This is the fourth in our blog series on COVID-19 Rapid Response. You can find them all, starting with the first post in this series, here.
In my earlier posts, I’ve put a great deal of focus on how to transition your call center agents from on-site to at-home. But of course, there are longer-term factors to consider – and conquer – in order to lead high performing customer care teams capable of delivering superior customer and patient experience.
In today’s post, I’d like to highlight how your coaching process will need to change. Here are the 5 Critical Must-Have’s I’ve been discussing with so many of you who have reached out during this challenging time.
- Strong, Confident Leaders — Now more than ever, you’ll need managers who are either experienced at managing remote employees – or confident enough in their leadership skills to not be driven by ego. Why? Because first time remote managers are going to make mistakes. They need to be secure enough to ask for feedback from their teams and make adjustments as needed in order to nurture strong virtual relationships with their at-home agents. Successful managers of remote teams recognize the importance of continuously reaching out, checking in, coaching, and praising people. They need to be able to recognize – and adjust to – the individual skills and needs of individual team members. To help facilitate that understanding, many organizations use personality style inventories to foster effective teamwork. If you haven’t tried this before, now is a great time to start. For example, DiSC® profile is a powerful do-it-yourself training and development tool designed to improve work productivity, teamwork, and communication.
- Deliberate communications and team engagement initiatives — Plan and create a new rhythm of communications with your team. Every supervisor will need to lead a consistent, reliable team meeting so every team members has that time to ask questions and share challenges. For example, company or program news every Monday, all-hands every Friday, 5-10 minutes pre-shift call. In addition, consistent one-on-one’s are critical. At those times, your supervisors can zero in on specific skill building areas – but also reinforce the message that they care, they’re availability, and they’re reliable. Again, communicating remotely taps into a different set of skills and expectations. It will take practice. You’ll likely discover that certain channels – from phone to video to chat or file sharing – work better for different circumstances and people. Offer ongoing training on your tools selected to communicate across the team.
- Technical tools that enable and promote real-time coaching — If your supervisors are used to relying on in-person, ad-hoc observations, they’ll need training and practice before they’re confident and proficient with remote-only monitoring systems and coaching in a virtual environment. Before, your supervisors could stop by each agent’s desk to say hello or check in on performance. However, these natural office occurrences don’t “just happen.” They have to be planned. Beyond call monitoring and on-screen feedback, you’ll now need interactive systems that enable you to coach your agents providing feedback as well as opportunities to improve their skills and learn new ones. Choosing the right system depends on compatibility with your other technology as well as budget. There are many various platforms and you’ll an understanding of the best technology platforms available today.
- Relevant contest and activities to keep the motivated — When you move your team to at-home workstations, you also remove them from the constant buzz and energy of coworkers in the hallways or at the water coolers. It is critical that you fill that void with other ways, tools, practices, and celebrations to keep people energized and engaged. For much of this, you’ll be relying on the core competencies of your supervisor teams. But those folks will need your support – both in terms of systems that enable easy, ad hoc check-ins – as well as your encouragement and recognition of It’s not as easy as it sounds. Even your most talented, inspiring front-line leaders are going to need training, ramp-up time, and support from you as they make this transition. Schedule home-based team building activities with mandatory attendance.
- Gamers! — You’ve probably heard about the advantages of interviewing for gaming experience – and enthusiasm – when hiring call center agents. At Skybridge Americas, we’ve discovered even greater advantages when hiring supervisors with those skill sets. Gaming is a powerful engagement and recognition tool. That is especially true for remote teams. I wrote about gaming in more detail in a previous post.
These are challenging times for call center managers. To meet the challenge, you need a team that is engaged and capable of delivering superior customer experience – all while working from home. At Skybridge Americas, we lead high-performing teams of at-home agents throughout the United States and Canada. We pioneered today’s best practices and we continuously invest in best-in-class technology and systems. As you make critical decisions about the future of your inbound customer care teams, we are here for you. If you would like to know more, please reach out. We would love to talk!
-Bobby Matthews
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Skybridge Americas
bmatthews@skybridgeamericas.com
Find out how Skybridge Americas can help you delight your customers and grow your business.
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