Contact centres: The business of caring

Sydney Water finalist (and eventual winner) Kathy Hourigan with Michael Wolf and Shane Dwyer from academy

Make no bones about it, the people who work in a contact centre, work in a business. They are there to help customers with issues, guide people towards services that will (hopefully!) help meet their needs and generally facilitate the making of money.

But you don’t stay in business if you don’t help people, actively offering them something they need or want. And you don’t stay in business if you don’t care about helping people.

This is what I noticed about all the contact centre employees, team leaders and managers who were at the NSW ATA academy Awards 2011 at Luna Park last Friday night. They cared.

They cared about being nominated. They cared about who won. And the winners cared very much about being recognised for, well, their caring. One lovely award winner from Sydney Water was visibly moved. Boy did she care! And that’s great. She’s in the business of caring, and she’s doing it well.

Sydney Water was one of the big winners of the night, taking out the team award for contact centres of 50-120 seats and two individual awards. They issued this media release.

Two things here stand out for me; two things that I believe are responsible for the team’s great success:

1. The managing director of Sydney Water, Kevin Young, attributed their ability to put the customer first to the firm’s investment in customer contact training and support. Put your people first and they will do the same for your customers!
2. It’s a business. There are big numbers… 4.3 million customers, over 3,000 calls a day in the contact centre… that’s 800,000 a year. But it’s a business that actively encourages its people to care.

The main reason we support the ATA and the awards is that we offer nationally accredited contact centre training; we love working with this industry and we are proud of what we can offer you. academy, too, cares very much about the people it does business with.

A very BIG congratulations to all the inspiring winners and finalists at the awards, especially to the contact centre teams of American Express, Sydney Water and Newcastle Permanent Building Society; and the individual winners from Flexigroup and Sydney Water.

Congratulations, too, to the team at Perpetual who won the academy prize of a one-day leadership and management workshop for up to 12 people, tailored to the team’s leadership training needs. We can’t wait to conduct that workshop with you!

Customer service: A rollercoaster ride or smooth sailing?

Good customer service is *not* a roller coaster ride!

Tonight I will be standing under the mouth of Sydney’s famous Luna Park entry way, about to attend the ATA academy Awards for contact centre excellence. I will be able to see both the amusement park rides and the beauty of yachts sailing by.

That’s just the difference that great customer service can make for an organisation. While rollercoaster rides are fun in your leisure time, the metaphorical kind can be stressful and time wasting when you are trying to get something done. Give me a ‘smooth-sailing’ contact centre any day!

You know, Luna Park has been perched on the edge of Sydney Harbour since the 1930s… It has had its ups and downs but to exist for over eighty years you have to know what your customers want and, in that sense, Luna Park hasn’t changed that much over the years. People still want to be scared witless on the rides, eat fairy floss and see the lights at night.

Good service hasn’t changed much either – and I think that people pretty much want the same service they wanted 80 years ago also.

If your business has entered these awards, then you can be sure that it has a commitment to great service, and that it values the people that deliver this service.

Congratulations to all the nominees and the eventual winners. academy helps train many people in their customer contact careers and is proud to support this celebration of your achievements. I wish you ‘smooth sailing’ tonight – and for your ongoing contact centre excellence.

Stress, telephones and pyjamas: Ideas for contact centre training

GUEST POST

Today, I’m handing over the reins to Linda Collard – a colleague and communications consultant – who shares some thoughts on stress, telephones and customer contact training.

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Stress management can stop the hanging on by a thread feeling

When I was in my teens, my Dad volunteered as a telephone counsellor for Lifeline. Even in my self-absorbed adolescent haze, I knew this was a tough thing. He had intensive training for the job; he was online from 10pm to 2am and still handling his senior management job during the day, and he was not allowed to talk about his callers for privacy reasons.

Once he broke that rule and he did tell us just a little about a call (all the while keeping the caller completely anonymous), because he needed to download. You see, someone had taken some pills and then called Lifeline in order to ‘be with’ someone while they died.  That person was my Dad.

