Home Uncategorized Page 3

Uncategorized

Share

What Tom Cruise taught me about productivity

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

I learned a very powerful lesson about productivity when I used to manage Distribution Centers.

In the 1990s I worked as a VP Operations of Call Center & Distribution operations.

Customers would phone in or mail in their orders to us and we’d package them up and ship them out.

All in the days before e-commerce was even a term.

We’d fulfill everything from compact discs through to gardening tools and children’s toys.

One company I worked for in Los Angeles had a big Client base across the movie studios.

Before any big new movie was released, the studios would send promotional materials to movie theaters around the country.

That was our job.

We’d package and ship off things like posters, standees (those life sized cut-outs and backdrops) and even one of a kind promotional items for VIP receptions and giveaways.

I remember for one particular movie about kids who became spies, we had a complete ‘spy briefcase’ with binoculars, a fingerprint dusting kit and a play along game that matched the plot of the movie.

As you’d imagine, we had a very interesting warehouse!

But I remember Tom Cruise the best

In the 1990s Tom Cruise was everywhere.

And we handled his Fan Club mailings.

So when fans would write or call in and ask for Tom Cruise memorabilia, our warehouse crew would ‘pick and pack’ all the necessary items for the Fan Club kit and mail them out.

They all had to wear white gloves.

No fan ever wanted to receive an autographed Tom Cruise photo with a big oily smudge on it.

If that happened, believe me our Customer Care Centre would hear about it.

Distribution operations teach you a lot about productivity

I didn’t have a formal background in running Distribution Centers.

I credit some key mentors who guided me and taught me lessons about productivity.

And thanks to Tom Cruise I got better and better at it.

Let me explain.

One of the first Fan Club projects I ever worked on was Tom Cruise.

So my mentor – another VP – showed me how to set up an efficient ‘pick and pack’ operation.

How to layout the items so that the right amount of time was invested in staging, packing and shipping each Fan Club kit.

We used stopwatches to track times and calculate staffing requirements.

A Distribution Center version of Average Handling Time if you will.

We would always package the first kits ourselves so that we could try out what worked (or didn’t).

There was no point bringing in our Team to do it – and charge them to be productive – if we hadn’t tried it ourselves.

That’s when my mentor said to me –

“Dan – it might seem obvious.  But one of the keys to success here is to avoid touching the same thing twice. That’s a waste of time.  So let’s arrange it this way…or that way…and make sure we remain as efficient as possible.”

Sometimes the most powerful lessons are the simplest.

And this one has stuck with me ever since.

Multi-tasking is kind of dumb

Today when I visit a Corporate office and I see someone’s mobile phone sitting out and open on the desk I shake my head.

There’s absolutely no way that person is going to be as productive as they could be.

The moment that phone buzzes they will move their hands away from what it was they were doing (reading email lets’ say) and touch the phone.

Then they’ll take their hands back to the keyboard.

Buzz buzz.

Then back to the phone.

Buzz buzz.

Back to the email.

The opposite of productivity.

If you can do it at one go – do it at one go

What I learned in Distribution Centres applies to my work today.

If I can do it in one go – I do it in one go.

Tick.

Then on to the next thing.

Of course some things have to be touched twice.

I have to talk to a Client or ask a Colleague.  No problem – set these things over here.

But I don’t touch the same thing twice if I don’t have to.

And that’s allowed me to be wonderfully productive.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

[email protected]

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can your Contact Center Agents compete with a robot?

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

If I were employing Contact Center Agents today, I’d be asking how my training and development processes helped my Agents be better than a robot.

A lot of Contact Center management complains that they can’t recruit or hold on to their Contact Center Agents.

But I think that the smart Contact Center Agent has a fair question to ask.

“Dear Boss…I’m aware that you guys are doing everything you can to off-load voice calls to self-service options.  So if you want me to stay with you there’s something I need to know.  How are you going to prepare me to be better than a robot?”

Now I’m one of those people that believes that, at critical moments, a person is going to want to talk to another person.

And with the growth in greying populations around the developed world, we’re still looking at demand in voice-based service for some time.

So now’s the time to prepare your Agents for what’s coming.

