Accountability is the backbone of quality customer service. When your contact center agents take ownership for their work, they provide higher quality interactions with their customer base. But how can leaders promote accountability within their organization. This article will give you some actionable tips.
For decades the line between home-life and work-life has been blurring. This has only been accelerating as the equation of internet + mobile devices has caused many of us to stay connected well past our “working hours”. It’s a common habit to check your email on your phone as soon as you wake up, and right before you go to bed because you can’t miss a beat. Or maybe you have to “get ready for Monday” by working a few hours on the weekends because work doesn’t let you disconnect. It’s one thing to leverage working from home to provide you the flexibility to work odd hours that benefit your life. It’s a completely different thing to feel like you can’t disconnect and now work is impeding upon your home-life.
Burnout culture isn’t unique to either in-office or at-home employees. However, what is unique for those that work from home is the fact that those blurred lines become even harder to see when you are taking all your meetings, all project work, and all brainstorming from your home. When employees work from home I think it’s critical for leaders to remember that working from home is different. You, as the leader and as a company, are impacting their homes and their families in ways that you don’t when they work in an office. Simply put, working from home is more than just work, it’s personal.
When you work in an office you have a commute that allows you to decompress and process the day a bit. For those of us that are introverts, it gives us an opportunity to recharge and get ready for jumping into family life. However, when you work from home your commute becomes the 20 feet between your office door and the kitchen. You have no downtime to decompress, and this has been especially true when our families are on the other side of the office door and need help with X things before our last meeting is even done.
Not only do you get the benefit of decompressing on the commute home, but so does your family. Instead, when you work from home your family gets the raw consequences of every meeting. There have been plenty of times that my wife has just sat there patiently as I dropped all of my frustrations from the last meeting right into her lap. I may have done that to some extent if I worked in the office, but not as much as I do knowing she’s just on the other side of my office.
Getting it unfiltered like that also means the families become even more invested in the employee’s work environment. When the employee comes out of meetings talking about how they “love working with so-and-so because they ask great questions and keep the meeting on agenda”, it may not be exciting to their family, but you better believe the organization will be perceived as a positive influence on not just the employee but the family as a whole. Of course, when they come out complaining that “so-and-so once again forgot about blah blah blah” their family is more likely to see the organization in a negative light and encourage the employee to leave for something healthier.
Lastly, I think it’s important for leaders to remember that the home is a sacred space, and work, whether welcomed or not, has invaded that space. When our direct reports turn on their cameras and we see their homes we see another part of who they are. We get to know them better, and to some extent, they have become vulnerable because of it. They may be embarrassed that they don’t have a dedicated space and instead you are in their kitchen seeing every dirty dish in the sink. They may not have mentioned before they play board games every Monday night, but now you can see all +50 games on the shelves behind them. And while you may love getting to see their kids and dogs every day, they feel like you think less of them because they are constantly being interrupted. Working from home turns “why don’t we meet in the conference room to discuss” into “why don’t I come to your dining room table and we can chat about this while your kids ask ‘what’s for dinner’”.
Working from home is amazing and has helped many of us create a more personalized work/life balance. However, as leaders, we must remember that the nature of our relationship with our direct reports, their families, and their homes changes when they work from home. We must remember that working from home is more than just work, it’s personal.
You still try. That’s the lesson.
This is the Koko Crater. One of the many trails, mountains, and craters my family and I hiked on our recent trip to Hawaii.
The length is manageable, between 1.4-1.6 miles depending on which website you look at. But it isn’t the length that gets you, it’s the +1000 steps and 900 feet of elevation gain that will destroy your legs.
My wife was the one that did most of the research and planning for our trip and she was excited to try it.
“I hear the views are beautiful!” – Sarah
“Right, but there’s no way we are making it up that thing” – Me
We had to change some of our plans that morning and so we pulled into the parking lot way too late in the day. “This sun is going to destroy us” but we still started the hike.
The tree-lined and paved path up to the trailhead is no problem at all. However, the people coming back were a bit concerning. The amount of sweat and hard breathing they are doing made me a bit nervous. And that was them coming down, not going up!
“I really don’t think we have a shot of finishing this thing!” but we still kept moving forward.
We got to the bottom of the stairs and took in exactly how high up we’ll be going and how many steps we’ll be covering. I hadn’t seen the numbers before then and every step looked like it would do us in.
“Babe, one of us is going to end up in the hospital, if we do this” but we still started the climb.
Blame it on my negative mindset. Blame it on the late-day sun and lack of water. Blame it on the moody teenagers that didn’t want to go on a hike. You can blame it on whatever you like but the fact of the matter is we got about 0.3 miles into the 1.6 and decided we had seen enough. Our Low Country lungs and sedentary lifestyle had finally caught up to us and we turned back to the car.
But before we turned back, we stopped. My wife looked up to see what could have been. My girls looked down to see what we had accomplished. All of us took a second to think about how the day could have been more. More relaxing in the hotel, more hiking up this crater, more water, more shade, more energy, more… but we still tried.
And as I already shared, that’s the lesson of the story, you still try.
Yes, there’s a good chance you don’t have the skills they are looking for and they might not ask for an interview. You still apply.
Yes, your company has never paid well, and you don’t think they’ll give you the raise you want. You still ask.
Yes, you aren’t seeing the results you want from your projects and things are moving too slowly. You still push for change.
Would it have been amazing to get to the top of Koko Crater and take in the views? Yes! I’ve seen the pictures and it looks beautiful. But honestly, I’m glad we at least tried.
