Powering change: Three fundamentals you need to get right
You may have read the article I wrote a couple of weeks back that focused on the micro-behaviours that set the best customer-focused agents apart from the rest. A number of people commented on how insightful it was to get down to such a specific behavioural level. Still, their next question was often how do you actually embed these behaviours to deliver long term results?
In this blog post, we will focus on how Energy Australia embedded a micro-behavioural framework, engaged employees, improved the customer experience, delivered outstanding financial performance and became one of Australia’s best sales contact centres.
In 2018 Energy Australia made a decision. To prosper in the increasingly competitive and commoditised energy market, they needed to change the conversations they were having with their customers. This decision kicked off a program of work that defined what a great customer conversation looked like, trained frontline teams, developed leadership capability, aligned call quality processes, changed operating rhythms and embedded behavioural measurement and tracking systems.
(If you would like to learn more about this program have a look at this webinar).
As many of you know, changing and aligning the behaviour of hundreds of people requires a multi-faceted approach consistently executed over time. However, when asked what really made the difference Energy Australia landed on three critical things:
Build a compelling business case
One thing sure to derail any program is to completely change course halfway through. During the period in which Energy Australia executed the program, they had the usual restructures and changes in leadership. But each time the logic, goals and vision laid out in the business case, as well as the incremental gains in line with key milestones, were enough to convince incoming management not to change course. Instead of just relying on a key sponsor to see the program through, they relied on a compelling business case to be the north star.
Engage people early and often
People rarely push back on their own ideas. When asked the right questions in the right context, most frontline agents know what they need to do to improve the customer experience. Energy Australia engaged frontline teams and their leaders early and they deliberately built their input into the program. Once the program started, what the people were asked to do was what they said needed to be done. When new senior leaders came on board, partway through the program, the frontline told them, “Don’t touch our program!”
Measure and recognise the change in behaviour
Behaviour changes well before KPIs change. Energy Australia understood that if they waited until KPIs changed to reward and recognise individuals and teams, it would be too late. The gap between the hard work of changing ingrained habits and affirmation would be too great, and the agent’s motivation would dissipate. To overcome this common pitfall, Energy Australia set up a valid and reliable system to measure the change in customer-facing and leadership behaviours that were occurring incrementally throughout the program. They also embedded a software program to track skills progression and coaching activity which formed a foundation for ongoing reward and recognition.
Whether you are trying to make a small tactical change or a large transformational change, you could do worse than make sure you get these three things right.
PS As a reward for reading this far here is a little bonus for you. Ever since the advent of agile and especially since COVID, everyone is PIVOTING. I have never liked the concept of the “pivot” as it implies that you have to come to a complete stop before changing direction, this is just not the way it works in real life. So, I am proposing a change in language as a better description of what is happening right now. Swerve: an uncontrolled change in direction at speed!
[Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash]
