What Emily in Paris taught me about CX

11/01/2022by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Here’s what Emily in Paris taught me about CX

In the show, Emily in Paris, there’s a funny scene between Emily and her roommate Mindy.

Emily is trying to write a letter in French and Mindy, who speaks French well, offers to help. But Emily declines the offer, saying, ‘No thanks, I can do this, my French is ok.’

To which Mindy replies, ‘Ok good to know. Then maybe you’ll want to stop washing your hair with dog shampoo.’

It turns out that Emily’s level of French wasn’t actually quite there yet. She was washing her hair with dog shampoo.

The picture on the shampoo bottle wasn’t meant to evoke the warmth of owing a pet. It was actually a shampoo for dogs.

I laughed long and loud at that. Because that scene mirrored my own life experience.

Six years ago, when I first moved to Germany, I did exactly the same thing. I stood in a grocery store aisle trying to figure out which bottle of shampoo to buy.

And no, I couldn’t guess at the German words on the label with any level of confidence. It was one of many watershed moments.

It’s a humbling experience to reboot your life in a new language.

Put aside cultural assimilation for the moment.

When you don’t know the language it becomes tough to just do daily life stuff like figuring out what buttons to press on the ATM machine or how to correctly fill in the mailing label for a package.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/what-can-i-do-with-my-ccxp

There are parallels between rebooting life in a new language and implementing a CX strategy

To successfully reboot my life in German, I went through a number of steps.

And I think there are some direct parallels to the steps I took in my personal life and how I see Clients implement CX in their organizations.

Here goes –

1. My world had changed and if I was going to succeed in it I was going to need to change too (and speak German!)

The CX parallel:

At the heart of so many successful CX strategies is (drum roll)…dissatisfaction.

A realization hat the world has changed and that our organization hasn’t changed with it – or hasn’t changed enough to meet new realities.

Not paranoia.

But a recognition that what’s made us successful up to now isn’t going to make us successful going forward.

If everyone thinks everything is just fine, you don’t see the impetus for change.

2. I set a specific and ambitious vision for my future – I imagined myself speaking fluent German everywhere I went

The CX parallel:

The CX Vision is where it all starts.

Not the organizational vision though of course the CX Vision must map to the organizational vision.

Rather a specific and ambitious view of the future that answers this question – what kind of experience do we intend to deliver?

And no, that doesn’t come from senior people meeting in a room to craft pretty words.

Crafting a great CX Vision for the future requires us to artfully blend who we are as an organization – our brand, our value proposition, our financial goals – with what our Customers want and need from us.

Most Clients tell me that they spend six months, sometimes more, doing a deep dive into the world of the organization and the world of Customers to craft their compelling CX vision.

But once that’s done, it becomes the check against which next steps and actions are mapped.

3. I evaluated the gap between my current state (of speaking German) and my desired future state – how big was the gap?

The CX parallel:

Before launching into the CX ‘doing’ it’s helpful to evaluate where you are now.

A strategic gap analysis across all the vital CX competencies includes looking at the current state of domains like VOC, Metrics, Culture and more.

Only through knowing where you are now, can you determine what you’ll need to move forward. And what that roll out might look like.

4. I set my strategy – my plan of action to achieve my vision (of speaking fluent German)

The CX parallel:

Equipped with my CX Vision (point #2) and my readiness analysis (point #3), I can now set out the short, mid & long term activities needed to move forward.

Avoid complexity here – remember that short term wins build credibility for longer term wins.

As you progress the impact will increase – Rome wasn’t built in a day – but it was built.

5. I considered how speaking German would improve my life overall – which is the real payoff

The CX parallel:

I saw a CX Consultant once say, “It’s not about the money…”. And I remember thinking what terrible advice that was.

We all operate in the real world. And have a responsibility to our organization to help it do better ‘financially’ or business-wise (I also work with governmental & non-profit organizations as well).

As a CX professional, I need to articulate how the CX work we’re doing (and trying to get others onboard to do) is going to help my organization do better and be better – in real economic terms.

6. I allocated resources into my plan – including time and money

The CX parallel:

Describing and quantifying the specific resources you’ll need is necessary to win budget approval. It’s overly simplistic to just say ‘CX is everyone’s job’ and hope your CX dreams come true. And it’s not about having a huge CX Team (those are rare).

You’ll be asking others to allocate their time and resources too. Don’t ever underestimate that ‘ask’ that you’re making.

