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As a worldwide speaker and author, I never in a million years would have anticipated serving as an executive consultant to provide training for customer service managers & reps.

However by reason of my global travels, cross-cultural interaction, understanding of the geography of thought, and interpersonal intricacies of the many ethnicities worldwide: I serendipitously have often been asked to evaluate and provide my unbiased opinion of companies’ internal customer service departments’ operations.

Globally, I find Asians to be far better at dealing with conflict in a respectful manner given their cultural upbringing and tendency to value people over profits.

This brings me to my customer service success secrets:

1. Always stay calm, warm, and smile when you speak.

Perhaps you remember the scene in the Rush Hour 2 movie when the Hong Kong mafia’s Chinese kung-fu killer female fighter is riding in the car with the latina detective from Los Angeles. With a sweet smile the Chinese vixen offers her Latina counterpart an apple. Moments later when the L.A. detective begins to eat the apple, the China woman throws a knife into the apple.

Whenever I found myself in conflict during my time living and working in Asia for 3 years, I was always amazed at how Asians can smile in the midst of conflict. I’m sure curse quietly in their hearts, but outwardly they maintain an amazing degree of composure.

2. Be polite no matter how difficult it may be.

Being polite overcomes the tendency to presumptuously treat the customer like a criminal, which only serves to further anger and encourage the customer to battle you more.

A personal touch often alleviates any need for conflict resolution down the road if you can simply train your customer service managers and reps to be polite. Being polite however doesn’t come easy for Americans who are increasingly impatient, a bit selfish, and somewhat arrogant.

3. Avoid being self-righteous and patiently listen to the customer.

Being self-righteous and trying to make a point never works well for customer service reps. The alternative approach is far more successful, that is listening, empathizing, and agreeing with the consumer. To do otherwise is to quickly create an adversarial relationship and erect walls of resistance.
Genuinely listen and find out what the customer actually wants before assuming you know everything.

4. Creatively seek to achieve win-win negotiations.

Creating win-win cooperative alliances is the objective customer service reps should pursue. Navigating through the relational and interpersonal complexities however requires grace, skill, and conflict resolution expertise.

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/05/11/customer-service-trainer-secrets-for-customer-service-managers-service-reps-to-improve-skills/

More than ever when approving funding for major training and development initiatives for staff members, senior leaders are concerned as to whether or not it will stick.

With 25 years of employee training and executive development experience under my belt, there are ten tips that I have used with great success to create training that is effective, memorable, and sustainable.

1. Solicit Employee Input. Get preliminary employee input and feedback before the training begins. Find out what they would like to get out of the learning, and what will make it interesting for them. Then customize the training content to meet not only the needs of the organization, but also those of its participants.

2. Integrate Icebreakers. To get everyone’s creative juices flowing, start the training session with a brief icebreaker that is relevant to the content that will be covered. The resource book, Games Trainers Play, includes hundreds of icebreaker ideas to choose from.

3. Incorporate Storytelling. Use real life stories and examples to bring specific points to life. An example might be that if you are facilitating a workshop on Problem Resolution and Empowerment, use personal stories that illustrate a time when you received poor service and how it was resolved.

You could even share personal examples of situations when you either felt empowered or disempowered to resolve an issue, citing specifically who, what, where, and how you overcame the situation with professionalism and finesse.

4. Encourage Participant Involvement. Engage participants throughout the learning process with open-ended questions, allowing them ample time to respond. We all learn when everyone participates.

It demonstrates that you (as a facilitator) are on top of your game, comfortable sharing the spotlight with workshop participants, and that everyone is accountable for making the learning energizing, inspiring, informative, fun, and memorable.

5. Use Visual Aids. When possible, incorporating PowerPoint presentations with relevant pictures are a great way to stimulate the learning process. Also, proper use of a flip chart to jot down participant responses to illustrate or make a point adds variety to the learning process.

6. Use Humor. Injecting funny stories that relate to the points you are making during the training are a great way to keep people engaged and help them remember critical tips on things you want them to consistently do or not do. Just make sure to keep all humor - jokes and funny stories strictly professional and in good taste.

7. Discuss Life Application. End training sessions by having participants share how they will apply what they have learned. This will encourage self-reflection, self-accountability, and is likely to motivate participants to use the tools, skills, and knowledge gained.

8. Give Away Prizes. You would be surprised how effective small give-aways (like candy bars, movie tickets, or even books) are in engaging participants and stimulating enthusiasm in learning. And we all know that when participants are engaged, they retain and apply a great deal of what they have learned.

