That’s a familiar piece of advice which is credited to John T Chambers, the former boss of Cisco. It’s a comforting mantra for your boss to repeat; it combines displaying respect for staff with a degree of humility.

In the old days, most leaders in the ‘customer world’ could not only say they would be ‘willing’ to do what they asked of their contact centre employees, they could do it too. Technically they might have been a bit slow, but when it came to understanding, empathy and the resolution of customer problems or commercial opportunities they would be confident of their ability to effectively engage with consumers.

That was then. What about now?

Last week a client shared with me some analysis they had done which showed that their frontline advisors were having to use 20 different systems, applications and third-party portals. 20.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1659441626817{padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]Just think about that for a moment. I’ll be honest, I’m not the world’s greatest multitasker – but even if I was, 20 applications would be about four times the number I’d be confident in using. So, in my client’s contact centre I know I couldn’t do an advisor’s job and if I was the boss I wouldn’t pretend that I’d be willing to either!

It’s a truism that contact centre agents’ jobs have steadily become more difficult over the years. The number of contact channels available and the range of activities undertaken have steadily increased. At the same time the emotional state of customers has often become more heightened either due to their frustration at failing to successfully self-serve or external environmental factors. We all know that the ‘cognitive load’ frontline staff work under seems to have steadily grown and the technology and processes they work with just make matters worse.

So, what can we do about it?

For one, we can start to acknowledge that our people are increasingly doing technically and emotionally challenging jobs that most of us couldn’t. Recognising this fact won’t change anyone’s reality, but it does show a degree of genuine understanding and empathy.

Secondly, we can ensure that the needs of the frontline are front and centre every time new tech, propositions and channels are being planned. There’s a direct line between employee experience and customer experience, so we need to start to make reinforcing that relationship – and helping our frontline people – a priority.

If you’re running a contact centre, especially one providing multilingual services, the dominant news themes of the past few years, Brexit, The ‘Great Resignation’ and War, have all compounded to make a challenging job even more difficult.

At the same time, Covid especially has driven significant growth in the demand for multilingual customer service as more and more firms have exploited to shift online to enter new overseas markets.

This is a trend which Contact Centre Panel has been acutely aware of over the past two years, both in the UK and globally. So, if you need to identify and recruit staff who can support customers in languages other than English what are the options available to you?

1. Employ people who are already here

Most multilingual contact centres are supporting European languages, so native language speakers originally from the EU are the most obvious candidates. EU residents who were in the UK by 2021 should have achieved Settled Status so can be employed just like any other resident. However, as nearly all contact centres are reporting massive recruitment and retention challenges, that’s far from easy.

2. Recruit new staff from the EU

This may help, but remember that to do so you will almost certainly have to take advantage of the Skilled Worker Visa Scheme which entails a lot of administration, being approved as an employer by the Home Office and meeting the minimum salary level of £25,600.

3. Recruit Remote Workers in the Country

With the widespread adoption of contact centre homeworking, employing foreign-language speakers to work for you remotely in their own country is now entirely technically feasible. However, the costs and complexity of doing so – especially if you don’t currently employ any staff outside of the EU – can be considerable.

4. Outsource

Outsourcing contact centre customer service isn’t always the right solution for every organisation. But as many of our clients have found, done the right way outsourcing can be a sustainable, affordable solution to the multilingual resourcing challenge.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss any of these options.

The recruitment crisis has made headline news in recent times, with businesses being affected by labour shortages brought on by changes to both local and global economic conditions caused by the post-pandemic recovery and for UK based organisations, the aftereffects of Brexit.

In one sense it’s great that economies are experiencing a period of rapid growth after such a difficult 16 months but this has its challenges for many business owners, with recruitment and wage inflation becoming two of the biggest hurdles to expansion or in some cases survival.

According to figures recently released by Reed Recruitment, customer service has seen the highest overall salary increase of any sector (in the UK) with employee wages in 2021 up 32% compared with 2019. This wage inflation is adding huge pressure to both the ability to recruit and retain existing staff, within customer service and sales operations.

Add to this the increase in customer demand for query resolution and a return to business as usual from the consumer’s point of view, then the reality for many contact centres is that staffing is going to be difficult just as a period of peak demand, for many businesses, begins.