7. I set appropriate metrics to track my progress along the way (such as passing the language certification exams)

The CX parallel:

Metrics inform me of my progress – and keep our CX efforts headed in the right direction,

Of course it’s important to look at all the many metrics and determine which ones support CX, which ones actually damage CX and which ones are function or departmental specific and may not have significant impact on CX.

Choosing and then measuring the right things is one of the most important decisions you’ll help your organizationn make.

And of course you have to take actions based on what your metrics tell you.

I’m not going to get into the ‘Organizations obtain scores and then don’t do anything with them’ discussion in this post.

It’s pretty obvious that if you’ve chosen the right metrics, you make the effort to help them move in the right direction.

8. I shared my vision and progress with my family & friends – to help build a culture of support & accountability

The CX parallel:

It’s amazing how much easier things ‘go’ when everyone is rooting for success – and pulling in the same direction to get there.

When you hear people talking in meetings about what they’ve done or are planning to do to make people’s lives better.

One of my favourite CX people told me that she knew she had been successful when people from around the company started coming to her office to tell them about what they were doing.

As compared to her first couple of years where she spent so much time ‘out in the field’.

Share your CX successes. Share those failures. There’s a teachable moment in nearly any experience.

In closing

These days I can visit the dentist, buy new eyeglasses and make a dinner reservation in German. I’m not where I want to be with my vision yet – but I’m closer than I was when I started.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/04/words-worth/

It will be the same for your CX work too. Your successes will begin to accumulate. And people in your organization will come to you for advice – perhaps one of the best signals ever that you’re on the right track.

So thanks Emily in Paris for that resonant moment with the shampoo bottle – and for helping me consider lessons around Customer Experience.

Thank you for reading!

I appreciate the time you took to read this. And if you’d like to follow along with our articles and other information just leave your email address in our contact form!

Daniel Ord

[email protected]

www.omnitouchinternational.com

How to get better at writing

04/01/2022by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

In this article I talk about how to get better at writing.

I wrote this as a response to a recent article written by Maurice Fitzgerald in which he wrote –

“The two most critical skills for managers”

“Quite simple really. We can have all the knowledge in the world. Unless we are able to communicate it effectively, we can’t get anything done.

The only ways we can get our teams and organizations to do what we want are:

Writing.
Speaking.

There is nothing else. There is no other way we can communicate. There is no other way we can get things done. The better you are at these two skills, the easier it will be for you to get things done.”

I’d recommend the entire article which you can find here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/only-two-ways-managers-get-things-done-2022-every-other-fitzgerald/?trackingId=CNRXgVmMQgWJ9CsXWUhfWA%3D%3D

Via the comments section on his article, Maurice asked me if I had any suggestions on how folks can improve their writing skills – largely because I spend so much of my time teaching communication skills.

And in this short article I respond to his question.

Let’s start first with context

It’s unlikely the people reading this are planning on writing the great American (or Malaysian or Irish) novel.

I think for most people at work, it’s about upping the levels of clarity & effectiveness in written communication.

So to get better at writing, I’d suggest starting off by improving how you write emails.

Because nearly everyone has to write emails – and yet the calibre and clarity of the email writing that’s out there is all over the place.

What I’m seeing in email writing

I’ve taught email writing for 20 years.

But what I’m seeing in the last couple of years or so is how Clients are embracing new ways of thinking about how their people communicate with Customers and with each other.

In the past, the training request I’d receive would sound like this – “Dan, we have a big Customer Service Team. Please help them improve their email writing skills.”

And that was all fine and good and I’ve very much enjoyed this work (and still do).

But these days, I hear a new variation on this request. It sounds like this –

“Dan, of course we want to improve our email writing with Customers. So much of how we communicate with Customers today involves writing – email, chat, text, social media and so on. So yes – let’s help Customer Service improve.”

“But we also want to improve how the people in our company write to each other. Because it’s not enough for us that our Customer Service folks can write well.”

They continue…

“To build our Customer-centric culture and our organizational effectiveness, we want everybody to write well – it’s that important to us.”

That’s the single biggest trend I’ve seen in email writing classes and I think it’s a terrific one.

If you truly want to build that desireable Customer-centric culture, then everyone should be able to write as if they were writing to a Customer.

A point I highlight, early on in email writing workshops, is this one –

Why would you write differently to a Colleague than you would to a Client or Customer?