It’s an interesting industry – but Contact Center Agents don’t know that

The Agent recruitment videos that I watch on YouTube look like they came from the same cookie cutter –

  • You’ll need to have empathy!
  • We’ll give you a buddy to work with!
  • Look – we have a pool table!

I’d love to see an Agent recruitment video that said –

  • Our Centre is at the heart of our CX strategy – and we will teach you all about CX and your role in it.
  • There’s a lot of technology & operations going on here – and we’ll teach you all about it.
  • The world is changing – so we’ll help you to be come better than a robot.

Liz Ryan advises –

It’s time to leave a job when a half-year has gone by and you haven’t learned anything new.

That advice doesn’t just apply to the big bosses.

Take your Contact Center Agent development seriously

When I was running large Centres in the U.S. back in the 90s, we purposefully hired our Contact Center Agents from places like McDonalds and Burger King.

By and large they already had the right attitudes.

Our job was to equip them to become better versions of themselves.

A few years later, when a big corporate restructuring came along, we had to let go hundreds of our Agents over the course of a few months.

It was tough, and emotionally draining.

But over those few months we were proud that each and every one got a new job.

Every Friday afternoon, we would take Polaroids of the people that were leaving that week, and stage a candlelight ceremony to commemorate their being with us and then moving on.

We all cried.

In that early Contact Centre era, some of the processes we take for granted today were still immature

In those days, we didn’t have a lot of QA.

Our training could have been better.

As a result, our folks probably weren’t very good at saying the Customer’s name two times or asking for further assistance at the end of the call.

They would probably have failed some of the current assessments that I see so often today.

But because we didn’t script them, they were forced to learn the fine art of conversation.

How to sell, how to calm, how to influence.

Even how to stay calm during large scale fluctuations in volume – a powerful self-management skill.

Our secret to success – and we were very successful in our day – was the caliber of our Team Leaders.

These direct Line Managers were the heroes who made our operation tick.

In closing

The world is changing.

But the need for people to learn and grow to succeed hasn’t.

Are you preparing your Contact Center Agents to be better than a robot?

Thanks for reading!

Daniel

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com

 

 

 

How to write a Tender for Contact Centre Outsourcing

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

In this special 1 day session we will help you write a Tender for Contact Centre outsourcing.

Choosing the right outsourcer for your Customer contacts is one of the most important decisions you will make.

And every outsourcer is different.

Some outsourcers have very specific niches they serve and they don’t perform very well outside of those niches.

Some outsourcers act as strategic partners while others just do what they’re asked to do.

Quality and the ability to deliver on your Customers’ expectations varies widely across different providers.

And the person or Team that manages your program might be a Contact Centre expert – or again they might not.

It can be hard for a layman to tell.

So it’s important to develop a Tender document that helps you hone in on your specific objectives.

And that helps you select the right outsourcer for your program.

The challenge is that the folks who have to develop the Tender and select the provider may not be Contact Centre experts

Many of our Clients & Friends have come to us with serious concerns about their outsourcers.

They also say they don’t have enough mastery of the Contact Centre environment to ask the right questions.  Or to know when they are getting what they should.

To address this need we have developed a special 1-day session to help Participants develop a Tender document for Contact Centre outsourcing.  And from there evaluate submissions.

In our 1-day workshop we will –

  • Establish the ‘right’ KPIs against which to measure outsourcer delivery
  • Understand how different channels of communication work – independently and together
  • Understand who is responsible for ‘what’ in the outsourcing relationship
  • How to handle rapid change in Customer communication channels
  • Know what to look for to determine if your Outsourcer is the right ‘fit’

Over the course of the day, we will work through a solid template for developing a Tender for Contact Centre Outsourcing.

We will also discuss what the ‘best’ answers look like when comparing different outsourcers.

Simply go to our Public Programs page here to register.

Public Programs

Or simply drop me a line to [email protected]

Thank you!

Daniel

[email protected] / https://www.omnitouchinternational.com

Daniel & M&C Class

Stop outsourcing your happiness

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Its tempting to play the if/then game with your happiness.  If my boss gives me this, then I’ll give my boss that.

But when you outsource your happiness you’re bound to lose.

