| |
| |
|
Customer Service Information |
|
|
|
Accountability
The Call Center world is an intense pressure-driven environment continually being shaped by pressure to ensure steady profitability and a secure competitive advantage. Accountability and a basic fundamental understanding of Performance Management serve as two of the most power tools a Call Center manager has at his/her disposal. Specifically, accountability when used properly with practical down to earth communication can change the way a group performs and takes responsibility for their performance. To understand accountability, think of it as a focal point of pressure and let's view pressure, as synonymous with the "demands of the business". Nothing exposes a strength or flaw like raw pressure. It is pressure that has the ability to create, empower, challenge or fracture, crumble and destroy. Pressure helps fuel the momentum and vision of an organization to fulfill obligations to employees, clients, and investors with high standards, clear-cut expectations and decisive accountability. In the hands of the unworthy, accountability can be a tool for self-preservationist, a weapon for the positional manager, or simply a replacement for development. Used with skill, accountability can represent a turning point in any organization, and the corner stone of an improvement initiative. Let me give you an example. One of my most successful leadership teams consisted of 10 core members, 8 of which were on some form of progressive action. Usually, you don't associate that level of performance management action, as descriptive of a successful team, but that's exactly what they were -- successful. It was clear they all understood the expectation, knew the consequences, and made a choice, which in turn, didn't leave me one. I had an incredible relationship with each of them; they appreciated the honest, direct dialogue and they always knew exactly where they stood with performance. Their success made them grow personally, and professionally. I'm confident that if I didn't hold them accountable for their actions, they would not have realized their own potential. There were no hard feelings, no misunderstandings, only expectations, accountabilities, and total situation awareness. Accountability should not be negative, but rather represent the strength behind the expectation. It is the empowering factor behind a directive or standard. John Maxell, Author of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of leadership, said that change could only occur when one of three factors are met: the person truly understands the big picture and why the change is needed to such a degree, they willingly change, or they hurt badly enough that the change must be accepted. So, hence we see the birth of the easy way, or the hard way. The fact is if everyone took the easy way, there would be no such thing as the hard way. With that fact understood, as a manager you must accept that your expectations will be ignored, follow-up will not consistently occur, and the process, vision, and company mission will be challenged. You must accept the inevitable, and make a decision. Your options: Lose control of your staff, and exist in the land of mediocrity until your business fails, your client is lost or you become the new focal point of all that "pressure"; or challenge and develop your team to increase their abilities, set high standards and expectations and expose them to their own potential. The choice is yours. Believe in your team, and expect them to accomplish great things, and they will rise to meet the challenge. If your culture lacks a solid Performance Management process with clear-outlined accountabilities, resistance should be expected. An entire team with average or below average performance will defy change easier because when you apply pressure, it's evenly dispersed because they are all on the same level. Set a clear expectation; raise the bar. Your stronger associates will break rank and begin to rise to the top. These reps are motivated by success, and only need a cause to rally behind. Praise them, recognize them, and use them to establish your benchmark. Once you have proven that one can do it, you can then more confidently expect more results from your remaining staff. Ensure that your conversations are direct, honest, with no sugarcoated words, or reserved dialogue. This level of communication will ensure that the message you send is the message received. If you ever proceed to progressively document an employee, and they are surprised, you must evaluate your communication process. Surprise or unawareness that he or she is not meeting standard prevents the employee from being mentally prepared, diminishes the effectives of the process, and will most likely not be a learning experience for the employee. Be consistent, and be fair with your expectations. Inconsistency leads to frustration, issues of favoritism, and also diminishes the effectiveness of the entire process. What would be the end result if a child touched a hot stove, and sometimes it burned them, and sometimes it didn't? Remove emotion from the process. If you take how you personally feel about an employee into a progressive counseling situation, it could impact what decision you make, which in turn could affect your ability to be consistent. View accountability as the end result of a process. An example would be how 2+2 will always = 4. Not sometimes, or most of the time, but all of the time. I'm not suggesting you disregard your judgment on the situation, but you must stay focused on the facts at hand and not irrelevant external variables. I had a boss bluntly address the team after each social company outing. He would pull us together in his office and state very directly: I personally like each of you, but I hope you don't take how I personally feel and doubt for a second that I wouldn't make the call and whack you if I needed to. That type of communication might sound harsh, but we never had any questions on what his expectations were. There were no hard feelings, no misunderstandings, only expectations, accountabilities, and total situation awareness. Aubie Pouncey has been in management for the past several years. In doing so he has developed his perofrmance management skills resulting in incredible success. He is a contributing writer for http://www.righttolead.com and he has developed a very success performance management process: http://www.accountabilityprocess.com
MORE RESOURCES:
Google News |
