Equipping leaders for the new normal

The challenge:

“Coronavirus has completely changed how people think about where or how you should work” – Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom Video Communications Inc.

Contact centre team leaders face an unprecedented challenge – how to coach agents to improve both operational performance and customer experience when they are not in the same building.

Adapting the DMAIC approach for home working

DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control. These are the five elements of the Lean Six Sigma process improvement methodology which is used to improve business processes throughout the world.

A full scale DMAIC project requires extensive analysis, but Team Leaders can implement a paired down version using Omningage Connect on top of Amazon Connect, the cloud-based contact centre platform.

This can be applied just as easily to one agent or to a group of agents.

Define

The first stage is to define the issues to be addressed.

The Supervisor Desktop has many options for reporting, and Team Leaders or their managers can have access to more extensive reports in the Administration Application. These reports provide plentiful data for team leaders to see which issue needs to be prioritized.

Measure

The first step of the “Measure” phase is to decide which KPIs measure the issue in focus. Our team leader will then look at the current levels to establish benchmarks and decide appropriate targets. For example, if First Contact Resolution (FCR) is to be improved, establish what the current level is, and then decide what the target level will be.

The next step is to list the suspected root causes of the issue and decide how to investigate them.

An experienced team leader will have a list of suspected root causes in her head which she can test. Often, the quickest way is to listen to call recordings.

Omningage Connect’s Supervisor Desktop allows this using the “Interaction Explorer”. The team leader can search for calls by various parameters including wrap up codes. She can listen to calls where wrap-up codes indicate that FCR was not achieved, and note what went wrong and which root cause applied. She can also listen to calls where FCR was achieved, to see which suspected root causes applied there, showing that they were not the real root cause at all.

Analyse

Our team leader will analyse her findings from listening to calls and conclude the root causes of the issue.

She may use the historical data reports in the Administration Application to gain further insights. They may reveal trade-offs where improving FCR might harm other aspects of performance.

Improve

Now our team leader has to take action. The most likely option will be corrective coaching or training.

The media player in the Interactions Explorer can be played through a conferencing application, as long as the “system sound” option is selected. In this way, agents can listen to calls during their coaching or training sessions and understand what they need to do to improve performance against the target.

Control

Now, our team leader will check the KPIs that show performance relating to the issue in focus. She can use the Team Monitoring page to silently listen to her team in real time and make sure they are applying their corrective training. She can take immediate action if she sees any backsliding.

The takeaway

No set of tools can make someone into an effective leader unless they have the skills to lead effectively.

The Omningage Connect Supervisor Desktop can empower leaders by giving them analytical and communications tools to identify, investigate, rectify and monitor issues which their team faces, even when their team is geographically dispersed.