Challenges faced include:

• Resource shortages driven by macro and microeconomic conditions
• Post-pandemic recovery growth creating rapid expansion opportunities
• Increased customer demand putting pressure on customer service teams
• Outbound and inbound sales not being fulfilled due to resource shortage

What can you do to cope with staff shortages?

There are two alternatives to recruitment, which may work better for your business helping to save time and money, whilst improving your customer experience as well as increasing sales conversion and revenues.

These alternatives can both help to fix your short and longer-term resourcing issues and enable you to build a more sustainable business in the future, that can handle both foreseen and unforeseen demand fluctuations.

Outsource to cope with peak demand and recruitment transition periods

There is a wide choice of outsource contact centres, who provide a highly professional service, which presents itself to your customers as a seamless extension of your business. Choosing an outsourced partner to cope with your peak periods or to handle your less complex frequently dealt with enquiries, will free up your core teams to focus on areas that require higher levels of expertise such as complaint resolution and more complex sales conversion. This will enable your business to focus on the development of its higher skilled advisors and salespeople, resulting in greater loyalty, increased retention rates, higher customer satisfaction and increased revenues.

Outsourcing can also be used to meet customer contact requirements whilst your business is in recruitment mode. Measuring your recruitment needs can be difficult, as consumer demands fluctuate, and finding the ‘right’ people for your business can take time when the labour market has become so limited. Working with a partner while you rebuild your teams can help you to maintain customer satisfaction, reduce customer churn and protect revenues.

Identifying the right outsourcer for your business can be difficult if you do not have full visibility of the market or the skills to vet each outsourcer against your requirements. Working with the Contact Centre Panel team takes the pain away, making the process much simpler and ensuring you find the right match for your business.

Implement new technology to reduce demand on your teams

Implementing the ‘right’ technology solution can help your business to cope with demand fluctuations and improve how you handle enquiries in a more consistent and controlled way. Improvements in technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Bots are enabling contact centres to massively reduce the demand on agents by channelling low level enquiries away from expert advisors and resolving them. The cost of implementing new technologies is covered by a reduction in resourcing expenditure, improvements to working and process efficiency and increased sales revenues.

The key to implementing technologies successfully is to identify a solution that fits your current and future business requirements. With such a large choice of potential systems and providers, it can be difficult to make the right choice, particularly if you do not have full visibility of what is available and the appropriate level of technology expertise needed to accurately assess each solution.

Many businesses have, so far, chosen to wait in fear of making the wrong choice, either retaining dated legacy systems or delaying the adoption of new. When adopting new technologies mistakes can indeed be costly in terms of wasted time and expense, but if done correctly this can be the reverse. Successful businesses are now embracing the opportunity to streamline their operations and improve customer service delivery by implementing the latest contact centre technologies, guided by the right level of expertise.

Working alongside a trusted partner, such as Contact Centre Panel, to help you narrow down your options will help your business to adopt a measured, managed process to selecting the right technical solutions to improve and future-proof your operations.

Who can you talk to about the options?

Contact Centre Panel has built a network of over 140 contact centres and 50 technology providers. We’ve done this to find solutions to the greatest challenges facing the customer contact sector. Whether it’s staff resourcing to meet fluctuations in demand or to cover recruitment periods, or it’s choosing and implementing tools to improve customer interaction/experience and agent reliance, we can help.

We work closely with clients to understand their specific requirements before helping them to source the appropriate contact centre outsourcer or technology provider. We are entirely independent, so you know our recommendations are not driven by self-interest. Our selection process is managed by industry experts, so you will always be in safe hands.

In this joint webinar with The UK Contact Centre Forum, we will be asking leading contact centre experts how can businesses create a secure, productive, flexible, low risk working environment for their teams to flourish and achieve wherever they work. Jonathan Billing, Marketing Director, Contact Centre Panel, will chair an ‘around the coffee table’ style debate to hear the views of our expert panelists.

