How COVID-19 Is Testing My Leadership Skills and What It Is Teaching Me Along the Way – a Weekly Update (Week Two)

Last week I talked about how we at Calabrio are approaching the impact of coronavirus on our employees, as well as our employee-customer collaboration. Since then, we have seen a huge amount of engagement across our Teams channels, a reduction in the concern about working from home and rewarding online workshops with customers. Virtual meetups and coffee breaks are also going strong.

While establishing what Calabrio’s new ‘business as usual’ is, as a company that serves contact center customers, we have been working hard to find ways to help clients empower their agents and other contact center staff. Anyone who has attempted to contact an airline, hotel, medical facility or even an entertainment venue has noticed the enormous impact that COVID-19 has had on these organizations and entire industries.

Here are a few things I have learned this week that I am passing along. Check out my full article on TMCnet.

• Be Flexible
  • We are promoting ways to embrace this remote flexibility via agent scheduling. One example is that we are recommending that companies should look at how they enable remote operations with self-service mobile apps for employees.
• Improve Visibility of Information
  • Agents do their best work when they understand the “temperature” of their customer. For agents now dealing with a public that may be afraid, confused or angry, this means having up-to-date insights into customer experience and how agent interactions may need to change.
• Don’t Forget the IT Team
  • When planning for changes that involve how to deliver services or products to end customers, make sure that the IT team is part of the conversation up front. No one wants to make promises to customers that they cannot deliver on.

At Calabrio, our goal is to be both transparent and empowering, for employees and customers. I am hoping some of these thoughts will inspire other leaders to do the same. Read my full thoughts on TMCnet.