Cultural transformation

I have fun running cultural transformation workshops for people who work at big companies.

One of the things we discuss are barriers at work.

What’s ‘holding me back‘ from delivering on my company’s values or vision.

What I appreciate most about this exercise is the honesty that you get.

You’ll learn that most people at work aren’t asked ‘what’s holding you back‘.

It’s usually phrased as ‘why haven’t you hit your KPI’ which is obviously a different question.

Outsourcing happiness

During the debrief of barriers, it’s common to hear something like this –

‘Well Dan’ they start.  

‘As you know happy Employees equate to happy Customers…  

…so if our bosses only would (increase our incentive, change our shifts, fill in the blank) we would be happier and then everything would be better…”

At this point they usually laugh a bit and look at me expectantly.

But I’ve heard this one before.

And my response is consistent.

‘Are you sure you want to outsource your happiness? 

Because it sounds an awful lot like you’re looking to strike a deal and its your happiness that you’re putting up as table stakes.

If you give me this, then I’ll give you that.  

But will you really?  

Are you going to live up to your side of the bargain?

If your bosses increase your incentive or (fill in the blank) they have every right to expect you to sign on the dotted line, head back to work and forever serve as a poster child for happiness.

I didn’t know that happiness could be sold so cheaply.

Your happiness is your responsibility – thank goodness!

Once you begin outsourcing at work, it spills over into your personal life as well (and vice versa).

‘If only my child gets into a good school…’

‘If only I could live in a better postal code closer to the sea…’

‘If only my partner would lose a few pounds…’ (oops!)

No one knows how to make you happy better than you.

And certainly no one is going to take better care of your happiness then you.

Avoid outsourcing your happiness.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to plan a better Workshop

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

You can run a better Workshop at your organization by following a few simple steps.

Every year, organizations plan workshops for their Employees – sometimes for a select few, other times for the Team at large.

A better Workshop has the potential to influence, inspire and provide clarity.

But one that is less well-run wastes time, money and impacts management credibility.

Here we share a few tips that will help your Workshop Leader deliver a better experience for your Participants.

1. Write a ‘Mission Statement’ for your Workshop

As with any important project, develop the Mission Statement or set of objectives early in the planning.

Of course you will tinker and tailor with the Mission Statement as you gather more input – but it’s a super important thing to begin with.

A great Mission Statement informs decisions ranging from selection of  content through to the seating arrangement.

Simple examples of mission statements are:

  • ‘As a result of this workshop we expect participants to better understand our current reasons for change and help them work through their Denial & Resistance phases…’
  • ‘After this workshop, we want better integration and bonding between those members of our Team who are newly hired and those who have been with us for some time…’
  • ‘We want participants to leave with a solid definition of Customer Experience, what it means, how it ‘works’ and how to bring it to life in their own work environment.’

Whether your Workshop Leader is the ‘main event’ or is one of several Speakers, understanding the Mission of your workshop helps.

2. Describe the expected audience in as much detail as practical

Audience composition matters.

If the audience is a mix of management and Front-line Team Members, its not appropriate to cover topics like ‘how to motivate staff’, or ‘how to improve staff performance’.

These are better reserved for a management-level audience only.

On the other hand, topics like “Stress Management”, “How to Enhance your Personal Brand” or “How to bring Customer Experience to Life’, can be quite relevant for a mixed level audience.

Be as specific as you can be.

For example –

The audience will consist of 10% senior management from all divisions, 30% middle management from the Sales & Marketing groups and 60% from the Frontline split evenly between Shops & Contact Centre.

3. Share the seating strategy

How seating is arranged and who sits where has a big impact on the success of a workshop.

If the setting is lecture style, such as in an auditorium, the Lecturer may decide to proceed with a one-way presentation (in the Ted Talks style).

Alternatively, they might break down the audience into sub-groups.

After all, a group of 100 is really nothing more than 20 sub-groups of 5 people each.

If there is to be group or table seating, define who is supposed to sit at which table.

If one of your objectives is to get folks to know each other better, avoid situations where management all sits together and staff all sits together.

Seating plans can be predetermined by the organizer or, if preferred, the Lecturer can help to establish the seating assignments.