Topic overview

With Covid restrictions relaxing and employees pushing for greater working flexibility – businesses are under increased pressure to run a hybrid working model. Although there are benefits to operating a hybrid operation, it opens organisations up to new risks and employee management challenges. These include:

• Data and payment security
• Secure corporate application access
• Management of working patterns, productivity and conditions
• Increased employee liabilities and insurance risk
• Employee wellbeing
• Staff onboarding and training

Expert panel

Thomas Doran: Head of Remote Working, Bupa

As the head of remote working at Bupa, Thomas has extensive knowledge of homeworking having been involved in managing homeworking teams since 2014. He has led the implementation of a hybrid working model for Bupa’s frontline customer contact centre operation before homeworking became the new normal. Currently leads and a number of customer contact teams and manages partnership with 100% homebased outsourcer Sensee.

Alexandra Farmer: Head of Team & Solicitor, Ellis Whittam

Qualified solicitor and employment law expert. Prior to joining Ellis Whittam in 2013, Alexandra worked as head of employment law for a legal practice – gaining a wealth of experience supporting clients over a range of sectors including retail, beauty, pharmaceutical and charities. She heads up the Partnerships team at Ellis Whittam and her team support over 30,000 employers across 14 partnerships with employment law and HR issues.

John Greenwood: Head of Technology & Payments, Contact Centre Panel

A payments specialist and leading authority in PCI DSS compliance and how this applies to customer contact centres and 3rd party service providers. John was the driver and lead content contributor to the official PCI SSC Information Supplement, published in late 2018. John is a technology subject matter expert with over 30 years’ experience working with and within the industry, he has a deep understanding of the technology vendor landscape.

Eileen Donnelly: Director, Ripple & Co and former Head of Values & Ethics, The Co-operative Bank Plc

Senior leader with experience at Director level within FTSE 250 businesses. Eileen’s career has focused on supporting companies to build purpose-driven business strategies and workplace cultures. She is a Mental Health First Aid England Licensed Trainer and set up Ripple & Co to help organisations to recognise their responsibility to maintain and improve wellbeing in the workplace.

Julie Goddard: Expert Resilience and Business Continuity Specialist,
Humanex Resilience

A business continuity expert with over 15 years experience. Julie is a professional member of the Business Continuity Institute (FBCI). She has operated within a multi-agency response environment, including arranging counter-terrorism training and trauma training for hundreds of staff and management. She is currently an ‘industry Sector Leader’ on the ‘Cross-Sector Safety and Security Communications’ (CSSC) hub, which is a NaCTSO initiative.

Topics for discussion

• Adopting the right technology to enable secure yet flexible and efficient working
• Putting the right processes and policies in place to avoid liability and insurance risk
• The management of staff workforce wellbeing
• Agents taking payments from remote locations – mitigating risk

What will be the main changes for businesses in 2021 and beyond?

Sam states: “Businesses need to think of every work environment as an extension of the workplace. This means that for employees who will continue to work from home, either permanently or part-time, the employer needs to be fully engaged to ensure mitigation of the major areas of risk, particularly employee health, wellbeing, ensuring fair employment practices, cyber and information security.”

Sam continues: “Ideally, individual home-based risk assessment documents should be issued to home workers to complete for their working space at home. Employees should be supported in completing these documents, so businesses might need to be adaptable in how this support is provided. Cost-effectively, video overviews could be used to assist individuals or remote meetings along with home visits reserved for the most complex cases. Every employee must be treated individually with consideration of their specific needs.”

Sam concludes: “Following individual risk assessments, action must be taken to mitigate the risks identified. This might mean supplying equipment to provide a safe and comfortable working space for your team members. Failure to address known risks will not be viewed positively should a claim arise.”

How can employers manage disruption and costs from the necessary changes?

Sam answers: “Make sure that your business has a Homeworking Policy and adheres to it. Consult with your employees on the policy and review it regularly. Following a structured approach will maximise consistency and highlight opportunities to foresee repeatable tactics to address your employees’ issues in the home workplace.”

Sam points out: “Your policies will help your business to adopt managed procurement strategies. This means that you can purchase equipment in an effective way, helping your colleagues whilst enjoying the economies of scale and consistency that good purchasing behaviours deliver. It also means that everyone is treated fairly, with equal treatment of similar situations for your workers. Being able to evidence a reasonable and consistent approach will be key to the defence of any claim that may arise as a result of increasing volumes of home working. ”

What about looking after staff wellbeing and development?

Sam voiced: “Increase the amount of communication you have with your staff. By ramping up the interaction, people can feel more connected to the workplace and enhance your corporate culture. At Lockton, we have teams who work with video calls switched on even when they’re not in meetings: that ability to interact whilst working mimics the social aspects of working together.”