9. Incorporate Testing. Give a brief quiz at the end of the training session to ensure retention of vital information. When participants believe they will be tested on the information shared, they are more apt to retain and later utilize what they have learned.

10. Follow-Up. Inform participants that you will be following up on their progress, and then do so to heighten self-accountability. Learning and development professionals who routinely follow-up with their participants are more successful in creating an environment where employees feel compelled to implement what they have learned.

Bottom-line, the key to creating training that sticks is engaging the learner in the process from start to finish. It is up to the training facilitator to ensure the learning sticks. Therefore, they should build sustainability mechanisms into the training content and session. If you are a senior leader, make it a priority to let your learning professional know that you will be following-up with them and expecting them to create a learning environment that will create sustainable change. Anything less is unacceptable.

Theo Gilbert-Jamison is CEO of Performance Solutions by Design, a global performance consulting firm that caters to luxury and premium brands with an emphasis on transforming organizational culture. She is also the author of two books, The Six Principles of Service Excellence (2005), and The Leadership Book of Numbers, Volume I (2008). As the creative force behind Performance Solutions by Design, Theo is a highly sought after speaker and consultant to CEOs and senior executives in high profile organizations.

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/04/19/creating-training-that-sticks-top-10-tips/

Six Sigma has proved quite beneficial for the services sector because rather than making direct alterations in the product or service, it concentrates more on making improvements in existing business processes, which automatically improves the quality of final outcome, be it a product or service.

 

This is like tackling the root cause that might be creating problems related to quality.

 

Determining Quality Levels In BPO’s And Customer Contact Centers

 

In BPO’s and customer contact centers, customer input and feedback is first quantified so as to develop a better understanding of their needs and expectations.

 

Based on the quantification, Six Sigma professionals then chalk out various levels of quality to be achieved over the planned period of implementation, which usually ranges from three to six months, depending on the complexity of the implementation project.

The basic aim is to make continuous improvements in business processes so as to achieve the highest possible quality levels.

 

How Six Sigma Is Helping BPO’s And Customer Contact Centers

 

1. Giving prominence to Voice of the Customer (VOC): The ultimate aim of BPO’s and customer contact centers is to increase customer satisfaction, a task that can only be accomplished if customer needs and expectations are met.

 

This is why in a Six Sigma organization, automated feedback systems are put in place, which continuously track changing customers’ needs and expectations. When existing business processes are tweaked based on VOC, it becomes easier for the organization to do justice to customer needs and expectations.

 

2. Assigning the right person for the right job: Six Sigma may be mainly associated with the improvement of business processes, but in BPO’s and customer contact centers, it goes a step further and takes on some of the responsibilities of the HR department.

 

Six Sigma helps in classifying call center professionals based on their current skills and expertise, which in turn helps management in assigning the right person for the right job. The point to remember here is that such classification is not done in a way that undermines the abilities of call center professionals.

 

It is done in such a way that professionals who are less skilled do not feel offended. Offering free training and making available other avenues of professional development to those who have been classified as less skilled, solves the problem of employee dissatisfaction, if any.

 

Apart from these, Six Sigma also helps in improving internal operations of BPO’s and customer contact centers, something that automatically leads to a reduction in the overall cost of operations. This may not affect customer satisfaction, but it does help BPO’s to maintain competencies, which has become quite essential considering the increasing competition in the BPO industry.

 

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Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution’s Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

It is so tempting to engage in outsourcing nowadays. Through the internet and the technologies it has to offer such as email and instant messaging among others, businesses in the United States now have the option to contact consultants and professionals all over the world to complete their business needs.

 

Because of the cheaper labor offered by these offshore consultants, thoughts of profits and cutting down production costs are foremost on the minds of most managers when they think about outsourcing.

 

There is more to outsourcing, however, than just reduced production costs and increased profits. There are several differences that have to be taken into account. The most obvious of these is the time zone. Most IT, CAD, and other professionals are located in India and the Philippines.

 

As such, there is a twelve-hour difference in the time zone. In addition to this, there are possible communication barriers that might complicate the situation. Language means more than just understanding the words being said or the words written on paper, rather, there are a myriad of connotations and different layers of meaning embedded in statements. Moreover, there are different cultural differences and modes of doing things.

 

At first glance, these differences may be easily surmounted because of the availability of information in the Internet and the prospect of instantaneous communication over the Internet. The issue of competence is not the question.

 

Rather, because of the cultural differences and different means and practices in conducting business, there is also a learning curve that offshore consultants have to go through. Not only that, this learning curve may also be steep and may take time to be scaled.

