Managing the customer experience during the pandemic has brought a host of changes to daily operations, not the least of which is training managers to both work and manage remotely. Managers have had to determine how to support their team remotely while ensuring the client is receiving extraordinary experiences. This article explores three keys to training your managers to ensure success for them, their team, and the client.
When managers know how and when to enable agents to engage in moderate risk-taking behaviors, they play a significant role in transforming their agents into high-performing teams.
Examples might include:
Teams who know it’s safe to take interpersonal risks as a group see increases in performance, engagement and retention.
The curriculum for training managers to create psychologically safe teams might include segments on how to:
Tasked with providing white-glove assistance for a high-priority client initiative, we needed to quickly identify associates for the project, determine SMEs, staff extended hours, establish an escalation structure and schedule same-day training. Given a short time frame and somewhat limited information, managers empowered agents to go off script, encouraging them to find ways to say “Yes!” to our customers and to reach out to leadership with complex scenarios that required creative solutions, such as Lyft, Uber or other innovative thinking.
The results were incredibly encouraging. Our customer satisfaction came in at 66.7% Top 2 box, compared to similar initiatives that have seen a 47% satisfaction rate.
Pre-COVID-19, we began building psychological safety with new hires on day one during orientation by embedding belonging cues into the curriculum design. This continues in our new distributed environment, where we:
Managing and motivating today’s remote associates requires leaders to broaden their technological horizons in order to best coach and mentor their teams. When successful, a tangential consequence is that team members interact and communicate more effectively as well.
The curriculum for training managers to use nontraditional tools might include segments on how to:
“There’s no such thing as over-communicating.” We believe this strongly and have trained our leaders to dig deeper into the digital tool bag. They’re learning to optimize the capabilities of tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Skype and other platforms to enhance engagement and learning. They’re becoming pros at functionality like screen sharing, commenting, hand-raising, creating breakout rooms, chatting and posting reactions.
Mastering the new digital tool box leads to more effective remote coaching techniques, such as establishing a chat room for daily trivia contests based on best practices. We’ve trained leaders to also sprinkle in personal questions about teammates to keep things fun and strengthen social bonds within teams.
Team Lead Ashleigh Phillips sent each of her team members a mouse pad showing a photo of her with a dramatically sad face. The corresponding message noted how much she misses seeing her team in person. The result was terrific, and the team sent back a series of selfies holding up the mouse pad and expressing how much they miss their beloved TL.
In this case, a new communication channel and an empathetic approach that encourages psychological safety resulted in a stronger bond across the team. We are working this example into leadership training to encourage TLs to embrace and replicate simple, innovative approaches such as this, thus producing another type of psychological safety among our TL team … a virtuous cycle.
When it comes to process changes, the remote work environment is the gift that keeps on giving. Many traditional in-person activities have gone digital/remote. Talent acquisition, onboarding, orientation, initial training and just about every aspect of job performance have changed.
The curriculum for training managers to help launch and enforce process changes might include segments on how to:
Paperless processes are now highly preferred, so the inertia of past paper-laden practices is gone. Leaders throughout our organization are learning to perform without paper, e.g., using fully digital job applications, leveraging electronic signature software, using note-taking apps and more. Benefits and results we’ve seen include a faster time to hire for some roles, increased associate data integrity (especially with regard to our new human capital management system), and a decrease in our environmental impact.
By training our managers to adopt and embrace our new paperless processes, we’ve found efficiency gains. However, even more exciting is that as our managers bring these processes to their teams, associates are bubbling up with corresponding opportunities for more positive cultural change.
Someone once said, “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’” Well … now that associates are working from home, they are, in effect, spending more time at the office. We’re training our managers to encourage team members to take care of themselves in this new “always at work” world.
Through microlearning opportunities on our Workday LMS and other resources posted to our intranet, we’re encouraging leaders to learn about and promote self-care and well-being techniques to help people adjust to this new work-from-home reality. Recent topics have included creating a meaningful morning routine, setting up your workspace, taking time to move during the day, having healthy snacks on hand and sticking to a sleep schedule.
SUMMARY
The remote work environment has opened up a world of changes affecting organizations’ people, processes and technology. By training managers on how to manage and work remotely, we can open a path for success in this new era of employment. To realize these benefits, our managers must be trained to embrace these changes themselves and pass them on to their teams in ways that create psychological safety, use the best tools for the job and ensure they’re informed on new processes that can help them personally and professionally. When this happens, it’s a clear indication that leadership training can greatly accelerate agent engagement rates and provide a competitive advantage for enterprises willing to make the investment.
Sources:
• The 3 pillars to managing a healthy customer service team in 2021
• 8 ways to create psychological safety in the workplace
• The importance of self-awareness in leadership
• 7 ways in which technology is reshaping employee engagement
• How to introduce change in the workplace