“<” + “3” = LOVE
Try to type this in Facebook, and you will get a heart.
This graphic animation often used in social media messaging is a simplistic and
lighthearted depiction of a complex emotion. Love in any form needs
demonstration. When one sees love, watches it grow, feels it, lives it, gives
and receives it, it becomes real and the most amazing thing, especially if it
happens in, of all places, a customer contact center.
The notion of love is alive and well in C3, a customer
communications outsourcer, whose customer contact representatives are
surrounded by love, literally as the word fills the spaces on the walls and cubicles around them, and
figuratively. Beyond the literal sense
and corporate speak, C3 makes a difference in the information communication
technology industry because of its culture of love.
C3’s full name, C3/CustomerContactChannels, spells out
its very essence: Customer, which means that C3 is a company that serves the
customer above all else, with full intent to resolve issues quickly, and to do
things excellently; Contact, as C3 is an expert in contact center management;
and Channels, through which C3 says, for every issue there is a way, there is
an answer.
C3
has become a pioneer in handling multichannel customer care and has created a
unique, employee-centric culture that is innovative for the contact center
industry. C3 prides itself in having an entrepreneurial spirit that
encourages everyone in its organization from every level of management and
every type of employee to suggest new ideas and try new things to make the
company better.
As a
contact center in the Philippines
Love what you do
At C3, “Love What You Do” is not a cliché; it is a way of
life. From the point of hire, the tagline comes alive for every employee in C3
and it becomes an essential way of doing things.
C3
Philippines was organized by a core team of seven people, all of whom are
seasoned professionals in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. They
brought with them a shared history, the key officers having worked together for
almost 10 years in different contact center industries worldwide; tenure; and,
the best practices from the industry including their own innovations on how to
make a workplace a love-filled hotbed of productivity. This core team knew what
was needed to do to make their idea of a dream company become a reality. And
this is exactly what they did. They built C3 to be a place of work where
someone can love what they do.
The Philippines being the number one call center
destination in the world, employing over 600,000 agents and surpassing India’s
350,000, makes it the ideal place to plant the C3 culture of love. The
Philippine contact center industry has grown exponentially in the last five
years, contributing a staggering $11 billion (5%) to the country’s Gross
Domestic Product (GDP). This growth has spurred a growth in the income levels
of contact center agents.
But being paid well is not
everything, according to Kevin Urrutia, C3’s Vice President for Operations. The
contact center industry has seen a high attrition rate even if higher salaries
and more bonuses are offered. While the industry average of attrition is 10
percent (10%), C3 only has an attrition rate of between 3 percent (3%) to 4
percent (4%), a significant indicator of how the culture of love in a workplace
can affect employee longevity.
“I
love people. There is a sense of joy and fulfillment from being able to help
someone, which makes me love coming to work every day,” he enthuses. It’s this
genuine love and care for people that reflect on the people around him. For
instance, he calls everyone by their first names. Even if he is an executive of
the company, he treats his employees as peers. “At the end of the day,” he
adds, “everybody is equal.”
Do what you love
It is everyone’s dream to get to do what they love. And
when that dream comes true, it makes everything click: the job becomes
effortless. Rick Ferry, CustomerContactChannels’ president and COO, explains,
“The whole theme is to love coming to work in the morning, love where you work,
love who you work for, love who you work with – it comes from the old notion
that if you love what you do, then you never ‘work’ a day in your life. There’s
a great deal of responsibility that goes behind that word and that overall
theme; we have to live that every day. Essentially, we want our staff to enjoy
what they do and be proud of it.”
At C3, an employee’s life begins with a mutual
understanding of respect, responsibility, and passion. And as this work culture
blossoms, employees become enamored with the dream that indeed they can love
what they do. He can learn to give all that he’s got; to be taught and trained
so that he could offer solutions to clients; to increase his skills and
therefore his confidence in looking for ways to help; to adapt to changing
situations and rise to different challenges – and as he learns to do all these
things at C3, he will end up doing what he loves and making his dream work
become a reality.