The key is to let the Lecturer know the seating strategy ahead of time.

Workshop Leaders have a variety of effective and respectful workshop strategies to get participants to rotate to new locations if needed.

4. Define the role of the ‘Big Boss’

The role of the ‘Big Boss’ or bosses should be clarified before the start of the workshop.

Typical roles of the Big Boss in a workshop are to:

  • Address the audience at the beginning with the objectives of the Workshop and the desired outcomes from the Workshop
  • Share latest organizational news and updates
  • Reinforce the Vision and/or purpose of the workshop
  • Introduce the Speaker or Speakers
  • Observe participant reaction to the Workshop

Big Bosses should walk in prepared to deliver on their role and ideally ‘stick’ to that role and not improvise on the spot.

A Big Boss can easily take over the workshop if you’re not careful.

In a recent event, the senior management had to quietly ask the Big Boss to leave as their presence (and poor introduction) created a lot of fear in the room.

5. Let your Workshop Leader know how much time they will have

If one of the workshop objectives is to allow participants a chance to get to know each other, it’s likely that a long lunch and long tea breaks will be encouraged.

The workshop might be held on a weekend and so ends earlier than a normal working day.

Once introductions, tea breaks and lunch have been factored in (along with starting and ending times), your Workshop Leader will know how much ‘real’ time they will have for delivery.

While Workshop Leaders are obviously good at time management, there is a big difference between having 4.5 hours to present and. 6.0 hours to present.

6. Share the evaluations & feedback with your Workshop Leader

Successful Workshop Leaders learn from every session they conduct – whether its the 5th time or the 50th time they are presenting.

They appreciate the feedback.

Thank you for reading and here’s to better Workshops!

Daniel

Why your call quality doesn’t deliver on Customer experience

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Call quality in today’s Contact Centres hasn’t improved enough to keep up with today’s Customer expectations.

Recently we released a new training course – “How to have Great Conversations with your Guests & Customers”.

Within days, we received a number of inquiries from banks, hotels and even two shopping centres.

While the industries were different, the inquiry was the same.

“Dan – we’ve got the Team to a level of standardization and compliance.

But despite that fact that we are an amazing company in our industry, we still have to urge (push, pull, scream) to get our Frontline staff to engage in conversation with our Guests & Customers.”

That got us to thinking – why isn’t call quality getting better?

Why do Team Members in hotels & retail environments sound so robotic?

The call mix has changed

What Customers called about 10, 5 or even 2 years ago has changed.

In a North American study, 41% of voice-calls received in Contact Centres were driven by failures in other channels.

So voice-based Centres are transitioning into channel-resolution Centres.  Working to solve more complex and challenging inquiries than ever before.

When you’re dealing with more complex inquiries, the stakes are higher.

A nice tone of voice and saying the Customer name two times isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Proportionally calls related to difficult situations have gone up

Ask any mid to long time Contact Centre Agent about the behavior of Customers today.

They will tell you that their Customers are more demanding.

Your longer-serving Agents might feel that organizational performance has declined over time.  A direct result given the increase in the volume and intensity of difficult situations.

That’s an important leadership challenge that needs to be addressed before the Centre shifts into ‘all Customers are jerks’ mode which is an experience killer.

If you’re an Agent who thinks Customers are jerks, your call quality is bound to suffer.

Contact Centres as an industry remain siloed

Unlike industries such as health-care, law, accounting and the like, Contact Centres are deeply tied to their vertical organization with rew ties to the ‘horizontal industry’ at large.

This means that the folks running the Centres might not have the necessary knowledge, skills and exposure to run multi-channel or omni-channel environments.

Once a Contact Centre has managed to achieve a ‘base-level’ of performance around Operations & Quality, a Business As Usual inertia sets in.

A sense that ‘we’ve done it, we’re there – so for heaven’s sake don’t rock the boat by changing anything now’.

So what is this mysterious Wow Factor everyone talks about?

You still hear the terms, Wow Factor, Go the Extra Mile, Customer delight – but it’s very seldom that Contact Centre leadership can define it well.

How can an Agent deliver this mysterious Customer Delight factor if their bosses can’t even define it?

No – this is not an Agent attitude problem.

This is a management failure.

