Follow the Leader", Featuring Jeff Toister

How do you encourage front line staff to take ownership of the contact center vision?

I recently spoke with a contact center leader who was frustrated that his agents weren’t really excited about the vision. He shared with me that he had come up with the vision on his own and then communicated it to the team. Well, no wonder agents weren’t excited about the vision since they had no part in creating it!

Frontline staff should be included in creating the contact center vision. When I work with organizations to create a customer service vision, I always insist multiple stakeholders take part including frontline staff, middle managers, and executive leadership. This immediately instills a sense of ownership and helps ensure the vision feels authentic to everyone.

It’s then up to contact center leaders to continuously encourage ownership. This means leading by example, discussing the vision with agents on a regular basis, and helping agents find ways to overcome obstacles and live the vision in their daily work. Contact center agents tend to understand something’s importance by how often you talk about it, so leaders need to talk about the vision a lot of they want to see their team taking it to heart.

Jeff Toister is an author, consultant, and trainer who helps customer service teams unlock their hidden potential. He’s the bestselling author of The Service Culture Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Your Employees Obsessed with Customer Service. More than 140,000 people on six continents have taken on of his training courses on LinkedIn Learning (a.k.a. Lynda.com). Jeff has been recognized as a Top 50 Contact Center Thought Leader by ICMI and one of the Top 30 Customer Service Professionals in the World by Global Gurus.