32: Managing Performance Issues with Hilary Dudek

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. This is episode 32. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is managing performance, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. Today I'd like to welcome back Hilary Dudek. Hilary, the topic for this week is performance issues and how we as leaders manage those both at a team level and in terms of the individuals within our team. So can you tell me what strategies you've got in place and how informal or formal they are right now? And uh some wisdom around managing performance issues.

Hilary Dudek: 0:59

Yes. Um when I came to this team, um, they were a little disorganized. Um so right now my strategy with my current team is to air on the side of more organizations. So uh I built an intentional dashboard for the team in Zendust so they can see team-wide their trending statistics. They know in our OKRs what we're working towards every quarter as far as you know, CSAT or efficiency, um, things of that nature. So they have the goals, they have this dashboard that they can see. Um, I'm always happy to pull individual reports for them too, so they can see specific things for themselves. And we also sort of lump into that um ticket quality. So we have a tool called Apricot. It's kind of like Klaus if you're familiar, and we do ticket QA that way too. So that's part of it. So I air more on the organized side of it for now until everyone is comfortable enough to speed. I also I should say that I have a lot of new people on this team. Five of these people have only been here since July or later. So they're still quite new.

Charlotte Ward: 2:09

And what's the what's the learning curve like on your product then? Because that's six months. That's all that's all they've been with you. Um so um with a significant portion of the team with that shorter tenure, how do you how do you account for that? Because that's gonna skew not only the team metrics, but also I guess those guys of uh pulling at, for want of a better word, they're pulling um at your more experienced uh agents, right? They're they're they're pulling strands of their knowledge out all the time. And that has an impact on the wider team when you've got that number of new agents in one go. How do you how do you um balance that with your dashboard and and everything else?

Hilary Dudek: 2:53

So what I actually did was for sort of my guru or my my oldest tenured employee, and he's actually removed now from the day-to-day queue activities, so he doesn't count towards those. He is taking internal escalations of tier two tickets. So um I pulled him aside because you're right, that is going to greatly skew. Um, we also have a wide range of tickets, so pulling out ones that are, you know, I know take 30 seconds to solve or automated, whatever, I pull those out as well. Um but that that that's what I'm using to manage performance as a team.

Charlotte Ward: 3:30

Okay. And uh do you look at individual performance on the basis of those kind of metrics as well, or is it more qualitative in terms of performance?

Hilary Dudek: 3:40

It's more qualitative. It's also more soft skills in term of in terms of performance for individuals. Um, I'm still getting to know them as people, so kind of learning their personalities, how they like to receive feedback. Um, but that isn't a huge component too, because they're all, you know, the team's not large. It's only seven people. So it's, you know, it's a tight-knit family still. So um, but I will say, like, there's something to be said for not just looking at metrics, but also looking at, you know, who really guides meetings, um, aside from me, you know, who really keeps us on track and you know, doesn't allow us to veer off topic, you know, I'm gonna, you know, taking to consideration who's doing that, who's not doing that, um, things like that, and try to coach them because they're not gonna stay in support forever. They're not gonna stay with Glue Go forever. So let's get them those skills so that they can be more successful in their next next position as well.

Charlotte Ward: 4:41

So, in terms of managing the performance then of individuals, you you lean, you are leaning quite significantly towards coaching, actually. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yes. What what what's your approach to coaching? Is it very real-time or do you have more formal methods that you rely on? You know, is it kind of in the moment?

Hilary Dudek: 5:02

It depends on what it is. So it could be in the moment. Um with my meeting example, though, for example, um, that's going to be after, you know. Hey, I think, you know, that question kind of derailed the topic that we were there to discuss. Maybe in the future we could do this a different way. That's going to be an after-the-fact conversation or in our next one-on-one. Um, I do hold regular one-on-ones with everybody. So that's a great place to have a lot of those conversations. But if it's real time and if it's appropriate, I'll just do it in real time. One less thing for me to write down on their document, remember to say.

Charlotte Ward: 5:36

So very true. Less work for you as well as uh as well as being more valuable for them, being in the moment as much as you can. Absolutely. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash thirty-two for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.