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Team Leaders - the unsung heroes

While there’s no doubt a highly functioning team can achieve first-class customer service, it’s those proactive and effective team leaders working hard behind the scenes who really deserve the accolades, writes CSIA Certified Practitioner and Virtual CX Director Andrew Carlton.

As we slowly emerge from the COVID-19 fog and get back into some sense of a ‘new normal’, it provides an opportunity to reflect on some of the amazing things that organisations have done to improve customer experience. But how have they actually got stuff done? I reckon that it’s time to call out the team leaders who I see time and time again as the Book ones who pull everything together and make it now work.

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Here are some of the common characteristics of great team leaders.

They understand the business

Great team leaders are acutely aware of how each cog turns within the organisation and how they relate to each other. They When: October 22, 2020 from 6pm understand how customer service can impact - registration details coming soon -the business overall, how decisions made can impact other business units, and can find innovative ways to work with other departments to improve the business. Take Jaime, for example, her aged care Non

For Profit (NFP) needed to get staff to work from home but with an outdated phone system — an issue faced by most organisations. She was able to figure out the work-around, work with limited technology, build the plan, assist and encourage staff and all in the background make this transition seamlessly from the customer’s perspective. You can only get this done quickly and effectively when you know the business.

Excellent strategy execution

Most executives are brilliant at creating a strategy and product teams build and configure innovative products but, at the end of the day, this needs to be understood by frontline staff. Naturally, they are supported by training and processes but I continually see team leaders as the ones who ensure each and every staff member can deliver on the promise to customers. With patience, with care and with purpose they coach and match the individual needs of each team member. They are able to take the great idea and the grand plan and make it tangible, practical and meaningful.

First-class communication

The ability to not only communicate well with customers and call centre / customer service staff, but the ability to work seamlessly with IT teams and report in an effective manner to senior management is another trait of a topnotch team leader. As an example, Jayden from a finance company was able to not only ‘talk’ the external tech language, but also the business operational language and then translate both to the internal tech language in order to activate much-needed changes to some software. Others who lack these skills could not have made this happen.

Excellent work ethic

Great team leaders are in it not for the glory, but the satisfaction of making an organisation’s customer service team hum. No matter what is on their plate, they always have time for their team and for the customer. They are often humble and shun the limelight. Janice, working in a retail organisation, does not count her success in hours spent in the office but in team successes for the day. Her generosity of time and knowledge seems to have no bounds, and unless you go looking you do not see the effort that that takes.

I call these team leaders ‘unsung heroes’ as, just like the Jaimes, Jaydens and Janices of the world, they get stuff done, develop their teams, deliver for their customers and they ask for nothing in return. So, from all the executives, managers, team members and customers out there, thank you.

Andrew Carlton Director Virtual CX

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