CONTACT CENTER CULTURE OVERHAUL

Industry Content Supporter:
Steven Cramer
Sr. Vice President Operations
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scramer

Deliberately creating a culture takes work. It is not impossible; it just requires commitment. Correcting the existing culture takes even more work. However, with the proper tools, it can also be intentionally orchestrated.

Brené Brown, author of Daring Greatly, created a list of insightful questions to identify culture that can help you get started.
– What behaviors are rewarded? Punished?
– Where and how do people spend resources like time, money, and attention?
– What rules and expectations are followed, enforced, and ignored?
– Do people feel safe and supported talking about their feelings and asking for what they need?
– What are the sacred cows? Who is most likely to tip them? Who stands the cows back up?
– What stories are legends? What values do they convey?
– What happens when someone fails? Disappoints? Or makes a mistake?
– How prevalent are shame and blame and how are they showing up?
– How are uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure perceived?

These questions address the “unspoken” norms that new managers and agents struggle with. Because they are unspoken, it takes experience and tenure to understand, for example, “sacred cows,” what happens when you make a mistake, what rules are enforced and by whom. You can intentionally begin to create the desired culture by having an honest conversation.

Corporate culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors determining how a company’s employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions. Often, corporate culture is implied, not expressly defined, and develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people the company hires. Changes to the existing culture are possible with a plan. It will take work, commitment, and a strategy. You want to create a customer—and employee-centered culture consciously. By consciously making the culture, you control it rather than the culture controlling the organization.

Your strategy includes:
– Aligning the management team: top down alignment.
– Deciding what culture is and is not to your site.
– Determine your values, attitudes, and behaviors to bring to the center and/or company.
– Create “messaging” around these values, attitudes and behaviors. Every team meeting hears the same consistent message
– Create an accountability process

When managers stray from the values, how will you address them to bring the focus back? This is where companies fail. Culture gets swayed by individuals and then it seems to change and morph into something other than what was initially intended.

Culture starts at the top. Attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors are passed down from one level to the next and finally to the front line. Attitudes and behaviors never travel up the ladder, only down. Change the attitude and behavior at the top, and watch your supervisors and agents change theirs.

If you can’t change the management team's attitude, behaviors, and beliefs, perhaps you should replace them with a more effective team. If you change the management team, you will change the culture.

Every site manager has the idealistic vision of running a contact center where everyone is happy, has fun, loves their coworkers, and brings their dog to the office. Take off the virtual reality glasses and ask the people.

Gather employees that exemplify the contact center’s culture; managers, supervisors, and even agents, and ask them “what do you like about the current culture?” “What don’t you like?” “What is culture and does it matter?” Don’t expect everyone to agree on a definition, that’s not the goal. You want a lively conversation that directs where you want culture to go, how you will get there, and why. It may take a few sessions, be patient with the process. It’s a good idea to take these conversations to an offsite location. Perhaps invite others from other places. While a company has a corporate-wide culture, each area has a unique character.

If you want to sync multiple locations and change the culture throughout the organization, you should invite people from every location. They will provide you with insights you didn’t see yourself. Just ask them.

Industry Content Supporter:
Stephen Paskel
VP, Senior Technology & Global Operations Manager
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-paskel

The company’s mission statement is filled with values, and culture statements can be empty phrases unless they are backed up with action. In the daily team huddle, agents hear messages about company values, culture initiatives (such as work/life balance), policy and procedure updates, and metric reviews.

Communicate consistently the values, culture, and behaviors explicitly that are desired. Repeat, repeat and repeat the messages again and again. The messaging never stops once you let your foot off the gas, your cultural revolution will lose momentum.

One strategy to give your culture energy is to take the time to reward employees you identify that are advancing the desired culture, and be honest with those you don’t. By rewarding those who model the behavior you choose, it will continue with those you reward, and it will also be contagious to those who want to be rewarded. Another strategy is to have serious conversations with those employees who are not progressing in the culture. You can’t ignore those; they are like wildfires, if left alone they will burn everything in their path. This is how culture turns from pleasant and productive to dismal and reckless.