I’m glad that we saw the crazy amount of stairs in person and appreciated how hard of a hike that trail is. I’m glad that my girls have something to tackle and overcome if they ever head back to Oahu. Most importantly, I’m glad that we tried to do something hard and failed.
Sometimes I think that accomplishing our tasks softens just how hard the challenge was for us. By finally getting the job, or the raise, or the change we wanted we forget how hard it really was. I think sometimes failure is necessary for us to see how far we can push ourselves and appreciate that hard things are hard.
Our hike was challenging, and we didn’t even make it close to the top, but I still have these pictures and this story that I find valuable. I still benefited from the experience and appreciate what we were able to accomplish.
I doubt my girls have internalized all the life lessons from our trip yet, but I’m hopeful this seed was planted in them. Sometimes things are too big for you, and you won’t be able to overcome them, and yet you still try.
Throughout my career I’ve had the opportunity to lead and network with some amazing individuals and from time to time they have asked what it takes to move from Manager to Director. I think it’s one of the hardest transitions.
I’ve seen plenty of individual contributors get promoted to managers, not because they are solid leaders but because they are great contributors. They know what buttons to push, what processes to work through, and how to execute the role. Because of this, they see their value add to the organization in doing and executing vs. delegating or casting vision and this makes the transition into a director-level role incredibly challenging.
At a director level, or above, you need to be more comfortable delegating than doing. More comfortable making decisions than giving proposals, or possibly casting vision vs. following a direction. That isn’t to say those other skills aren’t still valuable and an important role in any job. However, the priority of these skills pivots and suddenly decision making > giving proposals, for example.
Here are a few tips that I’ve given to people looking to make the jump from Manager to Director.
One: Serve Your Team
The most important thing you need to know about leadership is that your primary job is to serve your team. Period. Bottom line. Notice that I didn’t say “directing is that your primary job…” or “managing” or even “holding people accountable…”. This can be applied at all levels, even as a manager, but the point is that you are there to serve.
What does that look like? It means keeping them informed of the larger trends in the organization they might not be aware of. Helping them see how their efforts are connected to the larger picture and the wins of the organization. Protecting them from outside forces that are toxic or counter-cultural to what you’re trying to achieve. Serving your team means that you realize they don’t work for you but you work for them and that means their success is more important than your own.
Two: Ask Questions and Listen
One of the greatest mistakes that new directors can make is thinking that they now need to have all the answers. People are coming to them to make decisions, and as I already highlighted decision making > giving proposals. Decision making is important but the best way to make decisions is to not just assume you have the right perfect answer out of the gate.
As a leader and director, you need to make sure you’re asking questions and lots of them. You likely aren’t in the weeds like you used to be and you also have a limited purview, we all do. So you need to take two steps 1) ask questions and 2) actually listen. Don’t listen to confirm your original answer. Don’t listen to poke holes and show weaknesses in the answers given. Listen to understand and see the issue from another person’s perspective. You likely know your perspective backward and forwards, but you need to do the heavy lifting of trying to see from another person’s perspective. That only happens when we get comfortable asking questions and then actually listening.
Three: Pull Your Head Up
As an individual contributor, and as a manager, you likely added value by looking down. Looking at your particular job and executing it well. Looking in on your team and meeting the needs of your direct reports. As a director though, you need to pull your head up and look around. This isn’t to say you stop paying attention to your team (see above about serving and listening!), but as a director you need to stop only looking at your team and consider the larger lay of the land.
You need to lift your head up and see how your team is interacting with other teams and how they are perceived amongst those teams. You need to lift your head up and see where you and your team sit in your field. Are you on the cutting edge or way behind, or do you even have access to what others are doing in your field? You need to lift your head up and try to understand where your team, organization, and field are going. What’s up next and how are you and your team going to get there? As a director you need to get comfortable casting vision and to do that you need to be looking towards a horizon, not at the details of the ground in front of you.
Moving from a manager to a director is hard. It’s a large pivot, that requires new skills, especially if leadership wasn’t a focus in your manager role. However, if you realize that what made you successful as a manager won’t make you successful as a director, then you are taking the first steps to jump to director!
If you’re in the market for a new workforce planning tool, you need a suite that is future proofed, easy to access and use, and packs bang for buck.
Workforce management tools are vital to contact centers, but there’s little point investing in a WFM solution if your staff don’t know how to use it. Programs like Call Design’s Workforce Management Essentials course provide insight and additional knowledge.
Positive customer experiences are critical to cultivating a loyal following for your business. What are the key areas contact centers should be focusing on to create the best possible experience for their customers? Let’s take a look at the two golden rules and how Call Design can help.
Since the beginning of 2020 and the inception of COVID-19, contact centers have had to make adjustments as to the way we work and employees’ daily lives. This shift in the workplace proved to be specifically challenging for contact centers and help desks. Agents were used to being in an office and not working virtually. The change to in-person and effectively assisting customers had to take place quickly and efficiently. On any given day, agents might experience more extended workdays due to higher call volume, handling of complicated subjects, and customer complaints, and aggravation.
If you want to facilitate an environment for your contact centre agents to succeed, you need to start coaching. Coaching is a great way to encourage, enable, and empower your agents to not only want to be better at their jobs but perform better. Coaching is also a great opportunity for your agents to learn new skills, get feedback on the work they are doing, and resolve the problems they might be having with calls.
n our third instalment in the WFM and New Normal series, we talk about the impacts of increased handle times. As a lot of contact centres have quickly had to adopt work from home strategies to maintain BAU status, there have been some things to be wary of, and increased AHT is one of them.
