Senior executives in the service and support organization must be heeding the messages from these articles, as we are seeing renewed interest in our research and benchmarking related to organizational design.

This is particularly true for B2B support organizations that we work with, many of which are now reassessing the way their function has operated and organized for years.

A number of reasons for the renewed interest exist, but the most frequently verbalized is this: Faced with the realization that the days of basic order entry by humans are nearing a close as more and more customers prefer to self-serve and operating budgets shrink, more B2B organizations are seeking to innovate and optimize the service and order management function.

Interesting to note, however is that B2B organizations aren’t merely considering role and title changes, but in some cases actually shaking up the entire order management function and reorganizing to align differently to the business.

Here’s a look at some of the most interesting trends we are seeing today:

1. Creating business excellence centers—This is primarily occurring in organizations that seek to create greater collaboration between service and sales, going so far as to collocate service and sales staff in a single location.  Typically these business excellence centers are central hubs in a single region and are organized by product, industry, customer, or other major segmentation scheme.  The benefit of this model is both the savings generated by consolidating a service organization footprint but primarily the collaboration and account information sharing that is facilitated.

2. Redefinition of staff roles—Many B2B organizations are going through role and skill clarifying exercises, meaning that companies are taking a second look at the skills staff need to effectively serve in their roles.  Organizations are not firing staff per se, but they are clearly laying out precisely what skills staff need to be effective in their roles, in many cases creating competencies for the benefit of staff and managers.  Interviewing staff to place them in the right role has become a focus, as is increasing training to upskill staff appropriately.

Of course time will tell how successful these long-term strategies are.  But those organizations in the middle of the journey report positive preliminary indicators.

Interested to learn more from companies in the process of reorganizing—where else are you focused today?

CCC Related Resources:

Field Support Organizational Structures

B2B Key Account Rep Activity Audit

Deepening the Customer Relationship (B2B)

Boosting Self-Service “Stickiness”

No doubt about it…and in case you’re still wondering…remote reps are here to stay.  Stories of “failed” programs are rare, and most companies have very positive experiences.  Commonly cited outcomes (when compared to brick and mortar operations) include:

• Better customer survey scores
• Higher productivity
• Lower turnover
• Environmentally friendly (This is a new one…we’ve recently heard some organizations publicize remote programs as a “green” initiative to cut the company’s carbon footprint—because fewer people are driving to work.)

CCC members, learn more about our remote rep research.

These benefits are great, but almost all of them are highly dependent on the reps you choose to staff the program.  If you hire the wrong type of rep, you’re investing time and resources into people likely to leave the job or, worse yet, stick around and be entirely unproductive.  When hiring remote reps, here are some things to consider:

1. Start with your stars—Many companies acknowledge one primary reason their programs are so successful is they are primarily staffed by high-performers who used to work within the brick and mortar operation.  Even if you don’t target your high-performers, using reps that already work for the company does have several benefits, including:

A. Leveraging proximity—Operating on the assumption that they already live in the area, you’ll be able to maintain the option of asking reps to come to the office when needed.

B. Using the program as a performance incentive—Many of our members use remote agent status as a reward, or a “promotion without a promotion”, for high performance.

C. Eliminating some unknowns—By using reps already in seat, you’ll know what to expect in terms of performance, trustworthiness (particularly regarding sensitive customer information), and dependability.Please note: I’m not saying that you can’t be successful with externally-sourced remote reps.  But be aware that you will need to put a lot more effort into getting the program up and running from a training perspective, including considerations like —Will you house these people temporarily in your center to onboard them?  If so, where will you put them?  Or will you invest in remote learning technology?—and your benefits will be a) slower to come and b) incrementally smaller.

2. Give applicants a test-run—Even among your high-performers, not everyone is suited for remote work.  Given the complexity and expense involved with launching work at home arrangements (specifically from a technology perspective), some companies stipulate that employees must commit to working from home for a minimum period of time (perhaps six months). 

Better yet, giving reps an opportunity to back out before they enter the program can save you quite a bit of time and money of brining them back into the brick-and-mortar operations after a few months. 

One way to give reps a taste of remote work before fully committing is to create a “test cube environment” that mimics the physical isolation that reps will experience when working from home.  This allows reps to self-select out of the application process if they decide it isn’t right for them.  If you try this, have the applicant work from the “test cube” for at least a week—a single shift is likely not going to be enough of a trial.

These considerations are certainly just a start…what would you add to the list?  How have you ensured that you are sending the right people to work from home?

CCC members, be sure to review our tool for remote rep program development

The most concerning relationship I found was a strong correlation between larger staff size and a higher average number of contacts to resolve issues.

While this was a quick-hit analysis, and not an intensive deep-dive, I believe it highlights one of the most difficult challenges larger centers face: decreased individual ownership of issues, leading to unnecessary repeat contacts.

While we don’t have a comprehensive model to understand why this relationship exists, my hypothesis is that larger operations, foster a “just a number” mentality among staff.  The outcome: reps believe if they don’t give 100% one day (but still passably handle calls, meet QA requirements, etc.) they’re doing their job, especially as it pertains to the thousands of customers who have issues.

I know you’re asking, “Brad, are you suggesting we get smaller?”  Let’s be realistic here – that’s not going to happen. But, I do think you should be asking, “How do I make my center feel smaller?”Here are a couple ideas our best practitioners have shared on this front:

1)  Co-locate more senior reps with your frontline. Physically bringing your tier 2/escalation staff into your frontline team – either on a permanent or rotating basis, increases knowledge sharing as more senior staff can coach frontline reps in real-time.  It will save you an escalation now, and allow the senior staff to teach the frontline new skills so they can fully resolve issues on their own in the future.

2)  Design co-located team spaces for maximum collaboration. The actual design of team spaces is a great way to increase knowledge-sharing. Data shows the probability of communication between two people exponentially decreases as the distance between them increases from 0 to just 100 meters – so we’ve seen companies create spaces for teams where each team member sits together with a center ‘huddle’ table for impromptu problem-solving sessions.

3)  Create a team incentive program. Even with the right structure in place, you can’t always expect the knowledge to just flow on its own.  Establishing a program around rewarding teams for resolving issues and sharing knowledge creates a more collaborative team culture – and helps team members hold each other accountable for owning issues.

The key learning here is to not lose sight of your reps as individuals, regardless of your center’s size.  There may be a correlation between center size and number of contacts to resolve, but with these strategies, there doesn’t have to be.  What have you done to establish/maintain that “small center feel” in your organization?

CCC Members interested in reading further on this topic, I recommend viewing the case profile, Multi-tiered Support Clusters which demonstrates how NetApp, a B2B storage and data management provider, used principled incentives and co-location to increase team knowledge sharing and improve issue resolution.