The ZIZO Effect

Teaching the "Why" Behind Culture with Jim Iyoob

• ZIZO Technologies Inc. • Season 2 • Episode 3

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Welcome to Season 2 of The ZIZO Effect!
This season, we're diving into the diverse perspectives of agents, managers, and executives from call centers, exploring the unique insights and lessons they've gained.

Episode Overview:
In this episode, we chat with Jim Iyoob, the Chief Customer Officer at Etech, who brings decades of experience and a deep passion for enhancing customer experience in the call center industry. Jim shares his journey from starting as a call center agent to becoming a top executive, highlighting the evolution of workplace culture and the significant shifts in employee engagement and management strategies.

Discover how companies can balance remote work dynamics with in-office engagement, and learn strategies to enhance employee satisfaction, optimize team performance, and cultivate a strong organizational culture. If you are interested in understanding the complexities of modern call centers, this episode offers expert knowledge and real applications.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Personal Background
04:13 Defining and Teaching Culture
08:34 Communication and Feedback
13:49 Creating Engaging Workforce
18:38 Gamification and Transparency in Feedback
21:18 Addressing Burnout and Retention
23:24 Career Development and Skill Building
32:17 Balancing Remote and In-House Work
36:09 Work-Life Balance and Hybrid Work Model
38:09 Creating a Family-Like Culture
47:47 Addressing Mental Health in the Workplace
54:15 Overview of Etech's Services

Guest Information:
Jim Iyoob - Chief Customer Officer at Etech. Connect with Jim on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimiyoob/].

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Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and comment to join the conversation. Check out our other episodes and follow us on our social media pages: 


Don't miss this engaging episode. Tune in now to The ZIZO Effect - It's Game Time! 

Jimmy Chebat:

Welcome back to The Zizzo Effect podcast. This season, we're exploring the unique insights from every level within call center organizations, from the top down. Today, we've got a real treat. Jim Ayoub, the Chief Customer Officer at eTech, is our special guest. Jim is a true expert in the call center industry and we're excited to hear his thoughts on the modern challenges surrounding the workforce and workplace in the industry. So get ready, it's game time. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Zizzo Effect podcast. I am your host, jimmy Shabbat, ceo and founder of Zizzo Technologies, and today we have a special guest, jim Ayoub. He is the chief customer officer at E-Tech. He's a powerhouse in the customer experience world and has so much great experience and advice to give us. Jim, you're also a good friend of mine. We've met quite a few years ago in Nashville and have been friends ever since and also now becoming partners with Zizzo Technologies. Jim, welcome to the Zizzo Effect podcast.

Jim Iyoob:

Jimmy, thank you so much. It's so great to see you and I've been following you since we met and just impressed with all the things you're doing as well in the community. I think that's why God put us together, because we both have a lot of the same beliefs, which is people and communities, so I'm excited about it.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why I brought you on to this show. No-transcript.

Jim Iyoob:

Again, Jim, I'm your chief customer officer at E-Tech. I've been in industry for 30 some years, Believe it or not. I started my career at Dun Bradstreet as a call center agent and what's funny about it is not a lot of people have moved up the world like I did, but understanding all the things we said we used to give our people is kind of where it got my vision. But I've been with Matt Rocco, who I know you know is our president and CEO. So think about this. I was in Pennsylvania I'm not from Texas, as you can tell from this accent. I worked for him for a while and he moved to Nacogdoches, Texas, where E-Tech's headquartered, and I came down 30 days later still with the same guy. I mean two technical jobs in my life, really Dun Bradstreet and E-Tech, and I love my job every day.

Jimmy Chebat:

That's rare to see that people stay in the same job for the same company for such a long period of time, especially in this age where people just move around and change careers so frequently. But going back to you personally, Jim, you said you grew up in Pennsylvania. I know now you're down in Austin, Texas. Tell us about yourself personally and give us a nice fun fact as well.

Jim Iyoob:

I know've got a bunch yeah, I have so many, so, uh, I have three kids, believe it or not, 36 year old with two grandkids. I have a 22 year old who still lives here, jimmy and you probably get this because she says she's never leaving. She has it too good. And I have a 16 year old who's learning to drive and daddy won't teach her. Fun fact. Fun fact is the people who do know me. I dabble at the casino once in a while. I have two slot machines that I just bought my wife for her 25th anniversary. I have a crap stable upstairs. I enjoy data so much. I use data to make decisions, so, and I do. I am a sushi chef, so I love to make sushi. So, uh, and I do, I am a sushi chef, so, uh, I love to make sushi.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah yeah, dabble might be the understatement of the year there. I mean, if you've got craps tables, uh, you've got uh machines in your house. I think dabbling is is is just understating that whole fact. Well, again, jim, thanks so much for coming on today in our episode, and what we've been doing for this season is we're trying to get different perspectives about some of the same topics, and what we talk about perspective we're looking at from the agent perspective.

Jimmy Chebat:

You know the people, the frontline workers, the people on the ground floor, and you know doing the work, and then their managers. You know how they see it, because we believe that everybody sees things from their unique angles. And you are the executive perspective. You know, above the trees, in the clouds, what you see, what problems you're dealing with and how do you perceive these different topics like culture, engagement, distractions, work from home and things of that nature. So first you know, because I know that you had said it in the beginning of the episode here you talked about how we both truly believe in culture, and so I want to get your take on. First, how do you define culture?

Jim Iyoob:

So it's really an interesting topic because, at the end of the day, I mean, like you said in the beginning, like why would I be with somebody and it's really the same boss? Why would I be with somebody for over 30 years? It's because if you work for a culture driven organization who puts people first, which is is not really heard of in the contact center industry, in my opinion, I think culture is basically the heartbeat of that organization. And when I talk about culture, it's what are your principles and guiding principles? So, fortunately for us, we think of a servant leadership mentality.