And the lessons of Customer Experience teach us that consistent (good) performance beats isolated Wow Factors every time.

That doesn’t mean ignore Wow.  It simply means that you have to get the consistency right before you design the Wow.

You can’t build a house with Legos

Of course behaviors like tone of voice, etiquette and courtesies matter – but they are expected and don’t really provide differentiation.

When you listen to calls across organizations in the same locale or region, it all sounds pretty much the same.

Colin Shaw of Beyond Philosophy calls it the ‘blight of the bland’.

I love that term, despite its inherent negativity.

What you get these days when you call a Contact Centre is truly bland – not great, not bad – serviceable.

I’ve yet to meet a Contact Centre Manager who promotes the mantra of ‘Let’s be Serviceable!’

So why is this so common?

Primarily because most Centre leadership and Quality Assurance Teams focus heavily on the compliance standards like ‘fillers’ and ‘use the Customer’s name 3 times in a conversation’.

Agents become compliance driven – because that is what their bosses tell them they want.

And it’s what they hear their bosses talk about every day.

It’s unreasonable and illogical to expect Agents to suddenly dig deeper into their souls and find a way to ‘wow’ Customers when their ‘Quality life’ revolves around tick-marks on compliance-based behaviors.

Recently a senior executive said to me – “We are the most famous hotel in a famous country – surely my Staff can find something to chat about with the Customer!”

While on paper that sounds reasonable, at the Agent level we can’t operate on wish fulfillment.

It’s like expecting flowers to bloom in the desert.

So what can differentiate?

In today’s CX environment, the standard bundle of KPIs that exist in many Centres continues the blight of the bland.

To be differentiate, we find that there are 3 common things – across industries – that Agents can bring to life in their conversations.

The ability to deliver any of these involves a variety of other competencies including listening, empathy, confidence, product knowledge and the like.

  • Relevant opinions

    Imagine you call for a dining reservation in the restaurant of your hotel and after a brief but valuable conversation, the Agent provides their informed ‘opinion’. “In my opinion sir, you’d be happier in the La Sala restaurant as it carries a wider selection of dishes as compared to our La Marina restaurant which is exclusively fine dining and for which options are more limited…”

  • Appropriate Recommendations

    Recommendations are linked to opinions but stronger in depth & intensity.

    “Sir, thanks for answering all my questions. Based on your situation I’d recommend that you take the XX version of our product – while it’s a bit lower than our higher end solution – it will serve you well based on the parameters we spoke about. It’s always superb to hear a Contact Centre Agent use the phrase “I recommend” appropriately (i.e. after careful listening and weighing of options – not simply pushing a product or service).

  • Conveyance of Emotion

    There are so many definitions and descriptions of this important topic and it’s a topic we never tire of studying. One of the best and simplest definitions I’ve seen is this – “The Guest or Customer leaves the interaction feeling better than they did entering it.” 

When it comes to creating a positive emotional experience with a Customer (or at the very least mitigating a negative experience), it’s important to understand that it’s not achieved by tacking on a new KPI such as “Small Talk”.

It’s a matter of rethinking the entire conversation and learning how to identify solid opportunities to express opinions, recommendations and trigger emotions.

Some time back we did a Mystery Shopper which involved asking Agents about the various attractions to be found in a resort.

The question was this – “Can you tell me about the Aquarium?” .

The answer was, “It has fish”.

You can’t build a house using Legos.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

 

Here’s some advice to become an industry award winner this year

by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Your best chance at winning an award has to do with both the content of your entry and the style of your presentation.

When Awards seasons rolls around each year for Contact Centres & Customer Experience, I hear the same questions around ‘who’ will win the industry awards and ‘what’ they did to win awards.

One question that I hear a lot sounds like this –

Don’t the folks who ‘naturally’ present well have a better chance of winning than those of us who feel nervous presenting to a panel of Judges?”

It’s a fair question and I thought I’d share my perspective about Award winners coming from the judging point of view.

Yes – presentation matters

Judges are human beings.

And as human beings they respond well to a clear engaging manner, tone and body language.

In an industry based on communication & Customer experience, it’s understood that Candidates will serve as role models for communication & experience.

