10 Considerations for Successful Culture Shifts-Contact Ctrs #2 & 3

2. Management Ownership

It’s interesting to note that the three cultural components in fig.1 are all under control of management.  In spite of this, the culture is often seen as an independent force, only to be addressed as a last resort.  It is not uncommon for managers to refer to the culture as “they,” perceiving it as the independent sum of employee attitude.  Experience shows, more often than not, that management does not take full responsibility for the culture, but at times may perceive it a cause of an inability to improve performance.

Another aspect of ownership that cannot be overemphasized is the need for management to lead by example.  Management, from supervisors to the president, need to show they understand and live the “WHY.”  Most of us assimilate examples and parables easier than literal explanations, emails or speeches.  When the workforce sees management in action, they can instantly translate what they saw into potential actions in their area of influence.  Walking the talk makes all the difference.

A successful shift is unlikely, without management ownership
of the current and future cultures.

3. Ensuring the Need for A Culture Shift

Many planned culture shifts are not necessary.  In many cases the culture is well aligned to the purpose and able to deliver, but may need incremental adjustments in one or more of its components.  It should be noted that changes in the components might not result in noticeable cultural shifts until certain thresholds are crossed.  Therefore, within these limits we are able to make adjustments for improved performance without needing to address a shift in culture.  The less invasive option is usually recommended.

It is important to assess the quality of the culture, based on its alignment to the purpose, and not based on organizational performance.

Cultures are less often a cause and more often an affect.

Next Post:

4. Clarifying the “Purpose”
5. Identifying Needed Cultural Qualities
6. Employee Engagement

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCL

Copyright 2009 Vidal Consulting Group LLC

10 Considerations for Successful Contact Center Culture Shifts-Part 1

In this series of 3 postings, we will cover 10 considerations for creating successful cultures shifts in support contact centers.  Although not a complete or exhaustive list, it calls attention to areas often overlooked or of critical importance.  These considerations can apply to other types of organizations and contact centers.

These postings will shortly be compiled into a whitepaper available on our website.  If you’d like to receive a FREE copy, please click hereand we’ll email you a copy once compiled, or click here to be notified of updates.

Introduction
Contact Centers form very specific kinds of cultures, which can present challenges not usually seen elsewhere in the organization.  The proactive management of cultures is often avoided because it is seen as a difficult and even dangerous long-term endeavor.  This does not have to be the case, in fact, the proactive management of cultures increases the likelihood of success and is rewarding to all those involved.

Bob Greenberg, CMO of Panasonic, a dear friend and mentor, once said to me: “left alone, disarray and lack of grace always prevails.  If we want to maintain grace and beauty in our systems, we must be involved”.  An example is: A house left alone will deteriorate faster than one that is lived-in and cared for.  For the same reason, we need to nurture cultures over time.  Left alone, the forces of everyday business as well as changes in management and staff can move cultures away from the desired focus.

Through experience, we can list a few guidelines for initial thoughts:

-        Cultures require management ownership
-        Cultures are not the employees.
-        Cultures are usually the effect, not the cause.
-        Cultures cannot be changed; they are either shifted or damaged.
-        Culture shifts cannot be mandated.  Mandate = Damage
-        Cultures must be seen as a labor of love.

We feel very strongly about these factoids forming a foundation for success.  If you disagree, we love your comments.

1. Definition

Although there is room for interpretation, an over-simplified definition of a corporate culture is offered as:

“The  generally accepted norms and values of an organization that result in a behavioral or operational paradigm”

In short, an organization adopts certain norms and values that result in certain consistencies in the way it thinks, feels and acts.

Considering the definition we are tempted to equate “culture” to “workforce”.  But that is an incomplete view.  The culture is not simply the sum of the workforce, but is instead, the result of what can be considered a “chemical” reaction between People, Purpose and Environment.

This interaction results in the set of values and norms that allow us to predict organizational behavior under certain conditions.  To the extent that these norms and values magnify or support the core purpose of the organization, we can say we have a satisfactorily aligned culture.

Let’s cover the components briefly:

People:
As mentioned, the people component is not limited to employees but include all those in the interaction: management, customers, vendors as well as employees.  Some organizational behaviorists may include special external influencers such as labor unions or immediate family.

The importance of managing the people component is obvious, but the reason often eludes us.  We must manage the people component because it is “the people” that set the stage for the purpose, the environment and the chemical reaction and it is in “the people” that the chemical reaction takes place.

People are the most important asset of the culture, nothing happens without people.

Purpose:
In today’s experience economy (“The Experience Economy“, Pine and Gilmore), products and services are no longer considered long-term brand differentiators.  The market differentiators have now become “experiences”.  Experiences are a broader output and are driven by the organization’s intention or purpose.

The purpose of the contact center goes beyond the pragmatic “job” to be done, it reaches for the “WHY” or essence for which the contact center stands. (see “Start with Why”, Sinek)

By aligning our departments, employees, policies, processes, etc., to this “WHY”, we can create consistent and repeatable experiences for our customers across the organization.  A clearly defined purpose simplifies decisions, facilitates empowerment, promotes employee engagement and creates focus.

The purpose defines the culture.

Environment
The environment is the sum of the all other variables creating the conditions for the chemical reaction.  It is comprised of processes, policies, systems, tools, expectations, metrics, etc.  The variables we normally manipulate to improve our performance are most often part of the environment.

In Short
The Purpose defines the Culture, while the People and Environment make it possible.
By managing People, Purpose and Environment we can shift cultures.