Jill Vivas, Senior Operations Manager and one of the
members of the original core team, says, “At C3, we have an open door policy
and employees can talk to us anytime. They can bypass their immediate
supervisor and talk to any manager. Even the highest officer, our country
manager Andy Sarakinis, is available anytime.”
Jill
says she was touched when Andy opened his home to his employees during a string
of storms in August this year. Another manager, Chris Cardenas, drove employees
from their homes to the C3 building’s training rooms, which were made into
temporary shelters for employees and their families. She says she has never
heard or experienced such kind of caring from employers before. Things like
these make employees fiercely loyal to C3, she observes.
C3 is
taking the Philippines
Profile of Mark:
Living an adventure at C3
The opportunity of finding
satisfaction and adventure in the workplace is not as difficult as one may
think.
This Marc Espinosa discovered
that as a new employee of C3, a leader in Outsourced Customer Management
Solutions. Armed with an AB English
degree from the San Agustin University of Iloilo City, he was faced with the
choice of either spending his post-school life teaching in his hometown, or to
embark on a journey to Manila for greener pastures.
“I wanted to become
independent,” he recalls, adding that in the end, the lure of trying and
experiencing new things clinched his decision to relocate. Almost immediately
after arriving in Metro Manila, the driven Marc was able to find employment in
the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. It was not at all a surprising career choice
for him then as the industry was offering lucrative pay to fill the numerous
job vacancies that has since made BPOs the darling of the Philippine
economy.
Considering his command of the
English language and willingness to learn new things, he soon found himself on
the fast track of success in the first BPO he worked for. After attaining a
supervisory position, he began evaluating his next career move.
“I stayed there for five
years,” he says, noting that he would have remained longer had things been
better. A chance encounter with a former
colleague prodded him to take the next step in seeking professional
fulfillment. As it turned out, the
former colleague started working for C3 and encouraged Marc to join the
company. Sufficiently intrigued, Marc
did some research and found the company’s profile excellent. “The word-of-mouth reputation of C3 got me
thinking,” he relates, noting that the positive impressions he got from
colleagues and friends weighed heavily on his decision to make such a drastic
professional change.
There was, however, a
catch. After attaining a supervisory
position in his former company, the prospects of being a “newbie” once again
was not exactly to his liking. In the
end, the opportunity of working for C3 won out.
“It was a chance to work in a new environment,” he notes, adding that
unlike other established BPO companies, there was undoubtedly more upward
mobility in C3—something that the adventurous Marc looked forward to.
According to Marc, he breezed
through the hiring process. “After five
years, I had done a lot of interviews and taken numerous exams,” he says,
noting that he was quite confident that he would be hired.
And he was. Nonetheless, it was only after he decided to
join C3 that he soon realized how different the company was from his former
employer, or even perhaps with other BPO companies currently operating in the
Philippines. “The training process was
very different,” he shares, recalling that there were no boring PowerPoint
presentations that put one to sleep.
Instead, the lectures proved to be more interactive with role playing
activities included in the program.
This, he observes, made new employees fully grasp the company’s open and
honest way of conducting business.
One aspect of the company’s
culture that continues to surprise him to this day was how open employees are
to one another—including their superiors.
“You can communicate your concerns to the company. You can actually say if you’re not treated
fairly and you can directly reach out to your employers. In other companies, you don’t have that kind
of a relationship.”
C3’s open door policy allows
employees from all levels to approach even the senior officers at any time. Marc
also notes that unlike other employers who cultivate a serious image, C3’s top
officers keep their humor intact. “My
bosses are ‘kalog’ (zany),” he says affectionately, obviously referring to the
crazy and fun environment that his superiors encourage to help diffuse the
stressful aspects of being a contact center representative. “It’s a fun place to work in. We are serious with our work but we have fun
and work at the same time.”