Doesn’t your Colleague deserve clarity? Don’t they deserve ease or recognition of their emotion? And doesn’t everyone deserve more than an abrupt one word ‘noted’ in reply to their note?

Because everyone is a Customer.

And the way you write is a direct reflection of how you think and how you see the world.

When your Colleague opens your reply and reads it – how are they going to feel? What perception have you created? How are they going to remember you?

“Business writing” has ruined some of us

One of the hallmarks of a great email is that it sounds the way we speak (as our best selves obviously).

Yet so much of what we see when we evaluate email transcripts is the use of heavy words, lengthy expressions, jargon, buzzwords and even the dreaded ‘we regret to inform you’ or ‘we would greatly appreciate if you would…’.

Some Participants tell us they learned to write this way in school – often under the heading of ‘business writing’.

That to dress up the email with fancy words & phrases somehow made it more ‘professional’. Oh dear.

Where business writing refers to recognizing the tone and content of the Customer – I say yes – go for it. That’s an approach to ‘business writing’ I can get behind.

But where business writing refers to being murky in word choice and stilted in how we present our ideas and suggestions – I’d say that’s an approach to ‘business writing’ that’s not doing anyone any favours.

It’s a strange turn world we all live in when a Chatbot ends up having more personality and better word choice than a human being does.

We actually came across such a case in a Mystery Shopper program we undertook last year. And it still haunts me.

In an increasingly digital world – when one human being chooses to reach out to another human being – don’t we have an inherent responsibility to be human?

Some ‘lenses’ you can use to better see your emails

This short article isn’t a replacement for a formal workshop or learning program. There’s just too much ground to cover.

But there are a number of great lenses you can use to review your existing email writing and improve.

What I find is that people ‘look’ at their email, but don’t always ‘see’ their email.

What lenses do is provide new and powerful ways to relook (and rethink) how you write.

Here are three of my favourite lenses

Lens #1: The 9 Step Pattern

This is the essential pattern we teach in our email writing workshops and covering these steps:

1. Interpret Tone & Content

2. Choose the right Response Action (Clarify, Response Template, Free Form)

3. Write the Opening

4. Craft the Affirmation or Empathy Statement (this is where we spend a lot of time on empathy and what it sounds like).

5. Structure the Response

6. Invite Interaction

7. Conclude

8. Re-read

9. Send

Having a chronological step by step framework makes email writing both better and more efficient.

And the 9 Step Process is effective as well – it helps ensure that the Tone & Content of the Customer have been considered and where appropriate ‘matched’.

It’s not meant to turn writers into robots.

Rather – like a great recipe – it ensures that all the key ingredients are gathered and blended together for a great outcome.

Lens #2: The Customer Experience Pyramid

The CX Pyramid is so simple and yet so powerful.

It’s part of our CX workshops and we often use the CX Pyramid in our Mystery Shopper and Contact Audit work for Clients as well.

The pyramid covers 3 levels – each level with it’s own question to answer.

1. Meets Needs – Did I help my Customer accomplish their goal?

2. Easy – Did I make it easy for and on the Customer to understand and use my email reply?

3. Enjoyable – What kind of emotional perception will be left in the mind of the Customer once they read my email reply? Is that the emotion I was going for?

Considering the answers to these three questions is pretty much guaranteed to make your email better.

Lens #3: The Customer Journey approach

This lens helps remind me that the Customer is on a journey to accomplish something. And that I’m just one point in that journey (something for Customer Service people to remember).

By stepping back and looking at the ‘bigger’ chronological picture – I can serve them better. And here are the questions I ask myself using this lens:

Sometimes people get very factory like when they’re handling email. Head down, fingers flying, responses sent.

But taking a few moments to consider the Customer journey starting with what motivated them to write, what their goal is (and how my reply addresses that) and where they are likely to go next (including what I can share with them about what comes next) leads to better outcomes.

Including reduced ‘back and forth’ email trains and improved Customer perception (I was listened to).

Are there more lenses that we can possible use?

Absolutely.

In CX we talk about data architecture. How different layers of data can be combined to provide a full picture of Customer perception & outcomes.

I think that idea works for email writing too. Different lenses can be ‘layered’ and combined to provide a complete quality framework for an email.

Another lens we could use is the Cultural lens. How does a German national prefer to receive their message as compared to a Japanese national for example.

Or how about the Value lens – in what way does or should our organization’s core values make their appearance in our communications.

