Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership, Management, Organizational Behaviour, People Management

Why Managers Need To Understand Organizational Behavior

April 25, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 1 Comment

As managers begin to study organizational behavior, they will be struck by the fact that they can apply what they have learned immediately to the problems they encounter at work. Managers will be gaining a broad view of organizational behavior disciplines, and they will also find different ways they can alter their management philosophy to reflect the knowledge newly found in the study of organizational behavior. The more the knowledge about organizational behavior grows; the more managers will become skilled in understanding and analyzing the behavioral implications of the problems facing their organization. Before we look at the necessity of managers studying organizational behavior, let’s first look at the organizational behavior theories.

Human Relations Behavioral Theory

This theory states that organizations function well when the staff feels empowered and valued. The theory is based on studying the productivity of the employees under different circumstances of work. Human relations behavioral theory also states that the staff in an organization are likely to increase efficiency and productivity if they feel validated and satisfied at work.

For example, things such as free lunch could help employees feel content and secure because their company meets their needs. When the staff believes that management cares about their needs and wants, they feel a sense of loyalty, and this boosts their productivity in return.

Decision-making Behavioral Theory

This is the most applied theory to supervisors and managers because they can make more of their decisions that affect their company. Decision making behavioral theory states that people within an organization can only make decisions based on the available information. However, the information must be complete and accurate for the decision to achieve a specific goal.

The person making the decision should have the ability to sort through the process and information correctly. Inadequate or insufficient information leads to bad decision making. Also, managers who are not strong in information synthesis are likely to make bad decisions.

Servant Leadership Behavioral T

The servant leadership theory has gained a lot of influence over the past few decades. The theory states that the leaders in an organization will achieve success only if they become servants of their employees. Leaders wield influence in an organization, unlike servants. They are therefore able to create the principles and vision that drives the company forward. The servant leadership theory allows executives to view all work protocols and processes from the point of view of their employees. If you own a company, then your primary job is to view the needs and the wants of your employees as more important as your needs and wants.

This simply means that you provide employees with all the necessary resources for them to achieve performance standards that you have established for your company. Servant leadership behavior can help you create a stronger bond with your employees, but it is important to remember that your main focus should remain on the wants and needs of your employees and not on their feelings. Managers who focus too much on the feelings of their workers may be restricted from making hard decisions and from providing honest critiques of their work.

Benefits of Organizational Behavior to Managers

There are many benefits of knowing organizational behavior for leaders and managers in any organization. We have listed the three main benefits for you to understand.

As we have already seen in our previous post, organizational behavior is the study of employees and their work within an organization. When managers understand the definition itself, they can use it in their leadership roles. It will also help individuals within an organization to understand their behavior. Organizational behavior helps organizations to understand their employees better, and this helps them to get their work done perfectly.
Organizational behavior also helps in managing human resources within an organization. It helps to develop a work-related environment within an organization. Organizational behavior can help in the creation of a motivated atmosphere within an organization. It also assists in functional behavior within an organization such as increasing the effectiveness, productivity, efficiency, etc. of different operations. Organizational behavior helps in reducing dysfunctional behavior in a workplace such as dissatisfaction of employees, employee absenteeism and tardiness.
Organizational behavior can help in enhancing managerial skills in an organization. It helps to create good leaders. It also helps in self-development. This is an integral part of learning organizational behavior. It can also help in getting a perspective of ethics and human values. Communication in the form of coaching, persuasion, monitoring, negotiation, goal setting, and conflict handling creates an efficient and effective culture in an organization. It can also help managers to create good teams that can achieve the organizational goals.

Employee Training

Organizational behavior is very important in the process of training employees. Employees with the right backgrounds get hired to do relevant jobs in an organization. However, often the background is not enough to ensure that there is effective performance over time.

Organizational behavior affects the training provided to employees internally through resources. Employee training is focused on strengthening and improving the existing skills, regulatory requirements or learning about new technology that can impact how work is done in an organization and staying updated on changes in the environment that can change how employees do work.

