In search of the perfect team

[Frode Heimen]

I am a call center manager. I have one challenge that I never find a good solution for, and that is how to compose the best team of support agents. I am not going to team up the best agents. I want to find the best team.
So what am I looking for?
First I think I need to define what I want to achieve.
1. Self motivating
I want the team to be able to motivate each other to a group success.
2. Finding solutions
I want the team to be able to solve the problems.
3. Keep learning
I want the team to share knowledge and keep learning from each other.
4. Strong sense of achieving goals
I want the team to fight to reach goals and be effective.
5. Provide excellent customer care
I want the team to provide excellent customer care
6. Be happy
I want them to thrive and love their job.

All research I have read, also now stated in the influencer people that sits next to each other are more likely to work well together. And the ability to work good together shrinks already at 30 feet, by 90 feet they can equally just be miles away from each other. So I need to keep the team close to each other.

I need a small team. Seven is a lucky number, and I think a team of seven people might be perfect. I have tried with six, which is too few, ten is too many. So 7-9 might be a good number.

So to my first question: Fixed tasks or rotating on tasks? What is best?

My team recipe will be like this:
1 Quality Case Worker (QCW)
1 Listening Co-worker
1 On the phone w/Listening Co-worker next to them working along. I will explain.
4 On the phone

Role/Day        Day 1   Day 2   Day 3   Day 4   Day 5   Day 6   Day 7QCW     John    Beth    Jo      Sammy   Bruce   Claude  AmyLCW     Amy     John    Beth    Jo      Sammy   Bruce   Claude
OtPwLCW Claude  Amy     John    Beth    Jo      Sammy   Bruce

OtP     Bruce   Claude  Amy     John    Beth    Jo      Sammy

OtP     Sammy   Bruce   Claude  Amy     John    Beth    Jo

OtP     Jo      Sammy   Bruce   Claude  Amy     John    Beth

OtP     Beth    Jo      Sammy   Bruce   Claude  Amy     John

The roles
OtP = On the Phone – No further explanation necessary.
LCW = A Listening Co-worker. This person grabs an extra headset and sits down with another person to listen in on the call and work together for a day.
OtPwLCW = The person On the Phone that has the LCW placed alongside for the entire day.
QCW = This person will handle the cases that the people on the phone don’t know how to handle or difficult cases that might take time.

I use to sit along with people to listen in on calls. But as a manager I am losing the fine touch of the technical part of the customer handling. I listen on tone, dialogue and how the customer is treated. I want a co-worker to work together with them as well in order to learn from each other. I remember sitting next to other people seeing different and more effective ways to solve a problem. This I will not be able to share in my role as a manager. But hands on employees might pick up tons of information.

Since one person is sitting in on a call every day, we need to gain an increase in efficiency to “finance” having one person of the phone every single day.

6 people answering 50 calls a day = 300 handled calls. This means that 5 people need to answer 60 calls, a production increase of 20 %.

The goal of the LCW is to learn how to identify calls that might take too long. Learn how to solve problems faster. Learn how to solve problems correct. And increase the knowledge of each other. This will result in them solving problems faster. I do observe people trying to figure out how to solve a case and walking around searching for help. The help person of the team is the QCW role. This person needs to learn how to solve the problem, and have time to do it, resulting in them being more effective when back on the phone.

If a case is too difficult the QCW role will get the case from those on the phone.
I hope that this plan will help out on 2, 3 and 5 of my initial goals; Finding solutions, keep learning and Provide excellent customer care.

Only the QCW is allowed to take the case to other back operations. This will result in no confusion on where the case is supposed to be transferred in the heat of a conversation. Delegate everything you cannot solve to the QCW and their role is to get help or to transfer the case to the right people or departments.

Hold the team accountable for own results.
I want the team to be measured, not the team players. I want the team to handle 300 calls. I want the backlog for the QCW to be empty each day. The best team should get some kind of benefits, movie tickets or other tokens of gratitude. I need to teach the team members to measure and to work with goals and how to see if they are falling behind and how to correct to get the goals necessary. But I do not like to give price on results alone. I rather prefer to give benefits on the right behavior that again will provide results. This can be time logged in and ready, time on breaks, low sick leave rates and so on. This should take care of point 4, Strong sense of achieving goals.

I am now only left with 1 and 6 – Self motivating and being happy. Maybe this is my task as the manager, to make sure that they grow and succeed and have fun. I might teach them this skill? Or will the work itself provide motivation if they experience that this works?

Today my departement is 22 people including me. with about 5 people handling 2.line tasks. The rest is on the phone. I would love to create 3 teams of seven according to this model. Hoping that it will benefit in production increase a stronger loyalty to the team, more engaged employees, as the team is supposed to solve the problem and learn from each other, instead of me providing the answers and know how. I feel that some people are not taking their responsibility seriously as being one slacker of 22 is not "dangerous". I hope that a smaller team will play with their emotions and get them to take a bullet for the team

I would love your feedback on how to forge the best team in a call center, I feel as I might just be re-inventing the wheel here, and probably some have greater experience than me in this field? Please share any thoughts.

What is needed to create a winning team with great employees that again display energy and engagement.

I am considering the following: The team is responsible for one person staying until 20.00 how they solve it is not my problem, but the teams responsibility. For instance one can come at 0800 and be gone 4 hours in the middle of the day. The point is the result of the team. I am considering to not care about people being late. If the team have a problem with people being late for work they need to report it to me, and I will take action. And people being late for work might also prevent the team from achieving their goals?

Frode H
http://www.nevermindthemanager.com

[Doug Shaw]

Hi frode - I would like to draw your attention to some very interesting work originating from Finland all about top performing teams. I declare a vested interest I have written a couple of short pieces for these bright people.

Some friends of mine are exploring Marcial Losada’s seminal work of about how top performing teams achieve and sustain their success and how organisations can apply it to their own teams.

They talk about how they use his research to help teams perform. and look at ideas in complexity theory and neuroscience that underpin and explain the evidence that Marcial Losada found about teams.

An experiment by Losada and Heaphy with 60 teams showed that the top quartile best performing (customer perceived, 360-degree feedback and profitability) did three things that differentiated them from the others.
1. They showed as much interest in others as in themselves.
2. They asked as many questions as they offered opinions
3. They made nearly six times as many positive comments as negative comments.

These behaviours were separate from role differences or competence levels in the teams. All three of these behaviours were necessary. No two were sufficient.

If you wish to read more check out this blog:

http://dialoguelife.wordpress.com/