Jim Iyoob:

Right, so we have 12 character commitments. We have a Dean of leadership development. Her only job is to teach our leaders about culture and our 12 character commitments, and we come with taking care of the needs of others first. Everything will fall on the line. So my definition of culture would be defined as taking care of the needs of others before yourself, and that's what designs a great culture environment which lets people talk transparently about things they like, things they don't like and what you can do as an individual to help them, because it's beyond answering phone calls. It's giving people things that they can do better in their lives.

Jimmy Chebat:

You said something very important there, which is you have a dean who's responsible for teaching leadership. Right, because I also believe, like you can't just, you know, put a poster up on the wall and say here are our traits, you know, here's our pillars of what we believe in and what defines our culture. You actually have to do it. And, as being up above the clouds, you're not in the weeds every day, right, so you have to talk to the people who are in the weeds and tell us about that kind of that transition of knowledge and that transition of culture. And what sort of discussions do you have with your leadership team I'm assuming your management team? I mean, how does that cascade down to the frontline workers?

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah, so it's a great question. So you met Melissa, by the way, in Nashville. She was there and I mean that's her full-time job and what she does is they have aspiring leader programs. So, first and foremost, I think one of the mistakes we've all made in our business is we promote people who probably shouldn't have been promoted out of Indeed right. Companies are growing, so one of the processes we have is, in order to become a leader at E-Tech, you actually need to go through aspiring leadership program, where they have structured programs that teach you the culture, the why, why is this important? And she actually focuses. She has a team of people as well. What they do is they talk about values and talk about why this job is important.

Jim Iyoob:

You're not just answering a phone call for a person. You're solving their problem. Think about internet as an example. It's supposed to be a God-given right. I think some people think about when it goes down, but let's be honest, it's not. It's not a right, okay, but how do you? You're solving somebody's issues, whether they're going to school, whether they have to get something done, and you have to have these culture champions. So, once you get these people embraced in the culture, you create a program for them to be culture champions, and then you have recognition.

Jim Iyoob:

I mean, one of the things E-Tech does is we have I don't want to call it a contest, but it's more of an award ceremony. So every year we have 12 character commitments and you're literally voting almost like American Idol, except we're not voting you off the island, we're voting. You're literally voting almost like american idol, except we're not voting. You're off the island, we're voting. You're voting for these people who demonstrate that character commitment, and it's all your peers. So it's not the c levels deciding this, it's all of the people that are working for you that are deciding, these peers. That makes this process more engaging, right? It helps team members give recognition to the people who are doing it right, and then, of course, when you're doing it right, you want to recognize that person for doing it right. That help.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, oh, absolutely. There's so many great takeaways there and I want to point a few of them out. I think it's really important, and when you said we teach the why, I mean that is so critical. I mean, if you really want to transfer the knowledge, you don't just tell people how to do it right, because it's like a step-by-step instruction and when something does go wrong, they're not able to troubleshoot what's happened. But when you try to get them to understand why you do it and the outcomes that are supposed to come out of it, and then what happens when you do it and the outcomes that are supposed to come out of it, and then what happens when you do it wrong, what are the outcomes that usually wind up happening, and so I wanted to point that out. I think that's a very critical piece in being able to cascade your 12-character commitments, as you put it down, all the way through the entire ecosystem. But you also said another thing that I think is ubiquitous within not just call center space but all larger or growing organizations, is that most people who get promoted to managers, they're not formally trained.

Jimmy Chebat:

Usually. They're doing a great job, they're doing their job very well, and you don't want to lose them and there's no path to growth. So usually they're doing a great job, they're doing their job very well and you don't want to lose them and you know there's no path to growth. So usually they get promoted, they put into a leadership role and then you're kind of winging it. And so what do you do in those moments? I mean, what are the first things you address? I mean there's the people skills, obviously. How do you identify if they possess the people skills? You're teaching them your values and how you want them to lead, but what do you do in terms of the communication between them and their direct reports?

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah. So the communication is important and I have a simple analogy I'll take will over skill any day, because if you have the will I can teach you skills right, and the communication is probably that's like the biggest thing. So how do you fix communication? Well, you could do it with newsletters, which we do. We also have company updates quarterly where the executive teams come out and we let our team speak. We're there to listen to them. So we have other people. We pick somebody new every time for the town halls to speak about their departments and that's kind of where you get to see the future up and comers. Number one, right. Number two it gets you to try them and see what they're able to do from a presentation perspective and the date and how they're getting to it. And you can hear and see in the chats and all the people going around there. Right, we believe in a one e-tech mindset. So you know we're global, right? So e-tech has 3 600 team members in three countries. How do you keep that one e-tech going in communication? Well, we have a swap program, so we have corporate houses in our foreign places.

Jim Iyoob:

So we send US leaders at all times to our India locations. They usually do six months to a year. We do the same in our Jamaica and vice versa. We bring people from Jamaica to the US for usually three to six months, and the same from India. As a matter of fact, like I have two people that I've just relocated to the US the last 10 years. One of our VPs hired him in 2003 as a manager for me when I was living in India, and 10 years ago I brought him and his family to the US. He still runs India from here, but he lives in Dallas, texas now. His kid's going to school here and blah, blah, blah. I just did the same with one of our developers, which you know my development teams. You've worked with them. I just relocated his family here, but he was in India. So that's how you. So, if you think about it and I know I probably offend some people, but let's be honest the American culture has a lot of positives, but we also have a lot of negatives. The Indian culture has lots of positives but also lots of negatives. But the holy grail is can I get both cultures merged together and focus on all the positives by minimizing the negatives? And that's how we would do it, and that's kind of how we do it.

Jim Iyoob:

And the last but not least I would tell you is we use a methodology called direct feedback model. So direct feedback model is literally being the ability to give people direct feedback. And typically for me, you know, we're used to in the old days that sandwich theory, you know talk about the positives, talk about the opportunities, end with the positives. I was never a big believer in that. We do direct feedback model.

