Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Culture Index for Finding the Right People, Contact Center Cactus Chat

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Eric continues his conversation with Pac Biz Talent Acquisition Manager Cathy Belen. Find out how you can find the right people for the right positions at your company in this episode of the Contact Center Cactus Chat with Eric Mulvin of Pac Biz.  

Welcome to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Malden, and we're back for the part two episode with Kathy here. And so today we're going to be talking about culture index and getting into people's personalities and figuring out how can we find the right people for the right seat so that when you, the businesses that are listening to the show right now, start working with a call center like us, how do we make sure we're finding the right people for you guys? And so we're going to dig in that today. And we've got Kathy back on the show. Welcome. Thank you again, Eric. Thank you very much for having me again today. And I hope to

discuss a little bit about Culture Index today and more about hiring. For the people listening in the podcast, what is Culture Index? So over the last, I don't know, 18 months now, we've put in place this tool, Culture Index, which is a personality testing. So I think a lot of business owners and companies are somewhat familiar with that. And I agreed to bring it in over to PACBIS after I took the test. And I had other people take it. And I think pretty consistently it was giving people's personality within like a 95% to 98% accuracy.

Like people were finding out stuff about themselves. And it measures a lot of really interesting things such as even not just personality, It measures a lot of really interesting things, such as not just personality, but there's a thing called energy units where you're measuring if people are getting burned out or not. Correct. And that's an area that we're focusing on more. But initially, we brought it in for talent acquisition. And I think it all goes full circle because you're dealing with the people getting brought on, but you're with you know helping out with a little bit of other parts of the company we don't take care of the staff and they quit you're gonna have to hire more people yeah that's more work so there's an incentive for you know like to have be in an organization that keeps the people so don't have

to keep hiring more and more uh but you didn't tell me a little bit about your because you've been leading the chart i have to thank you for like the last little bit about your, because you've been leading the chart. I have to thank you for like the last, I don't know how long you've been the champion of Culture Index and really used it and brought it into practice so that we could use it, not just for hiring, but I think we're getting into this next phase, this next year in 2023 of how could we use it to manage our existing staff and build teams better. But tell me, what has your experience been like with Culture Index? Oh, yeah. And thank you for bringing that up, Eric, because, you know, Culture Index has really

been, it is really a fantastic tool. And that is true. It is a personality test. But I think more than a personality test, it's really an appreciation and a communication tool. And in our experience, it's really been great because probably I'll just give you like a background about what really this tool is all about and why this is important and why we're investing so much on it. investing so much on it it's because um you know culture index it focuses on people like what we mentioned earlier people is the most precious resource of the company so we want the people we bring in to be the right people we want them to be placed in the right seat because if they're not in the right seat it's like uh writing with your non-dominant hand. Remember our workshop? Try to write your name with your left. Correct.

And it's funny. And what it is is that, and if I may borrow Jackie Lord's words, if I may quote her, she said, when someone is not placed in the right seat in the company, they will have an out-of-body experience. Correct.

So that means, the ultimate goal really of talent acquisition here in PACMIS is really to get the right people and to place them in the right seat so how do we do that um first we have to identify the strengths of people and we have to enhance the impact of that unique strength because you and I may have different strengths and you know basing on our trait profiles but you know we'll discuss that later on maybe and also with culture and DAX not only are we able to bring the right people for the right seat or for the right role but we are also able to help you know better manage them how are we how do we manage people how do we communicate with people

and how do we motivate them and also um i think it is such a powerful tool especially when it comes to training and coaching and um apart from that i think it's uh it's one tool we're in we're able to see uh whether you know this person is is out, like what you said earlier, or, you know, is his strength, you know, aligned with a job description of the role. So that's what it is. So essentially, with Culture Index, we are able to get the right people, keep the right people, and keep them engaged as well. Yeah. And it's a fairly new thing. We haven't been doing it for that long. I can't say that we've been able to grow the company

