It pays to encourage workplace friendships.

According to a recent study by the Conference Board only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. While there are many reasons for rampant job dissatisfaction, there is one root cause that deserves a closer look. That is, the role that friendships play in creating a positive, supportive working environment.

Research by the Randstad Work Watch found that, “Interestingly, the top responses from the survey aligned <job satisfaction> more to workplace culture: a more creative and friendly workplace (70 percent); increases teamwork (69 percent); increases morale (59 percent); and increases knowledge sharing and open communication (50 percent).”

The survey pointed to the important role that close friendships play in employee job satisfaction. “There is no denying that workplace friendships can contribute to a positive workplace culture, including increased productivity and creativity, heightened morale, enhanced personal performance and stronger team cohesiveness.”

Other studies support these findings. The Gallup Organization, leaders in employee engagement research, studied high performing work groups and discovered that one of the things these employees had in common was having a best friend at work. In fact, “Do you have a best friend at work?” is the most controversial question on Gallup’s Q-12 survey.  According to the February 2008 Gallup Management Journal: “Gallup itself would have dropped the statement if not for one stubborn fact: it predicts performance. Something about a deep sense of affiliation with the people in an employee’s team drives him to do positive things for the business he otherwise would not do.”

Dealing with customer issues call after call, day after day is one of the most emotionally taxing jobs there is. That’s why it’s so important to foster supportive workplace friendships. You can bet that when front-line employees “feel the love,” they’ll pass that positivity on to their customers.

Be happy. Have a great week.

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If you don’t have regular team meetings you aren’t a team in the truest sense. What you really are is a collection of boxes on an org chart.

Managers and supervisors know how important meetings are to maintaining a healthy, high-performing team but find two things get in the way: finding the time to meet and figuring out what to do in the meetings so your time is well spent.

Team meetings provide a venue for supervisors and reps to build trust — the main ingredient to good relationships.The relationship between a supervisor and their team is one of the main drivers of employee engagement. Team meetings are absolutely, no-doubt-about-it, positively crucial to creating a highly engaged team.

The two best ways to kill team meetings is to let the discussion slide into a gripe session about what’s wrong and needs fixing or spending most of the time listening to “important information.” I call the latter the “Dump Truck Meeting Model.” That’s when the leader of the meeting backs up the truck and dumps a load of boring administrivia while the attendees passively sit there, eyes glazed over, wishing they were any where else (even back on the phone…).

Granted there are times when you need to provide need-to-know updates. Let the 80/20 Rule be your guide — spend 20% of your time on operational topics and the rest of your meeting Grtime talking about what really matters to your employees.

Six Tips for Better Team Meetings

1. Have an agenda.
Good meetings (and good parties or any other gathering of people) take advance preparation. Send the agenda out in advance and ask for input.
2. Learn how to facilitate good meetings.
Facilitating a great meeting is part art and part science. Pick up a book on the subject or take a class. Learn the do’s and don’ts.
3. Start and end on time.
Meetings time are essentially a promise that you need to keep.
4. Do everything you can to hold meeting times sacred.
Conduct meetings on the same day of the week, at the same time. You will find that your
employees will plan to be there — and have something to say.
5. Pick a topic for each meeting.
I don’t mean using the meeting as a training session. What I’m referring to is focusing on a specific subject for discussion that is relevant to the reps’ lives both at work and outside work.
For example, you could talk about achieving work and life balance; present a handout with bullet point tips (Google any topic and you’ll find scads of good information) sit around the campfire and share ideas on what the reps find works well.
6. Use a fable book.
When you think about it, fables and parables are the most ancient way of transmitting wisdom. Before I wrote my fable book, I used books like Who Moved My Cheese? as meeting topics. These are easy reads that even people who normally don’t read books enjoy. In fact, using these books convinced me to write my customer service fable, The Napkin, The Melon & The Monkey.

Got a comment or opinion? I’d love to hear from you! bb(at)barbaraburke(dot)com
www.barbaraburke.com

Resources:
For information on how you can transition your supervisors from ineffective “firefighting” mode to a service model that is proactive and intentional.

Interested in hearing more good stuff about how you can have better meetings? Click hereto listen to my July 14th interview with Bruce Belfiore at Benchmark Portal’s Call Talk show.

Are you a supervisor who spends too much time fighting fires? If so, it’s time to put away the matches.

If you are like many supervisors, escalated calls are the source of many of the fires you deal with every day. Some of the calls start out as a mild smolder and are transformed into a raging fire because the rep reacted emotionally to customers’ behaving badly. These reps are like pyromaniacs throwing lighted matches on highly combustible materials. Some customers insist on talking with a supervisor despite a reps’ best efforts to persuade the customer that they can handle their problem. Other customer calls should be escalated to supervisor who can easily (and calmly) extinguish the issue.

Firefighting by definition is a reactive activity caused by what is perceived to be a “crisis.” Preventing unnecessary fires in the “escalated calls” category takes a conscious, focused effort on the part of call center managers and supervisors. Although there is long list of actions you should take to reduce escalated calls, here are a few off the top of my head.