Marc and his colleagues are
experiencing some of the ‘fun’ activities that the company has been preparing
for its employees. They just recently
concluded their ‘Sportsfest’ he says, along with theme days like ‘Halloween’
that are part of the company’s calendar of activities.
In fact, caring for its
employees is a responsibility that the company doesn’t take lightly. ‘C3 Cares’
is a phrase that Marc often heard at work. The veracity of how C3 truly cares
is something he experienced firsthand during the disastrous monsoon rains that
inundated most of the Metropolis a few months back.
“I live in Pasig City and
during the ‘Habagat’ (Southwest Monsoon) our community was flooded,” he
recalls. To add to his worries, the
disaster took place during his training period.
When the company told him not to go to work until the floodwaters had
receded, it put him at ease that he would be allowed to continue training. Days
later, he likewise learned that C3 had actually allowed families of stricken C3
employees to take shelter in their offices until their homes became habitable.
During regular work days, C3
sets targets that employees can realistically achieve. “In other companies,
they ask you to do what is impossible.
In C3 they ask you to do what is challenging, but certainly attainable,”
he states, noting that the company knows how to prod excellent work by
providing an environment that promotes optimum performance.
When it comes to compensation
and incentives, says Marc, C3 has likewise proven to be very generous. “You get rewards for the good work that
you’ve done, including incentives for referring people to the company. And not only financial incentives, they also
give out trips to Boracay—which by the way is still ongoing!”
Indeed, C3 encourages friendly
competition with its employees, though not, says Marc, for attaining personal
scores for oneself, but for the team.
“You get to earn bragging rights, which inspires other employees to work
even harder,” referring to the company’s public recognition of optimum team
performance. “It inspires other
employees to work even harder,” he adds.
For its part, the company
actually provides activities and opportunities that enable its employees to
reinforce company camaraderie, as well as career advancement. These include bazaars, vacations as rewards
for accomplishments, sports fests, tree planting, museum trips with family
members, financial wellness seminars, etc.
Suffice it to say, Marc has
already mapped his goals and is appreciative that the company has in fact
instituted programs that will help its employees attain new mindsets and
develop skills that will help them on the way to success. “We have C3 University,” he says, referring
to the company’s free program that provides courses to enable employees to move
up the company ladder.
The C3 University platform
focuses on self and career development curricula. It houses all the courses
under a free program which is open to all employees regardless of their tenure.
Those who are willing to attend classes in their spare time for career and
skills enhancement undergo particular courses that fit the level of skill that
needs to be enhanced. Other various training programs are also offered like the
C3 Plus and C3 Labs programs, which can also spell a faster climb up the
corporate ladder.
At present, Marc has set his
sights on the C3 University, but is equally cognizant of the different
opportunities that can be found within the company in the near future. “Next year, they are planning to open even
more new accounts,” he observes, referring to the continuous expansion that C3 is
experiencing at the moment. “Who knows?
I could apply. Something new could happen, I might get to interact with
other people and that could be a new adventure.”
Profile of Keisha:
Where love takes
center stage
Blurb:
It is one thing for a
company to proclaim that it 'loves' its employees, but another thing entirely
to walk the talk.
Valentine’s Day may
traditionally be the time to show people how much you care, but Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) firm C3/CustomerContactChannels (C3) takes the
principle of V-Day to heart by making a company culture out of it.
This “love fest” is
seen the moment one enters company headquarters—posters strewn across the
company walls proudly declare, “Love what you do,” “Love coming to work,” and
“Love the difference.” And if that is not enough to convince a visiting client
or guest, the employees themselves are the best reflection of the company’s
love-centric culture. For an organization that operates mostly at nighttime,
the atmosphere teems with a vibrant energy that can only come from people who
genuinely enjoy what they do, respect who they work for, and thrive in their
work environment.
A Culture of Positivity
For 22-year-old
Keshia Faculin, a fresh college graduate, learning about C3’s core principles
cinched her decision to work for the company. “C3’s culture best reflects its
core values of accountability, open and honest communication, and recognition
of people and community—when I saw this, I felt that this was a company that’s
not all about business, but also one I can see myself growing in,” she shares.
