How to Lead Your Remote Teams to Get the Best Out of Them
With Sheryl North, Consumer Programmes Lead at Spark New Zealand
Show Notes
Sheryl North is the Consumer Programmes Lead at Spark New Zealand. She’s spent the last 25 years in the contact centre industry, and was responsible for setting up and running Spark’s highly successful Agents at Home programme from 2010 to 2020. She’s got a number of great hard-won tips for how to manage remote teams to get the best from them.
Top 3 Tips:
Have teams either fully in-office, or fully remote. Blended teams don't work (where some agents are in-office, and others work from home). Sheryl found that blended teams isolate your remote people (06:26).
Frequently connect with remote team members, and link their actions to the organisation’s strategy and purpose. It’s vital to prioritise these check-ins, even if your queues are busy (09:47).
Always do a pilot first, before launching into a full-scale work-from-home programme (11:23).
You'll Learn:
The key parts of Sheryl’s business case for the Agents at Home programme, which have helped make it a success (03:20).
The recruitment process Sheryl has refined (which you can copy) to ensure you screen out candidates who aren’t a good fit for working remotely, as well as finding ones who are. You’ll be able to avoid the “spectacular recruiting fails” Sheryl made (07:25).
The one thing Sheryl did to shave 40 minutes off interview times with candidates for remote roles, while improving the quality of candidates interviewed (08:18).
Connect with Sheryl on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-north-25a76536/
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 podcast. Connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
I am Blair Stevenson, the founder of BravaTrak. The High-Performance Coaching System for Contact Centers, that helps you to hit your targets without burning people out - by creating and sustaining a world-class coaching culture. Guaranteed to increase your centers' performance by at least 11% within 6 months, or it's completely free.
I'm joined today by Sheryl North, who's the Consumer Programmes Lead at Spark New Zealand, and I'm really excited to have an opportunity to interview Sheryl for this podcast. Not only does she have extensive contact center management experience, but she is also responsible for setting up Spark's highly successful Agents at Home program over the past 10 years.
Today, she's going to share a number of hard-won tips for you on remote leadership from that Agents at Home program. So Sheryl, welcome along. Great to have you here. So maybe just as a starting point, just tell us a bit about your background and your experience.
Sheryl North (01:10)
I'm a school teacher, who grew into a sales career, who then turned up in Telecom (the previous name of Spark New Zealand) in 1996 as a frontline agent. And then held different roles through Team Leader through to Center Manager and and eventually into Head of Contact Centers.
But as you said, the last 10 years - from 2010 through to 2020 - I was the Agents at Home Customer Experience Lead. And I’ve have since been in Consumer Programmes. So a little bit broad across the thing, but mostly my history is contact center.
And then as we developed Agents at Home, you know, how did we then look at ways for our people to work that would be longer term, and more effective for the business as well.
Blair Stevenson (01:55)
Cool, cool. So your experience is highly relevant in today's world where, you know, there's a lot of pressure for Contact Center Managers in COVID-19 times to move their agents to home-based. So I was just curious about what originally led Spark to opt for remote working, with the Agents at Home program?
Sheryl North (02:19)
We were thinking about it in late 2010. Just a pilot. It was for us to understand whether there was any scope for flexibility. We weren't the only ones looking at it at the time.
We originally started with a very detailed, just "let's have a go at the pilot", but of course in February 2011, when the earthquake hit in Christchurch (New Zealand), we had a desperate need to try and find a way for our Christchurch people to be able to work.
And so we took what we were going to pilot in Auckland, pretty much sent all the kit on a plane from Auckland, and delivered it out to our people. And from then what we were able to do was approach it really differently, too.
So what was a very structured, organized Gantt-charted pilot turned into a really creative "let's test and learn" program of work, using our Christchurch people to start with, and we really just built from there.
Blair Stevenson (03:10)
Cool. So thinking about that testing and learning, you know, what did you learn about the importance of remote leadership, from that experience?
Sheryl North (03:20)
A couple of things. So first and foremost, deliberate connection.
When you've got people working who are remote, then it is really important that they can feel connected into your business, that they understand what the purpose and the mission is that you're trying to deliver so that they can feel aligned to it. Everyone wants to feel purposeful, right? So communicate the why.
And the other thing I think was we learnt to be really clear on the value proposition. For us - for the business - there was obviously savings, and the ability to flex and get more efficiency. In terms of our customer facing metrics, there's obvious efficiencies if you can line up your bricks-and-mortar around any remote programs carefully. Employee engagement also was, you know, that's in it for us, but then to be really clear with our people about what are they gain.
So they were going to get the ability to work from home, their work-life balance, their costs versus their expenses. So what exactly would the agent value proposition be? Because if you can get the right people - and that probably is what we learned is the right people are critical to it - when you get them, they will never want to go back.
Blair Stevenson (04:29)
Cool. So I'll come back to the right people shortly around recruiting, but before I do, would you say that program was successful? And if so, what did you attribute the success to?
Sheryl North (04:41)
Oh, 100%. So our first two years we met our business case benefits, and those were largely around efficiency.
The BCP (Business Continuity Plan) capability bear in mind, you know, we were still navigating through what the Christchurch earthquake meant for our contact center in Christchurch. We had a very heavy - and still do - contact centre presence there. But even through now to not only the efficiency that we gained, but underpinning everything.
So when it came to last year and we had to navigate lockdown, we had a program that we could rapidly deploy all the learnings for and take all of our retail people - who were unable to get into their stores - and enable them to work from home.
