How We Freed Up Team Leader Time to Do More Coaching
With Sarah Mannion, Global Support Centre Manager at Fisher & Paykel Appliances
Show Notes
Sarah Mannion is the Global Support Centre Manager at Fisher & Paykel Appliances.
Her earliest contact centre role was back in 2000. She has deep experience in the finance sector, and at the intersection of HR and operations.
Today, she shares how she was able to turn around the coaching in her centre, by significantly freeing up Team Leaders’ time.
Sarah’s Top 3 Tips (08:12)
Identify the role you expect of your Team Leaders, and ask yourself, if you were to start again, how would you structure your contact centre to make that a reality?
Make sure you have the right Team Leaders in your centre. It’s vital to keep an eye out for new talent.
Connect your people to the voice of the customer, and to your organisation’s values and purpose. That way, everyone is clear about how they fit in to where you’re going.
You'll Learn:
How Sarah has structured her centre, to allow Team Leaders to spend 90% of their time coaching (02:07).
What change Sarah has made to enable much better career progression in her centre (06:28).
The tool Sarah uses to do frequent pulse checks of employee engagement (09:19).
How Sarah is ensuring Team Leaders do the coaching they need to, even if they have a natural tendency to avoid doing it (09:27).
The 2 elements of how Sarah is maintaining a great company culture, even with everyone working-from-home (10:04).
As part of this transformation, Sarah would like to acknowledge Suhail Shaikh who joined Fisher & Paykel and saw the gaps in their structure and the impact this was having on their leaders. He worked alongside Workforce Planning Manager, Tarush Airi, to deliver the business case and embed the change to deliver what they have today.
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-mannion-87bb2213/
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success podcast, 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. Our Sales Leadership System enables contact centres to increase revenue and achieve their sales growth targets.
I'm joined today by Sarah Mannion, who is the Global Support Centre Manager for Fisher & Paykel Appliances.
So Sarah, welcome along. Great to have you here.
Sarah Mannion (00:25)
Thank you, lovely to be here.
Blair Stevenson (00:29)
Fantastic. So just as a starting point, tell us a bit about yourself and your experience.
Sarah Mannion (00:34)
Thanks Blair. Yes, I've been at Fisher & Paykel around three years now. And prior to that, I've been in other leadership roles, mainly in HR areas in more recent years. So this role is about bringing together my HR experience and my operations experience, mainly in the finance industry in past companies. So that's a bit about me.
Blair Stevenson (00:57)
Cool. I'd really love to talk to you about team leadership and coaching. And one of the things I know is that you you've mentioned to me that you've restructured your global support center, so you can free up time for your Team Leaders to coach.
So the starting question would be, why did you do that?
Sarah Mannion (01:18)
I think what we saw in front of us, a couple of years ago now, is that we saw Team Leaders pretty much on their feet most of the day. Walking around the contact centre when people had their hands up asking for help.
So their day was spent mainly walking the floor, we used to say, and they would be helping real-time support the team, but they would also have to be looking at the queue board to see which calls were queuing, who had been on the call for a long time, was someone not on a break and they should have been. That sort of thing.
So they were actually trying to manage both, which left them minimal time to actually support their teams, post those real-time conversations. So they weren't having time for coaching and much support, apart from in real time.
Blair Stevenson (02:04)
Right. So what changes did you make to free up their time for coaching?
Sarah Mannion (02:07)
We really looked at our structure and tried to understand, what was the role of a Team Leader? So we realised we were asking them to do too much, and it was pretty impossible. And so we sat back and thought, "Well, if we were to start again, what would true leadership look like in a contact centre?"
And so we restructured the team, and had the Team Leaders reporting to our contact centre manager, who focused purely on coaching, one-on-ones and support after the fact. So not in real time.
And then we set up our shift coordinator team who report to our workforce planning manager, who deal with supporting in real time. So they are on a phone queue, taking support in real time from the agents as they need help - they phone to a central queue - as well as they are looking at what we would say is the wallboard, but it's all at home now, where they're looking at real time, what's going on in the centre, and providing support to the team.
Blair Stevenson (03:06)
Fantastic. I love the concept of starting again, it's a smart move because I do see across multiple contact centres that Team Leaders get overloaded with work. How much time did you actually free up in terms of Team Leader time, in order for them to be able to spend time coaching?
Sarah Mannion (03:29)
Really their full role now is coaching and support of their team. And they do help their teams sometimes with serious escalations. So if they need help and follow up post a call, sometimes the Team Leaders will help with that with the customer, but pretty much 90% of their time would be doing side-by-side coaching, doing the one-on-ones, doing call qualities - they do the call quality themselves - and doing that support for the team. So that is what they're doing.
Blair Stevenson (04:01)
Right. What's been the reaction of the Team Leaders and your agents to this change?
Sarah Mannion (04:09)
The agents now don't know any different, the new agents as we bring them in, but the existing agents really noticed the time that they got with their Team Leaders. So they just weren't getting time with their leaders unless they were asking for support real time. So yeah, a totally different approach.
And the Team Leaders love it, because they're very clear with their role now. It was very blurred before.
Blair Stevenson (04:34)
Right. Completely understandable. So you put these structures in place prior to COVID-19. But I'm sure you reaped the benefits once the pandemic hit. What did you notice in terms of the benefits of that structure?