 

Even if the labor rate of the offshore consultants is way lower than local ones, time lost on a project due to the steep learning curve may undermine the advantages and benefits that outsourcing may offer. Given this scenario, what should businesses do? What kinds of precautions should you put in place to take into account this learning curve?

 

It is still possible to enjoy the benefits offered by outsourcing as long as the necessary precautions are in place. More than that, the consultants to be hired should be able to demonstrate early on that they can surmount the learning curve in a reasonable timeframe. By hiring consultants from the Philippines, the cultural differences are easier to surmount.

 

This is because, the Philippines is heavily influenced by the culture of the United States. Moreover, the English skills of consultants from the Philippines easily approximate that of Americans. Hence, only minor improvements will be needed in their English skills.

 

On the part of the company doing the outsourcing, they should establish a set of criteria for assessing whether the consultant will be able to satisfy the requirements of the project given the budget and the timeframe. Otherwise, time and money would just be wasted on trouble-shooting the problems created by incompetent offshore consultants.

 

James Stinson is Owner and Founder of Global Sky Inc. For more information about seat leasing visit http://www.global-sky.com or email sales@global-sky.com - Get more articles at Read Articles.com

 

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/03/25/outsourcing-and-the-learning-curve/

When your IT projects consistently go over budget, past due, and lack in quality, it’s natural to assume the Project Manager is to blame. When return on investment and performance improvements from IT projects don’t live up to your expectations, you probably assume it’s the IT department’s fault.

In the vast majority of cases, however, both assumptions would be wrong.

Uncertainty Breeds Certain Failure

There’s a saying that goes, “We don’t plan to fail; we fail to plan.” Yet even before the planning stage, many organizations fail. They fail to define desired outcomes and project intent. They fail to identify the improvements that a correctly implemented project will bring about. In particular, they fail to describe how success itself will be evaluated and measured. And that spells almost certain failure for the entire project.

As a Six Sigma Black Belt, I’m obsessed with finding the root causes of problems and poor results. After many years of managing projects and advising others, I’ve concluded that the single most common cause of poor project delivery occurs not during a project but before a project manager or a single resource is ever assigned.

Too often, a company buys into a solution before it has identified the problem it hopes to solve or defined, in measurable terms, what it aims to achieve. Managers approve budgets, set schedules, and assign resources before establishing their objectives, success measures, and goals. On occasion, an ingenious project manager can help a sponsor “back into” a set of objectives for the solution already chosen - a case of shooting first and calling whatever you hit the target. But sadly - and all too often - a project is reduced to merely installing a system or set of features rather than delivering quantifiable improvements or a return on investment.

Lacking clearly defined outcomes and measurable objectives, a project team can’t design the best solution and implementation. Consider the case of Henry Ford; who wanted to “democratize the automobile”. He proclaimed that everyone would be able to afford and have a car. He wanted to build hundreds more cars at a much lower cost. It meant he needed to reduce the time to build a car by 90%. Without this key information, it’s not at all obvious that the solution design had to be innovative or that it required Ford to offer few options and only one paint color. But because Henry Ford clearly defined the desired outcome and measurable objectives before he began, he created the Model T and revolutionized auto making.

Revolutionize Your Results

Setting SMART goals establishes criteria for effective decision making. It clarifies what is essential versus nice-to-have or simply out of scope. When project objectives are vague, stakeholders with problems of their own will choose different interpretations and form conflicting opinions about what should be in scope. Inevitably, stakeholders, technical architects, and systems engineers introduce new requirements and changes to existing requirements. In an attempt to keep everyone happy, the project manager will accommodate most of the additional requests, thereby expanding the work, distracting and diluting the resources, and ultimately diminishing project benefits. Almost imperceptibly the gradual accumulation of unforeseen and/or unintended requirements progressively add to project scope, complexity, costs, and delays. Don’t risk the success of your project; always begin with a clearly defined outcome and SMART goals.

Chris Foley is CEO/Consultant of SMART Outcome, LLC a Business Process and Six Sigma consultancy focused on helping clients improve their bottom-line results through strategic goal setting, balanced scorecards, portfolio management and the “Magic of Metrics”. http://www.smartoutcome.com

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/03/17/what-is-an-it-strategy-and-do-you-have-one/

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about this phrase: leadership by example.

Leadership by example is in fact something that happens with or without your knowledge. When you are a leader in somebody’s life, it is a natural process that your follower will grow and grow to become more and more like you.

