At the turn of the 20th century, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote that “[h]appy is the man who is living by his hobby”.
Nowadays, we’ve become more gender-aware and gender-sensitive, but the essence of his message remains as true as ever: cultivating our hobbies makes us all – men and women – happy.
As a matter of fact, when we think of hobbies, we can immediately visualise a relaxing activity like reading, spending time with friends while sipping our favourite drink, or trying to improve in a sport we love.
But as it turns out, hobbies also have a deeper side, which throws some light on our personality and especially our conflict resolution style. In this sense, hobbies can assist in the recruitment process to pick the most suitable person for the job.
Last year, we shared the results of our research showing a direct correlation between active hobbies and domination levels for the CSRs working in the contact centres of one of the UK’s ‘Big Six’ utilities.
This year, we’re able to compare these data with those obtained from the study we’ve been carrying out in the Government Agency we’re currently working for.
The new results confirm that contact centre advisors who engage in active hobbies (such as playing sports or doing outdoor activities) tend to be more dominant than those who prefer sedentary (for example watching films and drawing) and social hobbies (e.g. social drinking, eating out with friends).
Writing is Back
What goes around comes around as they say. Writing, so long the poor relation in customer communication, is back in favour.
Over the past twenty years the pendulum has swung away from the written to the spoken word, and all the way back again. Ubiquitous emails, dynamic Live Chat, and frenetic texting have transformed corporate communication. Opposable thumbs could soon find themselves in the Olympics and Text Speak could become part of the school curriculum.
Back in the day, we learned grammar in school. Parts of speech, clause analysis, identifying grammatical errors were easy peasy for us. But all that changed when Creative Writing galloped onto the scene. Several generations have missed out on grammar, unless they did French, or German.
That’s why it’s difficult to explain why, ‘With reference to your email of 16 September 2017.’ isn’t correct. Where do you start? With the components of a sentence? With the need for a verb? A finite verb?
Trying to eliminate poor writing in companies is a Herculean task on much the same scale as cleaning the Augean Stables.
It’s like trying to teach a mechanic to service a car without labelling parts of the engine.
Apart from the technical accuracy of the text, something journalists call ‘Clean Copy’ – don’t you just love the phrase? – there’s the content to consider.
Those of us who write, love to quote the American journalist and author, Gene Fowler, who famously said, ‘Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.’
Writing is hard work. So even if you have a Hemingway, Twain or Blake on your Customer Communication Team, you can be sure they won’t be happy with the first version of anything they write. These stellar authors produced dazzling prose that was edited, polished and re-worked to within an inch of its life.
And that’s what a lot of people writing to customers don’t realise. The perfect message is not going to be your first attempt, nor necessarily your second. The perfect message demands mastery of content, style, rhythm and pace. Plus an understanding of how words effect customers – emotionally.
Robert Louis Stevenson said, ‘The difficulty of (literature) is not write, but to write what you mean: not to affect your reader, but to affect (him) precisely as you wish.’
It is possible to train Customer Correspondence Teams to write at this level. Some time ago the editor of The Economist wrote to the MD of Thames Water after receiving a letter from a delegate who had taken part in one of our seminars.
He said:
The attached letter gave me a shock – a most agreeable one.
I confess I fully expected either no answer, or the usual sort of standard, off-the-point, get-this-fellow-off-our-backs one that comes from most organisations. Instead I got the thoroughly sensible, non-standard, thought-out letter, directed to the question I’d asked and giving it a persuasive answer.
Please pass on a pat on the back to your customer relations people, as confirmation that, yes, it really does earn goodwill to treat one’s customers as rational human beings, not a pain in the neck or gormless idiots.
And if your company would care to hire out its evident skills in that direction to certain well-known banks/stockbrokers /insurers and other people whom I won’t name, you ought to (though you doubtless wouldn’t) find some ready takers.
Well, he should know.
T2 writing courses helped Thames Water reduce complaints by 18% . Please see www.t2linguistics.com, or contact info@t2linguistics.com.
Tutors and Assessors: The Magic Formula
Following on from the interesting results we obtained about tutors and assessors on the questionnaires dealing with conflict, Emotional Intelligence, and optimism and pessimism, we decided to examine the data on the Stress Evaluation Indicator.
The stress measure divided the participants into ‘B-type personalities’ – who tend to be patient, cautious and laid-back (scores 14–84) – and ‘A-type personalities’ – who are active, energetic, competitive and ambitious (scores 84–154).
In a normal population, the average score on the Stress Evaluation Indicator is 84. But for the exceptional candidates in the experiment, the average score was 90.
Since these results were measured against the independent feedback given by Senior Managers about tutors’ and assessors’ overall job performance, this trend shows that it would be more desirable to select and develop A-type personalities for teaching posts.
This trend was also confirmed by the fact that A-type personalities were more numerous in the above-average group (63.5%) – while only 54% of the average groups fell in the A-personality dimension.
What conclusions can we draw from our results? It’s most desirable that tutors and assessors are A-type personalities, with an optimistic outlook on life; they should also be strong on interpersonal relationships, and prefer a collaborative approach to resolve conflict. The combination of these characteristics seems to give them a better direction in their careers.
As Companies are increasingly more interested in employing sophisticated recruitment tools, T2 is growing its portfolio of psychometric questionnaires. From contact centres to colleges, we can help you hire the best people for the job.
Generation Stress
Working in a call centre can sometimes feel like a contact sport with an endless list of demands, deadlines and battles. Conflict can lead to stress and can directly affect your mental and physical wellbeing. And it’s not only harmful to individuals. Companies also pay the price.
The World Health Organisation estimates that stress costs American businesses a staggering $300 billion a year. Last year alone a record 17 million working days were lost in Britain, costing the economy at least £2.4 billion, according to the UK Statistics Authority.
But is it all bad news? Can teams that work in harmony and reduce their less stress?
We decided to do some research in UK call centres where the tensions were running high. To get the best results, we chose a UK utility company with over 14 million customers.
As part of the training, learners took part in a survey to find out how stressed they were, and how well they worked in a team. The results were really interesting.
Firstly, we looked for trends with work experience and stress levels. In the graph below, the figures on the left axis are a measure of stress. The higher the figure, the more stressed a person is.
What the graph shows is that stress levels increase in the first six years of work, but as staff gain more life experience they become less stressed. The results are even more significant for employees with more than 30 years of work experience. With a score of 75, they are the least likely to be stressed.
Secondly, we tried to find out if staff become more or less collaborative as they became older. The questionnaires completed by staff assessed their preferred Conflict Resolution Style to find out if they were more dominant or collaborative.
Surprisingly, the graph shows that as we mature, and have more experience, we are more likely to be collaborative and fit in with the team.
So it seems that older people are better team players, and are more likely to take a collaborative approach when working with their colleagues and customers. They are also less prone to be stressed and are more likely to take life in their stride.
What implications do these trends have when companies are deciding who to employ?
We think that age and experience play a big part in performance, as research shows that lower stress levels and better teamwork lead to higher productivity.
At least one thing is for sure: older workers are worth holding on to!