Team leaders are a group in transition.
The Customer Service Operations they work in are now entering a third phase of existence.
Just for the sake of this made up timeline, imagine ‘Phase One’ as the time when call centres were brand spanking new. They were the Social Media of their day 30+ years ago, built on the following revolutionary concept.
‘Being Interactive Without Being Face To Face’
In those days, ‘Quality and Experimentation’ ruled. Here’s an example: selling a contraceptive to farmers for their cows at 5.30am in the morning in order to catch them before setting off for milking! That’s a campaign pushing at the boundaries.
Then came twenty years of quite the opposite. The mission to massively scale Customer Service operations was born within the disruption of a couple of economic downturns that visit every decade or so.
The problem that the leadership teams of the day faced was this. The cost of servicing a more expectant customer needed a new approach. Thus ‘Scale and Standardisation’ replaced ‘Quality and Experimentation’ as the defining preoccupations of Phase Two.
But the price on both customer and agent/professional communicator experience was high.
Phase Three is pretty much present day. Although another economic downturn has catalysed the next phase of change, we now appear more sophisticated in our response. Both from lessons learnt and a new generation of vocal, social customers who want something better. Much better in fact.
For them, ‘scale’ without ‘quality’ does not cut it. Neither does ‘standardisation’ without the ‘human touch’. In other words Phase Three is full circle. Only this time we need to deliver quality and experimentation on a grand scale.
And right in the centre of this transformation is the changing role of the team leader.
The Trials & Tribulations Of Being A Team Leader
Being a Team Leader during Phase Two was tough. They have borne the operational brunt of meeting that ‘scale and standardisation’ agenda I just referred to. Regardless of what it said in their job descriptions, this has been their actual day to day experience for much of the last twenty years.
In a sentence being a team leader in a large call centre during the ‘90’s & ‘00’s was an open invitation to high blood pressure and low expectation.
A good day under those circumstances was to have the right number of ‘bums on seats’ (give or take…), no significant technology outages and an absence of senior calls on behalf of the chairman’s wife whose friend just suffered the experience of being a customer.
Asking for any innovation on top of all of that, forget it!
But today’s world has moved on. Now we want our battle hardened team leader with black belt spreadsheet skills to become performance coaches with a symphony of humanistic skills. It’s a very different approach to team leading
So it’s not surprising that many brands undergoing this transformation are quietly letting go or redeploying this generation. Their command and control instinct is at odds with the empowered model of engagement now doing the rounds. The Human Chemistry Of Customer Service is the new black.
The writing has been on the wall for some time of course. Ever since AHT(average handle time) became a management indicator rather than a behavioural straight jacket which agents could be forced into, the traditional team leader has been under threat.
Instead FCR(first call resolution) and customer effort/NPS(net promoter score) have turned attention outward onto the customer. Effectiveness is prized above efficiency in the new regime. Although quality management is still reassuringly pedantic thanks to a universal belief that any messing with internal compliance policy will instantly result in unspeakable disaster and damnation!
From Team Leader To Performance Coach
But overall it’s the end of the line for a type of behaviour. We don’t want 80% of shift time in front of the screen doing ‘admin’. We want tips and insights delivered ‘in the moment’ directly after a customer interaction. We want a team leader who can see potential and then tease it out through challenge and the kind of feedback people learn from.
We want to make work fun again and feel engaged. Zappos spoke of ‘happiness’ as their secret sauce. Thus ‘Happiness’ programmes are doing the rounds because Zappos ‘gets’ service.
So too is engagement. The UK Government wants to know why we have not got enough because someone told them that’s how tons more innovation and economic prosperity takes place.
C suite executives have been told that engaged customers are worth more but the only problem is everyone in the business needs to get engaged as a result. So ‘Let’s Learn How To Engage’ programmes are also doing the rounds.
And guess who is being invited to attend these? Every team leader of course!
Still the jam in the corporate sandwich, the team leader is the tipping point at which new culture is or is not operationalised. So getting them on board and reskilled is a ‘Do Not Pass Go’ type activity in the Engagement strategy plan.
In other words, their transformation is a fundamental enabler. It’s how new levels of engaged customer service are to be coaxed into being now that ‘ Human Touch On A Grand Scale’ is the new defining preoccupation in our imagined ‘Phase Three’.
Next time I’ll go more into the new skills, competencies and mindset that this type of team leader needs.
Team Leaders As Performance Coaches
That’s a really thought provoking summary of the role of operational team leaders. The most interesting aspect being how team leaders are indeed the ‘jam in the sandwich’. However, I believe we consistently fail to understand that as this role comes full circle, many current operational team leaders, used to the ‘world of admin’ that being a team leader has become, do not have the essential leaderships traits required to move their teams in the right direction. How many can recall the top sales performer, the top service representative for her EAHT, being catapulted into the world of team leadership as contact centres experienced exponential growth and the attrition that came with that.