Jim Iyoob:

And, more importantly, when you build the relationship with someone, they want the feedback direct. Tell me what I'm doing direct, tell me what I'm doing good, tell me what I'm not doing good, and then you know how can I improve it. And that's kind of why we rolled out that direct feedback model across our entire organization to be able to communicate transparently with the opportunities and what you can do as an individual to obviously get better. And the other thing I would tell you is I believe development 90% on the individual. You're developing 10% for me, as the leader. I'm going to direct you because now, if you give them goals to go out and achieve reading a book, going to a class, doing a certification if they do it again I go back to that's will they want to do a great job, and that's kind of some of the things we do from the communication standpoint yeah, will over scale.

Jimmy Chebat:

I like that. Uh, love that. A couple things I want to touch on, and you know, leadership being one of them that you just mentioned there. But with the feedback loop, you talk about providing that direct feedback, and I know we're working together on making that feedback loop as close to real time as possible, right, and we're going to want to scale that, hopefully, across your entire organization. But what are you doing now in some of those departments where Zizzo is implemented, how quickly is that feedback loop? How quickly are you and how frequently are you providing feedback? I mean, it's with over 3000 employees, you can't do it on a daily basis. So talk to me about that.

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah, it's almost so. Here's the problem with the contact center, and I'll probably offend some more people here. We say we're doing it, but you know, know, just like you, and I believe it as an executive yeah, I'm coaching, but is it effective? Are you giving effective feedback? You're counting on them to tell you what they're done, what they've done. Where I think the benefit of why we're partnering with you is.

Jim Iyoob:

I believe that 90 of the employee wants to do a good job. There's always a percentage that doesn't. We get that, but I think most of them come to work that says I want to do a good job. We also say this myth that we're giving you the tools to be successful. Coaching once a day, once a week, is not, in my opinion, effective. And I do see during COVID which is why we're so excited about an appointment with you during covid, when we went remotely because, remember, we have brick and mortar centers, so we were forced to go covid to remote all the stats went up, jimmy, as we all know right, why? Because it was a honeymoon. And I remember these conversations saying I'm telling you these agents are not getting coached right and I don't believe that you could be. Not everybody can work remotely. Not everybody can work from home, so you have to have those guide rails in there to get that data.

Jim Iyoob:

So what I did at E-Tech is I launched an agent portal where I was providing agents feedback. I shouldn't say feedback, it's not as good as what you guys are doing. Agents feedback more. I shouldn't say feedback, it's not as good as what you guys are doing. But I was giving them data to tell them what they did well and what they're not doing well, and gave them 30 second, 45 second micro learning labs and what we found was more than 70 percent of the workforce was actually clicking through because they wanted the feedback. And then again you go to the managers. I think feedback's a gift which we all talk about and if you want to receive it. But you can't just do it one way. It can't just be a one-on-one session with you and me every day. Hey, jimmy, let me put you over here. Let's listen to this call, let's look at what you did well.

Jim Iyoob:

I think people want more coaching and I think they want more feedback, so the ability to give it to them in real time is huge. But I will caution people, because I've written blogs on this, when I talk about feedback, I don't believe in the agent assist as much as everybody else is believing. Like, listen, I'm going to tell the agent during the call where they should go. All right, let's be honest. The agent has 20 screens open already because, based on your technology, they have to process this order. I have to go through 15 different websites and screens to get it and on top of that, while they're having a relationship building conversation with a customer, you want to pop something to their screen and tell them where to go.

Jim Iyoob:

I I disagree with that mentality. I'm all about real time, almost real time. So if you had the interaction, they did okay, but they could have done better. What can I give them in the moment? Because they're going to remember that call. They just hung up, right, right. So if I give them that opportunity to do some type of gamification which you know I'm a big fan of some type, a little bit of a feedback and again, same concept with the micro learning little bits, they're going to be great in a week to 10 days or whatever the case may be, versus just shooting from the hip saying, yeah, I coached him five times this week.

Jimmy Chebat:

I agree with you and we've talked about this extensively in in your belief in gamification, but more so about that transparency, that feedback loop, the gamification aspect, but more so about that transparency, that feedback loop, the gamification aspect of it is really just the novel part of SISM. Right, it's the recognition, the rewards, but the feedback loop of, hey, you did good and here are your expectations and here is where you are relative to those expectations. So it gives people a goal to shoot for, a target to shoot for each and every day. And you know, even when they do hit their targets, you know we implement things to eliminate complacency, right. So that way, hey, here's another goal.

Jimmy Chebat:

Here's a stretch goal, here's more rewards attached to it. But you had said something earlier in terms of you know, when you put out those micro learning sessions and you measured the, you know the engagement with that right and you measured the engagement with that right. So I always ask the question with people. When people say, hey, I don't want Zizzo to be a distraction, I always come back. My rebuttal is well, can you define engagement from your perspective and tell me what engagement means to you?

Jim Iyoob:

So engagement means so again, I started my career as an agent, so, if we're going to be honest with the world, it's probably one of the most under-recognized job in the industry. Because it's repetitive, it's boring. I'm tied to my headset all day and, by the way, yeah, I know people are out there saying, but we have wireless headsets, I'm still tied to it. Let's be clear, right, because I'm wireless too. But I think what the increased engagement that I talk about? Let's take a boring job that's repetitive, non-rewarding. And how do I make it fun so that my people are not bored every day and looking on, indeed, to find another job? Because I think when you engage the employee to make it more of a fun environment, I think your retention would be fixed as well.

Jim Iyoob:

And you know us, we're big in the corporate branding. I have, as you know, every time you see me, I have a new shirt, right. So what we're looking forward with you guys is these shirts right now you can buy at E-Tech, right? So employees like to have that brand, but they're doing it like every six weeks. Well, I'm imagining, if I can, an agent can earn right rewards and buy more of this merchandise. It's doing two things. One is giving them something concrete they can take home. Number one, and you can get TVs and all the other things we talked about.