But I’d still start with the 9 Step Pattern as my primary lens first. And then layer on the additional lenses that I’ve chosen as the most relevant and meaningful for my work communication.

In closing

Thanks Maurice for what you wrote. I think that in today’s world, being able to speak well and write well matters more than ever.

So does Warren Buffet by the way – here’s an excerpt from a business article I came across –

Legendary investor and billionaire Warren Buffet has a tip for young people: Focus on learning how to write and speak clearly.

“The one easy way to become worth 50 percent more than you are now — at least — is to hone your communication skills — both written and verbal,” says Buffett.

I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for reading!

Daniel

[email protected]

Shared understanding – the beating heart of your Customer experience

23/12/2021by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” Henry David Thoreau

In the domains of Customer Experience, Customer Service & Contact Centers, people can look at the same ‘thing’ but see something quite different than those around them.

Sometimes these differences can be due to petulance – “I don’t like that definition of CX!” (mine is better)

Or due to intellectual sparring – “That’s not the best formula!” (you should do it this way)

Sometimes there’s an agenda – “Surveys are dead!” (so buy my technology)

But perhaps – most commonly – it’s just a lack of shared understanding –

“Hi everyone, we’ve all listened to the same call but we all came up with different opinions about whether it’s a good call or not.” (so let’s work on a shared understanding)

If we all see different things, we’ll all end up doing different things

The seeing part directly impacts the doing part.

If I see it this way, I’ll go down this path. If you see it that way, then you’ll go down that path. And we both think we’re right.

But in this case, two rights don’t equal a ‘better’ right.

They add up to different – and even inconsistent decisions. We end up doing different things.

To get the right things done (strategy execution) and move our organization perceptibly forward (to achieve our vision and strategic objectives), a shared understanding is essential.

This is where Thoreau’s quote lands for me.

Diverge and converge – what we can learn from Human Centered Design

Seeing things differently is valuable. Some of you may have already been saying that as you read the opening.

The question for me is at what point is it valuable to air differences and at what point do we go with a shared understanding.

I think there’s a lesson we can learn from Human Centered Design (HCD).

With any change – whether that’s a Customer-centric transformation or redo of the Quality standards for the Contact Center – it’s valuable to have different people bring their different points of view to the conversation.

I liken this to the Ideate Phase in Human Centered Design where no idea is a bad idea.

Ideate is a ‘diverge’ phase in the Human Centered Design process where we open ourselves up to everything. The diamond in the picture opens.

Bring on those ideas.

But at some point, only a few of these ideas are worthy enough to bring forward into the prototyping and testing phases. The rest get discarded.

This is the ‘converge’ phase. There’s a winnowing down that happens in the Prototyping Phase. The diamond in the picture closes.

We’ve made some decisions. The best ideas get chosen to move forward.

Here are examples of gaps between looking and seeing

In the Customer ecosystem there are plenty of examples of the gaps that exist between what people look at and what people see.

Gaps that great Customer leaders can help to close to nurture and strengthen our shared understanding.

Interpreting Interaction Quality

When you listened to that call recording or read that chat transcript from our Customer Service Agent, what did you ‘see’?

When you listen to how Managers & Team Leaders describe what they heard on a call or read on a chat transcript it’s possible that you hear interpretations that are all over the place.

Or, to try and avoid opinions being all over the place, only the most basic Quality standards have been selected.

But enabling that improvement in ‘shared understanding’ is offset by the delivery of a large robotic experience to Customers.

Yes – shared understanding is the goal. But not at the expense of delivering an intended experience to Customers.

Getting people to ‘see’ Quality and align around a shared understanding of Quality makes Customer lives better.

And it makes Employee lives better too.

Because when management gives clarity – people can do better work.

They can say, “Yeah, we know what we’re supposed to deliver and we get clear and structured support from our company management on how to deliver that.”

Interpreting Metric results

When you look at those 27 Contact Center metrics you report every week – what do you ‘see’?

Because I work in many Centers around the world, I see the level of variation in the ‘what’ metrics people select and and ‘how’ they look at them.

Some Contact Center metrics are unnecessary, secondary at best, interpreted incorrectly, are weighted too much (or too little) or are interpreted in different ways among the Team.

A Contact Center is an ‘interrelated system of causes’ which is a fancy way of saying that everything is connected.

So it’s important to understand the interrelationships and trade-offs that exist between metrics. And how to explain what they mean as they move together – not just how they move in isolation.

