What Conway Twitty taught me about Agent resilience

How the popular country music Artist, Conway Twitty, taught me a life-long lesson about Agent resilience in the Contact Center.

What do I mean by Agent resilience?

Here’s a useful definition of resilience –

The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.

Contact Center folks at the Frontline are always going through a lot. Constant changes in the work environment, unhappy Customers, stressed Bosses.

So while the topic of resilience is always relevant, it has a special resonance in the Customer Service industry.

The capacity for Contact Center Agents to recover from difficulties.

Here’s a lesson I learned very early in my Contact Center management career.

The lesson

Early in my career in the 90s, I was Vice President of Call Center & Distribution Operations for Heartland Music.

Based in Los Angeles, it was the job that got me into the Contact Center & Customer Experience industry.

Heartland Music ran TV commercials and mailed out catalogues to millions of Customers across the US.

TV commercials and catalogues that featured titles like ‘All the Elvis Presley’ hits you need to own or the ‘Top 100 Love Songs’ of all time.

Customers then called into our Contact Centers to place orders which we packaged and shipped from our own warehouses.

And of course we provided Customer Service as well – anything from suggestions on what titles we should stock to ‘where is my order’ enquiries.

It was a big business.

So how does Conway Twitty fit into Agent resilience (and who was he?)

Country music was a big part of our offerings. And country music fans were invariably sweet, loyal and supportive.

And though it sounds a bit macabre, whenever a popular Artist that we carried passed away, there would always be a sudden upsurge in sales for their work.

That’s still the same case today – though it’s reflected these days by increases in streaming figures vs. how many ‘units’ are sold.

And an Artist passing away was an event that a Workforce Manager couldn’t really plan for in the calendar.

We relied on our own internal back-up plans and a strong committed Agent workforce to get through most of our unexpected surges.

But Conway Twitty was the surge to end all surges.

An American country music singer, he also recorded rock and roll, R&B and pop music.

He also received several Country Music Association awards for duets with Loretta Lynn – another beloved country music star.

I don’t remember which day of the week it was, but when I entered the office, our Operations Manager made a beeline straight for me.

‘Dan, Conway Twitty died.’

That’s all Frank had to say. We’d both been around enough years to shorthand the conversation.

The volume of calls in the Center had already picked up and we knew we were only at the beginning.

CX lessons we can learn from the Contact Centre industry

Six weeks later

I’m not exactly sure why Conway Twitty was different. But we were now six weeks into the surge and his sales were still going up.

Great for business but not so great for our Agents.

Occupancy was through the roof, hours got longer, and admittedly a few people started to get edgy.

And while we were dealing with normally sweet country music lovers, long wait times and out of stock situations put them on edge too.

Meaning even more frustration for our Agents to deal with.

It ended up being about a 3-month period overall. Much longer than the normal two or three week ‘lift’ that we had seen before in such situations.

Here’s what I learned about Agent resilience

It was six weeks in to the surge, when our Operations Manager Frank stopped by my office and said this to me:

“Dan, the Agents will be ok. Do you know why? They know there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Wow. I’ve never forgotten that line. They know there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The light at the end of the tunnel

People will go through an awful lot at work.

A Research Team that stayed up several nights in a row to finish up a Mystery Shopper report for a Client.

Finance people who locked theurmselves in the office over a long weekend to get out a critical P&L statement.

Contact Center Agents who went through weeks of being yelled at by Customers because a promised shipment hadn’t gone out.

After the Conway Twitty surge had subsided, Frank, the Team Leaders and I all sat down to talk about what we had done right over the past two months. And what we could improve in the future. Whether that was the passing of another famous Artist, or some other unexpected event.

At the end of the meeting, one of our Team Leaders turned to Frank and said,

“We had faith in you Frank. And by extension we had faith in Dan too. We knew that you guys were doing whatever you could to help us get through this. And for our Agents that mattered.”

There’s a lot to the art & science of resilience. I don’t pretend to be a qualified mental health professional.

But the lesson I’ve taken ever since is that resilience begins long before the tough times come.

With having strong relationships in place, with clear and meaningful communication and, as a Leader, remembering to help people know there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Especially when they may not see it yet.