The 3 Foundations of Great Customer Support (pt 2): Providing the right Environment

In the last article I posted 2 key principles in Hiring the right People. In this article I focus on the next key foundation to achieve great Customer Support.......

Provide the Right Environment

So you have a great team of individuals. Unfortunately, that counts for nought if the environment is not set up for success. Success for the company, success for the team and success for the individuals.

Building the right environment is just as important as hiring the right people. I’ve seen companies where over 60% of staff who had joined in the previous 3 years, had already left the business, with some great people amongst them. Finding the right people is probably the hardest part, so to lose them once you’ve found them is hugely disappointing.

Providing the right environment however, is the most all-encompassing aspect of good customer support, as it pulls from the very heart of the company internal culture. As a Support leader, it’s possible to create a collaborative, nurturing environment in your area, even if the wider culture does not display these values, but it does make it a little more difficult.

It was incredibly hard to only choose 2 key principles in this section (I’ll perhaps focus on this area further in future articles) - welcoming newcomers to the business is incredibly important, as is providing opportunities for staff to grow, as is listening and acknowledging feedback - but I've gone with a couple that I feel may be less obvious.

On to the first suggested principle…..

·?????Grow the Great – replant the poor

Do not bow to the will of a piece of paper with a Job Description on it.

JD’s are a great tool to outline a role’s responsibilities but we are human beings with different skills and personality facets and just because two people are in the same role, does not mean they have to both do exactly the same tasks.

If someone is a rockstar with task A but a liability at task B, maybe it’s the task that does not fit, not the person. Resist the urge to think “But it’s their JOB!”

If someone is a hero half the time, focus on that aspect and evolve their role so that they can be a hero 100% of the time. Change role specs, pass duties to more junior staff and give those junior staff an opportunity to grow and excel at something new.

I’ve seen it, I’ve done it – it is a wonderful thing to see someone struggling with half their role, become a real superstar, with the weight of failure lifted from them, whilst at the same time seeing someone growing into new responsibilities.

·?????Don’t let the Storm become the norm

Periods when the phones are red hot, when orders are coming so fast the business cannot keep up, or when the products or services are experiencing issues, should be just that, periods of time. There will be times when it is all hands to the pumps, with little time for personal development or anything outside of the core job in hand but when this becomes the norm’, there needs to be an improvement plan. There needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel, which allows staff to get their heads up and grow again.

Here’s an example;

I was working in a business which had released a service to the market ahead of the competition. Everyone wanted it. Orders came in thick and fast and the call centres were inundated with customers asking when they were getting their product. We were not ready for this level of success and all Customer facing teams became focussed firefighting teams. This lasted months and months and months. It was not fun for anyone. No one appeared to be doing anything about it. Good people left the business. The storm became the norm.

Some time and a role change later, I designed and implemented an IVR system, which gave Customers an automated update on their order which, if they were happy with the delivery date, meant they did not need to speak to the call centre at all.

On the day I switched it on, I received a call from the call centre, asking if the phones were broken, such was the drop in call numbers (my comms to management clearly had not reached the team leaders). It took me a few seconds to realise that nothing was broken, it was just the new IVR process taking these calls away. Over the next two years, 200,000 customer calls no longer needed to be fulfilled by the Service teams.

That day the clouds broke and frontline staff could breathe once more. They could learn again, shadow colleagues, help on projects and feel part of the wider business again, not just facing the fire with their hose, getting a battering.

Some more time and another role change later, I welcomed a new colleague to my team. He had been in the call centre on that day when the phones returned to previous levels and the drop in intensity had afforded him the time to do more, learn more and had led him to progressing his career outside the call centre.

This is a great example that if you hire for the future and ensure you find a way to end the storms, that the staff will grow with you, keeping the valuable expertise within the business.

Finally, once you have the right people, with the right environment, you need to Give them the right Tools.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment, drop me a line or connect.