They unconsciously learn the way you speak, your actions, even your nuances!

This is a very important principle you must understand and grasp hold of. This means that every little thing that you do or say makes an impact on the people you are leading; they unconsciously pick them up and adopt it as their own.

If you have a bad habit of being late for all your meetings, your followers will unconsciously think that it is okay to be late, and you’ll begin to see them coming late for meetings.

On the other hand, if you’re a leader who watches the time closely and is always on time on his meetings, you’ll find that you’re grooming a group of people that are excellent and on time for meetings and appointments.

Three points about leadership by example

1. You have to act the way you want your team to act.
To expect certain behaviour from your team, you have to first act out the behaviour consistently first before you have the right to speak and preach about it.

You shouldn’t be going around preaching about being on time if you’re constantly late for your own meetings, and worse still, meetings with your team!

If you do that, you immediately lose all respect from your team because you’ll be deemed a hypocrite: You speak in one way and act in another.

And that is not somewhere you want to go; you’ll want to be careful about chastising or speaking with your followers about their negative behaviours; you’ll want to look at yourself in the mirror first and check if you’re ‘clean’.

2. You set the unspoken standard by your example.
By your example, you set an unspoken standard about what is appropriate and what isn’t. You cannot be possibly speaking with your team all the time, but it is through observation that your followers learn about what is acceptable and what isn’t.

Is it acceptable to dress casually to work? If you do dress casually, you give permission to your team to do so.

Is it acceptable to express your thoughts and feelings to each other? They’re looking at you.

Leadership by example runs deeper than this; there are so many more things that people actually unconsciously observe and learn through you.

Having this thought in mind, it is good that you examine your own behaviour and understand that whether you like it or not, you’re leading by example.

It might be a bad example or a good example, but as a leader in their lives, you’ll teach them not just through your words but through your life.

3. Bring your team up by living on a higher standard
It is often said that an organization grows only if the people within the organization grow.

It is the same for you. Now that you understand the principle of leadership by example, you’ll understand that you can only bring your team up to a higher standard if you yourself commit to a higher standard of living.

By committing yourself to live with greater discipline, greater drive, you’ll find that your followers will unconsciously follow and adopt your way of living. They’ll also strive to follow you in those areas.

And as an organization, you’ll begin to see growth, be it in numbers, in sales, in influence because you made that first step to commit yourself.

Lin Yihan is the founder of http://www.leadership-with-you.com , a website that seeks to groom and teach people how to become leaders in this generation that make a difference in our world.

He is also the President of University-YMCA at Singapore Management University, a student-run volunteer organization that has a mission to raise up servant leaders who will impact the local and international community. It currently has several local community programs, overseas trips to countries like Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as a Social Enterprise arm that raises funds for its community work.

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/03/14/learning-to-lead-by-example/

The Customer Service Support Representative is a vital link between your customers and your business. They are an extension and ambassador of your company.

Skills of a Valued Customer Service Support Representative
A Customer Service Support Representative has specific training and expertise in many areas. Their skills are listed but not limited to:

• How to assess customer business needs and exceed customer expectations
• Critical thinking skills to resolve incidents quickly and consistently
• Active listening skills and effective communication strategies
• How to identify and defuse challenging customer behavior
• An awareness of the core processes and best practices used in service and support

Training of a Valued Customer Service Support Representative
The Customer Service Support Representative may be the first and only communication that your customer has with your business. It is essential that they have the tools, knowledge and training to be successful. The Customer Service Support Representative may work in a variety of areas, in diverse ways with the principle object of helping customers. Their success will be your successes.

Rewards of a Valued Customer Service Support Representative
Make sure each Customer Service Support Representative knows their value. It is important to provide them with an environment in which to thrive and grow. Continued education and training builds confidence and that will shine through to your customers. They say you can actually hear a smile through the telephone. Incentives and rewards for accomplishments and milestones go a very long way.

The first impression that a Customer Service Support Representative makes on your customer is one that will last. The importance of learned skills, comprehensive training, and rewards makes the difference on your business. Know the value of a good Customer Service Support Representative.

By: Linda Dunkelberger

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Are you crunched for time? Want to be more productive? What call center manager doesn’t need more time in their day.

Here is an article from Chris Crouch that you may find helpful in your quest for higher productivity.

What?

Allow me to get a bit Joyce Kilmer-ish for a moment: “I think that I shall never see, a number as beautiful as a 3.”

I don’t think Joyce would mind me borrowing a line from his poem about trees to help introduce the idea that the number “3″ is important to people who feel overwhelmed. Three is a useful number if you are a busy person, a digestible number…it’s anti-overwhelming.