Sam goes onto illustrate: “Regular virtual training sessions using the wealth of online material is easy to set up and offers great opportunities to learn in a relaxed environment. Why not watch webinars together as a team from home then follow with a Q&A to share what you’ve all learned? Simple techniques like these can encourage a culture of shared learning and recognise your team members for their engagement.”

Sam adds: “Mentoring is another winning strategy for remote teams. Putting structures in place where more experienced colleagues are tasked with helping others and being available to answer questions not only gives the more senior team members a position of responsibility and recognition, it gives your less experienced staff permission to ask for the help they need.”

Sam was keen to point out that working from home is not for everyone, though. As we move through 2021 and offices can reopen, there is pressure on businesses to find the right mix of working styles for their people.

Sam explains: “Before planning your office layouts for the return back to work, check that your people are happy with the new arrangements. If you can be flexible, then adapting to the ways your teams prefer to work might deliver great productivity results. Put simply, some people work better from home, others are at their optimum in the office, and still, others may love a mixture of the two. The key is to offer flexibility and engage to the greatest extent possible, ensuring that all staff members are given the same opportunities wherever they choose to work.”

Sam concludes: “The businesses that share in the benefits of hybrid working will perform better and reduce their exposure to claims from employees.”

What are the other business benefits of getting hybrid working right?

Sam explains: “Employers who move now to identify how much office space they need can take the opportunity to reduce office costs. By reducing space, they can seek reduced rents. Use some of those savings to make working from home better for your employees and protect your business from future claims risks.”

Sam continues: “By building a supportive and flexible hybrid working model backed by mentoring and team building your business can feed a positive culture and your employees will feel supported. This will be reflected in low dissatisfaction, increased productivity and a comparatively lower risk of claims from your staff. Research of course also confirms that where employees are happy then this benefit is passed on to the client by way of enhanced customer service.”  

 Sam adds “An extra benefit for the medium to long term is that a good, flexible hybrid working structure makes it easier to recruit. Your team will no longer have to be based exclusively in the towns where you have offices nor will they need to stay nearby – people who leave the area can stay with you where before 2020 they might have had to find a job in a new location. This simply makes it easier to retain and recruit the best talent as your business grows.”

So finally, what are the main takeaway messages for businesses adapting to hybrid working?

Sam summarised his thoughts very succinctly: “The businesses that put employees at the centre of their hybrid working plans will do well, making the most of opportunities to decrease overhead, widen recruitment, lower staff turnover and absence, enhance productivity and reduce claims exposures. The key will be to ensuring that engagement and investment in culture is at the centre of the strategy; all employees must be brought on the corporate journey to ensure fairness and success. Those who cling on to a jackets-on-chairs mentality may face the negative side effects as staff demand flexibility and look to competitors who can offer it to them. They could also fail to make the most of this once in a lifetime opportunity to improve their competitiveness.”

“‘By building a business which rewards people for results and supports staff development in a responsible way, companies now have a chance to deliver excellent service, attract and keep the best people, and reduce cost. For most this will be an opportunity that is too good to refuse.”

If you’re unsure how to assess your claims risk exposure and how to equip your business to handle new working conditions, the expert team at Contact Centre Panel can help. We can also help you to learn how to work with your employees to maximise their health, happiness and productivity.

There’s no getting away from the fact that the world has changed, but with good planning and adaptability, a prepared organisation can react and succeed where others may fail.

A change in our way of thinking

Julie highlighted major alterations in how we think about the risks in our business. “We’ve gone from being worried about our offices to worrying about homeworkers. In many cases productivity has gone up and people are reporting that they are happier, but many people are now missing the human contact and support that an office environment provides, so senior leaders need to work harder to support their people.”

Julie continues: “Those issues also extend to business continuity risks, which are now distributed in nature due to remote working, whereas in the past risks were largely centred around the main offices. Many systems which were implemented to cope with homeworking were rolled out very quickly, to solve an urgent business need. This approach may have lead to gaps and issues with both the resilience and security. Now that the situation looks more permanent, it’s important to check Business Continuity and Disaster Recover plans to account for the totally different risks.”

What does business resilience mean in 2021?