As we consider the growing demands of customers and the need for greater employee engagement, we must create better leaders, ones who can truly create the emotional connection with each individual they lead. A generation of leaders who know that empowerment is the cornerstone of success, leaders who admit failure and learn from their mistakes. Team leaders who are not afraid to say ‘I don’t know, but let’s work it out together’. Team leaders who will accept accountability for the customer experience created by their teams results.
So as we move along into this new era let’s make sure that any engagement programme includes team leaders who can engage people rather than be the masters of innovation and excelsheets.
Nuala,
Thanks for your insight. I agree 100% with the picture you paint of how the new breed of team leaders will need to function. I’ve come across some brands that are starting to understand and back the transformation. But as you say, I doubt they have explored the implications in full. That’s why we need to keep talking about it and describing that future so it can happen all the faster
Martin
The three historical activity areas for Team Leaders are depressingly familiar…….. But I would add a fourth category: complaint management. In my experience, in between the admin, team briefings, occasional coaching sessions and lateness interviews, the Tls would be squeezing in a steady stream of escalated calls from unhappy customers. More often than not, those customers would be unhappy with a company policy (refund, billing charges, cancellation, delivery, whatever), rather than any human interaction issue. TLs often have to deal with complaints with little or no ability to remedy the situation to the customer’s satisfaction I.e. they are unable to change the company policy. This in turn can lead to the disengagement of the very group that the business seeks to actively engage. In this stage of the development of call centers, it is critical that businesses actively LISTEN to feedback from the frontline on what works for customers and what doesn’t, and not make it all the responsibility of TLs to turn unhappy customers around. Engagement works both ways……. TLs and customers need to be listened to and acknowledged in order for engagement to take place.
Lucy,
Thank you for this expert view which I know you are well familar with. Yes, I missed that part of the story completely and it’s an important one. I’ll pick up that theme in the next post because Team Leaders As Performance Coaches are only going to be successful if they manage to influence policy as a result of listening to what their teams are facing. If ignored, then again they are dead in the water. I have to say the latest stats from the Institute of Customer Service around the effectiveness of complaint mgt in the UK is not encouraging!
Hi Martin,
I agree that engagement should be the new ‘black’ but wonder if it is still at the catwalk stage and has not yet reached the high street……to continue the fashion metaphor ! 😉
Here’s an interesting article that I saw recently:
Many employers only pay lip service to engagement, SHRM/Globoforce global survey finds
http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/hro/news/1019671/many-employers-pay-lip-service-engagement-shrm-globoforce-global-survey
Not very encouraging. Is it still too haute couture?
Adrian
Adrian,
Thanks for the comment. Engagement is a big nut to crack. Only thing I can say is that some of the UK biggest Customer Service operations are spending six figure amounts on at least having a go within their own chain of engagement. i.e. from leaders to front line to customers.
Equally I’ve just come across a couple of centres that are highly evolved in their customer ethic and approach to service. And yes they are small, contemporary brands with completely different mindsets.
Early days, but encouraging signs I’d say.
Martin makes very perceptive anthropological comments about life and evolution in the world of contact centres. I was in there in the midst of phase 2 but, I think, going against the flow. I headed a contact centre business in Liverpool that was part of a major bank. We had seven wonderful years, left to our own devices and during that time took the centre from having the last ever strike (good old Liverpool – it is my birth city – and reflecting back further to the 80s when so much business was put into receivership or administration, which was due not so much to union instransigence but to inept leadership) to being called the bank’s ‘jewel in the crown’ three years later concurrent with winning the Most Motivated Contact Centre in Europe. So much of what I see as ‘new’ today we did in Liverpool almost fifteen years ago. Customer Experience / Employee Engagement / effectiveness as well as efficiency. Whenever any business wanted to invest in Liverpool the investment authority asked us to host visits. And our people clamoured to be ambassadors for the enterprise and the City. As for the Chairman… we had the Chairman visit just before Christmas. A Team Leader asked him what he would like for Christmas because being so rich he probably had everything – yes, she actually said that! He said he needed a new wash-bag because he travelled so much. The Team Leader and a colleague went out and bought him one and sent it to him. He phoned to say thank-you. Put the people first, the numbers follow!
David,
Thanks for the story. Really says it all!
As far as deja vu, I have to agree. What comes around goes around. Or, “there’s nowt really new under the sun”. ‘Tis amazing though how bad habits seem to linger while best practice does the oppostite and seems to evaporate across generations.