How to Improve Customer Service While Increasing Sales Revenue
With Angela Wynn, Head of Strategy at ASB Bank
Show Notes
Angela Wynn is the Head of Strategy at ASB Bank. She’s spent the last 20 years in the finance industry, in sales, service, and strategy roles. Most including big change management projects.
She’s the most incisive strategic thinker I know. Today, she shares her tips from one of her change management projects around how to increase customer service in your contact centres, while increasing sales revenue.
Top 3 Tips:
Take the time to understand what your customers want, and what good looks like in what your agents do. It’s vital to put your assumptions aside (07:28).
The more positive feedback your managers give their people, the better. All of us think we give a lot of it, but when you track it, you may realise you’re not giving as much as you thought (07:55).
Establish a coaching operating rhythm around when you expect your managers to coach, and track it. It’s easy to assume people are doing what you’re wanting done, but they may not be (08:33).
You'll Learn:
The key part of a coaching operating rhythm Angela credits for lifting performance (04:58).
How you can lift sales by improving customer experience (05:24).
The shift Angela made in their recruitment of Centre Managers and Team Leaders, which made all the difference in creating long term improvements in customer service and sales revenue (09:40).
Connect with Angela on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-wynn-51847a14/
Get your free copy of Game On here: https://bravatrak.com/game-on-book (you’ll also get the latest podcast episodes sent straight to your inbox).
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success, connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
I am Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak, the High-Performance Coaching System for Contact Centres. It helps you to create and sustain a world-class coaching culture, so you can beat your targets without burning people out. Guaranteed to increase your centers' performance by at least 11% within six months, or it's completely free.
I'm joined today by Angela Wynn, who's Head of Strategy at the ASB bank, and it is great to have Angela along on this podcast, as she has extensive experience in strategy, sales and service leadership roles. Most of those with a substantial change component. And she's also the most incisive strategic thinker that I know.
Today, she's got some great tips for you on how to improve customer service while also increasing revenue. So Angela, welcome along.
Angela Wynn (01:01)
Thank you Blair. I appreciate it.
Blair Stevenson (01:03)
Great to have you here. Just as a starting point, tell us a bit about your background and your experience.
Angela Wynn (01:09)
Yeah, so you've covered a bit of it, but primarily I've spent the last 20 years in the finance industry, with more than 10 years of that in banking. And I suppose within that, in sales, service, and strategy roles.
But the roles over the last 15 years have had really big change components. So that's, you know, big technology projects, completely changing distribution models. Or substantial uplift in sales and service results required.
Blair Stevenson (01:36)
Yeah. So let’s hone into that last part. Tell us a bit about the challenge you faced and the implications out of it.
Angela Wynn (01:45)
Yeah. So one of the situations was that I managed the contact based business, and that business was responsible for delivering both sales and service results. So it had a real balance between sales and service.
It had recently gone through a distribution, sort of, model change. And the problem was that, of course, the aspiration was that you improve both sales and service results.
But the big problem that I faced was that I didn't really understand how to improve service. I didn't really understand what good service to our customers looked like. We had pockets of really good [service] across the business, but we didn't have that consistency. And so it was a real challenge because I didn't quite know how to get there.
The other challenge we had with that, was that with our leaders, there was a real variance in their capability around their leadership skills. And more particularly, in their coaching skills.
Blair Stevenson (02:40)
So how'd you go about addressing the issue?
Angela Wynn (02:43)
Well we engaged BravaTrak to help us look at two issues primarily. And those issues were the ones that we thought were most impacting the customer experience.
So the first one was the operating rhythm. So when we coached, when we spoke to our frontline staff. And the second piece was the how the leaders coached.
So we went through quite a bit of a process with BravaTrak. And the start of it was that there was quite a lot of pre-work.
And the pre-work was really around making sure we understood what good looked like. So the first piece of that was really doing some behavioral analysis. And so everybody involved with the project went through that process, so they understood what they were looking for.
(03:30)
The second piece was 'how do we identify what good looks like?'
And we were really clear as a business that scripting wasn't going to be good enough to get us great customer service long-term. And also, that would really impact culture negatively with our staff. So we really needed to listen to a huge amount of calls, and understand what those who those high performers were, and what exactly they were doing.
And just to give you a bit of an idea of the piece of work, it was, I think, more than 10 people doing it for more than a week, just purely listening to calls. So we understood what good really looked like. So that was the pre-work that we did.
(04:09)
And then I suppose the next piece is actually, ‘what changes did we make to the business?’ There's a few things that we did.
Now we understood what good looked like, we made sure we implemented that into training and coaching.
The second piece was that we spent some time with our leaders training them how to be coaches, what that really looked like. Because we knew what we wanted them to do, but we needed to make sure they had the skills to do it.
The next thing - or the next kind of component - to what we did was around a coaching operating rhythm. And the important piece to that was that we didn't just say, ‘this is when we should be talking to our people’. It was actually tracking that and making sure that it was done consistently. Because we wanted to get an uplift in that customer service long-term, and consistently across the business.
