Winning Call Center Culture
by Shawn Siegel, Call Center IQ -
July 3, 2014
Winning Call Center Culture by Shawn Siegel, Call Center IQ
Sure, the 1,500+ customer-center executives who attend Call Center Week are there to network, do business and have fun. But they’re also there to learn practical lessons that can be applied to their organizations. One of the major topics at Call Center Week is the importance of creating a winning culture through strong leadership. We recorded insights shared by our speakers at last year’s event, and want to share this knowledge with you.
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“I learned this at Virgin, and I spent a lot of time at big companies like AT&T, KPMG: If you don’t like coming to work, it just sucks.
I think if your company is going to take service seriously, you can’t just say it. It has to be bought in by the people at the top, number one. And surprisingly, by all of the employees, not just service. People in finance have to understand why service is important.”
Todd Provino – VP of Customer Service - GrubHub
“No matter what business I pursued, I would put the fun back in it. I would connect with my customers and employees. I would offer a place that people would look forward to coming to, whether to work or to shop. I would give back to the associates, the guests, and the communities in which we operated. And these are what I like to call the “bear necessities” of any good business.”
Maxine Clark – Founder & Chief Executive Bear – Build-a-Bear
“I don’t put a lot of stock on awards; what I put a lot of stock on is culture. And how you develop the right kind of culture can lead to employees really being engaged with you.”
Steve Riddell – COO – Blinds.com
“If you’re really going to change your culture, it’s going to have to be from your top down. It has to be starting at your executive level.”
Lisa Church – Chief Experience Officer - 1st Advantage Credit Union
“I think, just brin back common sense. We do know how to take care of each other. We’re humans, we do know how to do this. And we need to empower our staff to have common sense in their approach and be able to do things that are right.”
Tara Kelly – President & CEO - Splice
“The challenge, of course, is that culture can’t be easily developed. Nor can it be easily replicated. And that’s why the right culture, focused on what matters most to the organization and its people, can be a significant differentiator among companies providing similar products or services.
A true test of a strong culture is the extent to which it influences the actions of your frontline. In other words, how your frontline team members, or in our case, our agents, interact with our customers.
We all know that attrition is one of the biggest problems today, in the contact center industry in particular. So if we don’t meet Millennials’ unique needs for social collaboration, for constant feedback, for continual team recognition and ongoing personal and professional development, they leave.”
Jeffrey Purrit – President - Telus International
“For us, culture is really a powerful management tool and a competitive advantage. So we believe that our culture drives engagement and that that engagement from employees is really what drives our business forward, in terms of better service and better solutions for our customers.”
Marc Bernica – VP, Back-Up Care, Bright Horizons
“We have ten core values that we use to describe the culture, but really, I think its people. It’s paying attention to what people need. It’s giving people the freedom that they need to do their job well. So I would say that the culture really is about people.”
Jon Wolske –Culture Evangelist - Zappos
“There’s no way a hierarchical, rigid, command-and-control management style will retain Googlers, even with great food and great facilities. We expect our Googlers to act independently and with little supervision. The only way to do this is through values. What values do you emphasize to retain the best people, and to provide them the space to contribute in a meaningful way?”
Peter Scocimara – Director, Enterprise Global Support - Google
“For us, from a marketing perspective, the call center really is the first point of contact with many of our guests. And so it was very important for us as an organization to help them understand our employees, particularly our call center people, how important diversity is, from a hospitality standpoint.”
Patty Coaley – Executive Director of Diversity & Inclusion - MGM Resorts
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