Now that is a hardcore telephone job. Wanting to help, but not being able to do enough.

It’s obviously an extreme circumstance, but it strikes me that this must be how it feels to be on the end of the phone sometimes in commercial contact centres too. Most people are in the job because they like dealing with people, and by extension, helping them. It must be stressful for contact centre staff when they cannot do all they would like to be able to do to help their callers.

So I thought it was a brilliant idea when I saw that Lifeline was holding a fundraising day for workplaces today, called Stress Down Day 2011.

The idea is to have fun, dress up (or down!) and bring some levity into the workplace, all while raising funds for Lifeline.  It looks like Telstra’s Northern Rivers contact centre is getting right into the spirit of the day, wearing pyjamas to work for the day and also providing massages and stress management training for the contact centre team.

It may be too late to hold an event for Lifeline today, but I’m sure the idea could be applied any time of year – assisting your contact centre teams to de-stress, helping them feel appreciated for their efforts, and aiding an invaluable service such as Lifeline continue its amazing and essential work.

Of course, managing stress is an ongoing pursuit for team leaders and individuals alike. As well as ‘fun’ workplace events, teams benefit greatly from formal customer contact training from accredited training providers such as academy and others. The academy contact centre training addresses some of the techniques and gives your team members tools they can use to manage stressful situations with customers.

How do you keep stress at bay?

Learning at Virgin: An interview with Clint Scobie

Virgin Mobile's L&D Manager Clint Scobie

Around ten years ago, the iconic Virgin launched Virgin Mobile in Australia. Two months before that launch, Clint Scobie joined the company’s call centre and has been with them in a variety of roles ever since.

The Virgin veteran is now Learning & Development Manager, opting for a descriptive and slightly more traditional job title than many of his colleagues. (He tells me a colleague in recruitment is known as ‘Treasure Hunter’ on his business card and I once knew a Virgin Mobile ‘PR Princess’ and ‘Maestro of Fun’.)

Business cards aside, what keeps him there? And how does Clint manage learning and development in the fast-paced Virgin Mobile environment? We had a chat just before Christmas.

Can you tell me a little about your background?

I’ve been with Virgin Mobile the whole time it’s been in Australia. I joined two months before the launch as a customer service representative (CSR)… there was 50 of us at the time.

Before that I was an apprentice chef and with David Jones in customer service.

Why, or how, did you get into learning and development (L&D) as a career?

By accident. But a very lucky accident! I was asked to help train some of the new CSRs as they joined Virgin Mobile. I was in the first group of CSRs and ended up training the second group. I thoroughly enjoyed it and started to get a sense that this was what I wanted to do.

Twelve months later I was a trainer… I was a Training Officer for four or five years for call centre staff, then a L&D consultant for two years and I’ve now been an L&D Manager for around two years.

What exactly does that entail?

Well, it really means I do whatever I need to do at the time! I know that sounds a bit flip but that’s absolutely the Virgin culture. You do what needs to be done, whoever you are. We all do.

I just finished helping to organise the Christmas party for example… not traditionally an L&D job. But someone from the Marketing team floated the idea and I was up for it. It was great fun actually.

I do enjoy the fun bits and pieces at Virgin… bake offs, Christmas decoration competitions, the whole company culture.

A more functional ‘to do’ list would include conducting trainer needs analysis, helping people secure traineeships and sourcing external courses

What is your role at Virgin and the top priority?

I guess the top of the tops is to make sure the business training requirements are met. Or exceeded.

At the moment, we are going to the business and asking ‘what do you need?’.  Most managers know, some are not sure about gaps.

So we are also doing a very manual trainer needs analysis, looking at every single job description, matching skills, identifying gaps, making sure the people in jobs have the skills, finding courses or other ways to up skill them.

There are 300 job descriptions so it takes a little while.

Do you have any issues with buy in from the business?

