While you might be able to tell me who your most effective supervisors are, it’s probably much more difficult to say just what exactly makes them so good at what they do. Is it their personality? Communication skills? Their experience ? Something unique about the reps on their team? Is it their management style? The list of potential factors goes on and on…

When CCC set out to investigate what makes an effective supervisor, our first step was to try to make sense of all the above variables—and more. And while it’s true that no two supervisors are exactly alike, we’ve managed (with the aid of a few statistical tools) to simplify a seemingly infinite universe into five distinct supervisor personas based common characteristics. Here’s what we found: Read More »

This is a guest post by Kayleigh O’Keefe of the Communications Executive Council, our sister program for Corporate Communications professionals.

Business is in a state of permanent crisis. In its most frightening definition, a crisis is “a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, especially for better or for worse, is determined; a turning point.” How many of these turning points have you and your company experienced in the last two years? How many more do you foresee in the coming years?

The pace of change and level of uncertainty in the external environment is putting pressure on companies to build a new competency within their organization—adaptive leadership. In a 2009 HBR article, Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis, the authors argue that leaders need to solve for the underlying causes of major crises while simultaneously making the changes that will enable their organizations to thrive in unpredictable environments.

Adaptive leaders, according to the article, do three things well. Read More »

We’re now in full swing of that time of year when busy executives frantically try to cross items off of to do lists and hold last minute 2011 planning meetings.  All while maintaining solid end-of-quarter performance (and squeezing in time for a family vacation).

For those executives trying to close out 2010 business, CCC presents a quick recap of its best research of 2010, with the hopes that it helps refocus and fulfill organizational priorities in the coming year.

1. Drivers of a Low-Effort Customer Experience—Many companies wanted to know what causes high and low effort customer experiences so we researched this and find that companies have more leverage over customer experience scores than they ever imagined and the way to take advantage of this is by influencing how the customer interprets the interaction.  The best technique to do so is experience engineering, or actively guiding customers through an interaction designed to anticipate and preemptively react to emotional responses for mutually beneficial outcomes.

2. Modernizing Quality Assurance—CCC finds that efforts to improve the quality of the customer experience are fruitless if companies do not overhaul their quality assurance processes and bring the customer closer to the process.  Leading companies are successfully rebuilding QA by: asking the customer to measure quality, using evaluations to identify staff performance trends rather than isolated missteps, and embedding QA teams within organizations to build better relationships. Read More »

Here on the CCC research team, we spend quite a bit of time doing….research. And a few times each year, we are able to share game-changing insights with our membership using quantitative data and proven best practices from our network of companies. It’s a thrill for us to have that opportunity. But then this often happens: we send you off into the sunset with new ideas, and then we wonder what you’ll end up doing with those ideas. 

Every once in a while, we have a chance to hear how members have implemented our findings at their organizations. I’m happy to share that I recently caught up with the team at The Regence Group to learn more about how they’ve begun to implement CCC’s recommendations around personality-based, integrated coaching across their call centers.  Read More »

I just returned from a vacation at the beach, and even though I had grand plans for my days away from the office (reading a good book, catching a summer action movie with my wife) I found myself doing something that I wish I did more: observing my 5- & 3-year old children.

Too often I find myself involved in activities with my children where I’m just too close to the action, but this past week I was able to just sit back and watch.  And there were some terrific learnings.  For instance, my 5-year old is fearless and she’s a leader.  She has no problem walking up to children and opening the conversation with a zippy statement, like: “I’m 5 years old & I’ve lost 2 teeth.  How many have you lost?”

Also, I learned that my 3-year old is a bit more reserved, but she has an innate sense of humor with a penchant for one-liners & comedic timing that would make the cast of Second City envious.  Like when she told her 13-year old cousin to “Lock it up” because he wouldn’t stop talking.

And I learned these little insights from just sitting back and watching … not interjecting every 2 minutes like I normally do! 

Read More »

When I talk to members about frontline rep coaching programs, they often want a set of proven rules and concrete, granular steps every supervisor should take to be a successful coach.  It’s akin to the instructions on the back of an instant cake mix box.  Just add an egg and some water – and voila! – you have a delicious cake every time.