Jim Iyoob:

But I'm a big believer in marketing, right, brandy? So if they get more of these shirts, it's going to be more out in the community which are going to say, man, this looks like a fun company, right, and you take away that boring. I mean think about password reset be the easiest one for me to talk about. Okay, people are calling to reset their password. That's got to be monotonous. You're doing the same thing. You've lost your password, we know why you lost it, you forgot, right, and you're just doing that every day. So how can I make that just a little bit more enjoyable? And that's what engagement is about.

Jimmy Chebat:

It's a good point. You bring up, I think, one of the things that we always try to address, which is the repeatable tasks. Right, it's mundane, it's the same thing each and every day and it leads to burnout. So burnout was something that has always been part of, I think, the formula of HR planning right In. You know how do you manage your workforce. You understand that you're going to get a certain percentage of people, even the people who have been with you for a long time, they're going to eventually burn out. But burnout is happening much, much faster nowadays and I think it has a lot to do with technology and just our attention spans, right, especially the newer generation. How do you see burnout from your I mean over your career? You've been in this space for a long time. You've seen the evolution, whether it's generational or whether it's workplace work, from in-house to from your house or remote. How do you see burnout in today's day and age and how has that evolved?

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah. So I think, if you look at burnout, people get bored, like we talked about when you engage them. There's a couple of things that we do successfully. Number one when I'm engaging my employees and showing them a career path, right, a career path goes from agent to assistant to a senior agent to uh you know, potentially management or even moving into the data analytics side. So I talk about it as skills development, because we can teach skills. Like we said, will I can't, teach, skill I can't. If you continue to teach them skills and they see the career path, that's going to remove some of the burnout.

Jim Iyoob:

And, by the way, it doesn't mean everybody's going to be promoted. But I will tell you, this year alone I promoted over 190 people in my organization my director of insights, who does all my analytics. He was an agent 10 years ago. Today he's a director, my vice president of customer success. When I joined E-Tech in 2000, he was one of my agents. He's a VP now. Chandra, who I know you've met, my SVP of Apex. She started as an agent. So it's really important to use these tools to avoid burnout by what's in it for them, not what's in it for me, what's in it for them. And again, not everybody likes the career path, but I think skills development is imperative in this business. It's kind of like, if you've seen, I wrote a blog which got a bunch of bad press. Um, I said bad press, people arguing with me because everybody's talking about to your point ai yes ai is not replacing your job.

Jim Iyoob:

What's going to replace your job is people who don't embrace ai, because ai is a tool, like anything else, that enhances what you can do. It's not replacing you. And when you think about this customer experience which everybody talks about, the more engaged your agent becomes, the better that customer experience is. And people ask me all the time is like so what? Well, here's the difference. So, being a 32 year plus veteran in the contact center industry, yeah, 20 years ago it was okay for me to be on hold at American Express for 20 minutes because I had nothing else to do, but today nothing's going to change.

Jim Iyoob:

So what's changed in our business? Customer's expectations have changed the business. Customers expectations have changed the business itself. We're still answering the same phone call, still doing it in chat, doing an omni channel, still do. The only difference is I have a laptop now versus green screens because, believe it or not, when I was an agent I had green screens, right, and really, what's changed? To your point, this newer generation I have a 22 year old remember their attention span is that of a goldfish, which is seven seconds. So the better your agent is to solve the opportunity or issue or whatever you want to call it in the politically correct world the better that experience is, because as a customer, as a consumer in a global marketplace, I can get your product from anywhere in the world. So the only differentiator you have is that customer experience, which brings back to engaged employees, engaged people and people who are getting better at their job every day.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, I could agree with you more, and I think, as the world goes more and more online right, retail goes online, banking goes online, everybody's shopping online, and so therefore, you're going to need more support staff, which I see a lot of, the omni-channel support where you're getting it through text messages or through chat. But you said it, you're not going to replace the human, not anytime soon. I think people will even recognize, even if you're going to use AI for that low hanging fruit. I still want to talk to a person, even back in the days where they're asking you questions and I just keep pressing zero, zero, operator, operator. Get me to a human. But I want to touch on a point to elaborate a little bit more.

Jimmy Chebat:

You had mentioned part of the success of your organization is that you provide a career path and you provide career opportunities within the same organization, and agents should always be looked at as feeders for all your next level. But that requires investment, and I think you pointed out a few ways how you can identify who's worthy of being invested in. You can measure their will, you can measure their commitment to the organization. When they speak publicly in your public forum, you're able to identify whether or not. They have leadership skills. When you do identify them, how much time do you commit to training them on future skills that are going to be required for them to take jobs, and do you automatically identify what position that you're looking at, or do you just globally make sure that they have all the different skill sets that they're going to need for the different positions?

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah. So it's a great question, believe it or not? We start looking during the interview process. So during the interview process, our recruiters we have something different too. So the person who hires you is the hiring manager. We don't have HR doing it.

Jim Iyoob:

Hr does a lot of the paperwork, but the guy who you're going to be working for makes the final decision of who I'm going to hire, and during that we have a process that says getting to know you. So in that getting to know you session we're asking some questions what is your two-year goal, three-year goal, five-year goal? So now let's just take some basic information. Oh, jimmy, so you're engaged, you're looking to get married. So now I know that. So now I'm going to tell you there's a career opportunity because you're starting in the beginning, and then we basically see your interest in that. And then we flag that to say, okay, jimmy's interested in the promotion because he's getting married in a year. So now we know that about you. As far as the training, then we put you through a rigorous, it's about a six-week course, but I want to be cautious of that, because I'm not taking you out of production for six weeks to train you.

Jim Iyoob:

We're taking you off an hour here, two hours there. Sometimes it's a one day session twice a month, and we're giving you those tools as you're still being a productive employee to then you have to be certified and pass this aspiring leadership. And then there's a certification process that says you have to be certified and pass this aspiring leadership. And then there's a certification process that says you have demonstrated you can do this skill. We do skill transfer. So if you're going to be coaching somebody, you have to demonstrate for the trainers that you can actually take that feedback we talk about and deliver it to somebody, and then that's how you're getting your certifications, which then allows you to go to the next.