At first, yes. But once people understand the big picture of what we are doing, they are encouraging and help as much as possible

How have the priorities changed as time goes on?

In the mobile world, everything changes all the time. So yes, the priorities change along with the business. The challenge is trying to forecast what those changes will be and anticipate them.  There are quite a few goalposts moving around at any one time!

We try to stay as flexible as possible, open to change and ready to adapt.

Personally, I am able to change, but it’s a struggle when a big project suddenly gets pulled because of new priorities. Nonetheless, that’s the nature of any technology-based consumer business.

I remember doing an exercise back when I first started about ‘what do you want a mobile to be?’. This was ten years ago and we dared to dream of colour screens! It was back when Nokia had just brought out a phone with one colour and we all thought it was wonderful. It’s hard to grasp the quantum leaps in function and features we’ve seen over that decade.

What is Virgin Mobile’s approach to learning and development?

Most importantly, you as a staff member have to want it. You need to be hungry to develop. Go out and get what you want, and it’s there for you.

What business outcomes does the organisation look for?

All the normal ones… improved performance. We measure to a point. In fact, ROI is a big focus for us this year.

How is learning and development different from human resources in general?

It’s a function of HR…, which after all, is all about people, and how to get the best for people and out of people. We have an HR team of nine and four of us are in L&D.

What kind of learning does Virgin Mobile use?

We match the best kind of learning to the situation, but there is a lot of face-to-face classroom style learning. We also use webinars. They are a necessity, as is all online options, as we now have offshore call centre staff in Manila and Fiji and we want them to be included in all learning opportunities too.

We also use coaching and mentoring for managers and senior executives where relevant and needed. We tend to source mentors internally… we have people here with diverse skill sets and backgrounds and they can be a wealth of knowledge for each other.

High performance, high potential people may sometimes have some outside coaching or mentoring.

How do you encourage the L&D of employees?

It’s built into the performance review system. Together a manager and employee devise a development plan and they have regular review discussions. It can be tracked and people can clearly see their own development, which is encouraging in itself. Success breeds success.

What do you do if someone is resistant?

I haven’t really come up against this. Most people are thrilled to learn. I guess if I did encounter it, I would try to understand why and explain the benefits of training.

What professional skill would you most like to learn?

I like to constantly develop in all areas. I keep an eye out for opportunities and I also get to sit in on a few courses to see how they would be for other employees.

At the moment I am doing the Frontline Management Certificate IV, which is hard work, but I am enjoying.

And how about recreational? What do you most want to learn outside of work?

Oh wow. Music I guess. I did the recorder as a child and I wish I had moved on to the saxophone and piano. Perhaps one day!

What do you do outside of work?

I love cooking. I was an apprentice chef and actually ended up hating it for years. But I have fallen in love with it again.

More on Vision Australia

Graham Estreich (R) accepts a certificate on behalf of work placement companies from Vision Australia's Deputy Chair, Owen van der Wall (L)

Last Wednesday was one of those days that keeps you energised and motivated for weeks to come. I’ve already written about it once but it’s still on my mind.

academy was lucky enough to partner with Vision Australia to set up a pro bono training program for their clients, including work experience in call centres run by major Australian companies. That’s a dry sentence… the outcome was anything but.

Ten people, people from diverse backgrounds and wide-ranging experience, found new confidence. And each other. Their graduation ceremony (from Customer Contact Certificate II) was joyous and full of hope.

The course participants are all blind or have low vision, and all want to work.  I’ve already used this stat, but I find it astounding, so will use it again. Did you know that 63% of low vision or blind people who want to work are not able to find a job?

Kudos to the graduates who all amazing, but also to the companies who took them on for work experience placements. These included 3M, IAG Group, Australian Power & Gas and ATEL. Plus TNT and Penrith Council have already expressed interest in placing people on the next course.

The icing on the cake was that a job offer was extended from one of these companies to a course graduate while we were still at the ceremony.