Three has long been an important number among religious teachers and public speakers, it is important in the fields of art and entertainment, and it is important to people who are struggling with their workload.

My friend, who is a retired minister, told me that he was taught in seminary to design sermons using the ‘three points and a poem’ format. Great speakers have long known the value of designing speeches with three main points. And many movies, TV sitcoms and plays use a three-part or three-act story line format. Seinfield often launched three stories in the beginning of each episode and tied them all together by the end of the show. And, of course, there are the Three Bears, the Three Little Pigs, the Three Stooges, the Three Musketeers, the Three Blind Mice, the Three Laws of Robotics (if you are a science-fiction and Isaac Asimov fan), and then there’s the big three in school…reading, writing and arithmetic. The list goes on and on…and on.

In terms of triage, the medical practice of properly sorting or categorizing incoming patients in a massive emergency where the lifesaving resources exceed the number of patients needing attention, the number 3 has the potential to save your life. There are many forms of triage that vary slightly. For purposes of this discussion, let’s assume the triage physician has been taught to categorize incoming patients as follows:

1. Will not survive even if treated immediately.

2. Will survive even if they are not treated immediately.

3. Will only survive if they are treated immediately.

In case you haven’t already guessed, here’s where I am going with all this talk about the number 3. Frequently perform triage on your workload; design most of your days so you will get the three most important things you need to get done each day completed before noon.

So What?

Let’s talk about the simple psychology related to this strategy. Using this triage technique makes it much easier to decide what to do next. If you have a multitude of things on your mind and a work environment full of projects circling your desk waiting to land, you can easily succumb to the negative effects of choice overload. Here’s a relevant quote from Barry Schwartz, author of the book The Paradox of Choice:

“As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begins to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”

Barry’s comments also apply to you and your workload. You can become debilitated by choice overload whether you are trying to buy a new pair of jeans, a camera or a car, or trying to decide what to do next at work.

Now What?

Use the triage technique to design your morning activities and then shift down one more gear and get into a binary decision-making mode (the opposite of choice overload). The term binary means, “consisting of two parts or two separate elements.” If it is before noon, you simply compare any potential distraction - e-mails, phone calls, drop-in visitors, etc. - with the most important unfinished item on your list of three important things to get done for the day. It is much easier to compare competing demands on your time and make a decision if you are comparing two things, rather than trying to constantly juggle a multitude of things. This system also allows for the fact that something may come up that is more important than any of the three things you thought were most important. If that should happen, ignore the original three items until you complete the unexpected important task. Only become concerned about doing this if you begin to notice a pattern of frequent, unexpected items. Repeat the process in the afternoon or work in a totally unstructured manner. Do whatever works best for you. I personally think there is a lot of value in having plenty of unstructured time.

Consider setting up a “triage” hanging file in your desk drawer - take three minutes at the end of each day to jot down the three most important things you have to do the next day, and then drop the list of three items into the triage file and go home.

You may think getting three things done each day is a bit wimpy. However, I didn’t say you only had to do three things a day. I am simply suggesting that, at a minimum, you get three very important things done each day before you allow other less important forces to take control of your behavior. Ideally, by concentrating, focusing and minimizing distractions early in the day, you will finish your triage items and have plenty of time to continue your focused efforts. Or, you can join the masses in the world of the overwhelmed, if that is your preference.

I’ll admit, when I get my triage items done some days, I like to screw around awhile and piddle with the work equivalent of shiny objects that attract my attention. However, I find that if I am honest and rational about what I put on my triage list, I feel very good about what I accomplish most days. For example, I am almost finished writing this article and it’s not even time for lunch yet. Finishing this article ended up on my triage list since one of the roles I have defined for myself is being an author.

This brings up another important issue related to joyful and productive living. Maintain a long-term vision and a short-term focus. My long-term vision is to publish and sell books. My short-term focus related to that vision is to write one thing at a time and turn it over to my publisher to see if she can turn it into something with a cover, pages and a price tag. This short-term focus stuff won’t work too well if you don’t have a clue about your long-term vision.

In a way, writers are lucky. When you define yourself as a writer, your long-term vision and short-term focus are easy to determine. Writers write. If you don’t write most days, you are probably not really a writer. Now that I think about it, it is probably a pretty good idea to see if you can come up with a one-word description of your main focus. That would mean that sellers sell, managers manage, leaders lead, teachers teach, inventors invent, and so forth and so on. Using sellers as an example doesn’t mean they sell all the time. However, it does mean they sell most of the time and, hopefully, they sell some each day. It also means that activities related to selling should be the kind of items most frequently dropped in their triage file.

