97: Process Improvement with Kaylin Bailey

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 97 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is process improvement. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Kaylin Bailey. Kaylin, it's lovely to have you back. Thank you for joining me again. And this week we're talking about process improvement. Support is a really process-heavy part of the business, isn't it? We really rely on our processes to get us through any part of the day. And it's it's really important that they they work for us, right?

Kaylin Bailey: 0:56

Absolutely. Yep. I think that support is very driven by processes, and I'm always telling other teams that just give us an easy process to follow that you can't really mess up, and support is pretty happy to do it. Just give us a process that we need to follow.

Charlotte Ward: 1:10

What do we do when a process isn't working quite as well as we hope it might? And how do you spot that actually? Like what are the what are the red flags that we should give something a bit of attention?

Kaylin Bailey: 1:20

Yeah, so I think that there are some red flags and some yellow flags, some easy to identify process improvement needs or when something isn't getting done right. You think you've got this process lined up and it's good to go, but the results of the process are not coming out the way you expect and consistently not coming out the way you expect would be a pretty big red flag that something is wrong there. But it could be as mild as, oh, I'm getting a lot of questions on this particular part of the process, and maybe that needs to get cleaned up and I can reduce those questions because in the ideal world, a lot of processes are easy to follow without a lot of hands-on attention once you've got it rolled out. So anytime that's not happening, I think there's a time to step back and realize a process may need to get improved.

Charlotte Ward: 2:04

That's a really good point. Just the number of questions that a process is attracting is a really good indicator of how how good the process is, but how well it's documented and understood, definitely. How do we tackle those flags, red or yellow?

Kaylin Bailey: 2:18

So for me, I always like to step back and make sure I'm talking to all parties involved. So if it's a process for another team, make sure a team lead on support and maybe someone from that team is in the room. And then I like to ask a lot of questions. A saying around Illuminate is find the question behind the question. And the easiest way that I found to do that is throw everyone in a room into a meeting and ask why, and then ask why again, and then ask why again and again and again, because oftentimes you'll find there's a root problem that may be linked to three or four issues with multiple processes. And if you can really get to the bigger issue going on, oftentimes you can solve multiple things at one time.

Charlotte Ward: 2:57

Actually, we often arrive at these roles where processes have been around for a while and we run with them and we kind of accept for a little while. That's the way that it's it's it's working. So it must be the best way to do it. But actually, that kind of drilling down is is really helpful.

Kaylin Bailey: 3:15

And particularly at Illuminate, 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: 3:32

I I had never thought about that, that 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: 3:50

Yep. For a lot of people, especially with 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 going to realize, oh, this is easier and it takes less time or has less depth in it.

Charlotte Ward: 4:11

How do you deal with that pain when you're going through it though? Because I I think that I think you hit the nail on the head when it's a big process and a small early stage team. These discussions can feel enormous. And and there's actually a lot of stakeholder responsibility in that room, isn't there? Because these processes tend to be such a big part of the business.

Kaylin Bailey: 4:34

Yep, yep. So I think you start with lots of questions and making sure that the process really does need to change. And if that decision is made, it's all about documentation for us. So we've been rolling out a process with Confluence where there's a support hub, and one of the main categories underneath it is processes, and then that's broken down by leads and agents and other teams. That way it's really easy to document what is going on, what steps are in the process. And if anyone has questions, they can always reference back to that page on Confluence in particular. You know, you could watch a page and get an email when a page gets updated. So that has been really effective in communicating uh updates to processes. Obviously, an email or you know, a mention of it in the meeting is also important, but uh documenting it has been really, really helpful and having it all be in one central location along with all the other things agents might need to reference has been huge.

Charlotte Ward: 5:25

That's actually um something that I'm going through right now, like putting putting processes in place or refining them or documenting them and putting them in confluence. I'm I'm I'm starting to use some of I'm I mean I'm really early stage with some of this stuff, but I'm starting to use some of the same things that you're talking about there, documenting processes and uh role descriptions and things in confluence and having those change over time. People can watch the page, that's reliant on them watching the page. You can uh push the information out through email and in meetings, but how do you make sure the message gets to everyone that really needs to know that something key here has really changed?

Kaylin Bailey: 6:06

When it's something key, I always like to bring it up in a meeting. So we've got a league meeting that happens every week. So if there's a huge change to a process, we'll address it there. If it's only on a particular team, I also do one-on-ones. So making sure that in that one-on-one with the league, we go through, I show the document, they have time to look through it. So oftentimes I'll say, Hey, take a look at this confluence page before we meet and come to me with thoughts so that we can talk it through. Because for me, if you can get someone to internalize the process, internalize the why behind it, that's really when they can go out and communicate it to their team effectively.

Charlotte Ward: 6:41

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash ninety-seven for the show notes. And I'll see you next time.