“Business resilience isn’t just having a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan in place” explains Julie. “Although these things are important, the businesses that are most likely to do well in 2021 and further into the future are the ones who have changed their models to suit the new realities.”

Julie concludes: “Resilience isn’t just recovering, it’s thriving in changing times.”

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in practical terms

Julie explains: “One key example is your telephony systems. They may have been adapted to cope with the new normal when your people began working from home. These changes may have inadvertently introduced (sometimes hidden until it fails!) issues. Your contact centre is your shop window, especially while many physical shops have been closed for so long. Despite the reopening of the high street, your contact centres play a huge part in representing your business and brand.”

Julie adds: “If people can’t contact your teams effectively, you’re restricting access to your shop window. If your telephony systems fail or perform badly, it reflects on your business. If your online systems fail, telephony might be the only way your customers can get in touch so the ability to talk to somebody is a huge priority.”

So Julie recommends that telephony systems are tested regularly, say every 6 months. A plan for Disaster Recovery is needed in case your telephony fails. What will you do if your customers can’t get through? 

Cyber Security

Julie suggests asking two questions of your IT and Cyber Teams when assessing cybersecurity. If you don’t understand the answer the IT/Cyber team give you, or if you don’t even know what these questions actually mean don’t worry, but ask them to explain in plain English what it means for the business and the risk to data or systems. The two key questions are:

• Are you patching our systems for vulnerabilities and gaps?
• Do we have defence in depth built into our IT systems?

Irrespective of the IT/Cyber teams explanation, you should to take an urgent look at your Business Continuity plans and update them (with help from the IT/Cybr team) so that they can cope with a cyber attack. The plans should also be tested and rehearsed regularly with the business and IT/Cyber.

“There must be security at every level of your IT Infrastructure ” explains Julie, “Your central servers, within your technological partner solutions environments, and your end users including those at home. This includes educating your staff, who may be targeted by cybercriminals. They need to know how to recognise they are being  targeted  – i.e., what ‘red flag’ warning signs to look for – and most importantly what to do about it, and what not to do (e.g. not clicking on suspicious looking emails or links).”

Julie continues: “Testing is an important step. Penetration testing (or ‘Pen Testing’) is essentially paying experts to try and break into your systems. Even if you only do it once a year, this can uncover flaws and vulnerabilities in your security, and your security team or partner should then draw up an action plan to address the issues urgently – thus leading to better protection for your business.”

Julie adds: “Larger or regulated companies are more likely to carry out penetration testing, but smaller companies and outsourced partners might not be doing it. This might be because they think they’re too small to be at risk (they simply think it won’t happen to them!) or because they think they can’t justify it in terms of cost, or even because they’re worried about the potential results! In the event of a successful attack, none of these excuses will help.”

Julie explained that the key to introducing a good penetration testing regime is board support. Explain the risks in plain English to your board. Using IT jargon usually doesn’t help them to understand why they need to do it, how easy it is to break the company’s IT systems, and the significant risks of losing the battle against cybercriminals.

Julie continues: “Don’t believe it won’t happen to you. The criminals are running a numbers game and they may be just as likely to attack a smaller business as the biggest international brands and financial institutions.”

Julie concludes: “The pandemic has created a much more unstable world and global economy. Criminals will continue to look for new exploits so it’s important to try and stay one step ahead. Be agile, be flexible. Learn to adapt to the new world with its new sets of customer demands and business risks.”

What can business do now?

Julie suggests three questions to think about for your business today:

• What are your top 10 business continuity risks now?
• How do you plan to mitigate them?
• What can you build into your business now to shield yourself from future risks?

Which business will succeed in a world of new business risks?

Julie answers: “If you’ve taken your resilience seriously and have a proper Business Continuity plan in place, your business has a much better chance of coping with the next major disruption that comes along – and let’s be clear, something will happen. It’s just a case of when”

Julie explains: “Get the principles right and set your accountability and business framework for dealing with the risks, and your business should be able to succeed while others flounder. You will of course be nee to carry out training and exercising, which in turn will give you the confidence to be adaptable.”

Julie concludes: “The pandemic has actually given Business Continuity and Resilience professionals an opportunity to scan the horizon and hone our skills. Now is an ideal opportunity to engage with an expert partner if you haven’t done so already.”

