It’s widely reported that the contact centre industry has been through immense change in recent years. And the pressure is on to continue to transform both customer experiences and the approach organisations take with colleagues.
The fundamentals of a contact centre have not changed. However, the infrastructure within the operation has become increasingly more complex. From more technology options to onboarding new skills, such as data analysts and communications specialists.
So, what does it take to be a strategic leader in the contact centre today? During this one-hour online seminar, we explored the scope of the role, what skills a contact centre leader needs today, and what is expected of them.
We had former English rugby union player, Rory Underwood MBE DL, Director, Wingman Ltd, join us to help illustrate the point – before opening the floor for a live debate with our panel of experts:
- Helen Wilson, Chief Operating Officer at Atom Bank
- Anita Yandell Jones, Chief Customer Officer at Ecotricity
- Emma Dark, Director of Consumer Care UK & IRE, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.
- Emma Crowe, Executive Director, Human Resources, EMEA, TTEC
Questions from the Q&A
The audience asked some questions in the chat that we didn’t get to during the session:
Like Anita, I work in an industry which is now guided by outside influence. Internal drag is something we deal with as a management team daily. How would you suggest we strategically and effectively manage external drag?
Helen Wilson: I think this has to be tackled in the same way as internal drag – you need to be able to understand how it impacts on your organisation and contact centre, and what is ‘noise’ and what is a real impact to your strategy and vision. Then it is a case of assessing and reacting, communicating effectively as to why you need to deviate or what needs to be done to keep on track to your strategy.
Anita Yandell Jones: External drag is often out of a business’s control but can certainly cause challenges. It is always important to contextualise external drag i.e., the impact this has on people, Processes and systems and get this documented along with any costs associated. It is important to then to evidence how this is impacting BAU/Strategy and to remodel/replan current activity and get senior stakeholders the visibility of this and to be able to communicate this to your people about how/when things are changing and what is being done to support this additional requirement.
The purpose of the inverted leadership pyramid which may help to maximise communication between members of an organisation and create a more flexible and more-responsive team. This sort of structure in an organisation may help employees feel more empowered and add value to the organisation. Does the panel believe this strategy is relevant? Is this a good structure? Does it work in reality?
Anita Yandell Jones: This is more about culture, questions that work for me are – Do our people have the right knowledge, process, and systems to enable them to do their job, are they empowered to do the right thing? What mechanisms are in place to enable our people to provide feedback and action change, how do we ensure that communication is two way and valued.
Emma Crowe: I think this might refer to the organisation people hierarchy structure. Customers are the widest part at the base (but as inverted shows at the top) and then employees followed by executive the principle is that that the executive structure should be leaner and there should be less layers between customers/employees and leadership to remove bureaucracy, get closer to the people and customer and promote the flow of communication and decision making. Putting your customers and employees first in the organisation and empowering employees. I would say that anything that puts your people and customers first can only enhanced your organisation.
When was the last time you spoke directly to one of your customers or double jacked with an agent and actually listened to a call.
Helen Wilson: I’ll have to be honest, not very recently – however, I do analyse all the customer data every week as we capture the contact reason for all are interactions, so I feel I have a very strong insight into the driver of the calls as well as any complaints that we receive.
Anita Yandell Jones: For me it was yesterday – I try to give one day a month to this but lately a lot more, it really is valuable and improves communication with the agent, builds trust, enables me to understand what our customers are contacting us about and identify failure demand, what is working well and share and communicate this through all levels of the organisation.
What is the voice of your customer inside your organization? Do you guys do surveys?
Helen Wilson: Atom has a very strong source of voice of the customer – we do use surveys, but we also have a wealth of information provided through feedback sites such as Trust Pilot, App store ratings and we also use feedback direct from our agents who capture the reason for contact.
Anita Yandell Jones: Same for us. We also have quality assessments of agents where VOC is also identified and actioned, complaints are a good source of VOC also – There are lots of opportunities for VOC and for me this is about the culture of organisation and the purpose of using VOC and how you take appropriate action when needed or recognise people when things are going well.
Emma Crowe: Yes, we measure NPS regularly and it’s one of our most important metrics.
In my opinion another big element of “drag” comes from the pandemic where individuals have now a different understanding on work-life balance, yet from a contact centre perspective we still want to keep the same opening hours making it difficult to attract and retain employees. Question is, how can we overcome this challenge?
Helen Wilson: Atom have introduced a four day working week, reducing hours to 34 hours over the four days with no reduction in pay. This has been introduced across all roles, including the contact centre without any change to our operating hours. This has had a positive impact in terms of being able to attract more talent, reduce attrition and reduce sickness levels. So, there is always a way to overcome these challenges – it is about exploring what changes and opportunities would work for your company – but I would certainly explore the possibilities of the 4 day working week.
Anita Yandell Jones: We have increased reward for our people and introduced more recognition, maintained hybrid/home working and office working for those that want it. We are spending more time training, communicating with them and improving the culture so that they love what they do. We have also heavily involved them in redesigning customer and agent journeys as part of a digital transformation project and got them working collaboratively across end to processes, I therefore don’t feel it is about the hours they work – it’s about them feeling valued and loving what they do.
Emma Crowe: Recognising what works for your customers and your people is key and creating flexible working arrangement ensure that your people have a good work life balance and that your customers are being supported.