So over time it has been very successful in and of itself, but also to then pivot into other ways that we had to learn to be different.
Blair Stevenson (05:28)
Right, right, right. And before this podcast, we were talking about the term hard-won, which implies we make mistakes along the way. What were some of the key mistakes you made and what did you learn from them?
Sheryl North (05:43)
Yeah. Our first couple of years were transition, so we moved contact centre people that we knew and trusted and had proven performance for, and took those who wanted to literally, you know, transition to work from home. So that was super successful. They wanted to do it. We knew how they performed. We could bring them back if they didn't.
We also then wanted to look at how do we take that and be able to recruit off the street, so fit-for-purpose. And what we learned was that we really underestimated people's ability to calculate their own ability to work from home.
And they misconstrue what it means for their family. So we had people who were signing up thinking they were coming back off parental leave and could work with, you know, a two week old baby in the house, and that really wasn't going to work.
And so really getting clear on what is it that you're signing up for? We had to be clear in our recruitment.
The other thing that we learned is that blended teams don't work. So we are much more successful when everyone's on an equal footing. So trying to do half a team that's bricks-and-mortar - with some people wrapped around it working from home - really quickly we learned that that just creates two different camps.
And you isolate your remote people. Because the conversation moves on in bricks-and-mortar, in and around the leader at the time, and your people remotely are kind of left out from that.
So it was much, much more successful when we had leaders working from home in the same way that their people do, and that you then create your technology in your environment to support that connection.
So we hit some recruitment fail spectacularly.
Blair Stevenson (07:13)
Right. I have no doubt. What's the approach that you kind of evolved to in terms of recruiting?
Sheryl North (07:25)
We kind of learned, ultimately, that we built in tests. So we created a selection process that requires the applicant to do some things that they may not know are a test, but they are their ability to function almost in the system that they were going to need to be successful.
So having an interview on camera meant that they had to in the background, install maybe a new application or open up a webcam, or at least be able to, you know, turn up on camera. And plus, bonus for us, we got to look at their environment they were going to work in.
We also questioned the applicant in the interview that required them to go off to our website and cut and paste something and hotkey back. So the ability to run a couple of screens at any given time, copy-paste, hotkey, all those sort of things about technology, because people who work remotely have to be a little bit more resilient, because they don't have easy access on hand.
Sheryl North (08:18)
We also learned that the environment's huge. And so originally our interviews turned out to be 40 minutes of us talking about what it is that you're signing up for. What does it mean to work remotely and what would your environment have to be? And we weren't getting enough time just interviewing our people for why they were going to be great for the role.
And so we pivoted that to, we created a video that we shared and that they observed and read and looked through and signed up on some things; "You must have a lockable office", "it must be an extension of your workplace", "you can't be in charge of your children", all these things that we wanted them just to agree to before they even decided to proceed with the application process.
Because what we're looking for, obviously, is that the contact centre is a highly structured, really measured environment, but you're going to be working entirely unsupervised, at home. So understanding what that might mean, you have to get the right people.
So we'd just kind of tweak the process in a way that meant that we got all that out the way before we even got to interview.
Blair Stevenson (09:22)
Cool. Those are some really useful tips for other people who are thinking about, or having to transition their workforce to a work from home situation. So with that in mind, what would be your top three tips for Contact Centre Managers who are either thinking about, or having to transition their workforce to a work from home environment?
Sheryl North (09:47)
Your leaders are everything. Again, I talked a little bit about them being in the same environment. I think the phrase is now “drinking your own champagne".
So have them on an equal footing so that they can, you know, have the empathy and be aligned. Look for deliberate connection.
The technology is so much better now than what we had. You know, we've got Zoom calls and (Microsoft) Team calls and, you know, plenty of ways. Chat constantly through the thing. So give your people plenty of ways to connect back in.
And I did talk about, be purposeful about connecting them to strategy and purpose, and look for ways to connect and prioritize that time together. So I did more as the Centre Manager, more meetings, more "ask me anything" sessions, more celebration forums. And we were quite deliberate about that and we never, ever, ever compromised.
So our workforce team didn't love me much, because when it came to really busy queues where we would otherwise, you know, pull back on any off-queue work, my answer was "no, I need more time", even if it's just a 10 minute check-in because that is potentially the only time that they would have to just connect with each other and re-anchor them back in what we're doing and hear what their experiences were and just re-reinvigorate them for the rest of the day, really.
We all get it when we walk into the mothership, but in (remote working) environments you've got to find ways to create that connection to your brand and to your purpose in really creative ways. We branded everything for them.
Blair Stevenson (11:15)
Makes sense. Makes sense. Fantastic. Any other tips before we finish up?
Sheryl North (11:23)
"Test it first" would be my strong advice. Always, always pilot first, have a go. I'm more than happy to help and offer advice to people if they would like to just come and talk through that, but test it and be clear on what you are testing before you then launch into a full-scale program.
Blair Stevenson (11:40)
Brilliant. Thank you so much. So that's all we've got time for today. I'm just going to say thank you to Sheryl for coming on the show. You've given us some extremely useful insights into remote leadership for home-based agents.
And for listeners, if you'd like a link to the show notes, you'll find that in the episode description below.
And just picking up on something that Sheryl just offered. If you'd like to connect with Sheryl on LinkedIn, you'll also find a link to her LinkedIn profile in that description below as well (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-north-25a76536/).
Now, if you've tuned in today, looking for a way to hit your targets without burning your people out - by creating and sustaining a world-class coaching culture - 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).
That's it from us today, have a productive week.