Sarah Mannion (04:51)
I don't know how we would have coped with COVID-19 if we didn't, we would had to have made some fast change, but because we had the structure in place, it was very straightforward for us.
So we had our shift coordinators who were monitoring the queues anyway, so they could just do that remotely from their homes. And the Team Leaders just had to learn how to do side-by-side coaching remotely, which was really fantastic.
And the other supporting technology, I think with Microsoft Teams, as many people have seen, the value that that adds with a remote workforce has really helped. But the blend of that technology and the structure and people changes we've made is what got us through.
Blair Stevenson (05:34)
Awesome. What impact has that had on some of the key cultural indicators? I'm thinking about things like unplanned leave, attrition and employee engagement.
Sarah Mannion (05:47)
It just means we have time to have the conversations with people. So before, we were very reactive. We would just stand around a board in the morning, and see how many people were away that day.
Whereas now the Team Leaders have much more time to understand what's going on with their people. Why people are away, and what are the right conversations to have with them. So we have seen a shift in that.
Have we solved the secret to reducing unplanned leave in a contact centre? No, I don't think we have. But I think we are well aware of why people are away. And I think that's really important as to what sort of support they need.
Blair Stevenson (06:24)
Yeah. And what about things like attrition and engagement?
Sarah Mannion (06:28)
The thing we've probably seen that we're most proud of is the career progression. Because we are having time to have those development conversations now with our team, we're seeing a lot more movement.
So whilst it creates the challenge frontline, because you're continuing to replace agents because they're moving around in other parts of the team, or within our business, it's a great problem to have. So we are seeing a lot more movement.
So career progression, we've really seen having that extra step of a shift coordinator in has really helped provide us a clear career path for our team. Because we've had people go from an agent to a shift coordinator, and we see some real leadership skills starting to flourish in those teams. And so then they're moving to Team Leader. So we've had a number of that success in the last year.
Blair Stevenson (07:21)
That's fantastic. I think more and more people are looking for those career paths and what are the opportunities for them.
Sarah Mannion (07:31)
Yeah, I think so. During last year, we had people that were much more skilled than we'd had before, because obviously with COVID, in different industries people were struggling. And so we've really reaped the benefits of that with the career path we've had, because we've been able to progress people.
Blair Stevenson (07:49)
That's awesome. Clearly this change was hugely beneficial in terms of the pandemic, it's had a real positive impact for your business. To wrap up, if you were giving advice to other contact centre leaders about making this change, what would be your top three tips?
Sarah Mannion (08:12)
Tip #1
I think the one that we touched on before is, step back and actually look at your structure and look at what people are doing and what you expect of them in their roles. That would be the first one.
Tip #2 (08:22)
And then secondly, make sure you have the right Team Leaders in your organisation. So we had quite a change in Team Leaders during that time, we brought in some new talent. So really look out for those leadership skills to ensure the model's going to work.
Tip #3 (08:39)
And then the last thing that we're probably doing a lot more now, that's really helping embed the whole change, is really connecting our people to the voice of the customer, to our values, to our purpose and making that whole connection right through all of the roles in our team. So everybody's very clear how they fit in to where we going.
And I think that's probably the part that we're really now starting to see demonstrated in our results, that sort of brings that whole structure together. So just that connection to why we're all there.
Blair Stevenson (09:08)
Hey just one other question. Do you have any way of assessing who's at risk in terms of health and safety or productivity, and so on?
Sarah Mannion (09:19)
I suppose we've got many tools. From an engagement point of view, we use the tool OfficeVibe. So we use that as a pulse check all the time.
We need to ensure our Team Leaders are checking in with people all the time. So that's why it's so important that that is their role. And we're seeing some are more skilled at it than others. So I think it depends on you as a person as to what you need.
You know, if you don't need a lot of checking in and you just get in and do your thing and don't need a chit chat with others, then sometimes I think some of those Team Leaders don't understand the importance. But we're really driving the structures around that. So more team meetings, more check-ins.
And then deliberate social connectivity. So once a month, the Team Leader organises a social something with the team, and they go out and they do bowling or they do whatever. So making sure we get the social connection, so that they still feel part of the team, especially when you bring in new people in.
Blair Stevenson (10:23)
Yeah. I was talking with another senior leader recently and she said what she's worried about now is they used to have a very, very good culture. And she said as new people come in, they're not being inculcated into that culture. So that monthly thing is a really smart move.
Sarah Mannion (10:43)
Yeah. I mean, it's really hard. It has to be very deliberate and you have to, and I think we're all learning.
People have got the opportunity to work in the office if they want to. So we've got a booking system where people can book in a set of desks, if they want to. So we have a couple of people that always work in the office, for example, because they don't want to work at home. And what we want to get to is that a group of people could book to go in together, and start to get that going.
Blair Stevenson (11:17)
Awesome. Brilliant. Thank you very much, Sarah. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk today.
Sarah Mannion (11:21)
You're welcome. Thank you. Lovely to be here.
Blair Stevenson (11:24)
For listeners, you'll find the link to the show notes in the episode description below.
And if you'd like to connect with Sarah on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-mannion-87bb2213/), you'll also find the link to her LinkedIn profile in those show notes too.
And lastly, if you'd like to follow me on LinkedIn as well (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevensonblair/), or connect with me on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/blair.stevenson.980), you'll find links to my profile there too.
Well, that's it from us today. Have a productive week.