While I’d love to tell you I can give you the five easy steps to coaching success, I’ve come to believe that coaching isn’t a science we can replicated identically among our supervisors. 

In fact, it’s more of an art form.  And in art, we can give folks the tools – brushes, colors, and canvas – to create a great piece of art, but we can’t tell them exactly what to do.  We can’t tell them how to hold their brush or precisely how to create the most eye-catching color.  Sure, we can give suggestions, but it’s up to the artist to figure out what works best.

So – just like in art we can give supervisors the tools they need to coach effectively, but we can’t mandate a set of discrete actions to success.  And, like Pablo Picasso’s innate artistic ability, some supervisors are naturals and coach effectively from almost day one. 

Many though, don’t have the innate skills required to coach effectively right out of the gate.  But, if there’s no five step recipe for success here, short of the time and resource consuming task of hiring a set of super-coaches, what can we do to help these supervisors approximate the behaviors of their highest performing peers?   Read More »

At CCC we recently completed our annual performance reviews, and it’s gotten me thinking about talent.  More specifically, our high-potential talent and how to keep them around.  Sure, some folks tell me career options are limited in the service world – and there’s ‘healthy’ attrition of individuals who aren’t good fits.  But our top frontline staff, the ones who can just get it done – don’t we want to do everything in our power to keep them?

And the news from one of our sister programs, the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC), isn’t good.  In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, their study of over 20,000 ‘emerging star’ employees found some startling facts:

• 1 in 3 high-potential employees are disengaged from their job – and are far less productive as a result
• 1 in 4 intends to leave their current company within the next year
• 1 in 5 see a misalignment between what the company wants and their own personal aspirations

Sound scary?  Well, it definitely got my attention.  And it got me thinking about what we can do to swing these statistics back in our favor. Read More »

Stop for a minute and ask yourself this – is “getting coached” a good thing in your organization? If you’re being honest, chances are it’s probably not.

Last week Pete and I spent an entire day running our latest workshop, teaching trainers to instill better coaching practices in their supervisor and team lead populations. We had 30 companies represented across nearly every major industry. It was a great crowd, with very energetic discussion.

The very first exercise of the day involved creating a goal for coaching. And while many participants jumped in an added their thoughts, two things were abundantly clear:

 1) Coaching is a misused word and concept. The outcomes, methods, and intent of coaching around the room couldn’t have been more diverse. Naturally, we assume when everyone nods their head in agreement at the word “coaching,” it’s universally understood. Well, you know what they say about assuming…

 2) Most organizations have not defined a true goal and purpose for coaching. We’re telling our leaders to “coach” without a sense of what that really means. Good coaching does not involve performance management, nor does it involve a conference room.

Read More »

As a diehard men’s U.S. college basketball fan, the four-week period between “Selection Sunday” until a U.S. national champion is crowned, commonly referred to as March Madness, is one of the most intense and exciting months of the year.

Sixty-five teams will tip-off in mid-March, all vying for the crown of “Best College Basketball Team in the Country”.  And while all of the teams have talented athletes, and have achieved successful seasons to reach this stage, it’s their coaches that often deserve the most credit. 

Coaches recognize the strengths and opportunity areas of every player, and help guide each player individually to improvements that will ultimately boost the overall performance of the team.  You don’t find coaches telling players to simply “score more points”; they actually help them understand how to score more points.  And the best coaches emphasize “in-game coaching”, taking a few seconds during the game to guide the player to better performance, without taking him fully out of the game environment.

And while coaching in the contact center occurs almost as frequently as coaching on the court, not enough “in-game coaching” is happening in most contact centers today. Read More »

Have you ever wondered what makes your best frontline supervisors tick? Can it be boiled down to the same thing that makes for a great frontline rep?

Most companies assume that star reps will make great supervisors, and promote them accordingly. Unfortunately, while these reps are great at handling customer issues themselves, not all of them want to share their knowledge and develop staff – a key activity for supervisors.

CCC has found that one in three contact center supervisors don’t want to coach.  That’s right – nearly one-third of your supervisors actively avoid coaching and development activities.  These ‘reluctant’ supervisors can even harm team performance with the poor quality, unfocused coaching sessions that they are forced to conduct. Read More »