Arise & Sing

By: Neal Topf

Here's a concept I encountered in a chat session hosted by International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) about integrating new members into a team: "Once everyone is on board, you want them singing from the same hymn sheet."

It's a great image: Everyone in your company singing the same words to the same tune, in perfect harmony. But it's tough to pull it off. Really tough.

We recently had a meeting with a client about our support for one of their products. We discussed some changes that would help us strengthen our service. A director took great notes at that meeting. But I know from past experience that great notes don't always turn into great service by the time the team goes into action. They often don't all sing from the same hymn sheet.

So after the meeting I reviewed the notes with her. While she had made a great summary of what the client had asked for, I discovered that she and I had really different takes on why those changes were important.

That's not a criticism, by the way. It's human nature for two people to see things two different ways, even when it's all laid out in writing. My wife and I don't always think about important things the same way, and we share a house and kid! It only gets harder when you are dealing with people who have vastly different experiences than your own.

In other words, before my client services director and I could go to the rest of the team, she and I had to make sure we were singing from the same hymn sheet. Then we had to go through the same process with the team serving this particular client.

To be honest, it's painful and time consuming. Life would be much easier if we would just pass along summary notes from the meeting and assume that the team will read and understand the new direction. But if we want to get it right with any level of confidence, we need to meet with the team, explain, coach, and sometimes pull hair. It can take some tough love to get everyone singing from the same hymn sheet. But that's what makes the difference between being a good operations partner and a bad operations partner.

At Callzilla it's especially important to get everybody singing from the same hymn sheets because we don't like to rely on scripts for our agents. Scripts can work great when you are running a simulation. Out in the real world, however, a customer's feelings and sensitivities don't always follow a script. Our agents need to use their heads and think about how they can improve the customer experience and the client experience. Our supervisors and managers need to know it too, and how to improve the agent experience.

It's important to provide the right knowledge, right tools and the right coaching so that our agents can do their jobs well. It's always a work in progress. But when everyone is in harmony, it's a sweet, sweet sound.

Neal Topf co-founded Callzilla, a nearshore inbound call center that leads its industry in First Call Resolution and agent retention. Since 2005, the company has been compared to just about every contact center in the world, on every conceivable metric, and been chosen by the likes of Time Life, Rosetta Stone, Polycom, Murad, and Experian for bilingual customer support by phone, email, live chat, SMS text, social media, IVR, and more. Neal's team recently achieved ISO 9001 quality certification and won Customer Magazine's MVP Quality Award, among other awards