Here’s the good news: The fact that you are reading this likely means that you’re still employed. While others in this current economy may find themselves unemployed, your company’s management continues to believe in you and your ability to help it achieve its goals.
Now, what might seem like the bad news: You are expected to achieve your employer’s goals and deliver quality customer service with fewer people and on a smaller budget.
While at first this might seem like bad news, it might also be an opportunity to justify your company’s faith in you, with the possibility for career advancement in the future.
Let’s look at how both you and your company may benefit from this idea of “doing more with less.”
Five Ways to Do More with Less
1. Reexamine job descriptions.
Begin by reviewing the duties outlined in your original job description. Identify those duties that you have not been doing, but could be. Are you responsible for customer service training for your team, for customer retention or cross-selling? Should you be?
Discuss with your manager what you’re doing now, what more you believe you could be doing, and what you believe might be handled better by someone else or not done at all. Your manager will be impressed by your willingness to take on new tasks to help the company during difficult economic times.
The next step is to solicit the same review by those who may report to you. This will help you better understand how to allocate resources and whom you can count on for various responsibilities within your department.
2. Look for ways to work smarter.
There’s nothing like a reduction in your workforce to point out the inefficiency in your operations. By looking for ways to work smarter, you’ll be able to spot opportunities to improve processes and procedures that may not have been obvious at higher staffing levels.
For example, what happens during shift changes? Is there adequate time to brief the incoming team, or are there gaps that could be addressed by changing the hours of the shifts?
Are productivity metrics up or down? Why? What’s changed, and how can we do better with what we have?
Are ordering, procurement, reporting and documentation procedures efficient? Look for any bottlenecks, analyze where the problem occurs and consider alternative procedures that make better use of your limited resources.
The same goes for the problem solving skills of your team. It takes significantly less time for an employee to understand a request, fill an order, troubleshoot a technical issue or answer an inquiry if that employee understands what the customer is really after. Sometimes what the customer needs is not what s/he requested; the more astute the employee and the better her or his problem solving skills, the faster s/he will be able to satisfy the customer.
Help develop your team’s analytical skills by involving them in complex cases. Ask them what they would do, and why. Be ready to question their responses, and guide them to reasonable solutions that are free from bias, intellectual laziness or a lack of process.
Consider training for you and your staff in critical thinking skills. Your company will benefit from your team’s stronger analytical skills long after economy prosperity returns.
3. Shorten call length and improve first call resolution.
Metrics that become more important as you try to do more with less include call handle time and first call (or in many cases, least-contact) resolution. Both of these measure your staff’s ability to work efficiently. Here are three customer service tips for improving both:
- Encourage front line team members to focus on the customer. Focus can by achieved by minimizing distractions, taking notes, trying to understand the customer’s attitude and aptitude levels, and confirming any information that may not be clear.
- Teach your technical team members how to phrase customer issues as “when…then…” statements. An example of a “when…then…”statement would be “When the system’s rebooted, (then) the IP connection can’t be restored.” The great advantage of rephrasing an issue this way is that it helps clarify, to both the customer and the technician, where they will begin looking to resolve the problem. The faster a technical rep learns to state an issue in “when…then…” format, the faster the resolution of the problem can begin.
- Show front line team members how to interrupt politely. In all cases expect those in which a customer is upset, demonstrate to your staff the polite and professional way to interrupt a customer who is rambling. By taking control of the conversation, reps can keep the call on track and make the best use of both the customer’s time and your company’s resources.
Help your staff develop these skills by practicing them. If your company records calls, find one that went longer than necessary. Sit down the rep in question, listen to the call together, and look for ways that the call may have been handled more efficiently.
If calls aren’t recorded, listen in a live environment or ask to be cc’d on e-mail correspondence.
While this type of coaching takes time, it is likely an essential part of your job. The bonus is that showing your staff how to be more efficient pays huge dividends on a daily basis!
4. Identify new challenges—and work to overcome them.
Have the recent policy changes at you company affected the customer/representative relationship? New conditions may bring with them new challenges, and you can’t guide your team if you don’t understand what they’re facing. Examine how under-staffed, over-rushed conditions that may have been caused by recent cutbacks are affecting your team.
Ask your front-line employees if they feel that they’re handling customers differently since cutbacks or policy changes occurred. Do they feel they’re able to provide top quality customer service? What do they need from you to do their jobs properly?
Help where you can. Get them as many reasonable resources as possible, and when you can’t, explain why. Don’t be afraid of getting in the trenches yourself to assist during particularly busy or stressful periods. This goes a long way to improving the morale of your team and demonstrating your commitment to them.
5. Sharpen your Coaching Skills.
If cutbacks have left you with fewer people on your staff, leverage the opportunity to provide more personal attention to each remaining team member. If you’re finding it hard to do more with less, chances are that the people who report to you are too. As their coach, it’s your responsibility to understand their challenges and help them do the best job they can.
Observe the technical and customer service skills of your representatives. Do they have enough product training? Are they providing top quality customer service?
Sharpen your coaching skills by focusing on three basic areas:
- Defining success: Team members have the right to know what you expect from them, so make sure your goals for them are clearly defined and understood. All team members should have a list of the criteria by which their performance is evaluated.
- Monitoring performance: Observe the customer and coworker interactions of your team so that you understand their levels of proficiency. The more time you spend on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder with your team, the better you’ll come to understand them and the more receptive they’ll be to your feedback.
- Providing feedback: Don’t be afraid to provide feedback to your team members! If you’ve been diligent about observing them, they’ll know your feedback comes from a first-hand understanding of their performance. Praise the behavior you want to see repeated, refine the behavior that needs a little tweaking, and correct behavior by demonstrating the way to do it properly.
Always position feedback for what it is: the opportunity for team members to learn, improve and advance in their careers.
Consider the situation at your company. Hopefully you’ll be able to apply some or all of these ideas to increase your and the company’s efficiency, production and/or revenue.