Looking at a dashboard of metrics, and having the entire Team accurately interpret what they ‘see’ – unlocks a world of shared understanding.

Why are you still talking about Average Handling Time?

Interpreting how Customers behave

When that Customer scolded you while you were serving them what did you ‘see’?

Don’t be surprised when some Frontline folks – after being scolded by a Customer – say they saw a ‘jerk’. Or that they were being ‘abused’.

We hear descriptions like these when we teach how to deal with difficult Customer situations.

We’ve found that in even Customer-centric organizations, some real world discussion about difficult Customers needs to happen.

Because as you’ll find out when you talk to people, there is a pretty big difference between Customer behavior that is indeed ‘abusive’ versus Customer behavior that we just don’t like.

Helping your folks see that – and manage those situations better – is an important leadership responsibility.

For all of us who seek to be leaders, our job is to help and inspire others see things too

In management workshops Participants ask the following questions:

– How can I get my bosses to ‘see’ that our Contact Center is a profit center, not a cost center?

– How can I get my Employees to ‘see’ that the values we’ve chosen for culture change really matter?

– How can I get other departments to ‘see’ how important CX is?

I find that much of the practitioner discussion these days has to do with helping people ‘see’ better. Because when they ‘see’ better – and we create that shared understanding – they do better.

They make better decisions. They align & unite around common language & goals. They improve their ability to influence others.

When Clients reach out to us it often sounds like this:

“Dan, .can you help our people see how to run our Center better? See what CX means and how to bring it to life. See how to be a better boss. See how to improve coaching outcomes. See how to communicate better with Customers.”

It’s not that they haven’t looked at it.

It’s that they don’t yet see it.

Thank you for reading!

Thank you for taking the time to read this article today.

If you’d like to be kept up to date on our articles, activities and offers just send us your email or add it to the contact form on our website.

Daniel Ord

[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com

Banner photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

CX lessons I learned judging CX Awards this year

22/10/2019by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

In this article I share CX lessons I learned judging CX Awards this year.

Judging CX Awards is a privilege

When I first began judging CX & Contact Centre Awards way back in 2006, I thought wow – this is so exciting. What a wonderful way to build my CV and experience as a Trainer and Consultant.

But what I quickly learned is that judging Awards is first and foremost a privilege. One that gives you unparalleled insight into what real world CX heros face every day in the real world.

And when it comes to who gets Gold, Silver or whatever hierarchy of Awards is in place, I’d say this.

The very fact that you entered and reached some Finalist level already indicates that you’re part of the ‘tribe who cares’. The distinction between first, second, third and so on is much less important.

Some suggestions for industry Awards entrants

The themes I picked up judging CX Awards

The lessons shared here don’t originate from any single Awards entry. To come up with the lessons, I identified themes that appeared across multiple Awards entries.

For example, in Lesson #1 on ‘Who leads Tech programs’, I encountered three different Finalist entries that incorporated or mentioned this topic in their entry.

I think that makes the lessons more meaningful and also protects the confidentiality of individual Awards entrants.

And for those of you out there who also do qualitative research, I’m sure that the detection and reporting of themes will be familiar to you!

Lesson #1 – Who leads Tech programs?

It was quite remarkable to read that when it came time to implement a new Tech program – such as a new Martech stack – it was the Customer Experience Team that led the program. Not the IT Department.

I had to re-read that a few times to make sure I had it right.

Because so often, technology leads the way.

And Customer Experience has to gallop and chase from behind to figure out what the technology is going to ‘do’ to the Customer Experience.

But putting the CX folks firmly in charge of leading Tech programs ensures that the Customer perspective is built in from the ground up. Call me impressed.

A couple of years ago I ran a large number of management workshops on how to successfully implement Live Chat into the channel mix .

And when I asked Participants why they were rolling out Live Chat, most told me that they were told they had to do it by their bosses.

Either because everyone else was doing it, or because that functionality was already in the software package and they wanted to maximize their tech investment.

Sound familiar?

Lesson #2 – Is CX really everybody’s job?

Across multiple entries I saw the following sentiment expressed.

It might be nice to say that CX is everybody’s job.

But the reality is that the art & science of CX requires experts. And the nuts and bolts of how CX gets done is through expert know-how and experience. Just like any formal business discipline.

I admit I loved this sentiment.

Platitudes – such as ‘CX is everybody’s job’ – don’t take organizations very far in their CX ambitions. And it doesn’t recognize the robust nature of the know-how required to get CX ‘done’.

