Today’s interview is with Jose Herrera, CEO and Co-Founder of Horatio CX, a next generation CX outsourcing firm and the trusted partner of some of the leading and fastest growing ecommerce companies. Jose joins me today to talk about maintaining a human connection when everyone else seems to be talking about how customer service needs to be led by robots, taking an employee-centric approach, achieving an industry-leading attrition rate of only 5% and building a truly inclusive culture.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Our transformation journey and unleashing the power of AI and automation – Interview with Shelia Anderson of Aflac – and is number 474 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here are the highlights of my chat with Jose:

• We describe ourselves as the anti-BPO and started with the idea of becoming an employee-centric organization, which is not common in our industry.
• We work with mission-driven businesses, which are companies that prioritize their purpose and have a positive impact in whatever they’re making for or doing in the world.
• We pair clients with amazing individuals that share the same passion and values as them.
• The perfect combination: An employee-centric organization and a client-centric organization.
• This translates into lower attrition numbers and better overall happiness when it comes to our employee satisfaction.
• We like to maintain a human connection to challenge the notion that the face of customer service needs to be led by robots.
• We’re leveraging AI to make the lives of our agents easier. We also try to automate things that can make the lives of the consumer also easier.
• There are certain aspects of the customer journey and the customer experience that need to be handled by a human (there’s a personal touch to it) and that’s how most of the brands that we work with differentiate themselves from their peers.
• Being a human-centric business has allowed us to achieve an attrition rate of 5%.
• The industry average attrition rate is often in the 30-40% range with some organisations battling with 100% attrition.
• Matching the agent’s interests to the companies that we’re working with definitely helps with how loyal the team members are to that particular brand.
• Another factor is that we built amazing office environment. We have a running track inside our office.
• Our offices are bright, they’re open, they feel like coworking spaces and we’ve built it around collaboration so that the teammates can ask questions, interact with their peers and exchange ideas.
• Most of our employees are super young and they want to feel challenged by the companies that they work with. They want to understand that there’s room for growth within their career. So we built out a very strong learning and development team that works very closely with our associates to make sure that they are meeting their professional goals, but also their personal goals.
• We understand that this industry is not for everyone and that some people may be with us for a couple of years, but we want to make sure that their experience here serves a purpose for their long-term career goals or personal goals.
• Employees are routinely encouraged to pursue their interests and we try to find their individual strengths to make sure that they have a strong career path.
• We don’t share resources between companies, every agent is assigned exclusively to one particular client.
• We’re proud to promote diversity and inclusivity at our company. We are one of the few companies I would say in the region that actively promotes this.
• We’re also focused on improving the overall well-being of our employees. It’s a very difficult job whether that’s handling customer queries, content moderation or other back office work, it’s very difficult.
• As well as a running track on site, we also have a yoga studio where we have daily yoga classes, an outdoor terrace and an on-site gym.
• We also have mental health counsellors on site that are paid for by us and are always fully booked.
• We are building an inclusive culture where we’re trying to also help the broader society in Latin America at large.
• Horatio’s HQ is over 40% LGBTQIA+.
• This all doesn’t mean that we’re not focused on RoI or metrics. RoI and the metrics are a byproduct of the way in which we build this culture and the numbers speak for themselves.
• 91% of our employees trust us.
• One fast growing client who was handling over 200,000 interactions per month had a QA score of 60%. Horatio partnered with them and within a year they had been able to get their QA score from 60% all the way to 95.85%.
• There’s no better way to make an impact in society than by building high-paying opportunities in the country.
• Jose’s best advice: Understand your customers and employees as much as you can.
• Jose’s Punk CX words: Against the grain
• Jose’s Punk XL brand: Apple

About Jose

Jose Herrera is CEO and Co-Founder of Horatio CX. Horatio is the trusted partner for some of the fastest-growing startups and enterprises in the world. Their on-brand customer support teams help them leverage CX as a revenue generator through personalized customer experience support. As seen on INC, Forbes, and Bloomberg, and the recipient of the 2022 Customer Contact Week Next Generation Leaders Award. Horatio is headquartered in New York City with main offshore offices located in Santo Domingo and Santiago, Dominican Republic.

Check out www.hirehoratio.com to find out more, say Hi to them on Twitter @hire_horatio and feel free to connect with Jose on LinkedIn here.

Credit: Image by DANIEL SANDOVAL from Pixabay