10 Tips for Reducing Escalated Calls

1.  First determine the root causes.
This will take some time to research, but it’s well worth it. You can’t address a problem unless you know what’s causing it.
2.  Consider the “fear factor.”
Even if reps are empowered to handle customer issues they often don’t use their authority for fear that they will be criticized if they don’t “get it right.” (Sure, you’ve told them a million times that you have their back but if they don’t believe it…..).
3.  Listen to calls and be prepared to be horrified.
Having listened to thousands of monitored calls I am still amazed at what reps do (often unknowingly) to make customers crazy-angry. Meet with these reps immediately.
4.  Have “zero tolerance” for badmouthing customers.
Handling every customer with respect should be a core value. When reps start out assuming a customer is a “bad” customer (or deadbeat, or pain the rear, or chronic complainer…) the call has no where to go but down.
5.  Make sure you have an up-to-date knowledge base that is easy to use.
A huge portion of escalated calls could be prevented if the reps had the info at their finger tips.
6.  Survey your reps to find out what their understanding of when they should escalate a call. Again…reps’ perception is their reality. Straighten out the perception and the behavior change follows.
7.  Solicit and listen to your reps’ suggestions for reducing the need to transfer a call.
According to SQM, only 9% of the CSRs they surveyed were satisfied with “real time” support they received to resolve challenging calls.
8.  Make “reducing escalated calls” a project.
If you believe escalated calls are a problem, orchestrate a call center “initiative” to deal with it.
9.  Reduce dependence on the rep next door.
Asking the rep sitting next to them for advice on what to do about a customers’ issue is the first place most reps go for answers — sometimes those answers are just plain wrong.
10. Take away the matches by coaching reps to manage their emotions.
The vast majority of the reps I know are wonderful, conscientious people who handle customer situations beautifully. But being human, sometimes these same reps get hooked in, lose emotional control and turn what was a minor smolder into a raging blaze. It happens. When it does, the best thing you do can do is to gently ask them to hand over the matches and have a  “SODA.”

Have a great week.

Barbara Burke

Got a comment or opinion? I’d love to hear from you!

Resources:
For information on how you can transition your supervisors from ineffective “firefighting” mode to a service model that is proactive and intentional.

Study says front-line reps would trade gift cards for more praise from their supervisor

Imagine that a friend asked for your advice about how to repair his troubled marriage. He shares his strategy for saving his marriage. “I thought I’d take her on a cruise or send her to a spa. Or maybe buy her that bracelet she has her eye on.”

You can’t believe your ears. It’s absurd to think that bribing his wife to stay with him would actually work. You want him to understand that what she really needs is his time and his attention. He needs to let her know by his actions that he values her.

Now think about what you do to reward and recognize your employees. If the way you typically show your appreciation is to give them goodies, you may want to think again. While there is nothing wrong with giving out gift cards or having a celebration during Customer Service Week, what really matters to front line employees is genuine, on the spot recognition from their supervisor.

Ascent’s 2009 Reward & Recognition Best Practices study bears this out. Front-line reps ranked “praise” as most important. Tangible gifts came in fourth. The study also found that praise is best delivered on the spot. “Recognition and rewards can be formal or informal. Informal recognition, meaning, spontaneous or immediate — simple thank you’s or expressions for a job well done. In fact, most of a company’s recognition activity should be informal. Informal recognition is a critical component in human nature and the social structure — it’s a major motivator and results in people feeling good about themselves and their achievements.”

The report pointed out that while some supervisors are naturals, most don’t know how to reward and recognize their individual employees. “Managers and supervisors should receive the proper training that will develop the skills needed to praise and reward desired behavior and performance.”

This week stop by and give your employees a complement for a job well done. It will do you good.

Enjoy your week and the 4th of July Holiday.
Look for the next Monday Aha! on July 12.

Resources:
For information on how you can transition your supervisors from ineffective “firefighting” mode to a service model that is proactive and intentional.

Fast forward to today when customers are more infinitely more savvy and sophisticated. Today’s customers expect convenient web-based self service options accessible 24/7. On those rare occasions when they do have to call to fix a problem, your customers want to talk with an intelligent, knowledgeable representative who has the authority to solve their problem on the spot. Oh yes, one other thing, customers to be treated like a human being.

How did this rise in expectations happen? Blame it on companies like on line retailer, Zappos. When your customers receive a “wow!” service experience from a company with great service (even if it’s a company that offers a very different product or service), that experience instantly becomes the new standard for what they believe is possible. So, when customers call you and don’t get a great feeling, they wonder why. If Zappos can do it – why can’t you?

In my recent visit to Zappos’ call center, their upbeat, “let’s get it done and have fun” culture, reminded me of a newly hired employee who enters a company all bright-eyed and optimistic; convinced that they have found a place where they can really shine. Their positive can-do attitude gets noticed and they are fast-tracked to a promotion, leaving the other employees in the dust, scratching their heads and wondering – what’s he go that I don’t ?

The good news is that your company has what Zappos’ has – smart, talented people who want to give their all. Give them the opportunity to shine. Power to the people.

“Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.”
– Bob Dylan, poet and songwriter.

Think about it.