Amid our growth this spring, one of the things I’ve most enjoyed is an opportunity I had to fill in for my general manager recently. Here’s why.
This is shaping up to be a great year for Callzilla. We’ve won awards, earned ISO 9001 certification, added clients, and made improvements to the way we stay in touch with the rest of the world — like this blog, for instance. But one of the things I’ve most enjoyed at a personal level was an opportunity to fill in for my general manager while she went on vacation for a couple of weeks. I don’t get to connect with team members as much as I used to when we were a smaller company. Putting on my substitute general manager hat let me be a mentor again… trying to inspire, engage and motivate the team so we all have the same understanding of how to walk in our clients’ and our clients’ customers’ shoes.
How we resolve tub stoppers is the essence of the ISO quality framework
While the ISO 9001 framework provides an operational roadmap, our objective is to cultivate our management team’s critical thinking skills and adherence to the importance of quality, resolution of customer problems, and satisfactory customer experiences.
Tub Stoppers: @Mark Sanborn, customer experience expert and recent keynote speaker at the SOCAP Symposium (#SOCAPsymp16) reminded us that customer-facing companies must find ways to eliminate the Tub stopper problem — also known as the annoying things that customers encounter in their customer journey and communication with brands.
Analogy: A tub stopper placed in the wrong position, by cleaning staff employees or stepped on by the hotel guest, or simply too loose to stand on its own, will cause an unpleasant water rise in the bath or shower. How we proactively identify the tub stoppers in the customer journey and resolve them when they are brought to our attention is the essence of the ISO quality framework and the Mission and Vision Statements we have adopted.
The pain is worth it, because we can help our clients get back on track
Yes, it can be painful. But the pain is worth it, because we can help our clients get back on track by offering low-effort customer experiences. It’s also a good reminder to those of us leading the troops that it’s never enough to get the right words on paper. We have to make sure the team understands the goals and works toward them.
Recently, two clients asked us to help them optimize staffing plans around some non-standard call arrival patterns. They needed to more efficiently handle calls and ensure enhanced routing to the highest performing agents, which would improve customer experience (reduce hold times) and improve the client’s customer care cost structure – effectively removing several tub stoppers.
Our work force management and operations teams worked autonomously to pull data and adjust scheduling to facilitate greater productivity and customer experiences. Once our team understood that things had to change in order to reach our goal, they were able to create the directions that would get us there. They were part of the solution, so they could implement it with enthusiasm. For me, it was rewarding to see Callzilla operate the way it’s supposed to. It wasn’t me telling everyone to jump, it was the team figuring out for themselves that they needed to jump to remove the tub stoppers.
That kind of approach is why each of these particular client has removed their legacy centers in favor of our team. We’re working hard to prove to them them they’ll need only ever need one from here on: Callzilla. – Neal
P.S. We’re really excited about our ongoing performance for our current clients. And we’ve added new omni-channel customer care clients in Q1 and Q2. Some of the new client offerings include HIPAA compliant customer care, technical support/help desk, live chat, social care, and email coverage. We look forward to telling you more in upcoming posts.
About the Author: Neal Topf