Why not put CX-related responsibilities into everyone’s job role? That’s a great way to help bring CX to life.

And of course the CX-related responsibilities that I’d put into the jobs of my Finance folks will look different than those I put in for my Warehousing folks. But by taking this step, everyone knows what their role in CX is and how to bring it to life.

In my work with Clients I prefer to say that CX should be in everybody’s job. That strikes me as far more practical and meaningful.

And you can take that further – as many Entrants did – by providing a fundamental level of training in CX – not just Customer Service – to everyone in the Organization.

https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/what-i-learned-running-60-classes-on-cx-values-and-culture-for-one-client

Lesson #3 – There are different ways to build CX momentum

There’s a lot written about on how to get that CX momentum to start in your organization.

And different Awards entrants had slightly different experiences in how to do this.

One way – that was shared across quite a few entries – involved setting anywhere from a 6 to 12 month campaign to achieve as many small quick wins as possible. The principle being that the aggregated impact of many small wins ends up being significant.

In one memorable example, the focus was on eliminating 99 Customer pain points within a year. And that required a lot of cross-functional collaboration which in turn nurtured organizational excitement around CX.

A second way I noted was to tackle one relatively large project – one fully backed by senior management – and succeed at it.

That project then served as a showcase for other folks in the company. Folks who otherwise hadn’t been interested in CX but wanted to see what all the fuss was about and how such great outcomes were achieved.

Of course the risk here is that of actually succeeding.

And finally – one of my favorite submissions on this topic.

The Awards entrant shared that the very process of sharing broadly and deeply on CX and looking to Employees as a big source of insight on the current state of CX, kick started a completely new and more collaborative way of working with Employees.

And that Employees rewarded that sense of collaboration with even more effort.

CX lessons we can learn from the Contact Centre industry

CX lessons I learned – in closing

One last observation in closing.

Entrants specifically for CX Leader or Head of the Year Awards shared that they they were making an impact – and not just on Customers.

But on the hundreds and sometimes thousands of people who worked in their organizations.

And that while the first year – or even two – were hard, that eventually they became the go-to resource for CX in their organization – with folks actively seeking them out for advice and input.

It was this level of influence – and the resulting legacy they were creating – that seemed to be a big motivator for these terrific entrants.

Thank you for reading,

Daniel

[email protected]

CXPA Recognized Training Provider

What to look for when you hire a new Contact Centre Manager

09/10/2019by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International 1 Comment

In this article I share what to look for when you hire a new Contact Centre Manager.

Our scenario – you need to hire a new Contact Centre Manager

Let’s say you’re the new Chief Customer Officer and you need to hire a new inbound Contact Centre Manager for your existing 200 seat Centre. You’ve been given a mandate to implement a CX strategy and you have a small CX Team at hand.

You don’t come from the Contact Centre industry yourself. But as a CX professional you understand the value of the Contact Centre.

Your overall business is in good financial shape though the Centre has been somewhat neglected for the past few years. And tech-wise the Centre has the basic building blocks though there’s room for improvement.

You’ve learned from past experience that the number of years of experience held by the Contact Centre Manager doesn’t correlate to mastery of the job role. You need someone who ‘knows’ the Contact Centre – not just someone who has spent a lot of time in one.

So the essential question is this – what do you look for when you hire a new Contact Centre Manager?

The key domains of know-how required

The job of a Contact Centre Manager is a rich and full one. And that’s because there’s a lot to know to succeed.

I recommend the following key domains of know-how when looking to hire a new Contact Centre Manager. Or when you’re looking to upskill a current Manager or Management Team.

1. Operations & Technology

Includes Centre design, forecasting the workload, calculating staff and resource requirements, selecting the right metrics and ways to measure those metrics, understanding the interrelationships between metrics, understanding the underlying dynamics of the Centre, channel management and the ability to articulate the impact of business decisions on the operation.

In this domain I’d include essential & evolving technology knowledge. That’s because of the significant impact any technology choice has on the operation with cascading impact on Customers, Employees & the Organization itself.

When I’m asked which domain should come first in the hierarchy I always recommend Operations. That’s because so much of what happens in a Centre, from how people are managed through to how Customers experience the Centre, flows from strong operations management practices.

How to use the True Calls per Hour Calculation in the Contact Centre

2. People Management (or the broader ‘Employee Experience’ if you prefer)

This domain includes organizational design, strategic resource planning, hiring & selection, retention & attrition management, training & development, performance management, compensation & incentive strategies, coaching and employee engagement, satisfaction & motivation, career & skills pathing and succession planning.

