Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Managers and the Tech That Support Them, Determines Customer Service Outcomes
If there are any “secret recipes” to better customer engagement, only a few companies would appear to have found them. One thing seems clear: there is no “one size fits all,” and most companies will have to find their own secret sauce to success, since what works for one company may not for another. Next, growling, fear-inducing, autocratic managers are almost never going to be an ingredient for great customer support. Fearful, unhappy people will create unhappy, absent customers.
In a recent article for Alaska’s News Miner, Charlie Dexter wrote that many companies can form a triangle out of three aspects of their business: leadership, customer service and profits. The length of one side of the triangle affects the other angles directly.
“The quality of leadership occupies one angle in the tri-quation,” he wrote. “The quality of leadership then increases or decreases the quality of customer service, which then impacts positively or negatively the quality of profits (or lack thereof). If you will buy into the concept of a business tri-quation (leadership equals customer service equals profits), then I submit the quality of leadership is the easiest of the three angles to improve.”
There is ample evidence that managers who lead to inspire workers and help them achieve their personal goals in alignment with organizational goals are the best motivators a workforce can have. These managers understand building fair schedules to facilitate work-life balance, ongoing training that is inspiring and not punitive, regular performance reviews designed to help workers succeed, and encouragement and motivation during every-day work (in the form of gamified solutions, rewards and opportunities).
While managers’ people skills are critical, technology can help bolster managers to do their jobs properly. If poorly chosen, however, technology can make the job harder. Look for solutions that are easy and fast to implement, easy for workers to use, and simple to understand. In a recent blog post for CRM Sherpas, Michele Cracraft writes that contact center technology should be a positive tool for workers and not a punishment. It should also be a tool to help managers achieve their goals of engaging employees, encouraging them and rewarding them when they get the job done.
“Define clear KPIs [key performance indicators] and metrics to measure against and then create performance-driven reports to validate results,” she wrote. “These reports are a key component in enabling managers to track productivity and progress toward achieving defined goals. Additionally, you’ll likely see a significant improvement in user adoption when users clearly understand that their performance assessment is directly tied to their use of the new CRM system.”
While her column is about CRM, this applies to any enterprise solution contact center users interface with, whether it’s workforce management, call recording, knowledge bases, order systems or any other item on the agent desktop. Contact center solutions are meant to be tools, not punishments, so they should be configured to align to the goals of management: encourage, monitor, positively reinforce and reward. Without the right tools, managers simply won’t be in a position to open up the angle on that success triangle.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi