Customer service as a profession: DuPont

Congratulations to the DuPont Customer Contact graduates

Eimer Boyle, learning and development consultant for DuPont in Australia and New Zealand, is clearly a woman who gets a great deal of satisfaction from her job. Her eyes light up as she talks about development – of people and their careers – and she describes DuPont as a company that really lives its values and ‘walks the talk’.

The company embraces learning and, with this philosophy behind her, Eimer knew she would have support from leadership to help shift DuPont customer service jobs to become customer service careers.  We spoke with Eimer after the recent graduation of DuPont’s customer service representatives from the academy Certificate IV in Customer Contact, a nationally recognised qualification.

How big is DuPont in Australia?

We have approximately 350 people in Australia and New Zealand.  We are mostly a sales and marketing organisation with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland, with two small manufacturing plants in NSW and many employees working from home based offices.

Why the Customer Contact program?

Our customer service employees are often the first touch point our customers have with our company and the level of service they receive will determine their first impressions of our company.  We don’t have a call centre as such, we run what we call the Customer Service Centre of Excellence. In earlier days our customer service representatives were located with the direct business they supported but now we have the representative sitting together, supporting and learning from each other.

Sitting together in the centre of excellence helps us – and them – manage their professional development much better.   We can coordinate access to training more easily whether on the job, through others eg. buddy systems or in formal face-to-face workshops.

We were attracted by the fact that this program is nationally recognised and this provided participants the opportunity to understand the best practice behaviours and mindsets associated with a customer service professional.

This has helped us reposition customer service as a career option within DuPont and think about job roles, job progression and succession planning in a more structured formal way.

We now define customer service as a profession here, not just a job, and part of this journey is allowing our people the chance to earn a formal customer service qualification.   It is satisfying to know that when our employees achieve the qualification it is something they will always have on their resume and can be proud of.

In the last year, this team’s awareness of customer service, their place in the organisation, the contribution they make, has been significantly boosted.

What did you want the graduates to learn?

We wanted to raise the awareness of best practice behaviours and mindsets and then ask employees to benchmark themselves against these standards so they could see how they were doing ie. what were their key areas of strengths and where they could improve.  We also wanted them to get exposure to an external trainer who worked with many companies on a regular basis and bring these stories into our organisation so our employees could become less internally focused.

How did you choose a training provider?

We look for a values ‘fit’ when looking for partners to work with.  That is always very important to us.  A company that would understand the DuPont culture and be able to reflect that in the training.  academy matched our core values very well.

You also need to be feel confident with the specific trainer you choose as they are going to spend time with your people month after month. The trainer who delivered this course was outstanding – consistently enthusiastic, bubbly, professional and interested in our business.   She had hands-on customer experience herself and was able to bring her personal experience into her teaching.

What were your goals for the training?

We really wanted to build a stronger sense of team so our goal was to deepen the rapport participants had with each other, to communicate better, to support each other and to learn and model what a customer service professional looks, sounds and behaves like.

Due to our numbers we had two groups on the same day.  Every few months  we mixed the groups so participants had the chance to spend time with everyone on the team.  We also wanted to ensure the training related to the DuPont customers and so we customised the case studies to reflect our current challenges and reality.

We needed hands-on support and enthusiasm from our team leaders and we certainly had that.  In our culture managers meet with employees one-on-one every month.  We ensured that these interactions become opportunities to debrief and coach team members to support the learning focus of the month.  This kept the material alive before the next training session.

To be strategic about this our team leaders met with the trainer after each workshop, so they planned how to reinforce the course content throughout the one-on-one discussions and indeed on a daily basis when applicable.

How did you measure whether the goals were met?

We sat down with academy before we began and set some learning targets.  They related to our customer satisfaction survey score for 2011, behaviours we wanted to observe more regularly in the team, attendance levels at the training plus meeting deadlines for completion of assessments, journals and workshop exercises.  The trainer had a great system of tracking completion rates, we recorded attendance and our team leaders did observation checks monthly.  Our customer service satisfaction score will be due out later in the year….fingers crossed we meet our target!  I have full confidence we will.

What other factors were critical to success?

Without a doubt the key element has been strong and consistent support from our senior leaders.   Our managing director launched our opening session, and he was also the one who gave out the certificates at the graduation ceremony. We tracked the team’s progress in our internal newsletter too with a story and some photographs.

The customer services team’s buy in was paramount.  To their credit each and every one of them has been highly committed to the process and there was a great level of support to each other in getting assessments completed.

A key learning to me has been the wonderful job the team leaders have done through continual coaching and role modelling.  They were participants in the program as well as supporting their team members through it.  This ensured they were aware of what was being taught and also they got to see first hand how their people performed in the role plays etc to make their coaching more effective during the one-on-one discussions.

Due to the success of our first wave we are now running this program at our manufacturing plant at Riverstone plant.  We are taking what we learnt from this program in terms leadership support and team leader coaching and adapting some of our managing structures at that site to ensure similar success.

What did the team say about the course?

The ones who had been around for quite a long time said it enriched what they knew to date and thus helped them feel more professional. The newer employees gained new insights into communication, their own communication style, priority management and how to deal with difficult customers.

One employee said that “it is satisfying that DuPont has invested in a course which is externally recognised”.

What is the general approach to learning and development at DuPont?

It’s extremely supportive to employees’ personal development. In a company built on innovation there is a core recognition that people need to always develop and learn in order grow and remain competitive.  DuPont is a company to believe in and be proud of.  Our miracles of science have created many diverse inventions that have changed humanity.  Did you know for example that in the Apollo space suit 11 of the 13 layers were made of DuPont product?

Formally, DuPont development principles support the model where 70% of learning comes on the job, 20% comes through others and 10% is formal training/self study.   Since a lot of employees stay with the company a long time formal and informal mentoring, coaching and networking is commonplace to share the wisdom and knowledge that exists across our businesses and functions.

Our core mantra is that employees own their own career and thus drive their own development.  We can provide the opportunity but only they can take advantage of it.   So if you step up and contribute well, say what would help you and have a business case for it… it is normally yours.

Training with benefits

People who train together, strive together

Building a community during corporate training programs

New skills, increased productivity, career and personal development. These are all the natural benefits of corporate training – and if you are not getting them from your training provider, you probably need to ask questions.

But there is one extra benefit of training, which is not often thought about upfront or factored in, and I believe it is time to change that. People who experience a training program together, bond. They form a community, a network, call it what you will.

That’s a massive advantage for nearly any organisation, and nearly any person within that organisation.

It is the power to pick up the phone to another department and personally know someone who can help. It is a ticket to informal corporate knowledge, insight into how other areas operate (as distinct from office gossip!). It is a connection beyond simply working for the same company. It is shared experience.

If companies foster a sense of community among course participants they are giving people a ready-made cross-functional team – or, in the case of people who are training in their teams, a much stronger link.

Here’s the kicker… community, connections to other people, keep people with their employers longer. Community is a retention tool.

As trainers, we can almost physically see these links between people forming, even in the most trying of circumstances. We recently trained people from a state Government department in the middle of a restructure. These were not happy people and they had been told they had to be at training to keep their job (not much fun for anyone at first!).

They all did similar jobs but didn’t know each other. The body language at the beginning of the first session was daunting to say the least.

As the icebreaker got underway, the participants started to realise they were all facing similar problems and had similar fears and concerns. As they shared their experience and chatted over morning tea, this became more obvious. By dinner, they were sharing positive ideas and solutions.

Between classes, they started sharing thoughts on approaching the assignments and by the last session, they were regularly contacting each other to offer and access support and bounce ideas around.

No doubt the participants learnt new skills throughout the course, but it was clear that the most valuable thing they got from the training was the community to support them in applying their new skills.

Community is not the sole reason you would choose to train people, but it certainly deserves its place on the honour role of training benefits.

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.

Clive Byrne: I’ve been shaped by good and bad bosses

You lot are intriguing. There are so many interesting people with fantastic management and leadership stories signed up to the academy ‘I learn therefore I am’ LinkedIn group… so we decided to profile group members every now and then so we can all learn from, and be inspired by, each other.

Our first guinea pig, ahem, subject is Clive Byrne, Call Centre & Telesales Manager for Australian Power & Gas  (thank you Clive!) –and I’m sure he won’t mind us calling him a contact centre veteran.

After all, Clive started his career in call centres back in 1987 as a customer service representative. Over the years he has held a variety of line management roles, dabbled in call centre technology and also consulted to the industry. He’s been with Optus (a few times!), AAPT, Canon for the last five years and has just started a new role heading up the outbound call centre for Australian Power & Gas.

What, if anything, did you change when you changed jobs?

Well, I was brought in to implement change so the expectation was there from the outset.  But what I ended up changing was unexpected.

We are a small team of 10 whose main remit is to make outbound calls. (The inbound calls are outsourced.) However, inbound calls were coming through to us and getting in the way of what we were supposed to be doing.

So I negotiated with our outsourced provider and found a way around it. We are now able to conduct value-add activities without adding to the headcount, which is important at the moment.

What surprised you about the new job?

There were no major surprises about the role but I was surprised in a good way about the company culture.  Every Friday afternoon, the company has drinks and nibbles. I thought that had long gone in these, um, more politically correct days.

It’s a bit old-fashioned, but it’s great. It gets people together in a social atmosphere. At 4pm, we down tools and catch up and wind down. People can still leave by 5pm if they want to… or they can stay. You can’t underestimate the power of strong relationships and this helps build them faster.

Is there anything about your background that you would say has shaped you and the way you manage?

Most of all, I think I’ve been shaped by previous managers, good and bad. Hopefully I’ve taken on some of the traits of the good and avoided the pitfalls of the bad.

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

Oh yes. Definitely.  Management is all about processes, operations and activity. It’s monitoring and supervision.

Leadership is leading people. It’s all about people.

Both are important but leadership is much harder. In theory, I think you can manage without people skills (depends on the job!) but for leadership you need communication. And not just communication… effective communication.

How do you lead?

Hmmm, I’m trying to avoid clichés.  I guess you could say it varies depending on the type of people around me.

In some organisations I have needed to be directive, although that’s not my natural or preferred style.  In others, I have been able to be empowering… something I much prefer and is much more enjoyable for everyone.

It has depended on urgency and objectives and, let’s be honest, competence of team members. The analogy is with the armed forces. In the heat of the battle, you need someone telling people what to do, not telling them to figure it out for themselves. Of course what I have worked on over the years is not life-and-death in that way, but if it has been urgent and vital to the bottom line, you sometimes need to choose to operate this way.

And be flexible enough to switch when the circumstances are right for empowerment. I certainly like to be managed in that way.

Are you a parent? Has that changed how you manage people?

I am. I have two girls, 11 and 10 years old. And, yes, I am sure parenting has changed how I manage at work. It’s probably best expressed as softening me a little bit; helping me to be more tolerant, empathetic and compassionate. Our kids have very different personalities and it reinforces how everyone is different and responds to different styles and motivations.

So if you manage according to that you may take more time to uncover and understand people.

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

Yes I have. (Huge laugh)

I’ve had some nutters in my time, a long time ago. I guess I’ve learned to deal with poor management better. If I had that time over, I would handle it differently.

My worst boss was back when I still lived with Mum and Dad. I remember telling them about it and having Dad say: “Regardless, he’s still your boss”. That’s a good lesson.

So these days if I don’t agree, I push back, I get my point of view across, but if my boss really wants something to happen a certain way, he or she is my boss, and I do it. If you really don’t like it, sometimes you should move on and everyone will be happier.

When you’re young and you have a bad boss, it’s almost confusing. You wonder if you are ‘supposed to’ behave that way. Your heart, instinct and common sense says no. And then you go on to a great boss and you realise your instincts were right.

What advice do you have for other managers?

I think you have to know your limitations. There’s a line from Magnum Force or something Clint Eastwood I think that says, “A man’s got to know his limitations”.

(Ed, fact checking – Yes it was 1973’s ‘Magnum Force’ starring Clint Eastwood.)

Be aware of your limitations, don’t worry too much about them (we all have them!) but do what you can to counterbalance.

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

Oh the biggest and most prevalent one is lack of communication. Either not communicating at all, or not doing so effectively.

And relying too much on email. Yes, I’m guilty of that from time to time. Using the wrong communication medium. We are all sometimes tied to our desks waiting for the next email to come in.

Final thoughts?

I find it a little sad that people don’t see call centres as a great career. Many people outside the industry see it as a temporary job.  But so many people work in it. It’s a big industry that’s underrated.

(Ed – 250,000 across Australia, or more than 1% of population, work in contact centres.)

I would be proud if my kids ended up working in the call centre industry.

Innovation, velcro and the university of life

Ideas + change = innovation

Innovation has been on my mind lately. Why? Because frankly, no business survives without it.  And my partners and I want a great deal more than mere survival for academy!

As a business owner, I obviously have a very personal stake in managing innovation. But whether you own the business you work in or not, everyone should  passionately care about it.

The benefits for the business are inarguable, but for the individual too… wouldn’t you rather work somewhere where your ideas are valued and you are encouraged (and given time) to think about what you are doing?  I know I would.

An innovative idea about, well… ideas

One of my favourite examples of innovation is a recent one. It speaks to the educator in me and it has at its core the DNA of innovation…  a simple idea arrived at by thinking about something in a different way.

Chris Anderson, entrepreneur and owner of TED, connected the dots; curious people looking for ideas and inspiration, people with inspiring ideas they were willing to share, and a technologically and socially linked planet. Thus TED (in its current form) was born.  Anderson has now loosened the brand’s apron strings, giving rise to a multitude of TEDx events and ideas translated into many languages.

If you haven’t yet seen a TED – or TEDx – video, I’ll post my two favourites at the end.  If you’re not a ‘TED person’ already, I bet you will be after having a look.

Indeed, this whole blog post was originally going to be about how TED is a virtual university of life and business; one that encourages life long learning and also delivers it to people in a form that they control… but then I saw this excellent Fast Company article. Please have a read.

TED is a big idea; a simple one that has changed how many people spread ideas. It’s an innovation itself, but it’s also a cultural phenomenon that can help others to innovate, stimulating new ways of looking at things.

But you don’t have to have one big idea to create a culture of innovation. Sometimes innovation is merely doing better with what you have, doing something in a slightly different way because you took the time to think through a process that made more sense.

Supporting an innovation culture

Just a few of the actions academy takes to support an innovation culture in this workplace are (not surprisingly!) internal and external education and development programs for all staff; cross-functional (and self-directed) teams to manage new initiatives and training projects; and regular  ‘Velcro’ Days for trainers (so things stick!). Even more importantly, I hope we communicate the value we place of innovation across the company.

What happens in your workplace to support innovation? Could where you work be more innovative? What would you suggest to senior management?

P.S. Here are the two TED and TEDx videos I was talking about… one is Nigel Marsh on work / life balance and was presented in May 2010 in Sydney. And the other is Sir Ken Robinson on education and creativity – inspiring stuff.

Old-fashioned fun leads to team success

Old-fashioned fun = contact centre success

Collecting debt isn’t an easy job and is probably one of the toughest in the contact centre industry. You are exposed to people suffering extreme hardship through to those who just don’t like to pay their bills.

Through it all you need to keep your cool and focus on the objective – to provide a “win-win” for everyone! When you look at it that way, it’s also one of the most complex customer interactions in the industry.

Last Friday night, was the Australian Teleservices Association academy Awards for Contact Centre Excellence (yes, we proudly sponsored) and the collections team that won the Under 50 FTE category was inspiring.

Who are these people? They are the Collections team from FlexiGroup.  I was blown away by the sense of togetherness, teamwork and good old-fashioned fun that emanated from them as they celebrated their nomination – and then their win.

The business reasons they won (the numbers if you like) are truly impressive. Over the past year, the team has saved the company $4 million and increased productivity 25%.

It’s clear to see these results have been achieved through teamwork, support, training and people who care a great deal about each other. Indeed, the CEO was there on Friday night, celebrating the team’s success right alongside them. (The FlexiGroup New Business group also won their category of 50-120 FTE, no accident I am sure.)

While I don’t know the team members personally, I bet many of them are friends for life.  When you spend so much time at work, sometimes engaged in stressful activities, isn’t it fantastic to do it with people you like?

That’s what we aim for at academy.

FlexiGroup’s wins are a compelling argument for ‘people-first’ management and I, for one, would like to learn more about how they make this work so well.

Congratulations to FlexiGroup, iiNet (who won the 120+ FTE contact centre category), the nominees; and all the incredible individual nominees and winners. The contact centre industry is about people and service and it’s inspiring to see how you all ‘walk the talk’.

Intergenerational leadership – A marketing furphy?

Australia’s next MasterManager

Adriano Zumbo's V8 cake: Perfect teamwork

As a manager you have to hope your team is not going to be as hard for you to wrangle as an Adriano Zumbo creation is for an aspiring MasterChef.

Did you see that angelic-looking V8 cake on the show last night? For those of you who did not, it was eight thin layers of cake heaven (well, Adriano’s was, anyway!)… eight layers of vanilla used in different ways, with more than 140 ingredients and four hours of cooking.  The picture is to the left and the recipe link is here.

The reason the cake is such a showstopper is that each layer builds on a theme and is very different from the others, but (and it’s a big but*), they are perfectly complementary and would not work nearly so well without the others. Hang on… isn’t that how a team should be?

It really made me think… if managers (and I am one) put as much effort and passion into understanding the ingredients of their teams, how they work together and how they work as a whole, many businesses may just be in even better shape.

I certainly can’t tell you how to do that in one blog post, it takes different combinations of training, personal development, mentoring and coaching, passion and plain old hard work, for different people. But if we think of Adriano Zumbo as manager and cake as team, we can better understand how important care and attention to each element is when you are creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

* Madly trying to avoid a joke about eating too much cake here

The yin and yang of sales

The yin and yang of sales

Some people may be able to ‘sell ice to Eskimos’ and others may be ‘born salespeople’, but I tend to disagree with the notion that great sales people are only born and cannot be made.

I believe that anybody who is passionate and believes in their product will inspire others to buy.

Furthermore, a natural ability to build relationships, through an empathic ability to identify people’s needs and wants (even when they cannot voice them!) will also close many a deal.

So all of these traits will bode well for a sales person’s potential to generate revenue.

However, I have also worked with many competent sales people who achieve solid results largely through hard work and discipline. These people may not necessarily be ‘naturals’ when it comes to relationship building and management, but their persistent dedication often gets them across the line.

I always hesitate to generalise, however perhaps we can conclude that there are at least two distinct ‘types’ of high achieving sales people. Leaving each ‘type’ with a variety of skills that can still be developed. Indeed, to be a truly great sales person, I believe people need to use tools from a variety of sources, with a range of leaders and mentors.

Sometimes this means training yourself (or being trained!) to go against a natural inclination. Good sales people who are strong on relationships can be coached in disciplined processes. And good sales people who rely on top notch systems can have their people skills developed, by good managers and training.

Having a mix of these natural skills sets in your sales team can only help. Companies that develop a range of attributes in their team may just elevate their sales from good to great.

What do you think makes for a great sales person?