In a time of unprecedented change, businesses must learn to transform and adapt to capture and retain the attention of their customers and employees. Perpetual technological advancements, paired with an increasingly disrupted world is accelerating the pace of change, making it harder for businesses to keep up.
To adapt in an ever-increasingly disrupted world, there are three important things contact centres must keep in mind:
Embrace Failure
Failure, although dreaded by most, is more often than not a prerequisite for transformation. Developing the ability to stay on course and utilising failure as an opportunity to learn, innovate and develop new ideas, will have profound benefits on your call centre. No significant changes are ever made without failure, yet we humans are afraid of it.
Developing a workplace culture that embraces failure is the first step towards utilising it as a tool for success. Stepping into the unknown can be frightening, but it will always bring about the greatest rewards. Creating an environment that rewards failure will encourage employees to take more risks and experiment with new and innovative ideas. To reinforce this culture, failure should be well funded with time, money and ideas.
Most importantly, when we are experiencing failure, it can be very easy to scrap our ideas, plans and strategies for a completely new approach. In this case, the benefits of failure are not achieved. Understanding what worked and what didn’t is the first step to utilising failure as a steppingstone for success.
Break the Script
To create real transformation, we must break the script and pattern to capture the hearts and minds of workers and feed a change-resilient culture. Treat the transformation process as a joyous and exciting event - add colour, humour and surprises to engage your team emotionally and create meaningful change. People act out of emotion and justify their decisions with logic, so we must appeal first to the human desires, while providing enough information to help rationalise why they have bought into the change and future vision.
Businesses are accustomed to communicating wins and successes with their employees but often omit mistakes and failures. By establishing true transparent communication, where faults are not swept under the rug, a culture of trust and loyalty will be fostered, thereby eradicating the risk of circulating rumours.
Plan Flexibly
A well-developed and comprehensive transformation strategy is imperative for goals to be achieved. While a detailed plan will provide your business with a roadmap for its transformation, a constantly evolving environment means the plan must adapt. Rigidity in a plan can work to the detriment of a business by hindering the timeliness and relevance of key activities, and therefore allowing flexibility is empower your teams to adapt to new information and ideas.
To create a flexible plan, start by articulating your primary vision. This will ensure that as your team adapts they remain pointed toward the north star and don’t veer off path. To achieve this, workers who are tasked with decision-making roles should be empowered throughout the transformation process. It is these workers who possess the insight needed to respond to the rapidly changing landscape - set boundaries and parameters for them to work within and get out of their way. To ensure the business is taking the necessary steps towards it primary vision, the macro and micro reviews should be conducted on a cyclical periodic basis. In doing so, you will ensure that the big picture and smaller steps remain aligned to the overarching objective of the organisation.
Empowering Evolution with Execution
We are operating in a never before seen business landscape. Technology advancements and social media have empowered ordinary humans with great ideas to disrupt established markets overnight. Embracing a start-up mentality and constantly seeking to disrupt your own business model is critical to maintaining ongoing relevance in any market. But it's only one part of the equation. We must also execute on those ideas to realise their impacts on a never-ending journey of transformation.
Are you interested in learning how to transform your contact centre? Level-up your contact centre and watch this video podcast with Athena Consulting Founder and CEO, Frances Quinn. If you have any questions regarding customer disruption and operational excellence, please contact Athena Consulting for more information.
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About the Author
Lea-Anne Warren is a highly regarded change and communications management specialist.
With 16 years experience working within the contact centre industry, she has helped large banking and utilities organisations design, implement and adopt highly complex change initiatives. Whether improving business operations or driving large scale cultural change, her passion and commitment to excellence is unwavering.
Lea-Anne’s strengths lie in balancing the needs of the people with the needs of the business, and creating a change framework that provides the flexibility needed to make great things happen.
She is a dedicated mother, a master multi-tasker, and a tenacious perfectionist who never backs down from a challenge.