will have a hard time getting to work on time or might not be ready to work effectively even if they are on time. You can allow for shift swapping. Have grace on your agents who need a bit more flexibility in their life outside of work. While adhering to your attendance policy is essential, remember that your agents are people, not machines.

It is essential to know your team when it comes to attendance and absenteeism. Build a schedule that plays to their strengths and conveniences their time. If employees see that you’re considering them and they have a voice in the process, they come to work ready to give their time and energy.

The above image is a screenshot of our proprietary software used to help us manage attendance at Qualishore. This tool allows each employee to self log their time, track their production hours, breaks/lunches, etc. In addition, it allows the supervisors and floor managers to monitor activities in realtime and even extract the data they need to process payroll and billing. To learn more about our software and how we can help implement the same systems in your business, please feel free to contact us via email –  info@qualishore.com

Call center frontline leaders are expected to be renaissance people who excel at a variety of roles and responsibilities. They must be excellent multi-taskers, combined with the ability to manage and coach agents, handle challenging customers, readily shift priorities, prepare management reports, and lead call center initiatives while ensuring that service level and quality objectives are achieved. 

One such leader who has been achieving all these responsibilities is Miriam Thomas. She has been employed with Qualishore for the past three years. This budding team leader stated that her greatest accomplishment is being a Supervisor. 

“The work we do as a team at Qualishore is exceptional and my greatest accomplishment is being a team leader. Taking the time to understand my team members and ensuring that they are comfortable and supported every day. This allows for a smooth communication flow” she cited. 

She explained that understanding your team members will help you to work efficiently with your team because every Customer Service Representative (CSR) brings something different to the table. 

“Everyone comes with a different personality, and one of the things that I take great pleasure in is making sure I understand each team member, individually, and [ensuring that] we have a common ground.”  

Preparing her day 

Supervisors set the tone for the day, and for Thomas, she tries to set her day in order to cater to each team member’s capabilities. 

“I try to separate our tasks based on each team member’s capabilities. I would give them tasks that I know they would be able to complete,” this, she said, allows for her agents not to be exhausted and helps them to focus on their strengths as she works along with them to develop their areas of opportunity.

Motivation 

An agent’s job can be demanding and stressful at times, but having a supervisor who does the trick can relieve the tension by creating a positive, supportive, and collaborative environment. Over the years, Thomas has been ensuring her agents feel valued, respected, and treated fairly by management- which has made her a top performer. 

“I offer incentives, and one of the top lines would be attendance and punctuality. It is very competitive; I have one particular agent, he has been mastering attendance for the past few months, so [with him] I focus on attendance performance and punctuality but I also rely on him to coach and mentor those that are struggling in this area,” she added.  

Advice to other frontline leaders

 “The key to success starts with having a passion for what you do on a daily basis because you enjoy doing it so it becomes effortless. We are in a people business, therefore, the customer’s experience is a true reflection of how we treat our team members” Thomas noted. 

Continued development 

The contact center is a dynamic real-time environment where constant change is habitual. As such, we do bi-weekly training that introduces new content or reinforces the existing process.

“We believe in consistent one-on-one coaching sessions, so we spend a considerable amount of time focusing on strengths, wins, and opportunities.” 

When asked to describe herself, Thomas responded in the positive, she added, “I would say definitely that I am a huge team player and I lead by example by meeting or exceeding expectations.” She disclosed that she tries to go above and beyond, which paves the way for her to be the top-performing supervisor. She believes that if you are performing well, it will motivate your team members as well. 

“I must give credit to Dr. Ellis and Mr. Fraser for supporting and coaching me throughout the years to become the leader I am today,” Thomas concluded. 

Now that you have met one of our leaders who has been driving success in our contact center, be sure to contact us at https://qualishore.com/contact/ if you would like us to deliver results that are in line with your business goals and strategic objectives.

As the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease continues to create havoc globally, we are happy that this is not the same here in Grenada.

With the lockdowns and social distancing protocols, it appeared to have reached the level of community spread within one month. However, cases continued to decline through May, and by June 18, the Ministry of Health declared zero active cases — indicating Grenada’s efforts were successful in ridding the country of the virus. To this end, the Government of Grenada has announced a phased approach to the reopening of its borders, promoting a smooth, systematic, and safe process. For this process, countries will be categorized as Low, Medium, or High-risk, for the purposes of entry requirements to Grenada.

We can safely say that through the hard work and diligence of the Government of Grenada and the Ministry of Health, the coronavirus was successfully contained by closing borders since March 22, imposing a limited state of emergency, social distancing, the wearing of face coverings and screening and testing. Grenada presently has no active cases of COVID-19 since June 18, with only 23 positive cases recorded. Finally, as of Tuesday, July 8, 2020, the curfew has been lifted in the tri-island state of Grenada, Carriacou, and Petite Martinique. The relaxed measures come on the heels of Grenada’s success in being a COVID-free destination and our preparedness for the gradual reopening of the borders.

Grenada’s borders are expected to reopen to international travel from August 1.

Quality assurance (QA) should be the foundation of all contact center management efforts.

Here at Qualishore, we think this is important because it helps you to optimize QA practices, which will help to enhance the quality of the service your team provides to their customers, increase their efficiency and reduce wasteful spending. We here at Qualishore take quality seriously. It is a critical driver of our success – which translates into significant advantages for all of our clients. In fact, the benefits of optimizing your QA practices will definitely push your team a leg up your competition and making your contact center number 1.

Here are ten things you could do to optimize quality, increase productivity, and improve customer relations:

1.Standardize

Daily, routine KPI monitoring and other standardized initiatives which will ensure your call center is always on the upswing, even in the face of prolonged activity.

2.Evaluate agents

Keep checks on call center agents with critical KPIs and other methods. Qualishore agents include top-trained, professional assets for any industry.

3. Involve key stakeholders

Quality assurance is the ultimate team game. Your Customer Service Representative (CSR) does their part, management does its, and everyone else pitches in with unique contributions. You can schedule at least three monthly meetings with department leaders to stay on track – multilevel feedback and collaboration work!

4. Stay on the cutting edge of technology

Security & redundancy are two key areas that conclusively boost quality assurance. Advanced servers, robust operating systems, and other technological initiatives form the backbone of every high-quality call center.

5. Figure out what your customers are saying

The key to being the high ranking customer service call center is by listening to your customers. You can do timely surveys and follow-up communication this way; you will be an ear to your customers on critical feedback and able to tail your customer service to their needs.

6. Stick to your QA schedule

Always remember, daily, weekly, and monthly quality assurance helps establish positive interactions between your agents and customers.

7. Reward a job well done

Quality assurance practices can settle into a mundane routine, so it’s crucial to recognize exemplary performances. Gift cards, company discounts, incentives are all excellent ideas for any call center quality program.

8. Update KPIs frequently

Getting on the right track with your quality assurance program is great – but the business climate changes often. You need to keep quality monitoring agile and fluid enough to stay current with up-to-the-minute scenarios. If your quality assurance doesn’t change, you’ll quickly fall behind with customer satisfaction.

9. Rate your reservation services

If you’re having a workshop or important meeting, client participation is everything. Make an extra effort to follow up with would-be clients and regular customers. Quality assurance and customer participation go hand-in-hand.

10. Showcase groundbreaking calls

We can safely say that legendary performances aren’t limited to the sporting arena, but at times, Sometimes, call center agents hit a homerun with spontaneous communication and exceptional service. You can use this same outstanding service as examples to inspire your entire team for optimal quality assurance – sometimes, a little extra inspiration does the trick.

Now that you would have learned some best practices for your call center Quality Assurance, contact us now so that we can help you to be the number one.