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Be the Customer: See Yourself as Your Customers Do What do your customers experience when they interact with your business? As a mystery shopper, I help businesses see themselves through the eyes of their customers by posing as a typical customer and evaluating their service, quality and cleanliness. Was it easy to find what I needed? Were the employees polite and helpful? Was everything neat and clean? Was I thanked for my business? What happened when I made a return?Whether your business is an international retailer or a small one-person shop, what you don't know about your customers' perceptions of your quality and service can hurt you. 8 Critical Steps to Establish a Customer Service Culture "Every company's greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company,"--Erwin FrandDuring our recent weakened economy, many businesses have seen declining revenues and declining budgets. Declining budgets often lead to reduced staff levels and diminished services. A White Paper: Profiting with Kindness In 2002, there wasn't much interest for Kindness in business, and some business people would question, "What does kindness have to do with business, anyway?" Is this a for real question or just to prove a point? Or perhaps they couldn't figure out what being kind really had to do with business. Or perhaps the word was a jargon word, an unfamiliar language. Call Center Services - An Ever Increasing Demand Are your company's call center services all that they could be? Even centers that were state of the art a decade or so ago might be out of date and inadequate today. As technology expands, so do clients' expectations regarding communication. Under Promise & Over Perform: The Art of Managing Customer Expectations I'll always feel warmly about Conrad's restaurant, in Glendale, California.On the morning of the Northridge earthquake, Conrad's was the only restaurant in town that opened for business, and stayed open until the last customer went home. Customer Service A Chickens Way Anyone who knows me knows my favorite fast food restaurant is Chick-fil-A. Aside from the fact their chicken is especially good and I can always get sweet tea, I have a valuable business reason for eating there - they serve up amazing customer service. Dealing with Disgruntled Customers No matter how hard you try, in business you simply can't please everyone. You could have a highly trained customer service squadron and an award-winning product, but still you'd have some buyers who just weren't happy. Doesnt Anybody Work Here? Nametags Impact Employee Communication Walmart was the first business to require all its employees to wear nametags. (There's a surprise!) Sam Walton created this initiative because he wanted his customers to "get to know the people they bought from. It's Customer Service Stupid: Delivering Customer Service Training That Sticks "Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense."This Ralph Waldo Emerson quote opens one of the most impressive works on customer service: Michael LeBoeuf's book How To Win Customers and Keep Them For Life. The 3 Rs of Customer Service What I am about to tell you may seem very obvious - you may even say DUH!!! but the fact is, - many company's forget the 3 R's of good customer service- Respect your Customer, Take Responsibility for Your Actions and Products and give your Customers a Full REFUND when it just isn't right. I promise you that if you follow these 3 simple rules you will never have to run after the same customer again!Respect the customer! Just about as plain as the nose on your face Right? Wrong!How many times have you been greeted in a less than courteous manner or worse yet- not at all!! Never lose the opportunity to make a great first impression- very rarely do you have a second chance to undo the damage done by that first encounter. Stellar Customer Service in 10 Simple Steps If you're like me, you've had plenty of experience with BAD customer service. Just think about the last time you had a bad experience with a product or a service. Outsourcing: The Unspoken Costs Outsourcing seems to be the new-new thing and approximately 50% of our major corporations are doing it. What are the costs? The benefits? And what skills need to be managed in order to make it work optimally?Let's get a clear understanding of what we mean by outsourcing: it's the shifting of easily codified jobs - such as help desk support, call centers, system maintenance, and programming jobs - to countries that can manage them more cheaply. Is Your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System Doomed To Fail? "Right, People. Let's blast out that mail campaign we've been planning for so long. Wholesale Buyers Versus Retail Customers Are wholesale buyers and retail customers really different? Frankly, there are two answers to this question: yes and no. Yes, because they are different from the buyers and those selling to buyers' point of view and no, because the principles that apply are the same for both types of buying. Aint We Wonderful! It may come as a surprise to you to discover that customers don't buy your products or services because they feel that you have a right to make a profit. In other words, their motive for doing business with you is not to help you buy the latest Jaguar or put your children through college. Make Your Customer Your Friend The simplest way to describe a 'durian' (pronounced doo-ree-ann) is to say it's a yellowish-green fruit about the size of an mid-sized watermelon. It has a thick skin of spikes, and a rich bitterish-sweet fruit. Putting The Service Back In Customer Service The future of customer service is here. Technology has made seeking out support faster and easier than ever. The Dissatisfied Customer We, as small business people, naturally dislike complaints from our clients and customers. Because we're intimately involved with our home businesses, small businesses, or freelance careers, any complaint takes on a personal commentator. Improving Customer Service Improving customer service starts at the top - with us owners and managers. We need to be living pictures of how we want our staff to treat customers. Identify Your Silent Customer Service Message With the growing number of people in every business sector,doing business requires creativity and ingenuity. Theentrepreneur that understands the importance of thinkingdifferently is the entrepreneur that sees their businessesgrowing.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2007 |
