164: Year in Review: Successful Improvements

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 164 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week I continue to look back at 2020. Why do organizations so often place higher value on managing and cutting costs than on improving their culture, organizations, and offerings? The fact is that it's usually about fear. Fear of wasting resources, fear of failure, fear of stepping away from the known and into the unknown. In customer service, where our support organizations are still so often seen as just another cost center, fear of innovation can hold you back from change. Fear of doing something that risks your customer relationships or your team morale, and and have them marching off into the sunset with another provider or to another employer. Fear. But that fear is an illusion. The fact is that unless you innovate, you risk those losses anyway. And maybe even especially. The organizations who remain static will become relative to the risk takers, that clunky old technology abandoned in a drawer. Unless you innovate, ultimately you die. We all know that, really, but when a business function is already perceived to be a cost center, innovation can seem to be just adding to that. So how do you build an innovative customer service model in that climate of fear? Ultimately, you need to figure out ways to demonstrate the value of the innovation that goes beyond the cost. It could be as simple as figuring out the direct ROI on some change, using all the figures you can muster in terms of retention or upsell. We know, for example, that it takes five times as much to sell to a new customer as to retain an existing one. And 89% of companies see customer experience as the key to retention. So demonstrate how the proposed changes improve retention. Build a narrative around the service model and how it relates to the experience. And then invest in the right innovations. Don't buy cheap running shoes when you're training for a marathon. Invest in a viable and relevant solution as early as you can, rather than trying to craft an Erzatz mess that's cheaper but less relevant and less scalable in the long run. Investments in process improvement, for example, are often heavily front-loaded. Spend time and, if necessary, money at the start, and you'll see a long tail of continued improvement and ROI in the long run. Scrimp at the start, either on time or money or effort, and you're in for a bumpy ride. Let's hear some other leaders talking about process improvement. In this overarching banner of process improvement, I know you're very data-driven. Is all process improvement to you uh do you see it as increasing efficiency? Or there are there other aspects to it?

Denise Twum: 4:24

No, it's not all about efficiency, it's also about joy. Joy, yeah, customer joy and um the support agents joy, right? Because there are some things that you have to do for work that don't necessarily make you excited because there's so many steps in there. So is a task that needs to be done as part of your job description. So how can I make it as painless as possible so that you're like, oh, look, I am clearing these tasks, you know, I am I am kicking not what is it, knocking it out of the park? Is that all term? Yeah, it's not just about efficiency. I think the efficiency is definitely a big part, but also the joy, because often the tasks that you want to automate are the tasks that are that are very manual and they're just drudgery and boring, but you need to do that.

Charlotte Ward: 4:54

I think that's yeah, I think that's important actually, that maybe the efficiency and the joy go hand in hand because they go hand in hand.

Kaylin Bailey: 5:02

We've had a lot of mergers and a lot of different companies come in, and it's always a good idea to take a look at your processes at that time and and really figure out if you've got the best process or you've just got the process you're the most comfortable with, because it's a comfort level thing, it's worth addressing and potentially uh changing the process.

Charlotte Ward: 5:22

I I had never thought about that, that uh a process might just be moderately effective because it's comfortable, but it's worth getting uncomfortable with. So process improvement is worth getting uncomfortable with. And I think asking those questions when you get everyone in that room can be an uncomfortable experience, right? Absolutely.

Kaylin Bailey: 5:38

Yep. For a lot of people, especially with a a smaller group coming trying to change a bigger process that can be rocky and it's definitely worth exploring and making sure that it's the right thing to do. But oftentimes it is. And in the end, you know, six months on the line, people aren't going to remember the pain of the process changing. They're gonna realize, oh, this is easier and it takes less time or has less steps in it.

Charlotte Ward: 6:02

There is a big piece here, I think, about developing a culture where everyone is free to make suggestions on how things can be different, even if they're a bit outlandish or a bit underinformed.

