Being a Change-Management Champion in Your Call Center
Call centers and change - they are inseparable terms. Change management is a critical aspect to successful call center operations. If a call center is not constantly changing then it is only a matter of time before the call center becomes less relevant to the customers and the company’s business strategy. Successful operations require that you have excellent change management skills which are necessary to lead staff, support areas and the organization forward.
Call center operations today have increased the need for excellent change management skills. Integrating new contact channels such as email, web, IVR, or live chat can be a real challenge. Ensuring that your staff can change to meet the challenge push the need for you to be a change-management leader - a change management champion. We have noted that very little is written in our e-business world about the human-side change of e-business. In our opinion, it is easier to get caught up in the excitement of new e-processes and technologies than to manage the human-side change issues. We are guilty of it and that’s what has motivated this article. Call center staff need our attention in helping them to adjust to managing the new access channels in a multi-channel call center world. Our staff need our help because many wonder if they can handle the change.
Call center staff ask some great questions when it comes to adapting to change:
- “Will I have the necessary skills and ability to handle the new processes and expectations?”
- “Will I receive the appropriate training for handling emails when I have never really done it before?”
- “How will I navigate these new systems?”
In our experience, there are three typical responses to any suggested change in call centers:
1) The Early Adopters - staff who are looking for change therefore adapt quickly to new challenges and opportunities.
2) The Bulk Adopters - this is the largest group who are between the early adopters and the never-adopters and accept change when coached and supported through the change.
3) The Never Adopters - those who may never really accept change but are drawn along because the other 95% of their co-workers have adjusted.
Understanding the characteristics and motivators of change for each group will help you be a change champion. A person may be an Early Adopter in one change initiative but a Never Adopter in the next initiative. The key is to learn how your staff respond and what motivates them when change is underway.
Consistently successful operations learn how to manage change. Spending time at perfecting your change leadership abilities will help you move to market faster as your team become ‘owners’ and ‘agents of change’ of the new initiative. Failure to be or become an excellent change leader will result in problems of trust between you and your staff. It will affect your ability to deliver change necessary to meet your competitive environment. It can lead to higher turn over rates of staff as they vote with their feet and find another call center to work in.
The intent of this article is not to provide a thorough change management strategy but to remind all of us that it is our staff who deliver the changes to customers. We need to keep them front and center to ensure that they are prepared to keep the customer front and center.
Posted: January 21st, 2007 under Operations.
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