Engagement

Managers and employers are concerned about developing a conducive environment where employees can feel connected to their work and to the mission of the company. Managers are also concerned about their ability to offer ideas and insights to help improve the production and the work environment. The work rules in an organization affect the engagement as well as the culture.

Conclusion

Organizational behavior is an important subject. It helps leaders and managers to understand, and plan for an individual’s actions. Organizational behavior is the study of perception, attitude, and moral ethics of individuals in an organization.

Leadership, Management, People Management

How to be a Good Boss and a Leader

April 20, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 2 Comments

Many discussions have come up concerning bosses and leaders. We have seen many people discourage individuals from being bosses and becoming leaders. The question though is, are bosses inherently bad and are leaders inherently good?

First, we will look at the definitions of the two words.

Who or What is a Boss?

A boss can be defined as a person who has and exercises authority or supervises workers.

A leader, on the other hand, is somebody with the ability to lead or create a following and inspire and motivate people.

Generally, a boss tends to be more of a manager and a leader. A boss must have some authority over some people to get the title while a leader doesn’t need to.

A leader has positive connotations. The moment anyone gets the ‘leader’ title means he is respected and appreciated by those who follow him and draw inspiration and motivation from him. We, however, note that the word boss comes with negative connotations. A boss is generally seen as someone who is controlling and doesn’t care about other people’s feelings.

Can Somebody be a Boss and a Leader?

Sometimes it’s hard to be a boss and a leader considering the different responsibilities bosses and leaders have. Bosses mostly are managers and trying to be a manager and a leader at the same time could be detrimental to your business.

Managers, for instance, are supposed to not feed their emotions when doing their job. Managers are supposed to dismiss when they should, give a pay cut when they should, be hard on the workers when they should. A leader is however like a good teacher who gives inspiration and motivation. A leader listens to his/her juniors. He/she can break the rules just to endear themselves to the juniors.

A manager can’t do that and doing that could see them make some really bad losses. Normally, I like to compare a leader to a grandparent of a child and a boss/manager to the mother of the child. Most of the time, grandparents are nice to grandchildren. They smile at them, play with them, tell them stories, and many kids love being around them. A parent, however, has to discipline the child. Once in a while a parent has to show a stern face, give a stern warning, ground a child, and in some countries and among some people, they even have to spank them. It is thus quite a challenge of a task trying to be a boss and a leader at the same time.

It is, however, possible to be a boss and a leader. In fact, whenever a boss is described as good, he’s already a leader because you can’t be a good boss and fail to exhibit most of the characteristics of a leader.

We are thus going to look at some characteristics of a leader and how a boss can use them to become a good boss thus becoming a good boss and a leader at the same time.

Don’t have Favorites

Good leaders care about the emotions of their followers. They use emotions to create inspirations and attach themselves to their juniors. This means good leaders avoid doing things that may hurt some of the workers. One of these things is being unfair to particular individuals. Luckily enough for the bosses, you don’t really have to run on emotions to achieve this. You can completely run on logic and still be able to be impartial. Of course, as a human being, it’s quite impossible never to have a favorite – the point is – never show it.

Always Remember your Employees are Human.

In business, managers are advised not to run on emotions. This has led to many managers completely disregarding the feelings of their employees. Some bosses only focus on production – anything else is out of the question. You can, however, pick this leadership trait of being human without compromising your work standards and production. Happy workers are more productive than unhappy ones. Treat your workers humanely, and they’ll be happy.

Listen to your Workers’ Ideas and be Open to Change

One characteristic of a good leader is the capability of listening to their workers or juniors or followers and trying out the ideas they come up with. However, leaders interact with their juniors way less than their bosses, and this is a tricky thing to try out like a boss. We, therefore, advise bosses to moderately listen to their juniors once in a while. This creates an environment of harmony and a feeling of belonging among the workers.