In this domain, I’d specifically include the design and implementation of the monitoring & coaching process.

For organizations that are evolving into Employee Experience – a big topic today – I’d recommend adding those competencies to this domain.

3. Leadership & Business Management

From a leadership perspective, this domain includes competencies around the vision, the mission, values (or principles) and development & execution of strategy in the Centre. It also includes how to build healthy cross-functional relationships and put the Centre front and center on the organizational radar screen.

From a business management perspective, this domain includes the ability to make credible business cases, calculate Contact Centre budgets, calculate ROI and understand change management project management. I’d add that it’s vital that the Contact Centre Management bring strong financial and analytical skills to the job role.

In my experience, very few Centre Managers have a strong grasp of how to correctly calculate a Contact Centre budget.

If I were conducting a hiring exercise for a Contact Centre Manager I’d ask the candidate to walk me through how they budget for a Centre. You’ll learn a lot about how much they know (or don’t know) about a Contact Centre operation.

4. Service Management

Service Management is the art & science of delivering value to Customers through any channel or combination of channels. Often times the Contact Centre is at the heart of the Service Management function.

Service Management includes know-how around developing and implementing a Service Delivery Vision, the selection & definition of relevant Quality standards, Quality assurance practices, Customer research practices including service monitoring, Customer communication strategies and the nurturing of a service culture.

And of course it includes a strong & practical understanding of the specific service and relevant sales skills for each channel in use.

The skills for handling a Customer email are different than those for handling a Customer live chat for example. Omnichannel service requires a different approach than multi-channel service.

And yes – your ever evolving mastery of what are commonly called ‘digital’ channels goes here as well. That incorporates chat, messaging and to some degree even chatbots as there should be a solid bridge between chatbot-assisted and Agent-assisted service.

I think some folks confuse Service Management with Customer Experience Management.

Service Management very specifically relates to Customer interactions with the brand. It’s a subset of the overall Customer Experience.

Customer Experience includes product, pricing and every single aspect of the organization from the way the bill looks to how fresh the chicken is in the restaurant. It’s so much more than a call to the Contact Centre.

With that said, let’s look at the last domain of know-how – Customer Experience Management.

What I learned running 60 classes on CX values and Culture for one Client

5. Customer Experience Management

There is a ‘real’ Customer Experience Manager job role out there.

And the Contact Centre Manager role is not that role.

The Contact Centre Manager job role – by its very nature – only involves some subset of all Customers (never all Customers), at some point of time (not all points in time) in that specific Customer journey (not all Customer journeys).

If it was really true that the Contact Centre Manager job = the Customer Experience Manager job then why not rebrand every Customer Experience Manager as a Contact Centre Manager?

Because that’s what’s implied. It would have to work both ways to be true.

So you honour the Contact Centre profession when you keep the phrase Contact Centre in your job title. Not when you decide to jump on the rebranding of everything as CX bandwagon.

Sure – the Contact Centre has impact on those Customers who experience that touchpoint. But it’s not the same thing as the perception the Customer has of the entirety of their experience with your brand.

Once you get that – and master your understanding of and contribution to the overall CX – you become a better Contact Centre Manager.

So after that big build up, what does the Contact Centre Manager need to know about CX? From my perspective, the more the better.

But we need to be careful here.

While having our Contact Centre Manager understand CX as a business discipline is important and helpful to our CX efforts, let’s remember the Contact Centre Manager already has a full-time job.

Just relook at domains of know-how we covered so far.

So it’s likely that much of the actual ‘work’ of CX will be done by the CX Team.

That’s because the CX Team is in the best position to handle activities like VOC research, developing the CX strategy, cross-functional journey mapping. implementing organizational accountability measures and the like.

The CX Team has a higher elevation across functions as well as a broader mandate.

I think that in real life, the Contact Centre Manager has a lot to learn from the Customer Experience Manager with regard to CX.

And I think that the Customer Experience Manager has a lot to learn from the Contact Centre Manager as well. The Customer Experience Manager will benefit from the rich experience, know-how and Customer insight residing in the Contact Centre.

Ultimately, both roles will work closely together for the benefit of the Centre and the Organization.

CX lessons we can learn from the Contact Centre industry

You don’t have a CX Team? I see that all the time.

