Steps for Success - Turning Around an Underperforming Contact Centre Team

When a team works well together it's able to respond to challenges, problems and change more quickly than the same individuals working alone. In other words, a team should be greater than the sum of its parts. If you want to improve the productivity and performance of your team as a whole it's crucial to keep in mind that it's made up of individuals; people who need defined roles, ample support, constructive feedback and accolade for their achievements. If your team is underperforming there can be many reasons. Perhaps poor collaboration is lowering results. Individuals may be suffering from a loss of confidence. Or there may be frustrations that are inhibiting effectiveness. Here is a brief look at the issues that could be affecting your team, and ways to move your people from under achieving to target smashing month-on-month.

What's the story?

If your contact centre isn't hitting target, the first thing you need to do is pinpoint the exact reason why. Identify the issue and you're able to take appropriate action. This may seem like an obvious point, but finding the real reason for failure is often not as easy as it sounds. Is your incoming call rate below target? You may need to evaluate your marketing strategy and service offering. Is the average call duration too short, suggesting your team aren't asking enough leading questions or successfully identifying customer needs? Is your team not working hard enough to build customer rapport? Or perhaps your team isn't communicating key information and benefits in enough detail, identifying a need for further training and knowledge sharing.

What's missing?

There is no definitive recipe for successful team building. However there are a handful of crucial elements that need to be in place to help a failing hosted telephony team improve. Engage your team in a discussion about their roles and responsibilities. Begin by establishing their level of involvement in key decision making. By empowering individuals and offering them a stake in their success you encourage a culture of participation. If your team members aren't ready for this level of shared responsibility take steps to build their confidence. Is there a sense of collaboration and peer responsibility within your team? If you have individuals working a blinkered way, whose only concern is hitting their own targets, this will have a negative impact on group dynamics. How does your team react to change? A successful team will always embrace development with an optimistic viewpoint and positivity. How well does your team understand the needs of the customer? A vital ingredient to enhance performance is the ability of your employees to see things from the perspective of a prospective client. Finally, do you promote a culture of open communication? If there is a problem it's important that your team feel comfortable raising it with you promptly.

Embrace diversity

While it's not realistic to expect your team to think as one, it's imperative that different opinions are discussed and taken seriously. In an unsupportive environment, where people are afraid to voice their thoughts or difficulties, problems are never resolved. This can lead to resentment and a lack of commitment in the long term. What's more, when new ideas aren't expressed, valuable opportunities for new working methodologies and solutions can be missed. Your role as the manager of a contact centre is to ensure that differing opinions do not become personal. Deal with the issue on a professional, objective level.

Steve Alexander is a writer with a good knowledge of hosted telephony services. Click here for more details. For more information on how to improve your contact centre, visit Britannic.

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Steps for Success - Turning Around an Underperforming Contact Centre Team

When a team works well together it's able to respond to challenges, problems and change more quickly than the same individuals working alone. In other words, a team should be greater than the sum of its parts. If you want to improve the productivity and performance of your team as a whole it's crucial to keep in mind that it's made up of individuals; people who need defined roles, ample support, constructive feedback and accolade for their achievements. If your team is underperforming there can be many reasons. Perhaps poor collaboration is lowering results. Individuals may be suffering from a loss of confidence. Or there may be frustrations that are inhibiting effectiveness. Here is a brief look at the issues that could be affecting your team, and ways to move your people from under achieving to target smashing month-on-month.

What's the story?

If your contact centre isn't hitting target, the first thing you need to do is pinpoint the exact reason why. Identify the issue and you're able to take appropriate action. This may seem like an obvious point, but finding the real reason for failure is often not as easy as it sounds. Is your incoming call rate below target? You may need to evaluate your marketing strategy and service offering. Is the average call duration too short, suggesting your team aren't asking enough leading questions or successfully identifying customer needs? Is your team not working hard enough to build customer rapport? Or perhaps your team isn't communicating key information and benefits in enough detail, identifying a need for further training and knowledge sharing.

What's missing?