A born-again
Christian, Faculin regularly conducts bible study groups outside of work. “I disciple
people and teach them how to lead their lives in a positive way, to be vibrant
in spite of challenging circumstances,” she shares, adding that this aspect of
her personality is something she feels her company genuinely supports. “In C3,
I get to help out people with their concerns. So, aside from being of service
in church, I can also do that at work. It totally coincides,” she says.
For call center
supervisor Dennis Escobar, it was the fact that C3 is a growing company in the
Philippines that drew him in. “It’s the hope of a new culture, a different
environment,” he admits. “I didn’t like how things were handled in my
previous company—they were quite rigid when it came to their employees. The
call center culture I grew into was good, but people would change as they went
up the ranks. With C3, the bosses here are different. They listen to you,
they treat you as family, and they ask for your input before making a
decision. My past company would never ask for my take on the company’s
operations. Here, we have an open door policy that is neither abused nor
exaggerated. I feel that what I say matters,” Escobar says.
A Caring Employer
More than being an
environment that injects fun into the workplace—C3 regularly holds monthly
raffle draws, sports fests, and parties to further engage its 1,800-strong
workforce—what makes the company’s average attrition rate significantly lower
than the industry average is the management team itself.
Comprised of call
center veterans that have been in the BPO business since it started in the
early 2000s, C3’s team of executives has served the industry as agents
themselves who experienced firsthand the negative aspects of the sunrise
industry. “Where we came from, there were so many concerns coming out and
nobody would listen. The average attrition rate for most companies would be ten
to fifteen percent (10 to 15%) every month. But ours is just at three to four
percent (3% to 4%) attrition. That’s a very big difference. Only when you
show people you care do they become better employees on the phones when
they talk to their customers,” says Kevin Urrutia, Director of Operations at
C3.
Since people tend to
spend more waking hours working than doing anything else, work happiness plays
a huge role in overall happiness. More than providing opportunities for its
employees to grow and stay motivated, C3 adds depth to this principle by
reaching out to its people beyond work.
When the recent heavy
monsoon rains struck Metro Manila, a number of C3 employees were left
stranded; some even had their homes flooded. “When the habagat (monsoon
rains) came, our office was converted into a ‘relief center’ for employees
and their families,” shares Escobar, adding that it further added to the family
atmosphere the company wants to cultivate. “We had grandparents here, kids and
even yayas (nannies). The pantry was open 24/7; there were concession
areas, shower areas, etc. It was basically letting employees know that we’re
all family here,” says Escobar.
Apart from providing
for its employees’ needs, what really struck Escobar was the physical
presence of management during the storm. “In most companies I’ve worked for,
during storms, you’d never see the bosses. They’d come up and send food, and
that’s it. But here in C3, all the bosses were here physically, checking up on
people. When we had agents who got stuck in Pasig where it was flooded, it was
the managers who drove them from their homes to C3. Our country manager
even offered his house for an agent,” Escobar shares.
Indeed, it is one
thing for a company to proclaim that it “loves” its employees, but another
thing entirely to walk the talk. “Many of our competitors try to do it this
way, but it really boils down to execution and sincerity. You can always
say that so and so are your values, but if your employee feels from the very
beginning that he can’t even talk to his manager, then that automatically tells
him that what you’re saying is a lie,” explains Urrutia.
At the end of the
day, the golden rule still holds true: “Do unto others as you would have them
do unto you.” Treating people the way you would want to be treated creates more
positive results. “For us, it’s all about presenting them opportunities for
growth, giving them the right support and training to develop and move up, and showing
them that when you work for a company, it should be the other way around—the
company should be working for you,” Urrutia asserts, ending that, “it is all
about transparency, open lines of communication, and living up to the company’s
core values. Once employees see all that, they realize that C3 is not just
all talk. It walks the talk.”