How Contact Centre Panel can help

If you’re unsure how to assess your businesses risk exposure and how to equip it to handle any new risks posed by changeable working conditions, we can help by advising you on the risks you need to consider and the best way to mitigate them. We can also help you to learn how to work with your employees to maximise their health, happiness, and productivity.

We are running a series of joint webinars with UKCCF on outsourcing. In the first webinar, titled ‘an introduction to outsourcing’ we hear the thoughts and experiences of seasoned industry professionals – Dave Cleaver, former Head of Operations at Centrica and Lynda Campbell, Head of Transformation BA Global Contact Centres, British Airways, and Debbie Glenister, former Head of Customer Care, Etihad Airlines, as well as our joint host and outsourcing expert Phil Kitchen, Managing Director, Contact Centre Panel.

The session will include a Q&A to help answer any questions or queries you may have and allow the panelists to provide expert advice on specific outsourcing challenges.

Topic overview

For most businesses running an in-house contact centre, without outsourced support, is not straight forward. Forecasting customer demand and flexing resources, particularly in the current climate, is an art and can be difficult for organisations that have changing needs.

Outsourcing part or all of your customer contact requirements could be the answer. It can give your business the flexibility it requires to deliver a consistently professional and efficient service. Having access to additional agents, when required, means you can easily ramp services up or down without exposing your business to additional overheads. Outsourcing is also a great way to introduce new communication channels, Automation and AI into your business, without taking on considerable capital expenditure and risk. However, identifying and onboarding the right outsourced contact centre or technology provider can be tricky though. Particularly, if you don’t have experience of outsourcing and full visibility of the market.

In this webinar, our panelists will discuss this topic sharing their in depth experiences and highlighting the do’s and don’ts of outsourcing. They will provide tips on how to get the most out of a partnership with an outsourcer.

Expert panel

Dave Cleaver: Former Head of Operations at Centrica

Dave has over 23 years experience of working as a senior operations leader for a FTSE 100 Company. He was involved with key outsourcing projects whilst Head of Operations at Centrica. Over that time, he was responsible for building customer-centric business models, developing winning leadership cultures, optimising customer service operations, implementing cost efficiencies and turning around business performance.

Lynda Campbell:Former Director of British Gas (Wales) and Head of Transformation, BA Global Contact Centres, British Airways

Lynda is the former Director for British Gas in Wales and Head of Smart Metering Customer Services and more recently the Head of Transformation for BA Global Contact Centres. The latter role involved many aspects of transforming BA Global Centres including their outsourcing strategy. She has in-depth knowledge and experience of Contact Centres and Customer Services, including working with outsourced contact centre partners.

Debbie Glenister: CX Specialist, Contact Centre Panel and former Head of Customer Care, Eithad Airlines

Debbie is an expert in contact centre operations, with extensive outsourced and insourced multi-channel customer service experience across various sectors. She has worked in senior operational leadership roles for global industry leaders and had responsibility for up to 1500 employees. Across her career she has worked for many leading brands including American Express, BMI International, Bosch, BT, Department for Work & Pensions, Disneyland Paris, EE, Etihad Airways, Microsoft, Nectar, Sky, The Daily Telegraph and Trainline.

Phil Kitchen: Managing Director, Contact Centre Panel

Phil has a deep understanding of the contact centre industry, having worked within it for over 25 years. In 2006, he jointly set up VOICE Marketing Ltd, a successful outbound contact centre, which he sold to Capita Plc in April 2015. Phil set up Contact Centre Panel the same year, to help match businesses with the right telemarketing, call or contact centre partners and then support with the onboarding process. Phil’s working mantra is to provide a ‘safe pair of hands’ – he uses his vast experience, market knowledge and deep operational understanding to consistently deliver against clients’ requirements.

Topics for discussion

1. When and when not to outsource
2. The key benefits of outsourcing
   Cost reduction
   Risk reduction
   Post Covid business model adjustment
   Post BREXIT business model adjustment
   Digital transformation
   How to gain alignment to existing business goals
3. The role of technology Blended services/part outsource options
4. Do’s and don’ts
   Challenges faced
   ​Lessons Learnt

Watch the play back…

According to the research, a crisis creates three psychological states of mind. The first is a state of emergency, when an event comes from nowhere or catches us off guard and we find a clear sense of purpose, grow in energy and become more productive. How long you stay in this state varies by person, for example a crisis junkie, like myself, often enjoys spending time in this mindset so may prolong this period.