Jim Iyoob:

Now, interestingly enough, you ask, because I have three departments. Right, we have three divisions of our company. We have the call center, the analytics, which is under me, and the developers that are under me. So, believe it or not, the best analytics people in the business all came from ops because they were doing the job. They the ones that say this is how it would have been better, right? So that's the other thing. And some people are just data nerds, right, developer coders and, believe it or not, they're getting an agent job to buy beer, money or whatever right extra money. And they're the ones telling us man, man, I went to school for computer programming but I have no prospect out there. And those people are huge to get into the technology division.

Jim Iyoob:

And last but not least, some of our cybersecurity people best ones we hired zero call center experience came in as an agent, just a genius when it comes to cybersecurity. Our chief security officer was like man. They put him in an internship. So now I've taken you from an agent to an intern. We take you through the security stuff and then we see, and then you obviously get promoted up into a full-time job in the security division. It's a diverse background. So think about all the different people that are out there that are taking these jobs because they have to supply for their family. But the only way to understand now to answer your question, is having conversations with them to see what everything is about. And again, that's focused on them instead of me.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, we went through a generation I think our generation where work-life balance was very important. And you know, what you just talked about is something that I've seen happening more and more, which is work-life integration. And you know, one of our other guests earlier guests you know had said the same thing is, you know, with the agent, when we asked them from their perspective and we said what could leadership do, you know, to keep you engaged, to keep you loyal, to keep you there for longer? And he had said ask me how I'm doing, ask me what's going on in my life. And you know, what you just said there just kind of solidifies that as well and but also marries the two right what is going on in your life and how can we help you achieve those personal goals, those life goals? You're getting married, you want to buy a house? Okay, let's set a career path for you. And you're absolutely right from the perspective. Nobody's going to school and getting educated on call center work. There is no major in college for contact center, so you're getting them from all walks of life. You're getting people.

Jimmy Chebat:

You know, when I was, you know I had ran my own operations. I had a lot of people who were college educated, couldn't find a job in their field and just came here as a job, as a temporary job, but excelled Right, and then you just try to find a role for them in the future because you know they're not going to stay forever. Nobody's going to be an agent for their entire career, especially if they have a lot more to give as an employee. I want to shift gears a little bit here and talk about remote work you had talked about. You guys went remote only when required. Have you came back? Are you doing? You know, in terms of uh, you know, your, your workforce? What percentage of them are in-house, full-time? What percentage is hybrid? What percentage is remote full-time?

Jim Iyoob:

yeah, so we're probably 80 back in the centers. Um, and this is just. It's not because we can't do it with technology, it's just one of our beliefs. Our belief in remote workers is you have to earn the right to be remote, right? So if you come into our centers and you're doing a great job, meeting all your kpis exceeding the kpis showing up doing you deserve the opportunity to work from home because you've proven you can do it. And that's really what our our mindset is now.

Jim Iyoob:

Developers and some of my data people who are pulling reports yeah, those people can be remote because there's this task driven, more or less, I just need to get my stuff delivered. So, those people we do remotely. But what we found is, even during covid, when we had so many people that can, that connection was lost. It's not the same calling you up and saying, hey, how was your weekend? Where, when you're in the center, I can walk by. Hey, buddy, how's it going? How was your weekend? What'd you do? Did you? How was your football team, whatever? It's harder to do that remotely in our opinion and, by the way, I know there's companies out there that are 100 remote and they do a great job, um, and and I'm sure they do. It's just not E-Tech's belief to be a hundred percent remote, because we want to have that relationship and we want to have that ability to have a relationship with our employees, which is harder to do when you're remote.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, for the record, I'm 100% in alignment with you. I think there's you had said it earlier the honeymoon phase where it's like, oh my God, we're working from home, I can roll out of bed, I don't have to get dressed, I don't have to drive. If you have a long commute, you can do your laundry at the same time. And I think people really tried hard in the beginning. Then it lost its oomph, but a lot of companies struggled to bring their workforce back. The workers revolted and said no, if you're not going to keep me remote, I'm going to find a company that does hire for remote and I'm going to go there. And it caused a lot of attrition. How did you get your staff back into the office?

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah, so great question. So I think and you're right we did lose some people who took jobs from some of our competitors because they offered the remote. I think it goes back to what we talked about originally, because I've lost them employees, by the way, I've lost in my own organization. I'd lost guys who were, by the way, I've lost in my own organization. I've lost guys who are getting paid double what we paid them. And the funny part about it is, to this day, some of these people who left me for money have tried to come back. Some of them I bring back, matter of fact one.

Jim Iyoob:

I just had a call recently with this guy. He got 2.5 times his salary. So, by the way, I said, by all means, you should go, absolutely, love you to death. I would never match that. You should go Right. So he goes to this company for six months, he gets removed, he comes back to me and says man, I'll take you back in a heartbeat. And I gave him a little bit of a bump from what he left me at. He's like but I was making this, but you're unemployed now, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely right. So so I think it goes back to that culture. Yes, because everybody thinks the grass is greener on the other side. But if you have built a culture of caring individual people and taking care of your people like people, not machines and robots and everything else and taking advantage of them and being a dictatorship, I think that's really what happens and that's how we got a lot of them back.

Jim Iyoob:

Now, to answer your question, some people have work-life balance. That's important kids, schools, whatever. So we like the hybrid model for them, as long as you come in once, twice a week and you tell me when you can come in. By the way, because that's the other thing we found, like when we said, hey, you need to come in on Monday and Wednesday, that didn't work as well for us, because we should have said what day is you committing to come into the office and then you've agreed to that. So then it's easier to do some type of hybrid with that.

