For more than 160 years, American Express has developed a workforce to provide assistance with customer care. Robert Childs, senior vice president of human resources and senior relationship leader for World Service, the company’s global customer servicing operation, is responsible for acquiring new talent and creating development and retention programs to build high levels of employee engagement.

TM: Describe your company’s approach to talent management.

Childs: Whatever our business and the enterprise [are] trying to do is the starting point. Our talent strategy is about getting very grounded in that and then understanding the type of resources and talent needed to achieve that not for the short term but for a sustainable period of time. That is the starting point for me at World Service, but it’s the same for my colleagues across the entire company.

At World Service, we focus on taking service, which is the area most companies outside of American Express view as a cost, and turning that into a business driver. We look at it as an enabler of growth. That sets a foundation for how I create the human capital plan to make that a reality.

In terms of hiring talent, we make sure we bring in the right kind of front-line employees into the organization, which is critical to us because they are the first contact with our customers. Our customers range from consumers to small business owners, merchants, corporations and employees who work in corporations.

TM: How do you make sure you’re getting that top talent?

Childs: We try to look in places that meet our objectives. We look to be a premium service provider, so going to sources that don’t have a feel, background or mentality around service and premium would be a waste of our effort and time. One of our challenges is making sure we stay relevant and fresh around the right sources to find people.

We’ve made adjustments and evolved to source people in industries such as hospitality and retail. A large proportion of employees we’ve hired have backgrounds that are not in a traditional call center environment. However, World Service is a call center by definition. Again, we don’t treat service as a transaction; we treat it as a growth enabler.