The next phase we move to is regression. When the uncertainty of a situation makes you lose purpose and can lead to withdrawal, irritability and a drop in productivity.

The third and final phase is the recovery. We start to reorient ourselves, check with our goal, adjust if necessary, and then get our heads into how we move on.

Individuals move through these phases at different speeds, which you may have witnessed when observing your colleagues’ behaviours as they have dealt with the Covid pandemic.

How have ‘we’ coped?

Many contact centres were very quick to prepare their staff for homeworking, with equipment and technology made available so people could work and service could be maintained. Non furloughed staff had clear objectives and knew what they had to do to make things happen. Rooms in the house were turned into working spaces and new daily patterns established…all with the intention of ‘making homeworking operational!’

After several weeks in lockdown, many people will have naturally started to drift into regression. The uncertainty of how long the crisis will last had kicked in, with the lack of interaction and normal patterns of communication starting to impact on how people felt. Work started to feel laborious and customers (who were also going through the same behavioural patterns) became a bit more irritable. Family were not as understanding as they were, which created its own problems.

All in all, things began to feel much harder.

Then we moved into ‘lockdown lifting’, which may or may not change your working arrangements. With some homeworkers heading back into the office and others remaining at home. That said, there is a potential for staff to see ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.

Supporting staff in the transition to the ‘new norm’

As a leader with staff working from home, what can you do to help support team members and your customers as we tiptoe towards recovery?

Keep up the staff communication

Firstly, on a human level, check in with your teams. How are they getting on? How are they feeling? What is happening in their personal life? Show them that you care about their wellbeing and as people, not just ‘doers’.

Secondly, give your team insight into the business. What is happening within the organisation? How is it performing? What is their part to play? Given that they may well have felt a loss of purpose, now more than ever is a time to direct them back to that and be sure to make it clear. Connect the dots very obviously, thereby creating a renewed sense of purpose in what they are doing.

Set expectations for customers

According to research, many people have had mixed experiences dealing with contact centres during Covid. I personally found it infuriating being told my wait time was 5 minutes (due to demand) and then waiting 45 minutes before giving up as had to join a meeting. Conversely, my bank has a message in its IVR explaining that they are doing their best and that their staff are working from home. My expectation had been set so I understood that I might hear noises in the background due to family life still going on. I was happy with this. Not only did it set my expectations, but I had immediate empathy with the person on the other end as I too have had that struggle.

My advice for leaders is to keep up your communications with homeworkers, both on a personal and organisational level, to remind them that they matter and that they have a purpose. Help your customers to be aware of what you are doing to help and how your teams are operating. Bring a personal level and some empathy to your conversations. Keep up the encouragement and give regular gratification. Life will get easier as we head towards recovery so remain positive and focused on your goals.

Concerned with staff wellbeing and productivity?

If you require help improving team member wellbeing and productivity, we can assist. At CCP, we are skilled at assessing and implementing progressive cultural change. Our extensive experience of working with a large range of clients, including large multinationals, SMEs and charities, means we have the expertise to help any business. For further information click here or get in touch for a chat.

For years we’ve been talking about how homeworking would bring opportunities and change how contact centres employ people and deliver service, creating flexibility for both people and organisations. It was a win-win and was coined as the great opportunity – yet it never really fulfilled its potential. However, due to the pandemic, in 2 weeks it has been delivered, but at what cost?

Who would have thought on New Year’s Eve, when we were celebrating with friends and loved ones, and pontificating on what 2020 would bring – the celebrations, trips, events and the hope that something would knock Brexit from the headlines, that we’d now be longing for the day we can just meet friends for a coffee or go around to see our families.

In hindsight, we needed to be careful about what we were wishing for and appreciate many of the things we’d taken for granted.

However, nobody could have foreseen this one, or maybe the signs were there as warned by Bill Gates in a TED Talk in 2015.

The impact

Initially, there were some who ignored the #bekind memo and put their own self-interests before others by panic buying and ignoring government advice around separation. I saw a comment that said “I feel the world has sent us to our rooms to think about what we have done”. Perhaps it has, maybe the world is being reset? The tragedy is that it’s taking something so epic, which will see so many people lose loved ones, for us to acknowledge that the world we have been living in will be fundamentally different after COVID-19. Perhaps our only option is to embrace this.