Jim Iyoob:

But we didn't pay any extra money. I do know some tests that when I'm friends of mine in the contact center industry, they tried to bring everybody back and everybody says, no, I want to stay home. So then they offered $2 more an hour to come back in sight and like 60% of them decided to do that, but she said it didn't really affect the production. By the way, those people that came back in for that $2, it didn't really give that person a lift, it didn't really help them. She's like it was kind of we should have just made them come back in. So we didn't offer bribes or anything is my point? We just basically says listen, this is part of our business, we want to be on site, we'll work with you, and that's kind of how we did it.

Jimmy Chebat:

So many things you and I agree upon, which is, I think, what makes us great friends. Cause I had the same experience we were. You know I would if somebody came to me and said, hey, I got offered more money, and I'd say, look, that's not in our model, you know we, and if you can go get that, 100%, go get it. And we'd have the same people. Same thing happened. They'd come back.

Jimmy Chebat:

I didn't like that culture. I didn't like it was a, it was a shit show. It was just crazy. There was no accountability. I didn't feel like I was part of a family, and so I do believe that creating that family environment, that culture, that you're not just a number, you do matter here. You're friends with the people that you work with. We treat our people like family. We care about your family the way we would, and I think there has to be that flexibility, that balance. But you're right, it's not for everybody. It has to be earned. You could treat it as a perk, and that's something that we encourage to put into the reward store in Zizzo, which is hey, earn enough coins or Z-Bucks and you can buy your right to work from home.

Jimmy Chebat:

And you can customize so that way. They have to earn the right and once they've done it, they can buy it if that's what important to them. So working from home. So you still have. What do you think is the biggest challenge? I mean, there's the tail end of the honeymoon, right, and there was a point right before you decided okay, this can't continue, we have to bring him back. What was the biggest challenge that you thought? What were the biggest reason that forced you?

Jim Iyoob:

to say, okay, they got to come back. Yeah, probably because you know I'm a data person. The data tells a story. Sure, it's the data decisions. So in the beginning, that honeymoon period right, more log time, more things, because they were home, they had to walk from their bedroom to their office. So, yeah, log time went up. All the results went up the first couple of weeks. But then what we saw in the data? The data was telling me it was going down. Long time might have been there, but performance might have been down. So I think that's probably one of the opportunities and, like I said, not everybody's disciplined enough to work from home.

Jim Iyoob:

That's probably the biggest challenge I thought I saw was you can't be inspired, in my opinion, all the time when you're home alone kids, distractions, all sorts of things looking out the window. I mean, let's be transparent, I go cut my grass in the middle of the day. Sometimes, right, if I have no calls, I'm going to go outside cut my grass, smoke a cigar, right, but I come back and do my job, right. But not everybody can do that. So I think that's probably the biggest challenge we've seen.

Jim Iyoob:

I don't need to be at my level and you know I'm a pretty fun guy. I can self-amuse myself, like I don't need people to be patting me on the back and telling me all the great things because I can do that myself. So I think for me I'm a unique individual and there are unique people that can do it. Like Chandra, who's my SVP, she works from home. She, she gets it. Like Chandra, who's my SVP, she works from home, she gets her job done. I guess self-awareness in her is like listen, I got to get this done. If I get it done by two o'clock or four o'clock, it still gets done. But not everybody has that. So I think that was the biggest challenge. The data told me a story that looked really good, but then it plateaued and then it started coming down.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, and I think a lot of people experience that same thing and I even will challenge that a lot of the reason that spike in productivity is most of our job is about contactability. Well, if you're outbound right and if everybody's home, it's impossible not to be able to get a hold of somebody. Well, not impossible, but it's. It's much easier. So it did spike in. You know, some of that data may have been flawed or or looked at for the wrong reason as positive.

Jimmy Chebat:

I do want to go to change topics for a second. And you had mentioned earlier where one of your peers in the space offered $2 an hour more for people that come into office and that didn't really motivate them or move the needle in terms of productivity. It just Productivity. It was more of a way just to get them back into the office. Talk to me about compensation versus incentives. I think you have a model where you're pretty, you know exactly what people deserve to earn, you know what the market is paying and even if the market is overpaying, you're not willing to compromise your business model because you know at some point that's just, you're just going to lose, but you are willing to put money into incentives. You guys have had a reward program for a long time. Talk to me about the difference between compensation and incentives and how you feel about what's more important.

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah. So I don't think one is more important than the other. I think you first have to start with compensation. You have to give people enough to be able to come to work, provide for their family, and you need to give them an opportunity to make more money cash money based on their performance and meeting those KPIs. What I think is funny before I get into the next part of it is like our agents think we should just give them raises all the time. Our customers are not giving us raises, so at what point do you want me to pay that customer to take their calls? And when you tell them with our direct feedback model, which kind of works, like some people have told me, like when I, when they said, man, I need to make more money, like you're only paying me X and you know I need to make Y and I'm like, yeah, but our customer pays a Z, so at what point do you want me to pay them to take their calls? And they kind of appreciate that. So you have to give them a fair wage. But we're huge believers in incentives and Matt's wife runs, as you know. You've talked to our team who runs that unique boutique store. That is something different because I'm top of the money.

Jim Iyoob:

Now you earn rewards. So there's a couple reasons we do this. Number one it's physical, right, and I know a shirt's not as physical I like to. I love, like lots of stuff. But I will tell you we have tvs, we have, you know, cups oh yeah, you got the cups too. We got, we got all those type of things. But you can get like laptops and we believe, if you stay with us long enough, because, remember, you earn these points and these incentives as you continue to do your job and you can build a bank. So at christmas time, if, if you've earned thousands of these rewards, you can exchange them for gifts, christmas presents. That's real stuff. So that when we believe, um, like, that's why a lot of people buy tvs. So we believe this.

Jim Iyoob:

So let's say, jimmy's working for the call center and he got a tv. He earned in addition everything we paid him. When he's home telling his wife he wants to quit, his wife's looking at that 70 inch tv, saying wait a minute. Isn't that where he got this tv? So we like material things in addition to the e-tech, merchandise stuff and we believe that is in addition to.