using Culture Index for eight years. It's only been like the last year or so. And you mentioned Jackie, which we'll have on a future episode soon. So if you wanna learn more about this, we're gonna have Jackie on the show. So you get to get a little deeper in that. But yeah, it's really just to take what we're doing at Patentless to the next level, which the way I feel like at explaining it is, you know, like

most companies, you figure this stuff about people, but it takes time. And it might take trial and error. Like, hey, let's put this person in this role oh that was a bad idea they're not doing too good we shouldn't layer we gotta put something else in uh where this team is not functioning you know we need to change it up so instead of guessing and trying and seeing if it works or not we don't have time for that and i don't think our clients do either they can't afford to have us tinkering around and figuring things out with the staff and who goes where. So it's really just about cutting that learning curve down so that we could work with people better. And we're using it in so many different interesting ways that I never thought when I initially brought it on. Because we're not only using it with our staff,

we're actually using it with clients too. Correct. Yeah. And I know you're helping get the surveys out. but just to share, you know, for example, we're doing virtual assisting here now at PacBiz. And the skills to be a really great virtual assistant is different than the skills to be good for customer service. Correct, yeah. So, I don't know, can you speak about that a little bit? Yeah, definitely, Eric. Because, you know, when we talk about customer service or being

a customer service representative, you need to be more of a people person. And, you know, you need to be more empathetic, so to speak. And, you know, in general, you really have to be a people person. But when you talk about being a virtual assistant, you don't get to talk to people as much i mean i'm just talking about virtual assistants per se wherein it's more admin work you know work that doesn't talk back to you so obviously you know uh somebody who is great with people may not be as great doing you know work that's that doesn't talk back to them um some people would like to be placed in a spot where they're able to you know just work that doesn't talk back to them. Some people would like to be placed in a spot where they're able to, you know,

just interact with people on a daily basis, but others would just love to be there on their computer doing worksheets and just, you know, things that don't necessarily need a response. So that's why this is where Culture Index comes in and it's really very essential because we are really able to see the unique strength of our applicants and which seat or which role they should be in. Eventually, they may be good at this at the beginning, but three, six months down the road, if that's not really the seat that's right for them, that's right for them, they get burned out. They just and they just quit. Yeah. And we have high attrition here. You know what?

True, yeah. We want to bring like we I mean you're the one that oversees the hiring process. So, I mean you know how much work it takes to get that person to be here because we're in this is a training. Yeah, this is a training yeah this is a trick so it's to get them to come to the training room to start training is a lot of work and so we don't want to go through all that and then turns out they don't work out because not only does that impact us internally it uses or resources again gotta think back to the clients you know what happens to your clients when you start working? Like there's,

so some of you people listening right now might be thinking about using a call center and you're looking for like, what's some tips to look for? And I would say, you know, this is something to consider. You know, are they doing personality tests? What are they doing to hire the people? Because there's so much data that you can get on people these days that could be really useful and we're not trying to use it to eliminate people we're trying to use it how can we find their strengths how can we find them to so they could thrive in that correct yeah uh because that has been my goal from day one that's why i was so attracted to this tool because i want people like if they're in the right seat and it's the perfect job

for them and we'll leave and I don't rank we've got over 200 people today working at pac-biz it's February 2023 and I don't think we'd have 50 people this year celebrating their five-year anniversary when the company if we weren't putting people in the right seat and I last time I was out here is July 2022 about eight months ago. And it was really shocking. It was my first trip back after almost three years. How many people were telling me,

Eric, I've been with the company now three, four years. Before this, I've never worked at a job for more than six months. And it was like really, like it was validation for me because I started Pacbiz because I wanted to make this a job that people really loved and then that they felt home correct so I don't know again it just goes full circle because we got our core values of family and you know why are you going to bring someone into the family that is disruptive or correct you know yeah not a good fit but if you

bring someone in and you know they're gonna be lasting three, five years. And so I get to sell clients at all the time. There's a good possibility that this team that you have taking calls for you, these three people, five people who started with 10 people, that core team is still gonna be there three to five years from now. And that's, like in our space,

I feel like that's pretty unheard. I don't know. I don't know how much experience you have with other call centers, talent acquisition, but I don't know. I feel like that's something that's pretty unique here at PackBits. Yeah. Yeah, I think so too, Eric.