Reflecting back

We are undoubtedly social creatures and need contact from those around us. For the past 22 years I’ve been working in the contact centre industry, an area which someone said to me a few months ago “seems to hate itself”. This stopped me in my tracks. I’ve always loved being part of the industry as it has afforded me the opportunity to work with some fantastic brands, especially from being in outsourcing, and given me a range of experiences. I’ve been able to help so many deliver improved service or support to their customers and assist people when they need reassurance or information.

I’ve the utmost respect for all front-line contact centre staff, every day they are communicating with customers – dealing with questions, challenges, complaints and fixing issues. Their line managers supporting them, a role which has changed so much. When I first became a line manager things were simpler, compliance extended to whether DPA had been completed, there was no social media and people didn’t talk about their feelings. Now a line manager has to be so much more than just an excellent agent, they need to fully understand how people, systems and communication work and interact.

Maintaining the energy

Why am I raising this discussion point? Because what gets a team through the day in a busy contact centre is often the buzz, the camaraderie and the sense of belonging. I find the energy and feeling you get when walking through the door of a contact centre is an indicator of the culture and performance of the Team(s) within. The fear of saying the “Q” word for fear of creating an avalanche of calls and when you know there is a problem, due to a change in the volume level on the calling floor, that comes before the words “systems down”.

Contact centre people are problem solvers, I believe we thrive in a crisis and see the best of people when things are going wrong – whether that be for our customers, the organisation we represent or that team member who is having a crisis at home. It saddens me to see photos of empty call centres with their energy dissipated, leaving me with a unfamiliar feeling as ‘our’ purpose has always been to fill buildings with motivated people delivering solutions to customers. But a challenge was set and it appears many have delivered at pace against that need.

I fear however, that we are an industry running on adrenaline which is providing a temporary buzz. The novelty of homeworking and the focus on the broader needs of our society are providing a boost, but this may be temporary and fade in time. Our industry is therefore responsible for making sure any gap is filled and levels are maintained. We’ve heard some great stories of people using technology to deliver virtual meetings and team events, perhaps further advancement of gamification will provide extra impetus maintain the energy and engagement in the future.

The challenges of homeworking

For years we’ve been talking about how homeworking would bring opportunities and change how contact centres employ people and deliver service, creating flexibility for both people and organisations. It was a win-win and was coined as the great opportunity – yet it never really fulfilled its potential. However, due to the pandemic, in 2 weeks it has been delivered, but at what cost?

The mission was to get agents and staff working from home, protect people from the virus and continue to support and serve customers, whilst maintaining revenues. But we now have further challenges, how do we ensure that those agents handling calls from emotional customers (and we are all in a state of heightened emotion right now) receive the appropriate support and guidance from their team? How do we ensure that the services being delivered are compliant and useable long term, when potentially unsecure interim homeworking solutions have been adopted first?

The future

The landscape has changed, if done correctly then there could be an appetite to maintain homeworking as it offers the flexibilities and opportunities as I previously mentioned. This was realised, when it was proved, that a solution to enable homeworking could be rolled out at the scale we are seeing now. In the future, could we see the contact centre becoming merely a hub for workers, offering the flexibility that many people require and giving options to both those who choose to work in the office or from home. It will open up new talent pools, enabling workers who were unable to adhere to constraints of working from an office i.e. parents with young families or people living in more remote locations. This will become the new norm so will you be ready to embrace this?

We’re here to help

None of us know what the coming months will look like, but the 2020s are already changing how we approach our lives and work. With this in mind, we are wanting to support the industry as best we can. This will include regularly keeping in touch, with a view to helping our industry in navigate these challenging times and beyond. We will support people and businesses, be a friendly voice and share our knowledge and experience to help continue to forge and maintain strong partnerships.

As part of this, we are creating a programme of content with industry leading experts on subjects such as technology, PCI Compliance, GDPR, homeworking engagement, leadership and operational management in the context of the current and anticipated landscape.
If you have any questions related to this article or on what’s happening in the industry or would like to provide feedback, email hello@contactcentrepanel.com.