There is no definitive recipe for successful team building. However there are a handful of crucial elements that need to be in place to help a failing hosted telephony team improve. Engage your team in a discussion about their roles and responsibilities. Begin by establishing their level of involvement in key decision making. By empowering individuals and offering them a stake in their success you encourage a culture of participation. If your team members aren't ready for this level of shared responsibility take steps to build their confidence. Is there a sense of collaboration and peer responsibility within your team? If you have individuals working a blinkered way, whose only concern is hitting their own targets, this will have a negative impact on group dynamics. How does your team react to change? A successful team will always embrace development with an optimistic viewpoint and positivity. How well does your team understand the needs of the customer? A vital ingredient to enhance performance is the ability of your employees to see things from the perspective of a prospective client. Finally, do you promote a culture of open communication? If there is a problem it's important that your team feel comfortable raising it with you promptly.

Embrace diversity

While it's not realistic to expect your team to think as one, it's imperative that different opinions are discussed and taken seriously. In an unsupportive environment, where people are afraid to voice their thoughts or difficulties, problems are never resolved. This can lead to resentment and a lack of commitment in the long term. What's more, when new ideas aren't expressed, valuable opportunities for new working methodologies and solutions can be missed. Your role as the manager of a contact centre is to ensure that differing opinions do not become personal. Deal with the issue on a professional, objective level.

Steve Alexander is a writer with a good knowledge of hosted telephony services. Click here for more details. For more information on how to improve your contact centre, visit Britannic.

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Hosted Telephony Was the Last Game Changer - What's Next for Contact Centres?

Imagine what a contact centre may look like in ten years time. In the technological world, a decade is a generation. If you can remember the year 2000, consider what technology was like then. Hosted telephony was still just a dream, as was SIP, and social media wasn't even a proper term. It's amazing, albeit a bit scary, how rapidly technology progresses, with less focus on direct interaction and even less focus on the human being. Bearing that in mind, here are some of the advancements that will no doubt shape the call centre of the future.

The largest continuing change is, without doubt, investment in VoIP, or Voiceover Internet Protocol. Businesses have generally been utilising VoIP for one reason - to lower costs - while neglecting to recognise its full potential. Research is showing that investment in VoIP and, to a lesser degree, workforce optimisation and CRM systems looks set to increase.

The great platitude, which does hold some meaning, is that customers are either a phone call or mouse click away from finding another service. Whether true or not, it must be assumed: successful interactions are imperative. Thus, the emphasis on customer service is more important than ever. Multi-channel technology will be a step up in customer choice, allowing them to choose text messaging or video, personalising the way one-to-one and web interactions are accommodated and handled.

Further down the line, then, the total virtualisation of call centres isn't so hard to imagine. In fact, it's inevitable. It will be just as easy for agents to work remotely - from home, a personal office, hub buildings, or even on the go. High speed connections to the web are getting faster, more reliable and more ubiquitous - therefore, there is less need for agents to work in offices, as a team. This will ultimately lower already inexpensive costs, as firms will no longer have to consider commercial property and equipment. This immediately raises the question of whether customers' enquiries will be handled properly and professionally - although interactions would typically be monitored by workflow and CRM systems.

Another vital change will be call routing, which we see on a small scale now, but will eventually allow customers to be quickly matched to the most appropriate agent. Voice recognition software will let centres deal more efficiently with customer and security checks, such as questioning. Already in effect is social customer service, which proves a hit with consumers. The concept is simple: customers interact online, in forums and such, answering each other's questions and solving one another's problems.

It may be a decade away, but as companies vie for new customers, optimised service and lower costs, the call centre will inevitably evolve. Hosted telephony was the last game changer, and it will continue to shape the industry, but who knows what's next. But with the focus on customer service and retention bigger than ever, one thing is for sure: the integration of new technology will make interactions easier and more personalised, offering a better service for clients and even better results for companies.

Steve Alexander has been writing about the future of the contact centre. For more information on hosted telephony, as well as SIP services, go to btlnet.co.uk

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