Are Your Employees Answer Shopping?

[eric_hemmer]

Fresh off the heels of the HR Summit in Denver last week, I wanted to address a common phenomenon in HR call centers:   Answer Shopping.   What is answer shopping?   Here is an example:   Employees call HR to see if they are eligible for a particular benefit or can take paid time off.   (E.g. Can i get reimbursed for my commute?   Am I eligible for that class I completed last semester?   Can I get 401(k) matching?   I'd like a paid sabbatical...)   If they don't get the answer they want, they call in again in hopes of getting a different answer from someone else in the HR call center.   I've heard a number of our customers talk about this, most recently Shalonda Welborn, Sr. Manager, HR Shared Services at Sally Beauty ( shalonda ) who shared this with us at the HR Summit.   The funny thing is, this might work when HR representatives are scattered about and inconsistency is common place.   But you can prevent this in a couple of ways.   First, documenting the correct answer in the knowledge base for the HR agents and tying the right answer to the employee's profile via user criteria ensures that all agents will be reading from the same playbook and providing the same answer to the employee.   Secondly, by using Worknotes and showing the case history for employees in the case, an HR agent can see if that employee called in for the same question the day before (or five minutes ago.)   Providing consistent services and answers to employees is a major reason customers of our wish to structure their services.   And you can only do that with a good case management and knowledge base system.

If you have employees that answer shop, please comment on this blog and share any humorous stories with us.

Eric