It was a great example of something we all strive for in our life, be in the personal or professional sphere… a moment where work ceased to be ‘work’ and became ‘life’.

* As an aside, did you know that companies who hire an employee who is blind or has low vision will be subsidised by the Federal Government to set up the workplace with appropriate software and so on? I am sure Vision Australia would love to talk with you about available assistance.

A good look at training for Vision Australia

Vision Australia gave the academy team some snazzy purple hats

Some months ago I bumped into an old school friend who I hadn’t spoken with for 15 years or more. My friend is classified as having ‘low-vision’ and I was dismayed to hear that he had not enjoyed paid employment since I saw him last, despite his obvious intelligence, a positive personality and an expressed willingness to work.

Apparently this is distressingly common for people who are blind or have low vision.  Margaret Noonan, regional manager for Vision Australia, tells me that 63% of their clients who would like to work cannot find employment.  That’s a shocking statistic when compared with the same measure for the general population.

In the months since my encounter, academy has worked with Vision Australia to set up a pro bono training program for their clients, including work experience in call centres run by major Australian companies.

To our great delight, last week the graduates were awarded a Certificate II in Customer Contact.

Vision Australia, the academy trainers and – most importantly – the course participants all had a ball, and it’s fair to say we all learnt a great deal from each other.

It’s with huge excitement that I can report at least one job offer is in progress as a direct result of the work experience component of the program.

This has been so all around successful and satisfying that the Vision Australia and academy partnership will continue, offering the program to other participants throughout 2011.

To celebrate, I had a chat with Vision Australia’s Margaret Noonan.

Can you tell us a little about the work that Vision Australia does?

Vision Australia is the leading provider of services to people who are blind or who have low vision. We provide a wide range of services; from Employment services, Orientation and Mobility and Adaptive Technology through to independence in the community and independence in the home. Our clients are all ages and from all walks of life, so our range of services need to suit very diverse needs.

Why do you call the people you work with clients?

I guess that’s a mindset.   Our services are free, so they are not customers or consumers. It professionalises our services and helps make sure the clients come first.

What type of Vision Australia clients did the academy course?

A wide range of people, from very different backgrounds. But what they all have in common is they are hoping to gain new opportunities from the course.  Most are looking for a career change; some have vast experience in other fields but their low vision means they need to change their career path, and others are hoping for other new opportunities.

What will the course do for your clients?

It opens up opportunities for them, whether they want to work in a contact centre career or not. For many of them, they will be able to work in the call centre industry, work their way up and establish a new career.

For others, the skills taught will create other opportunities. The communication aspects of the course will help them, giving them essential skills for new career paths.

Many of the participants are dealing with a recent loss of vision, a recent loss of the career path they were on and may have even loved. So this will really help them regain a little of what they have lost.

Why customer contact work? Is it because you use your voice?

Not necessarily. There are so many leadership opportunities and the chance to work with teams in the contact centre industry. And many of these people are at leadership level.

They should be able to have any job they choose to have and this course certainly broadens the opportunities for any kind of employment.

How easy or hard is it for your clients to get work?

Well, 63% of the people who would like to work can’t find it. So it’s hard. It shouldn’t be, but it is.

One extra thing that will really help is that the program included work experience placements. academy placed each person in a call centre.

They were able to assess if working in that environment is a good fit for them and it gave them the experience of working in a new workplace and managing the implications of doing so with little or no vision.

We provided orientation and mobility training to employees and employers. Our clients want to be as comfortable and efficient in the workplace as possible.

Actually, employers often tell us they really love employing our clients… they are dedicated, focused and loyal.

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Our sincere thanks go to Vision Australia for enabling us to work with your clients. The extra bonus for us is that our trainers had a wonderful time and hope to make a big difference in people’s work lives.  In this, the sales team, who sourced the work experience opportunities, will also make a huge impact. We are all grateful for the experience.