Ash Rhodes: 6:14

You're you're one, you're absolutely right that they're um they're unvarnished and completely new opinions may very well be just kind of a uneducated. Let's go with uneducated, as to like the reasons why it might not be a sensible solution to a problem or or what have you. But but the second half is also completely and totally true as well. By setting it them up for being that that this is an environment wherein all opinions are welcome, the the payout later on is untellable. Like if if everybody always feels like your door actually really is open to feedback, um that's I mean, I I would assume that everybody actually wants that. I I know that I do, and I I know that you do, and I hope that that all your listeners do as well.

Alyssa Percell: 7:02

Something that's not talked about enough is the idea of having a process for processes. Basically, what this is is an internal procedure that your team can use to ensure that you're constantly updating materials or questioning how efficient they are, how impactful they are as a workflow. Something you can do in setting up an internal process like this is basically empower your team to make sure that they're keeping content relevant over time. So not only are you updating the materials as they need to be updated, all the other procedures that are more customer-facing, but you're also allowing your team some agency to decide, hey, no, this isn't working. So here's a suggestion for something better. But how do you do this? That's the question, right?

Charlotte Ward: 7:44

It's really matter, isn't it? Actually, it's really meta. It's kind of interesting. I've never really thought about this before. When I was talking to Ash yesterday, we were talking about this empowering people to have the confidence to question processes and question the status quo. But actually formalizing that in itself into a process is a really interesting approach. So, so how do you do that?

Alyssa Percell: 8:07

Yeah, that's a good question. I love to go to my team, and this works, this works great, especially in startup environments, because content is such a consuming thing, right? Whether it's help centered macros, internal processes, right? And internal processes always seem to fall by the wayside because they're not customer-facing. They truly are the foundation to what impacts the customer experience, right? Because if your agents don't feel supported, if they don't feel like they have clear answers on how to do things, then you're creating inconsistent experiences. To really create this process, I love to go to a team and say, like, you know, we all are working in this ecosystem together. And every moving piece helps the ecosystem be successful, help, helps it grow and flourish, right? And just as much as macros or help center articles may be important, the processes that you all are held to are just as important. So you have to, as a leader, go in and you have to make first make space for it and say, like, this is so important to the ecosystem of our team and our customer experiences, right? And then the second thing you do is you work with them to figure out what is the process you want for this so that they feel empowered and they're given agency in creating their own internal process. An example of what this could look like is a simple procedure for an anonymous submission form. You can actually create an archive or a database for, let's say, your procedures, and then alongside that create a submission form so that your team at any point in time can anonymously submit a suggestion to improve a process or a procedure. And then you yourself as the leader, or you empower somebody on your team as a development opportunity to step in and check those submissions and edit or publish them as needed. You know, you can bring up those submissions during team meetings. Hey, here are the suggestions we got. Do we want to vote on this as a team? Or you can make the executive decision as a leader. Hey, this is a really great idea. Let's go with it. And even on that anonymous form, if you feel like you want to give your team the agency to be able to kind of claim that idea, you can always give in an optional like field so that they can claim credit as well. Allowing an anonymous option also allows them to speak more candidly if they'd like to.

Matt Dale: 10:15

I think in our business world, it's very easy to get caught up in the quick fixes and and not invest in those longer-term projects and not being very strategic in those. Being able to take that bigger picture perspective if you're thinking about you know being a leader in customer support. I think you need to kind of take that step back and really go, what are what what what kind of organization do we want to be? What's the end goal in a perfect world? What will we look like? And then you need to kind of work back from there and go, what are the um, you know, from a project planning perspective, what's that that's that critical path that will get us there? What are the things that we must do right now or we must start right now so that we are ready to go when when we need this thing to be in place? And I think those are the things that as a younger manager and leader that I wasn't as aware of the importance of, but but I think I as I'm as I'm learning and growing, I'm I'm seeing the importance of that longer term strategic planning.

Charlotte Ward: 11:14

That's it for today. Go to customer supportleaders.com forward slash one six four for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.