And some of the key things around that is that we had a lot of positive reinforcement, making sure we were saying positive things to people. And then also had a system for noticing really good behavior. So it's kind of ‘walk around management, with a purpose’. And then, of course, we made sure we monitored and tracked all of that.
So those are the kinds of things that we did in the business.
Blair Stevenson (05:20)
Cool. So what were the results of that project, and what did you learn from it?
Angela Wynn (05:24)
Yeah. Well thank goodness, the results - I'll talk about those first - thank goodness the result was that we got an improvement in that customer satisfaction, and that was measured through NPS (Net Promoter Score).
But in particular around that, we got improvements in the areas we focused on with our training and coaching, which was great.
The other, sort of, measure that improved through this was actually an increase in sales results. So that's the thing. I think we had an uplift in sales and I think that's because we were connecting better with customers. We were having better customer conversations. We were really customer centric. And so we actually got an improved sales uplift as well, which was absolutely fantastic because we really needed to deliver both.
And I suppose the other things are that, you know, in the business now we understood what good looked like. And so we knew what we were aiming for. We knew what we were trying to achieve.
Other results are that, you know, we were smarter about how we inducted people, smarter around our recruiting, and also had better coaching and training, because we incorporated all of this work into those things for long-term.
Blair Stevenson (06:32)
Cool. So your experience, I think, is really highly relevant for most Contact Center Managers. For either those who … customer experience is so vital for all organizations now. So, you know, if you're in a sort of sales environment, you still want to improve customer experience. Or if you're not in a sales environment, you still want to have that uplift.
So I’m just curious about what would be your top three tips to General Managers - like you were in that role - or Heads of Contact Centers, in terms of getting those uplifts in customer service experience, while increasing sales revenue?
Angela Wynn (07:17)
Yeah, I suppose some of the big things for me, and it can be a little bit overwhelming thinking you need to have great service, but also increase revenue. But they're really connected.
Tip 1 (07:28)
And I think the big thing for me is to understand actually what your customers are after. What customers want. What good looks like. And I think, for me, I had some assumptions, right? And I thought I knew what good looked like. And I think as leaders, you can kind of make those assumptions.
But actually take the time to make sure you do understand what good looks like for your customers. So you know where you're aiming for. Otherwise, you don't really know what your aim is.
Tip 2 (07:55)
The other really big tip for me was, or thing I learnt, was around positive reinforcement and the benefit of that.
So I think all of us think that we give a lot of positive feedback. But when we started focusing on it and tracking it, we weren't giving as much of it as we thought.
And I think, naturally, people hold onto that negative kind of comment a lot more than, than the positivity. So you need to give more positive. And I think that holds true to any kind of leadership role, and / or if you're dealing with customers. More positive conversations, feedback, etc. the better.
Tip 3 (08:33)
And the other kind of tip or area, and I've touched on it, is around that operating rhythm. But you need to track and measure it. So you can say to people, "this is what we want you to do", but you know, everybody's busy.
Make sure it's tracked to get that uplift. If you're investing in a change, or you're investing in the business doing something, make sure you're actually sure it is happening.
Because, again, you can assume - and if you're more of a Senior Leader you're more removed - you can assume that people across the wider business are doing what you're wanting done. What you know needs to be done. But the reality is they may not be doing it. Or not everybody doing it.
So yeah, those are some of the big things I learned.
Blair Stevenson (09:17)
So true. So then what you're saying is that the coaching activity of your Team Leaders - your frontline managers - and also your Centers Managers is so critical. So what did you learn out of that in terms of the qualities you require in your Center Managers and your Team Leaders?
Angela Wynn (09:40)
Yes. So I suppose we learned a whole lot of things through the process we went through, and absolutely one of those was around, you know, 'what kind of people?' recruitment.
And so we tried to really embed - or looked for when we recruited - people who could display those types of behaviors. Had a passion for these things. For actually truly coaching. Had a bit of a base understanding of coaching, or, you know, were prepared to learn a lot around it.
So it's harder, but we kind of moved away from more technical skills to those kind of softer skills that would help us deliver that uplift in customer service, and realize how important it was, be really up for doing a whole lot of positive reinforcing, catching people doing great things all the time. We were after people with that kind of mindset and aptitude.
That made a real difference, I think, sort of long-term embedding those changes.
Blair Stevenson (10:40)
Yeah, totally, totally. It's always better to find people where you can play to their strengths. As opposed to try and plug their weaknesses.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Angela. Okay. So that's all we got time for today. Angela, thank you very much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. You've given us a wonderful insight into how to improve customer service while also increasing revenue.
Now for listeners, you'll find the link to the show notes in the episode description below.
And if you'd like to connect with Angela on LinkedIn, you'll also find a link to her LinkedIn profile in the description too (https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-wynn-51847a14/)
Now, if you've tuned in today is looking for a way to create and sustain a world-class coaching culture, so you can beat your targets without burning people out, have I got an offer for you!
You're welcome to a free copy of my book, Game On: How to Increase Sales, Productivity and Customer Experience by Turning your Managers into High-Performance Coaches.
The link to that offer is also in the episode description below (https://bravatrak.com/game-on-book).
Well, that's it from us today. Have a productive week.