Jim Iyoob:

But we also know how incentives work, competition. So when you can earn extra stuff by having a competition and I know games are really fun with that and I know games are really fun with that. I mean in the old days before you existed, I remember I used to bring because I had Brianna, who was my, I think, five, six-year-old at the time she had that little battery-operated fishing game and I used to take the fishes out and I would put stuff underneath it, a piece of tape with prizes, and then every time you did something good, we took that fishing game for the five-year-old to your game and you got to fish out a prize and people were always competing against that, just like hot potato. But now you've digitized it for us to make it much easier, because I do believe that you could drive extra rewards. And, by the way, competition is good because we're all ego driven, which none of us want to admit.

Jim Iyoob:

right, but all the best of the best have egos and when you're having competition, I think that's what gives those extra rewards out. So we believe in all three. Um, but again, uh, and by the way, when our a lot of our customers supply us with stuff, nice. So our customers, when they come to us and they'll say, listen, we're going to pay you X plus Y plus Z and we want to give $1,000 per month to all of our employees in there to do whatever you want with. We put those into the systems that you can earn. That's how you do all those extra competitions. Hey, today we're going to give away 100 of this or 200 of this or whatever this, and I think that actually builds more morale in the contact center as well.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, and and, and I think you and I both agree that you know you want to make that competition as fair as possible and as inclusive as possible, so that way everybody's able to participate. One of the challenges with kind of gamified cultures is if you're running the same types of contests and it's the same people that are winning all the time, it actually you're demotivating the majority of your staff. So I think it's important to be able to find ways to include everybody so that way they're always winning. And I love your model, which is something that we have as well, which is the reward store Micro rewards. Let them build up. Buy what you want, not what we think you need. I want to shift gears We've got just a handful of minutes here left and I want to touch on a topic that's really become more and more important in today's society and I think, in the workplace where people are paying closer attention, which is mental health.

Jimmy Chebat:

There's a statistics that says that 60% of employees have never spoken to anyone at work about their mental health. But it impacts, right. We used to have a philosophy where it's like, hey, leave your home life at the door, but also leave your work life at the door when you leave. Don't bring the stresses of work home, because we want you to. That's the work-life balance. Yep. Does your company have a strategy and addresses mental health issue in today's day and age?

Jim Iyoob:

We do. So what ETEC has put together was community action teams, so CAT teams you know we all love acronyms, right? So community action teams, and there's one for, like, rewards and recognition, there's one for mental health and and employee assistance, and then there's, you know, they have different groups of these people that are made up of our employees. So our hr team is awesome. They have their own wellness site, they have their own wellness newsletter. They do these things in all of our contact centers, which is they bring in volunteers, either doctors, chiropractors, dentists, I mean anything you have to do with mental health and mental wellness, and they have mental wellness days, usually once every six weeks, eight weeks, where we bring not etec employees, employees from outside, outside professionals in. We pay them to come in and basically an employee can go talk to them for anything. Right? And where those ideas come from? Are those community action teams? Right? So we are embraced in health and wellness. Because, by the way, as a, as a company you know this, I'm right so it's going to cost this company much more money if I don't take care of myself, and I will give you a live example.

Jim Iyoob:

We have personal wellness coaches and and you've known me for God, 10, I think at least 10 years of the industry. And you said the last time I saw you in Austin, man, you look great, you lost a lot of weight. Let me tell you the secret. So, first of all, I hate working out. It's not even on my top hundred list, right, and I love to eat, as you know. So my boss gave me a personal wellness coach. So this personal wellness coach calls me up and they say to me you know, fill out this intake. So I filled out all the stuff and they get me on the phone and they say listen, we want you to start walking. I said're on crack. There's no way I'm going out walking a mile a day.

Jim Iyoob:

So what was cool about it which really made me different, was they asked me my eating habits, they asked me all these things and then she basically said she customized it. She says I'll tell you what. Will you commit, because she knows I work from home, will you commit to leaving your one because I do drink about two gallons of water a day, because I love water? Will you commit, because she knows I work from home? Will you commit to leaving your one because I do drink about two gallons of water a day, because I love water. Will you commit to leaving your water cup not on your desk in the kitchen? Absolutely so.

Jim Iyoob:

It forced me to walk little by little and then I told her about I cut in my grass and smoking a cigar. So she's like, let's get you to cut the grass twice a week. I can do that because I'm smoking two cigars right, so it was this package that was really geared towards me. And you know, like my daughter has, she goes to the gym every day. She's a workout crazy person six o'clock in the morning. I could never do that, and when I admitted that, that's kind of how this thing happened for me and you've seen, I've lost like 30 pounds.

Jim Iyoob:

I've gone down four inches off my waist and all I'm doing is these, and then every week, she would try to push me a little bit more. Hey, let's walk around the house. Okay, I could do that, right, cause I'm in the air conditioning, right? So? So those are the kinds of things we do in addition, and I think, by offering that to all of our employees, this whole wellness stuff, I think makes a big difference, because giving me a trainer who's going to force me to lift weights every day, there's no way I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it for a day. I'm going to hate it, never going to do it again. So finding that balance right Is is really what's making it successful for us.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, I think that personalization is critical. There is no more one size fits all. You have to have that, and what you're offering is a personal wellbeing coach to every individual that can identify what will work for you, what will move the needle and take it in digestible increments.

Jim Iyoob:

And then you build it up right.

Jimmy Chebat:

Take what you can get, something is better than nothing, and then eventually you know your tolerance level, your health will improve, you can do more, and so I love that. And you had said something that I think is very insightful, that I think is important and it's not selfish as it may come off to be, but in the sense that, hey look, if they're not healthy mentally, physically, physically some will lead to mental, mental health issues. You know they're not going to come to work, they're not going to be productive at work, they're not going to be happy individuals, they're not going to be confident individuals. So there is, there is a benefit to the organization for keeping people healthy, both mentally and physically and making sure that. So I love that you already have a program.