I know life is not always this simple, but keeping things simple is a good idea when you are trying to establish a reasonable level of order in your life. In reality, some days I am a teacher and items related to teaching belong in my triage file. Some days I am a vacationing spouse and parent. On those days, items related to watching the sunset from the beach, eating shrimp and taking my daughter to get Hawaiian Shaved Ice belong in my triage file. Life balance is the ultimate trump card when considering your triage list.

That’s all for now on this topic. Admit it, some of you didn’t know Joyce Kilmer was a guy, did you?

You can receive regular tips on how to live a more productive and joyful life by subscribing to Chris’ blog at http://www.chriscrouch.typepad.com

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/02/05/improving-productivity-the-big-three/

Being a leader in the contact center industry is one thing. Being named "Best in the World" at the Top Ranking Performers in the World Awards is another! We caught up with Best Leader, Les Blacker who shares with us what it's like winning and how he got here.

Why did you enter the awards in the first place?

We had won many awards in the UK and Europe over the last 3 years and wanted to test ourselves against the best in the world. Equally we wanted to see what else was happening in the world and what might be good for our company.

What did you think of your competition in this category?

All of the competition in my category from both the regional heats through to the finals, were great leaders in their fields. I have huge respect for all of these great people.

So how does it feel to be the No.1 in the world?

I didn’t really feel like that, I feel I work with the best team in the world and feel proud that I work for a company that has allowed me to express myself, take considered risks and supported me though out my leadership journey.

How did you feel when we announced you were the winner?

A sense of pride for my team and recognition of all our hard work and obviously then worrying what I was going to say in the acceptance speech.

How would you describe your leadership style?

In my feedback from my managers, they describe me as very open and down to earth and that I do not pay Lip Service to real people values - I live them.

I talk about the contact centre industry with a passion and my enthusiasm is often commented on for the business.
Other feedback that my people have given:

*I give them room to Grow and develop.

*I create a safe and supportive environment for them so they can learn as they experience situations often outside their normal scope of their job.

I have worked at getting my company very proactive within our local community where we are based.
I mentor people outside the business and do lots with our local schools. We have to remember these schools will be teaching potentially our workforce of the future so I see the collaborative piece essential for our industry and our company.

I never forget the importance of thank you - and as I leave my business every day I ensure that those I see on the way out are thanked for their contribution that day and I constantly look to motivational activities that let me have a chance to say THANK YOU AND WELL DONE.

I was very proud to receive the following quote from our Chief Executive

"Les has transformed the Customer Contact centre from a generic site to a showcase for our company, handling our high value consumer customers. He has significantly contributed to the UK wide strategy, where service differentiation is fundamental to our long term success in the market, whilst making a step change in all key performance indices and ultimately the dramatic reduction in churn of customers handled at his site. His leadership style is one of setting a clear vision of where he was taking the centre, setting the pace of the deliverables, but importantly building commitment amongst all levels of the team & coaching where necessary to build confidence and ensure success. I have visited his team regularly throughout this journey and regardless of business pressures, workloads or programme delivery milestones, he keeps on smiling and motivating it is very uplifting for all concerned including myself".

How have you celebrated your win?

Initially until the early hours with some of my team and fellow award winners!, various ways back in the business both with my people and on a wider level giving a sense of achievement of what our great contact centres can/and have achieved.

Whats next for you?

I love working with my people and thus I have to say that its more of the same and continue to get better as a leader (I don’t think anyone really is the finished article!).

For those who don't know why the awards and the conference are different, how would you describe them and their value over other awards?

The USP of these awards is without doubt the fact that you are marked/judged by your industry colleagues, it is clear winners are definitely on their own merits.

How do winners benefit by entering?

The fact that the awards are world related gives the awards gravitity and thus if you get short listed, win a regional event or indeed qualify for the world finals it enhances the contact centres profile with your business and gives real credibility.

Source: http://www.contactcenterworld.com/view/contact-center-article/Good-Leader--Try-GREAT-Leader.asp

Barbara Brown, PhD shows managers how to improve employee performance by linking performance to results. Her E-Books contain phrases and examples for discussing performance, improving performance, and reinforcing performance. Her E-Courses provide strategies for motivating employees to cooperate and contribute.

Source: http://www.callcentercafe.com/2009/01/27/employee-negativity-3-ways-to-discuss-personal-impact/