So do great presenters gain an edge over those that don’t present so well?

Absolutely they do.

I was watching a reality TV show last night where the Contestant managed to get the Judges smiling, laughing and exchanging glances with each other during their presentation.

Superb.

When I mentor Candidates for Awards I advise them to leave the Judges feeling better than when you walked in.

At the end of the judging day, after seeing so many Candidates, there are always certain folks that stand out in your mind. And it helps to be one of them.

Yes, content matters too.  And with expert Judges, even more than presentation.

I read a short post from a well respected Customer experience guru recently.

He had been invited to be a Judge at a Customer experience event in the UK.

His post was along the lines of –

“The Candidates were all very proud of what they had done. But from a CX maturity point of view, what they had done wasn’t all that impressive…”

That post really resonated with me.

Folks working in Contact Centres, Customer Service & Customer Experience talk constantly about how fast the industry is moving and how important it is to keep pace with Customer expectations.

But is the content shared during the judging process experimental? Or is it expected?

By now, Judges expect that you’ve got your process house in order.

The key now is to share what’s new, what’s different, what you’re trying now, what’s worked and what hasn’t.  This is the stuff Judges want to hear.

Imagine a simple matrix that measures Presentation quality on the vertical axis (from low to high) and Content quality on the horizontal axis (from low to high)

In the blue box we see –

Great presentation skills but expected or even less than expected content.

For example, it’s great that you do transaction coaching – shouldn’t everyone?

If you’re doing transaction coaching, tell us how it aligns to organizational goals and overall CX strategies.

Tell us how you continuously improved the process to make it more efficient and more effective over time.

Folks that operate within the blue box tend to be super happy with themselves and their organizations and that’s a great thing.

But being happy with yourself doesn’t mean you’re Award winning.

In the yellow box we see –

Less than stellar presentation but more than expected content.

As a Judge, I always assign more weight to content than I do to presentation skills.

In an industry as dynamic as ours, its those who try new things (and perhaps fail), that impress much more than those who are just getting the basics right.

To help me differentiate on content I also look a lot for those who face and work ‘outwards’ vs. those who work or face ‘inwards’.

Inward looking Candidates focus on their Centre (or department) and what happens in the Centre. There’s typically a lot of discussion on KPIs.  It becomes very touchpoint focused.

Inward looking Candidates talk less (if at all) about the Centre as part of a larger eco-system or as a key contributor to overall organizational purpose & objectives.

You don’t hear much about the linkages between the Centre and the Organization at large.

You don’t hear enough about journeys.

Outward looking Candidates talk about their role within the larger organization and share their wins (and failures) in achieving organizational purpose & objectives.

In particular I look for thought leadership and the breaking down of organizational silos.

You hear a lot more about journeys.

In the world of Customer experience, none of us is an island.

It’s exciting to listen to and interact with outward facing folks who seem to understand that.

 

Today people throw around the words ‘disruption’ and ‘innovation’ willy nilly and often without context.

But when you listen to Awards presentations you seldom hear much that sounds innovative or disruptive.

Perhaps there is a misguided perception that it is better to play it safe.  But that makes for a dull presentation.

 

 In the red box we see –

The Winners – or at least those who deserve to win.

Memorable presentation combined with inspiring content.

 

 

 

 

 

In the green box we see –

Individuals & Centres who were pushed into the Awards process.

Some Organizations just throw in a bunch of Candidates with the hope that they just might win an Award.

We also see the Candidates & Organizations that waited till the last minute to prepare.   To Judges, this lack of preparation is blatantly obvious.

As the years go by, the gap between high performing Awards entrants and low performing Awards entrants is widening.

In short, the good Candidates are really good, while the not so good Candidates can feel achingly behind.

This is one reason why I always advise individuals to try and work for the very best organizations that they can.

The odds of learning and growing are always better when you work for a better organization.

In closing

I heartily support entering a quality Awards program.

I think that the process of entering makes you smarter and better.  And that the more seriously you take the process, the more you get out of it.

But as you prepare for Awards season – hopefully months in advance – consider the role of Content and the role of Presentation.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

Liked this article?  Then join our mailing list.  Simply enter your email address on our Home Page!

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com