Leadership, culture, strategy, feedback.
All of these are great words in the business world, but they can cause chaos if not built, maintained or nurtured effectively. Look at the crew team above and particularly the position of the paddles.
Do you think that the team is working well together? Are they operating at peak efficiency? While they probably aren’t spinning in circles, the front half of the boat is operating out of sync from the back half. The end result is that they’re wasting valuable energy and are likely being passed by other boats in the race.
Let’s talk about how this is supposed to work. The person in the front facing those rowing is called the coxswain. Their job, aside from making sure the team doesn’t hit anything, is to keep everyone focused, in sync and motivated to win. When the team is dialed in and working perfectly together, the boat is working at peak efficiency and races are won.
Which boat looks like your service desk? Are you operating a peak efficiency? Are your agents dialed in? Let’s get our positions straight: Who is rowing your boat?
On my desk, it’s our frontline agents, completely focused on taking care of our internal customers. We talk about our customers often to make sure that we’re dialed in and focused on the same things.
The coxswain is like our supervisor on duty. They are keeping close watch on the operation, the queues, the stats, the feedback and any escalation requests. They are constantly checking in with the team and making sure everything is OK, providing feedback/ encouragement and answering questions.
Where’s the manager? They’re on shore looking at the overall race, checking positions of the other boats relative to theirs and evaluating how the team is doing as a whole and looking for areas of improvement and preparing for the next race. While your desk may be structured differently, the needed roles are likely the same.
Service desks tend not to operate efficiently when these positions are mixed up, where, for example, the supervisor and the manager are both in the boat (that’s dead weight) or worse yet, there’s no coxswain and the agents are left fending for themselves.
Here are some things that I have learned over the years:
- Service desks need to be aligned on their purpose. Everyone on the service desk needs to understand their role and purpose in the organization and how their work ties into the organization’s larger purpose. Leaders need to reiterate this daily.
- A positive culture breeds success. It can take years to turn around a negative culture, yet a good culture can be ruined in 10 minutes by a bad leader. As leaders, we need to constantly be setting the example of what we want to see in those whom we manage and provide constant feedback and encouragement along the way.Even on our worst days, we need to be at our best for our teams.
- Our coxswains need good tools to constantly assess the organization. What metrics can you measure in real time to provide good feedback to supervisors on how things are going in the moment? How can you best communicate those stats to agents so they know how they are doing individually and as a group?
- Managers need time to reflect and think. They can’t be in the boat! On so many desks I’ve seen, managers and supervisors are both living in the moment and no one is tracking the overall direction of the team. As an example, I block off my calendar for part of every Friday afternoon to take time to slow down and assess the week and plan for what’s coming up next.
- Crew teams don’t win races with broken paddles and leaky boats. Not only do frontline agents need to be empowered to report things that get in their way of servicing customers, but leadership needs to be involved too. For example, periodically, I’ll sit with agents deskside to see firsthand how our tools and processes are working. Sometimes, a fresh set of eyes catches things that others simply accept.
To build an exceptional service desk, everyone needs to be in sync on who is their customer, what those customers need from the desk and the most efficient way to deliver it.
As leaders, we need to show up for our teams, always in a positive way and always ready to help. Lastly, leadership needs to create channels where agents feel heard and appreciated, ensuring that their insights and challenges are brought to the forefront. After all, those on the frontlines often hold the key to identifying inefficiencies and generating innovative solutions.
Leaders who prioritize these elements will find that even the most challenging "races" can be won with grace and determination.