Company Policies

[StephB]

Has anybody ever drafted an acknowledgement statement to give to CSRs when they begin. It covers the basics such as working shifts, holiday, weekends, and calls being monitored.
I'm looking for suggestions on how to word it without coming off to harsh but yet still getting the message through to everybody.

[Michcall]

I use two: one a list of the center policies and another a form agents sign that acknowledges they understand they will be monitored. We use the policy list during the interview to make sure the prospect understands what the expectations are and can make an employment decision based on all the facts and then we review it again during training.

My belief is that any list you put in writing should be as straight-forward as possible---that's not harsh, that's just reality. If you try to soften the document too much, they become suggestions, rather than policies, which agents will interpret as they want. Ours is a bulleted list that covers shifts, weekends, vacations, asking for time off, breaks, attendance/tardies, metric goals, etc. When we deliver it, we state that these are the center policies that everyone is expected to follow, however we understand that individual situations may occur that may impact an employee, so we do take individual situations into account. We use the face-to-face time to let the agent know those areas that we can be flexible, and those areas that we are not. We use this time to show that we care about them as individuals, but there are standards that are critical to our success.

We begin the document by stating what our customers expect from us, what our goals are as a group, and that to achieve these expectations our team follows the guidelines/standards in the document. I've only had positive feedback from agents because they want to have a framework of expectations and understand how to be successful in the group.