Sorry is the hardest word

Customer service: Own your apology

That’s what you might think when you are talking with some of our largest companies.

There’s definitely a place for scripts in contact centres. They are invaluable for trainees and for more complicated conversations with customers, where your information has to be accurate and up-to-date.

However, I do not want a scripted apology. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want that either. Yet, some companies seem to do everything in their power to remove themselves from the apology, to never accept fault.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Just writing that inspires negative energy in me. Why? Because of course there has been some inconvenience. That’s why I am calling.

A much better approach for contact centre operators (and absolutely better for their company too!) is to own the apology.* Use ‘I’ instead of ‘we’. Don’t qualify it.

“I am sorry.”

Isn’t that better? When you have an upset customer, he or she will be pleased to hear that. You can then use your investigative skills – questioning but, more importantly, listening – to figure out the best way for your company to make amends.

This is where the customer service and people skills of the individual must be relied upon. You are talking with the customer. You are uniquely positioned to understand them, their tone, their needs.

It is vital for companies, and vital to their brands, to train their people in these customer service skills, or up date them, or even practise them in-house. A role-play or two on a regular basis means the whole team is reminded of how to get this right and maybe even coax a customer from upset to impressed.

And that’s nothing to be sorry about.

* This post was inspired by a chapter ‘How to say you’re sorry’ in the excellent book ‘Rework’ by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.

Saying no (but sounding like you are saying yes)

That’s a hard ask, isn’t it? Sometimes when you are dealing with customers, someone asks something of you that you are just not able to deliver. It may be a product that is out of stock, a service you do not have available or a completely unreasonable request (it happens).

A blunt ‘no’ is probably not the best approach, although there is no magic solution to avoid letting your customers down. The ‘magic’ comes with how you deal with people, how you say no.

3 core customer service skills

Some of the skills you can use (taught in our Customer Contact course) are:

• Apologise and show empathy
• Provide options or alternatives
• Consider giving the customer a ‘care token’

A care token is any action you take to let customers know you care about being unable to give them exactly what they want.  Examples of care tokens are discount coupons, extra helpings or a free delivery.

A positive no

Additionally, when possible, try to preface your no with something positive.  For example, “That was an excellent book, and I am very sorry to have to tell you that it is now out of print. We do have the author’s latest book though and it is just as good.”

In this situation, you may even like to point the caller to a second-hand source, somewhere they can get exactly what they want. Sure, you may not get a sale on that call, but you will certainly earn gratitude and be remembered as someone who listened and provided what was needed. It’s a medium-term approach, considering loyalty over an immediate conversion.

But what if the person is emotional and unreasonable?

There are some situations where you are, unfortunately, simply there as the person at the end of the line. The best thing for you to do is listen and under no circumstances get frustrated or sarcastic (tempting as that may be). You represent your brand and in many cases, people vent, feel better and go back to being reasonable. Just get off the phone intact!

However, you are a person and you deserve respect. If someone is being rude and abusing you, it is time to extract yourself.

The skills in this post are not hard. You probably already use a few of them. But you can use them more and more effectively if your efforts are considered. And practised.

Use them well enough and you may even earn a loyal customer, someone who comes to you over everybody else because they know you always find a way to say yes… even when the answer is no.

Michael Meredith: I have the second best job in the world

CEO of the ATA, Michael Meredith

Michael Meredith is a busy man. He leads the Australian Teleservices Association (ATA), the industry group for contact centres around the nation, and in his spare time he marries people – he’s a qualified marriage celebrant – he plays golf and he heads into the bush, preferably somewhere without mobile coverage.

So it’s not surprising that the first thing we discussed was time management.

Michael is a fan of the old-fashioned, hand-written to do list penned in his desk diary so that it is visible during the day. Apart from the satisfaction that comes from crossing off tasks, he also appreciates having a written record of the multitude of different things he does on a daily basis in what he describes as ‘the second best job in the world’.

