It was thirteen years ago, the first I saw the 9-11-2001
videos. A month, after all the videos in
the dreadfulness, I thought a different idea that happened at the towers. The towers ended of working into the office. Then began, to work from
twenty feet inside home in employment.
About 90% people, working in the towers, used a telephone
and a computer. Those 90% people left home on that morning --- and forgot about
their telephone and a computer at home … they forgot their office in their home.
In 2000, few employers worked at home. In 2010, 13.4 million people worked at least
one day at home per week --- an increase of over 4 million people in the last
decade (US Census). Now, that is established as a daily ---
walking twenty feet to their office.
This month I got a email that answered
my vision of walking to the office. Mindvalley,
a company in Malaysia, sent the email. Here are the
best of that email (I put the pictures).
A few years back we decided to
expand our Customer Support team and open a support center in Costa Rica. Costa
Rica is a hotbed for customer support centers with even major companies like
Amazon.com having teams there. (Working at the office, not working at home.)
But
when we opened up applications we noticed an interesting pattern. A lot of the
candidates who applied were single moms. They were attracted to our jobs
because we allowed people to work from home.
But to be honest, we really didn’t
think it was going to work out. How could a work from home mother who also had
a kid to take care of compete in Customer Services scores against our service
stuff who worked from other locations in professional offices.
We
assumed the Costa Rican hires would be comparatively unproductive, because
we assumed that being a stay-at-home mother meant that you would
be prone to distraction and are occupied with what naturally comes first – the
children.
But what unfolded proved our assumptions wrong.
These
mothers who worked from home, while simultaneously taking care of
their children, actually outperformed fulltime Customer Support
Teams that are based in an office. At that time we scored all our agents based
on a metric called the Awesomeness Quotient. It
was a metric measuring emails answered multiplied by customer satisfaction
scores using a polling service called NiceReply.com.
In
BOTH metrics our moms outperformed regular 9-5 office workers.
Keep
in mind that these moms had outdated laptops. They worked from home while our
regular staff worked from a Mindvalley HQ, an office that was mentioned in Inc
Magazine as one of the "World’s Coolest Workplaces." Plus they were
also taking care of their kids.
Yet
in every metric they outperformed.
We’re not absolutely sure why our
experiment worked, but what we learned was this:
1.
It’s important to trust the people you invest in. Why do we insist that
people work around a 9-5 or report to a office to clock in? Perhaps
the 9-to-5 work setting is merely an illusion. What if all employees
could chose to work their own hours?
2. Motivated employees can
easily juggle work and family. It’s a mistake to underestimate a man or women
who is dedicated to their job yet has a child to raise.
3.
We asked our moms to treat every customer as their personal angel. This means
no copy and paste answers but actual meaningful personalized replies. We asked
them to inject love and care into their emails. (Perhaps there was some quality
about being a mom that helped fuel this.) Because within a few months customers
began writing back claiming that we had blown them away with our level of
service. Almost every week we have customers writing in to call us the ‘best
customer service they have received in their lifetime.'
But more importantly, we are
impacting and changing the lives of our Costa Rica Moms, enabling them to raise
their children fulltime, while still delivering quality work and service to our
customers from home.
On September 11, 2001 remember that was the day when
employees began to "work on their hours." The next decade will be
more as business become "female," as the old "male" will
lose the power.
PS. I am speaking
at Peter Cikalo's Entrepreneur Club on February 12, 2015 at Denny's on 2077 N 1st
San Jose. If you eat for dinner, arrive about 7 pm. If you eat a snack, arrive
about 7:30. Speaking begins at 8 pm.
First, we (I am the speaker,
but all attendees will be to speak) will work to understand your four personal
zones for business.
- Comfortable Zone (when you are comfortable, with no fear at all),
- Un-Comfortable Zone (might be feeling unsure, lack of confidence, etc),
- Fearful Zone (real, or unreal (ie, like a gun pointed at you),4. Panic Zone (no place to go, you know that you has cancer).
For the communications,
we understand your four personal zones for your business or future business.
Be happy, healthy, wise, and abundance,
Tom Van Drielen
Symbiosis
Enterprises
1175 Branham Lane #18907
San Jose, Ca. 95118
http://www.symbiosis4u.us (lots of
free videos and eBooks at website)
Home Office 408-723-4777