Well, I don't really have that much experience in terms of, you know, how long people would stay in a call center or in a company for that matter. But I think when when we're talking about the BPO industry there's really higher attrition compared to others and I've been with a couple of BPO's before and of course I can really see that people don't stay for that very long. And in my interviews, I would often, you know, get amazed by people who

stay maybe two, three years down the road in one BPO. Because that's really, really amazing. And I'm also quite impressed. And like what you said, we have 50 employees who've been with us for five years. That's pretty amazing. That goes to show that, you know, the environment that we have really is, everyone is really aligned to our core values of, you know, family, respect, teamwork, compassion, and personal growth. And that also shows in our, what we call, Employee Satisfaction Survey, which we run every year. And although not everyone's really happy because, you know,

there's no perfect organization and you can't really please everybody but you can really see that people are just really happy with the family environment with the camaraderie with that teamwork and there's just genuine um there's just genuine love if i may use that word so boldly there's just genuine love and support in this in word so boldly there's just genuine love and support in this in this company yeah and it might sound weird to say like oh you're talking about a company and those are words you're not might not typically hear but i could tell you you know uh this trip here uh i brought we brought a lot of people out not me personally i have family here

uh that we brought from the u.s and a lot of i i think there's probably like 30 or 40 people who have never been to the philippines before that are experiencing it for the first time and a lot of them got to attend the the celebration eight year celebration and they've been telling me just even this morning is having breakfast with some people and they're like it was so incredible at your event. You could feel how happy people are. And I think it's true. So for you guys listening, it's possible to build an organization where you've got staff members that feel like that.

It takes effort and it takes work. It is, yeah. It's taken eight years to get to this point. But, yeah, it's pretty cool when we get there. And, you know, now we can build on it. Now my goal is, okay, how can we get a lot more people to fill it? Because though we got 200 people, why can't we get 400 people? Yeah.

And, you know, eight, they say is a lucky number. But of course, we don't just believe in luck, but we, of course, believe in hard work and teamwork. So it's, if I may quote Father Bong from our mass, it's just onwards and upwards from here on for Pac-Bit. Yeah, definitely. And they say that luck is where hard work meets prep. Correct. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. We make our own luck by putting ourselves prep. Correct, yeah. I couldn't agree more. Yeah, we make our own luck putting ourselves out. Right, right.

Cool. Hey, Kathy, it was so awesome to have you on the show. I really love the conversation we had and glad we're able to share that with our listeners. And I think this will probably be part two because this is long enough.

Two parts. So I hope you guys got a lot out of that. And if you want to learn more about Culture Index, we're going to have a future episode with Jackie, who's one of the people that helps implement this at companies based out in Saskatchewan, Arizona. Really amazing person. She works with a few other businesses I know as well.

And I know you guys are going to love that episode as well. We're going to dive deeper into that. But for this episode, yeah, thanks for sharing a bit about your, you went deep into a little bit of your background. So I appreciate you opening up and thank you so much for all you've done at PACT is with helping bring in all these talented people and helping us out here over the last few years. Yeah. Thank you very much, Eric. Thank you very much. It's really such an honor to be here at your podcast and our podcast, if I may say so. And thank you very much for having me. I really had fun today.

All right. Great. Well, until the next episode, please, you know, if you know other people that are dealing with call centers, maybe they're thinking about outsourcing, maybe their business gets a lot of phone calls, they're looking to improve their customer experience. Please send them this podcast.

I think there's a lot of really great information that we're going to keep sharing. We're starting to build up some really amazing guests that are going to be on the show this next year. And so make sure you subscribe, follow us on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, any social media platform. we're sharing clips from the show so look for us out there

and until then we'll catch you guys on the next episode thanks for listening