Investing in employee development and engagement paves the way for world-class service delivery.
Agility is key to success in today’s rapidly changing business environment. No operation is more familiar with the need to quickly adapt to changes in the market and evolving customer expectations than Pacific Life’s Retirement Solutions Division’s (RSD) contact center. The operation has built a reputation for delivering a seamless, low-effort service experience despite a complex, extensive product line.
“The RSD contact center is a ‘one-stop shop,’ says Lorene Gordon, Pacific Life’s senior vice president of Operations & PMO, Retirement Solutions Division. “We assist our customers (both annuity contract owners and financial professionals) with trades between investment options, withdrawals from their annuity, and clarifications on pending annuity transactions. We will answer any question received about our annuity contracts, from the submission of new business through any part of the lifecycle of the annuity product.”
The contact center’s unique one-stop-shop model impressed judges for the American Business Awards, who recognized the RSD operation last year with a 2014 Gold Stevie Award for Customer Service Department of the Year.
More recently, the contact center received a 2015 Gold Stevie Award for Contact Center of the Year for improving employee engagement and retention. The center successfully employed “voice of the employee” techniques to capture and act on employee feedback.
“These awards are a reflection of our division’s ability to continually shift our processes to meet the ever-changing needs of our very fluid industry and work environment,” states Gordon.
Service as a Key Differentiator
Pacific Life’s RSD contact center is staffed by 99 FTEs who support RSD customers via phone, web and email. The center is committed to delivering on the organization’s customer-centric vision, which is set forth in its “Pacific Life Promise” to customers. “Our ‘Pacific Promise’ outlines our commitments to all of our customers,” says Gordon. “It focuses on the timeliness of handling transactions and resolution of complex requests.”
The center is also guided by an Operations Mission Statement, which simply states: “Through Service Excellence, we are a key differentiator in choosing to do business with Pacific Life.” As Gordon explains: “Our customer service area is an integral part of upholding our Pacific Promise and Mission Statement by ensuring that each customer’s inquiry is responded to promptly and with the highest quality.”
For customers, one of the key differentiators of the contact center’s service delivery is its one-stop-shop model, which has not only helped to distinguish Pacific Life from its competitors, but has resulted in high customer loyalty and retention. To maintain a low-effort experience, the center relies on its voice of the customer program, which enables it to continually collect direct client feedback, quickly identify opportunities for improvement and promptly take action to adapt and evolve processes.
Using Employee Feedback to Identify Growth Opportunities
Although providing one-stop service appears seamless to customers, keeping pace with continual change requires the right backstage processes in place to ensure that frontline staff are kept up to date with the training and knowledge to support an extensive and ever-expanding product line.
“Twenty years ago, Pacific Life had a couple of products, no optional riders and no website, and our variable annuities had less than a dozen investment options,” Gordon explains. “Today, we have over 100 annuities, and not only does RSD support several products spanning the spectrum of annuity investments (i.e., variable, fixed, immediate and index annuities), but we also support the entire history of legacy products and options offered in the past. Whether you bought or sold one of our products yesterday or during the Clinton administration, you will receive the same level of service.”
In an environment of continuous change, the majority of staff development time is often allocated to product and process updates and training. To ensure that the center’s management team was fully supporting its most valued resource, the RSD leaders launched an employee engagement survey to capture anonymous feedback about the work environment, which opportunities, benefits and resources were most valued by staff, and how effective the organization was at delivering on them.
“Pacific Life learned many valuable lessons through the survey and the post-survey work that we did,” Gordon recalls. “One of the areas in which our management team was most enlightened was around what the teams felt to be development versus what we saw as development. While we felt that helping someone understand how to best perform in their current role was development, our staff did not always see it that way.
“Our reps see development as the key skills that their leaders are helping them develop for whatever they see as their future role in the company,” she adds. “The types of opportunities are important, but of much greater importance is that the rep feels like their entire management team is invested in their long-term career development.”
Reshaping Career Development
Pacific Life’s RSD contact center leadership team used the employee engagement survey feedback to reenergize the contact center’s career development initiatives, Gordon says. As part of its commitment to employee development and advancement, the contact center increased headcount to provide reps with adequate time to pursue personalized professional development plans.
There are three main facets of the current employee development program, Gordon explains. They are: “Frequent meetings and meaningful conversations with supervisors, a career roadmap that details different career paths with the skill sets require to be successful, as well as an individual development plan, which outlines objectives necessary for a rep’s growth.”
Performance goals also were established for the management team to create accountability for putting career plans in place for each rep. Professional development aids were rolled out, including a monthly employee publication to highlight “opportunities, success stories and senior employee guidance on advancement,” and career development resources that reps could access via the intranet.
Not surprisingly, the employee development program had a significant impact on contact center attrition. Within the first year, the attrition rate dropped dramatically and almost half of the remaining attrition was positive—reps who left for advancement opportunities within the company.
Gordon considers the growth in internal advancement as a key achievement of the initiative. “One of the things I am most proud of is how many of our reps get selected for significant advancement opportunities within Pacific Life,” she says. “What that really means is that there is no limit to where a frontline rep might go within the company. Given the complexity of our environment, our training path takes about one full year from an individual’s hire date. We typically will start talking about potential growth and development opportunities early in their second year with the organization.”
Importantly, the leadership team’s sincere dedication to staff development also generated higher levels of engagement and performance. “It’s simple,” says Gordon. “Employees who feel that their management team is committed to their long-term development are engaged employees. Engaged employees give discretionary effort that is critical to a world-class service organization like Pacific Life.”
Post-Survey Action Is Critical
The employee engagement survey program has become an ongoing process at Pacific Life. But administering the survey and collecting the feedback are just the initial steps. As Gordon points out, “Our post-survey work is as or more important than the survey itself. We do what we call ‘empathy work’—directly meeting with employees for confidential discussions—which provides a much deeper dive into the survey results and helps us to determine our action plans for improvement.”
In addition to numerous Stevie awards in various customer service categories, Pacific Life’s RSD contact center has been recognized as a service leader within the financial services industry with multiple DALBAR Service Awards since 1997. Gordon is quick to point out, though, that, while awards are important, “Success is also about how well we are impacting the teams’ long-term development—as seen by their responses to future surveys and how they are progressing through the organization. Feedback from our sales teams and customers is also another measurement of success.”
What’s the most important thing a contact center leader can do to improve the rep experience? Gordon offers this advice: “Ask and listen. Your teams have great insight into how their roles can be improved—whether it is the way you document information, provide feedback or how our websites can be enhanced. Surveys and, more importantly, post-survey action, are critical to keeping the pulse of your team.”