Jimmy Chebat:

You're a very progressive company, one of the most progressive companies that I've met. You care deeply about your employees. That's why you keep them, it's why you're able to promote them. They'll stay with you for a long time. You have a lot of tenure within your organization and I want to give you a minute just to kind of plug eTech a little bit. Tell everybody what eTech does and, if they want to contact you, how they can contact you.

Jim Iyoob:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And before I go into that, I will give you one story, though. It comes around self-awareness. If your leadership has self-awareness of their employees, it's a game changer, and I'll give you a true story. Awareness of their employees, it's a game changer, and I'll give you a true story.

Jim Iyoob:

You know me for 10 plus years in the industry. You know I'm out traveling all the time. You know I love people. My boss called me during COVID because he knew I was about to break and he said to me get yourself on a plane. I don't care where you and Kelsey go, you need to take a break before you lose it, which not everybody would do. That, of course, I went to Vegas, just so we're clear. But it's like those are the things. You have to be that self-awareness.

Jim Iyoob:

But to tell you what E-Tech does, we are a global business process outsourcing. We're a contact center. That's our bread and butter. That's what we do best. Secondly, we're an analytics company. As you know, we have integrated your platform into our quality management tools, so we have a whole total quality management solution which is QA and steroids, which holds people accountable and it actually shows you who to coach, what to coach and how to coach and, last but not least, as you know, you've used some of our people in the past we have over 100 full-stack developers that help companies who want to outsource some of their IT work, whether it be developing a website or doing some integrations and things like that. Those are the top three things we do, but at the end of the day, what we always say we're in the people business, because whatever technology you have is the technologies that enable it. It's the people that are successful, that drive the business, and we are a people culture focused company and I think that's why we're successful.

Jimmy Chebat:

Anybody that wants to work with you we're going to put up. Give us your website address. We'll put that up on the screen here. We'll give the handles to your social media as well, but if anybody wants to come and work, it sounds like it's a great and amazing place to work. If people want to do business with you, let them know how to reach you. Is there a phone number, a website?

Jim Iyoob:

Sure, you can go to wwwetechgsforglobalservicescom If you want to connect with me on LinkedIn. Jim Ayub, there's not a lot of Ayubs out there. As you know, I'm very passionate about speaking. I don't sell on social media, but I do provide content, as you know, and you can subscribe to my newsletter and you can contact me there as well.

Jimmy Chebat:

Beautiful. You have a ton of great content out there. I love watching you speak, especially at the conferences we're both attending. Right before we wrap things up here, we are a gamification company, as you know, and we we our podcast is, uh, the zizzo effect. All things gamify, so we like to play a game, uh, at every one of our podcasts and for this season, what we're doing is we're playing with our guests and it's trivia. I'm'm going to have Emma, our producer. Come on, I love competition. I have my buzzer here. What is the capital city of Australia?

Jimmy Chebat:

I have no clue. Sydney, is it Sydney?

Jim Iyoob:

That's what I was thinking.

Jimmy Chebat:

Hold on. I don't think I get another chance. Jim, do you want to take a crack at it? Nope Pass, I don't think I get another chance. Jim, do you want to take a crack at it? Nope Pass, I don't know that. One Next question Melbourne. I thought you had it. It's the only two cities I really know in Australia. What is the chemical symbol for gold AU?

Jim Iyoob:

Oh, that's huge.

Jimmy Chebat:

In what year was the first iPhone released?

Jim Iyoob:

91.

Jimmy Chebat:

All right, I am going to say 99.

Jim Iyoob:

2007,. Man, we're old. Yeah to say 99. 2007? Man, we're old.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, what is the tallest mountain in the world?

Jim Iyoob:

Killing Vajramo.

Jimmy Chebat:

K2? Everest, everest, I don't know. For some reason I thought it was K2. I knew it was Everest, but I don't know why I guessed K2. That won't count, because I had two guesses. Go on, who painted the Mona Lisa? Michelangelo, da Vinci? Oh, no, da Vinci, that's not it either. No, it's Da Vinci. Okay, I don't know why. Yeah, yeah, I'm off today.

Jim Iyoob:

You're smarter than me.

Jimmy Chebat:

Go ahead. Which planet is known as the red planet, mars?

Jim Iyoob:

Mars, that's easy.

Jimmy Chebat:

Yeah, I like the easy questions, just for the record. Who discovered electricity, tesla? Is it Benjamin Franklin with the kite? Okay, good, oh, it is. Yeah, I mean, that's what I learned, you're right, you're right, you're right, that's how you learned the kite. You're right. What is the world's largest ocean? Well, we only have a handful to choose from. I'm going to go Pacific.

Jim Iyoob:

I'll go with Atlantic then.

Jimmy Chebat:

Is it Pacific? All right, is that? Five Killed me, killed me. Nice, I win this one. Jim, you're a wealth of knowledge, so I was shocked that I was able to beat you. But again, jim Ayoub, thank you so much for coming on the Zizofact podcast. It's been a pleasure. Everybody knows how to contact you. We'd love to have you on again, looking forward to seeing you at the next conference that we're going to be at together, to seeing you at the next conference that we're going to be at together. For our audience, this has been a great episode. Thank you for joining us and remember, if this is a fact, it's game time.

Jim Iyoob:

I definitely want to come back because I got to get my reputation back from being so knowledgeable. I knew none of those. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to seeing you in person. I appreciate you guys so much.

Jimmy Chebat:

That was such a great and insightful chat with Jim Ayub. It's always refreshing to hear from someone who knows the true power of investing in people and sticking to core values. Jim really drove home how these principles are the backbone of eTech and how important it is to the success of any organization. Thanks for joining us and we'll catch you on the next episode. And remember it's game time.

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Andrew Reimers

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Jimmy Chebat

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