CX Leaders Can’t Afford to Stand Still as Agent Roles Evolve

With the role of the human agent evolving – fast – standing still just isn’t an option! But moving with the times isn’t easy and has left many leaders asking themselves, “how on earth do I keep up?”

That’s why we asked our consultants panel for their tried and trusted ideas on how to become a more agile leader, so you can bake good habits into day-to-day contact centre life to make sure you don’t get left behind.

Focus on HOW Your Team Works Together – Not WHAT They’re Working On

Adam Boelke, Founder of the Alignment Advantage Group — Adam Boelke

Culture is about to become more important than ever. AI is creating exponential change at a blistering pace, but the one thing that doesn’t change, if done right, is HOW we work together as a team.

HOW we work together to accomplish our vision and mission should be based on our shared values and foundational beliefs, regardless of what technology we’re using.

If done right, WHAT we work on will always change, as it should, since we need to be able to change in order to improve and grow, but HOW we work together should remain constant. That’s how your culture can stay stable in an unstable world.

With that said, to truly harness the speed of change, organizations will need to be nimble. I suspect many companies will be left behind their competitors if they insist on solely operating in a ‘command & control’ style of leadership across their enterprise.

AI is proving it can quickly improve every individual’s and department’s effectiveness, and those companies that fully harness that opportunity across their organization will set the pace for their competitors to follow.

Company leaders will benefit the most if they establish a culture of continual improvement by providing their team with guardrails to operate within and empowering their employees to experiment and innovate in their area of responsibility.

Contributed by: Adam Boelke, Founder of the Alignment Advantage Group, and author of the “7 Cs to Success” mastermind course on leadership & culture

For information on how team climate impacts the contact centre, read our article: What Great Leaders Know About Team Climate and Results

Understand the Full Capabilities (and Limitations) of the Technologies You’re Adopting

Neville Doughty, Partnership Director — Neville Doughty

Leaders (at all levels) need to ensure that they understand the full capabilities (and limitations) of the technologies that they are adopting.

Leaders also need to understand the potential paradox of unintended consequences on frontline staff through increased cognitive load from fewer “easy” conversations/interactions and, potentially most critically, ensure that they are identifying where processes need to be changed to align customer need and technical capability.

An automated broken process still means customers are receiving sub-optimal experiences, friction, and are making unnecessary contact.

Just because you’ve automated your side of it, doesn’t mean it is gone, only hidden, and therefore when the customer becomes frustrated and needs to speak with someone, then it is still your people who will need to pick up the pieces.

So, ensure you’ve robustly tested your approach with your team and enable them to review and provide feedback using their experiences. They interact with far more of your customers than your developers do.

Contributed by: Neville Doughty, Partnerships & Growth Director at Customer Contact Panel

Recruit and Train for Resilience and Emotional Intelligence

Siobhain Goodall, Customer Experience Specialist at Ventrica — Siobhain Goodall

It’s really important to understand what your agents need in the changing world. It’s no longer just a case of doing 10 calls an hour, it’s much more consultative, so the whole way you support your agents needs to be different too.

With the simpler transactions being taken care of (which used to give agents something of a mental break), call handling is relentless, so you need to focus on delivering training that gives agents that resilience as well – providing them with the tools and the skill sets to help them thrive in a more challenging work environment.

This mindset shift is also needed at the recruitment stage when it comes to attracting the right talent!

It’s now less about their ability to type or their grammatical skills, and more about their natural ability to listen, understand, reassure, and empathize. Quite simply, how they demonstrate a real level of emotional intelligence!

Contributed by: Siobhain Goodall, Customer Experience Specialist at Ventrica

For information on successful call centre recruiting, and tips to help you build a strong, efficient hiring process, read our article: 10 Ways to Attract Fresh Talent Into Your Contact Centre

Remember, the Only Enduring Constant Is the Choice to Learn

Agility begins with mindset. In a technology-intensive environment – where systems evolve, employee expectations shift, and customer pathways are constantly disrupted – the only enduring constant is the choice to learn. Agility depends on whether you consistently demonstrate that choice.

Are you visibly modelling the behaviours of a committed, enthusiastic lifelong learner?

Consider the core markers of that commitment. What was the last book you read, and have you discussed it with your team?

What new skill have you acquired, and have others seen you attempt to apply it? How do you speak about learning and training – do you frame them as investments in growth or as burdens? Your answers signal whether learning is a lived value or merely a slogan.

Contributed by: Dr M. Dave Salisbury, D&C Consulting LLC

Proactively Sort Your Processes to Identify Areas for Improvement

Standardize and sort! Take a leaf from the Lean Six Sigma workbook and proactively sort your processes. This will help you identify areas for process improvement, essentially eliminating clutter and creating space for efficient working.

Standardizing ensures you have some ongoing discipline and consistency in your working practices by having clear work instruction, SOPs, and a robust knowledge base that allows teams to become more self-sufficient.

Gone Are the Days of “That’s the Way We’ve Always Done It!”

We need a step change in how we approach processes and systems, reframing the conversation from “That’s the way we’ve always done it” to “Is this the best we could do?”

So be curious and invite your team to regularly talk about how technology could help you unlock problems, so you continue to move forward together.

Contributed by: Garry Gormley, Founder of FAB Solutions

Lean Into Peer Learning – It Matters More Than Ever Before!

Alex McConville, author of ‘Diary of a Call Centre Manager’ — Alex McConville

Nobody really has the full answer yet! The pace of change is relentless and the barrier to entry for AI is now so low that there are millions of products, platforms and opinions competing for attention.

Waiting to see what appears in the latest quadrant or copying what a FTSE 100 enterprise has rolled out is no longer a viable strategy.

One of the most effective habits I have used and seen is leaders regularly speaking to non-competitive peers about what is genuinely working and what has failed.

Your organization can only move at one pace, but by crowdsourcing through peer groups you can hear about four different things that didn’t work which took another organization two quarters to realize!

To make this happen:

Build relationships with similar-sized contact centres outside your market
Share learnings openly, including mistakes
Pressure-test new ideas before investing heavily

Peer communities should now be considered mandatory for leaders. They provide real insight on what leading contact centre organizations are doing.

Contributed by: Alex McConville, Contact Centre Consultant and author of ‘Diary of a Call Centre Manager’

For strategies to help create a dynamic and collaborative contact centre environment where knowledge flows freely, read our article: Want to Foster Knowledge Sharing Between Your Agents?

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