Why the ‘second best’? Showing he’s the right person for his job, Meredith tells me that being a call centre manager is the absolute best job in the world and he feels privileged to represent the interests of call centres all over Australia.

“We have fantastic contact centres in Australia. They do a great job. Did you know there are 16 million inbound calls a day handled by Australian call centres? That’s three-quarters of the population making a call in any one working day. Our people handle these in a spectacular fashion.”

What is your background? How did your career lead you to be CEO of the ATA?

I’ve been in the call centre industry since 1986; yes it’s 24 years this week and have been the CEO of the ATA for the past 10 years. It’s a very rewarding role and I enjoy dealing with such a wide array of stakeholders, I love the industry and I love the people. I get a great sense of accomplishment.

I guess I’ve been involved with the ATA in one way or another almost from the word go and prior to taking on the CEO was a member of the national board.

My background is in call centres is in the banking and finance area… I was involved in one of the the first call centres built in Australia, taking on the role of a senior supervisor. My manager was one of the founders of the ATA and he volunteered me to be treasurer of the association and it’s grown from there… next thing you know the CEO job came up in 2000 and I was lucky to get the role.

What is the ATA’s mission?

Well it’s two-fold really, my first priority is the ATA membership given the ATA is membership-owned. Everything I do, I have to think, “Is this for the benefit of the majority?”. When we ask members what they want from the ATA it is opportunities to learn and network, activities that help them develop their centre and to develop themselves both personally and professionally.

And the second part of what I do is to promote the industry in general, to the general business community and to the public as a whole.

Do you believe management and leadership are different? How so?

Absolutely. To me management has a focus on the supervision of activity or of a process however when you lead, you lead people. They are two different roles. Some people are born with more innate leadership ability, but I believe everyone can decide to improve their leadership skills.

How do you lead? How is it different when you have to lead an industry body?

Well, I have to try to always do what’s best for the ATA as a whole…. with its many stakeholders I need to find a common path that works for most. I had to learn how to do that and I’ve definitely become more competent at that over the past decade.

In terms of the team here at ATA, and other places I have had leadership roles, I like to focus on the outcome or the goal and therefore I look for the people who have the skills for that role, and once they are engaged, let them do it. I’m there to look around the edges and help when needed but that’s it. You need to trust the people you have and let them do their jobs.

People are individuals, they are adults. For example, our event manager has a great degree of expertise in events so I trust her skills and defer to her on issues that are outside of my knowledge.

As long as people have parameters, I find it generally works well.

What culture do you like or work best in?

I like where I am now… a smaller team environment. We do everything ourselves which is sometimes a bit full-on but better than large organisations where you can sometimes just feel like a number.

I like the intimacy and how you just get the job done, whatever it is. We work hard and yet we still have fun together.

Have you ever had a truly bad boss? What did you learn from it?

I think we all have had the bad boss but I try not to dwell on the negative. I’m a glass half-full guy. I look to people who have done great things.

I guess when it comes to bad bosses, you see how some people behave and you simply decide you won’t replicate that.

What did you learn from your best ever boss?

In my first 3-4 years of my career, I learnt a lot from a manager in a bank that I worked at. He was very very good at detail and engaged the staff particularly on a personal level; he also made work a fun environment.

As you get older, you know yourself and your own values, strengths and weaknesses better and better. For example I’m still not strong on attention to detail but I try and address that through check lists and where possible have someone who is good at detail check what I have done.

What are some classic management mistakes that you see over and over?

It has to be people who just make decisions based on numbers on a piece of paper without thinking of the people side of the business. I have seen repeatedly the difference that people can make to a business and they should always be considered.

The other one I see is people doing the same thing over and over when it’s not working. Move on! Try something else.

Final thoughts on leadership?

To be a good leader, I think you have to be true to yourself, you need to be open, you need to be honest and you need to be transparent.

Why a celebrant in your spare time?

I love it. A friend told me about it, I thought it sounded great, so 20 years ago I became qualified and am still doing about 20-30 weddings a year. It’s fantastic to meet wonderful people at happy occasions.

