The founders of ListenTrust, a company which has generated $1 billion in sales for their clients, groom their employees from day one to quit. Their corporate culture focuses on helping their employees visualize their career goals and urges them to quit if they feel they’ve outgrown their current job.
Craig Handley and Tony Ricciardi are the founders of this company and they spoke to Entrepreneur regarding the success of their company. ListenTrust is a bilingual, live agent sales company which helps customers who need help in English or Spanish. Their company is on track to boost their revenues by over 60%, which in terms of business is an astounding growth.
Craig and Tony started their company way back in 2001 when they saw an opening in the call center market. While few companies needed to communicate in Spanish, they saw a potential market which could be exploited and created their own company. Today ListenTrust employs more than 1000 live agents to help sort out their clients’ queries.
All of their employees go through six stages of personal development: career goals to intellectual growth. Once the employees know what their dreams are, ListenTrust comes in to help them achieve their goals. All this is part of a program called DreamTrust which has helped the company secure a phenomenal “save rate” of 15 out of 100 whereas market average lies at 2 out of 100. This means that their call centers have a very high customer satisfaction rate, that only 15% of the people tend to come back with an unresolved query.
This program encourages ListenTrust employees to quit. Why may you ask? Basically, they are focusing on the employee’s future career path. The seniors will personally sit down with them and help them make decisions regarding where they intend to go after ListenTrust. It’s all about inspiration and helping them avoid the mistakes they made. It’s a long term benefit for them. But eventually, they will leave the company to pursue their passion as they have been tailored with the required knowledge. They may create their own start-ups too.
Ultimately the employees will also be satisfied that the management is helping them in their careers rather than make them work in a dull atmosphere. Which also means that they will perform the task assigned to them a lot more efficiently.
The pillars of this program are given below:
All this wasn’t easy, however, during the early days, their revenues fell from $50,000 a week profit to $70,000 loss. Craig had to live out of the office for months to turn his company around. But they managed to turn their company around with some clever thinking and were back in business with $4 million shaved off their annual expenses.
For young entrepreneurs and startups out there who are having problems with their businesses, Craig has a fine advice you.
“The reality is that sometimes we’re making money, and sometimes we are losing it. But life is all about growth and the challenges certainly provide growth.”
Image Credit: Entrepreneur