Next Posting:

2. Management Ownership
3. Ensuring a Need for a Culture Shift
4. Clarifying the “Purpose”
5. Identifying Needed Cultural Qualities
6. Employee Engagement

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCL

Front-line Empowerment Can Makes All the Difference

This story is sad, but a little funny at the same time.

Continental Airlines Flight 47 kept about 50 passengers on this regional Jet on the tarmac overnight.
Fifty people in a regional Jet with babies and backed up bathrooms can be a pretty scary thing.

The airplane was diverted and landed in Rochester about 12:30 am.  Passengers were not let off of the plane because the security officers had already left for the day.  The airport reports that it told the crew they could deplane, but the crew disagrees. (full story on USA TODAY.)

Of course, we can expect confusion when a flight is diverted after hours to a small airport that is not serviced by the airline.
But what a difference a little front-line EMPOWERMENT would have made !

A crew member calling the police on their cell phone saying – It seems very unreasonable for us to keep 50 people in here all night.  Can you help us reach some authorities that could give us options? – Instant emotion, Instant Loyalty.

Take a chance on Empowerment, it works !

(I wonder what a SouthWest Airlines crew member would have done)

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Extreme Customer Loyalty

Copyright 2009 – Rudy VidalFron

All Customers Are Not Created Equal

 

 

 

Your contact center is suffering from unexpected staff shortage.  Two queues are are in trouble.  Michelle, one of your super agents is skilled in both queues.  Where do you place her?

Actually, it doesn’t matter.  The point is you will decide to put the agent in one of the queues, which ultimately means, for whatever reason, you will consider one queue, a set of customers, to be more important than another. 

Because service and the idea of serving people has an ethical taste, it is easy to adopt a general altruistic philosophy towards customer satisfaction.  As a humanist you may believe all customers should be addressed with the same attention regardless of their economic weight on the organization, however, for a business person managing limited resources, some customers are worth more than others.

Depending on your company’s priorities customer may be more important because they purchased a  strategic product or because your company needs quick market share growth in a particular segment to win a positioning battle.  For whatever reason, when in a resource constrained situation, some customers are in fact more equal than others.

Great customer centric organization work hard to avoid this dilemma altogether.  When Customer Centricity becomes part of our corporate DNA, we begin to proactively manage the incessant pressure of limited resources, always including the customer in our business plans, our contingencies and our innovation.

Customers are resources just like cash.  The difference is that customers can appreciate the value we add and the difference we make in their lives, and therefore, can offer long term loyalty. 

The benefits in the transformation of corporate DNA towards customer centricity is not only external in the way customers see us, but more internal in the way we begin to see ourselves; holding ourselves to a different standard for the benefit of our customers, and therefore our own, as a member of a social group.

“Recognizing our responsibilities as industrialists, we will devote ourselves to the progress and development of society and the well-being of people through our business activities, thereby enhancing the quality of life throughout the world.”  – Konosuke Matsushita, 1932

At some point we will all have to make the decision to place super agent Michelle in one queue over another, but our intention to work towards avoiding the dilemma altogether, speaks volumes about our future.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

Intention, the source of . . . . . Everything !

 

 

 

I’ve been thinking about intention for a couple of days now.  So, I may as well post.

I think great work of any lasting value comes through intention.  In fact, I believe clear intention may be a prerequisite to greatness.  I read somewhere, ”if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else”.  The place we end up may be a good place, but we will probably not be able to reproduce our results consistently.

Through intention we can transfer the “human-ness” of our effort to another person and increase the likelihood and strength of the potential emotion.  Simply because two people purposefully and intentionally interchanging in a common interest is emotional.  Intentional service.

Some touch-points are managed by technology, collateral materials and other innimate methods, but even then, our intention can be made to show through.

Without intention we run the risk of having our companies feel machine-like and impersonal, even when we do a good job.  Without intention we loose the opportunity to create and be part of a culture that is sustainable, reproducible and proud.

My intention is to serve my customer as I would like to be serviced myself.
Because it feels right and brings positive emotion to all involved.

Committed to XCS !
Rudy Vidal

XCS – A New Paradigm, kind of.

Colleen’s last post about mindset shifting brought to mind the importance of Paradigms.

The primary reason for cultural resistance to change is the momentum held in the current paradigms.

A paradigm is a set of rules or expected actions used to solve problems.  After time, the paradigm becomes the norm and thus drives the way we act in certain circumstances, many times without thinking or justifying our actions.  We simply trust the paradigm.   (For more info on paradigms check out Joel Barker, he is my paradigm guru- quite good.

For example:

Problem: traffic accidents at intersections

Solution and new paradigm: traffic lights – red=stop, green=go.

At first the current paradigm (slow down, proceed with caution dodging crossing traffic) will resist.  After a while the new paradigm will begin to take hold as it proves effective in solving problems.  Over time the paradigm is refined (add a yellow light, add arrows, add time delays) with more problems being solved as the paradigm matures. 

The adoption of new paradigms can be painful but can also be very beneficial.  There are risks – (to be discussed in future posts, if there is interest).

The current Customer Satisfaction paradigm is:  Customer satisfaction is good as long as we can afford it (CS is a short term expense, for an unquantifiable, future benefit)  This paradigm never really worked, but lacking the tools and processes to measure the benefits, what seemed logical prevailed.  

XCS is a new paradigm that solves many of the uncertainties of the old and shows us the mechanism to attain loyalty and measure the progress and financial benefits to the organization.  It is simple and easy to follow.

As Paradigms go, its not the most difficult to introduce into a culture.

Try it.