They get knocked down, they get up again

Resilience in the face of adversity

Every now and then a business may just have a disaster… fire, flood or perhaps even worse, in the premises. Many businesses have a plan for this; backed up IT, alternative buildings and so on, but it can still be devastating for the people involved.

One of academy‘s learning and development specialists recently noticed something pretty special about one such organisation mid-crisis. Here are Shane Garrott’s thoughts on the always impressive (but never more so) Liverpool City Council.

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In science, resilience relates to the ability of an item to absorb energy when it is deformed, and then return to its original state.

In psychology, it’s about human emotions and positivity in coping with, and bouncing back from, stress.

At academy we have seen it. Heard it. Taught it. But I am not sure if I have ever experienced the resilience I witnessed today.

Last month, Liverpool City Council’s chambers were destroyed in a devastating weekend fire. I saw the building on the news – it was burnt out but you could still make out the sign,

“Liver o   Cit  Council 1987”

- standing tall.

Despite knowing everyone was safe, it left an unsettling feeling.

Today I was lucky enough to catch up with the contact centre team who have since taken up operations in a tight and cosy training room in the council’s nearby depot. As I opened the door to the new temporary residence, I was welcomed with what could only be described as the most enlightening universal “Hi Shane! “Hello Shane” “Heeelllooo!” I’ve ever heard.

After some discussions individually, I began to understand what was behind the bricks and mortar of the council’s chambers. People’s notes, memories, experiences, accreditations, team awards – self-diarised over five years, 12 years, 17 years – lost; cherished photos of team member’s children and loved ones – lost.

Hearing the stories from individuals that observed the inferno on that weekend, and then the aftermath, makes you think… was it a house or a home?

“Hi Shane!” “Hellloooooo”

Enthusiastic. Lively. Why?

Despite the tragedy, the team continues to share a laugh, see the brighter side of the situation and get on with the job at hand. Internal and external customers continue to call and email with their requests that will right now require time and patience. They should know they are in safe hands.

It is this passion and emotion that can drive people in the work place. Science cannot magically self-forge steel and immediately restore a building, but a sign can stand tall against the odds. And the resilience of a team can teach us the importance of being strong, composed and confident in the onslaught of corporate emergency.

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Shane’s words made me think: How do we make sure we develop resilience in our organisations? Can you foster it? How do you know you’ve succeeded (unless the unthinkable actually happens to you)?

I took the opportunity to pose just a few questions to the extremely busy customer service manager at Liverpool City Council, Eva Cosentino. Here’s what she had to say:

Why do you think your team has been able to show such resilience?

The situation has been a shock for all of us and initially without systems to work with and business being as usual, it brought the team together to deliver service to the customers.  At the initial point of the fire occurring Customer Services was the main point of call for customers to deal with – and the main contact for their concerns.  It was been difficult for some staff at the start…  emotions were involved and some handled it better than others but steadily this has been overcome.

Has it been hard to get things done after the fire? How hard?

Initially, without phones, we had after-hours service take calls and we responded to these calls.  Within three days phones were installed and operational.  Systems were not in place so everything was done manually. Staff were only too eager to assist in whatever had to be done.  Over the last few weeks systems have been gradually installed and very little is now being done manually.  We have had a few issues to battle through…  but these have slowly been addressed and resolved.

How would you describe your team?

Everyone has come together to deliver and the team has handled the customers with courtesy and care. [They have] been tremendous in their efforts. We have been complimented by many on being up and running so efficiently, and this has boosted the team…  We are moving forward and will soon be progressing to our new building so this is something that we are all looking forward to and being reunited with the rest of team and Council staff.

My conclusion? A strong team of good people is already well set to pull together should a crisis occur. What do we take from this? Developing high performance teams is critical to your business… in good times for obvious reasons, but in bad times, the impact of people pulling together when they really need to is enormous.