Human Resources Changing the Landscape in China’s CX Workforce

With a similar trend to the U.S. China’s unemployment rate has been decreasing MoM since July 2016 and is currently around 3.67%. This is a healthy sign for any economy but it does create pressure on companies to innovate and to find better ways to attract staff specially in the CX industry. KKH, now in its 6^th year has been a pioneer in retention and works hard at keeping staff motivated and happy to work with us. Here are some key questions and take away we like to share.

Is the Chinese Labor Market for CX currently a difficult one?

When I arrived in China in 2004 all and most contact centers resided in the big three cities: Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou and long gone are the days where as a CX Provider you would house the majority of your CX Agents in these main cities. As in the U.S. and Western Europe most contact centers have move to lower income cities and regions. China has also been a recipient of these changes with cities like Wuhan, Dalian, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Xian, etc. Despite the fact that this is so with unemployment being relatively low in China it’s still difficult to find and retain staff.

What is being done in China to create loyalty and retention for CX Agents?

It’s not very different than in other countries actually. KKH strives to take care of its staff, keep them motivated by working on rewarding and challenging accounts with great clients. One key advantage is our top management and middle management as most have been with the company since the start so this shows other employees that there are career path opportunities and an environment for professional growth. Average age in China for CX agents in my experience skews lower than in the U.S. and Europe. This opens up the opportunity to capture great talent and this is why we work closely with Universities to offer intern programs that can lead the agents to then graduate and work with us full time. In China it’s critically important to keep activities with groups due to the cultural mindfulness of being more group active rather than individually minded.

What is actually happening in China regarding human resources and the changing landscape in the CX Workforce?

With the rise of Social media juggernauts like Tencent’s WeChat, and Alibaba’s Dingtalk most interactions in China today happen by Chat versus Voice and with the rise of Chat then AI programs have been taking over simple and not so simple interactions with Automated Response AI driven Chats. This is changing the landscape of the CX industry in China. However, we see more and more how the Human itself will not be replaced by technology but it will help the CX workforce be more efficient thus reducing the amount of actual CX agents needed or permitting the expansion of more workers in industries such as ecommerce where demand for more services arise. Therefore, we still see the need of ensuring the staff we hire are educated, socially savvy, tech driven, and CX oriented.  

 Tips for Retaining your CX Staff:

1. Hire the right employees
2. Offer competitive salaries
3. Provide the best environment, office, contact center you can provide
4. Keep staff challenged and communicate with them constantly to understand their desires for career path
5. Top Down mentality: ensure top management and middle management are engaging with newly hired staff
6. Provide the right tools and technology
7. Never accept what is called “Acceptable” turnover.