Then it’s likely that you have a ‘Service Quality Team’ or variation. As is implied in the name, a Service Quality Team tends to focus on service – including research and analytics, high level complaint management and targeted improvement efforts across the organization.

But again – avoid confusing a Service Quality Team with a Customer Experience Team. The mandate and activities are different – as well as the scope of authority.

For Contact Centre Managers (or anyone) that wants to develop competency in Customer Experience – I recommend the CXPA 6 Competency Framework as a basis.

In that framework, the essential domains of knowledge for CX are CX Strategy, Voice of Customer, Experience Design, CX Metrics & Measurements, Governance and Customer-Centric Culture.

To those domains I add Maturity Analysis & Implementation Strategy as well because I think that’s important.

10 CCXP Exam Practice Questions for Customer Experience Strategy

Of course there’s more to consider

Of course when you’re selecting your Contact Centre Manager you will also look at their past track record of success and their ‘characteristics’. Such as how well they seem to ‘fit’ your culture.

But know-how is an obvious and critical component in the selection process. And it often takes a backseat to how much ‘experience’ the candidate has. That’s definitely the wrong way to go.

The key to success will always be KNOW-HOW + EXPERIENCE with DEMONSTRABLE SUCCESS.

In closing

I hope this article has been helpful. It’s a big nut to chew on for sure. And each heading and domain could be an article or set of articles on its own.

But I hope the high level overview is useful for you.

Thank you for reading!

Daniel

With one foot planted solidly in the Contact Centre industry (29 years!) and the other foot firmly planted in the CX industry I have the ability to connect the dots for people in the Contact Centre that want to understand CX and for folks in CX who want to understand the Contact Centre.

I’m one of 6 Trainers in the world designated as a Recognized Training Provider by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) and I help people learn more about CX and prepare for their CCXP Exam.

[email protected]

Organizational culture matters more than where you live

07/08/2018by OmniTouch International OmniTouch International No Comments

Organizational culture matters more than where you live. And blaming ‘national’ characteristics for poor behaviour is just lazy.

That first morning

One of the great things about facilitating workshops across many countries & regions is that you get to see a lot of organizational culture up close and personal.

Whether in Kuala Lumpur, Colombo or Frankfurt, the first morning of a scheduled workshop session is always interesting.

Will all the Participants turn up? Will they turn up on time?
Will Management turn up? If so, who – and how long will they stay?
Does Management all sit together? Or do they integrate into the group at large?
What does the energy feel like before the session begins?
Do Participants talk to each other or do they stare at their mobile phones?
How does management speak to staff? As adults? Or like children?

What I see on that first morning of a session – before introductions have been made – should be the ‘best’ in organizational culture.

Why? Because it’s not work.

Participants are there to learn and grow.

And because the gap or opportunity is so significant, an external Provider was asked to come in.

On a recent drizzly morning in _____________ (fill in the country).

On a recent drizzly morning session in ________(fill in the country), half the Participants had not arrived by starting time.

The HR Representative leaned over to me and said –

“Well you know we _________(fill in nationality here) like to sleep in.”

Or –

“We’re always late in ______(fill in country)” or “When it rains you know how it is in ______(fill in country).”

But over the years I’ve been conducting sessions, I find that what matters most is where you work – not where you live.

Organizational culture matters most

In countries which are notorious for staff absenteeism and tardiness, I’ve worked with organizations where people aren’t late.

In countries with a reputation for staff timidity, I’ve worked with organizations where the folks laugh and chat and catch up with each other.

In countries where a traditional management hierarchy is revered, I’ve worked with organizations where management and staff intermingle and sit together.

Great organizational culture always matters the most.

The way the Employees at Company X carry themselves can be quite different than the way Employees at Company Y carry themselves.

Even when their offices are in the same office building.

Blaming poor behavior on country or national dynamics is just lazy

Of course, there are wonderful examples of national culture that embody happiness, wellbeing and getting things done. An entire article could be devoted to these examples.

It’s not my style to be negative.

But when HR or management blames poor behavior on country or national dynamics – then it’s unlikely that you’ll see a great culture at that particular organization.

The happenstance of being born in Country X doesn’t guarantee a worklife of tardiness, timidity or futility.

Individuals always have a choice.

A choice to be on time, a choice to speak up and even a choice to find employment with an organization with a better culture.

A Culture of Fear & Compliance are poor tools for delivering a great Customer experience

Thank you for reading!

Daniel