Accountability Shouldn’t be Limited to your Workers

A leader is someone who motivates and inspires. A leader can lead by simply being there and not actually interacting with their followers on a one on one basis. A leader just makes themselves the golden standard which he/she wants his/her followers to emulate.

A boss however also has the responsibility of instilling the discipline he/she expects in the workers. Many bosses end up just shouting orders and giving punishments to their juniors without even looking at the person. A good boss who wishes to be a leader should make sure they live up to the standards they intend to instill in their workers. If you want a corruption free organization, don’t be corrupt. If you want a clean environment, be clean. Always be accountable for your mistakes and never project mistakes you did to your workers. You’ll be shocked how you’ll have an easier time implementing your standards when you live up to them yourself.

Be Polite

Leaders create a connection with the people. To have people follow you, you must inspire them. You can’t inspire people if they fear you. Bosses, on the other hand, need to create a professional environment with their juniors which in many cases can’t be compromised with too much familiarity. Familiarity breeds contempt. However, a boss loses nothing by being polite.

You can exhibit leadership qualities by being polite when you speak to your workers. Sometimes always barking orders projects you as insecure and trying too hard to stamp your authority.

Support your Team

This leadership quality doesn’t necessarily mean you hold your worker’s hand. You can simply give them guidance where necessary and acknowledge their hard work.

Remove Obstacles for your Team

Good leaders make it easier for their followers to progress. Good leaders can accept temporary discomfort for the benefit of their followers. Generally, managers are forced to limit the choices of their workers. For the sake of productivity and meeting deadlines, managers may be forced to increase the working hours of the workers and be strict on reporting time for instance.

A good boss, however, can try their best to remove obstacles for his workers rather than increase them. Providing a better working environment, improving their working conditions and generally showing care is a good step. A small task like ensuring the computers used by the workers are always in good condition can see you go a long way.

Don’t Just Ask, Demonstrate

Good leaders can be good leaders for just being there and being themselves. They don’t have to make orders or ask for anything to be done. They create a kind of lifestyle such that just being there inspires the workers to do something.

Many bosses just bark orders without understanding what the workers go through. Some workers may be going through challenges and may not exactly understand what they should do – a boss wishing to be a good leader demonstrates rather than ask or order. Once in a while pick that tool and start working with your workers.

Avoid Micromanagement

One prominent characteristic of a good leader is the ability to trust and have faith in his/her followers. Some bosses, however, don’t understand that it’s the people under them that make a company successful. They act as if they are the only ones who know what they are doing in the company and would want to supervise every little thing happening in the company.

Micromanagement slows your team, demotivates your team, slows the growth of members of your team and causes you not to perform more important tasks that you should be performing rather than micromanaging your team.

A good boss delegates duties to juniors. This improves their self-esteem and respect for you.

Develop People Rather than Using Them

I once worked for a construction company and was the supervisor of the casual laborers. One day I noticed that the workers had left some of the tools outside the store. I took them back to the store. My immediate boss came and found me opening the store and was very mad that I was doing a casual laborers job. I explained to him that they had already left, but he barked and insisted I should have called one of them back because he pays them to do that job and they must do it. I later realized many bosses have a similar mentality – they pay their workers and thus must use them as much as they like.

That’s really a bad approach to business. A worker is a human being who just like you also wishes to progress in life. Developing your workers earns you respect and makes you an example surrounded by successful people who respect you. Good leaders support, they don’t use.

Customer Management

Some Simple Steps to Improve Customer Experience

April 2, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 4 Comments

Let’s take a simple example that everyone is familiar with – Email. Email is a fact of life now and many organizations have switched to email as the only way in which they provide support to their customers. However humans are social animals and we are built to make judgments based on visual clues – this is called Body Language – and when these clues are removed from a conversation, the most innocuous and innocent topic can quickly escalate out of control.

With email, it’s impossible to understand body language, so what can you do to ensure you are getting your point across? How can you improve customer experience when you do not get a chance to meet your customers? Some things that you can do to improve this though are as follows:

Personalize

If your company uses templates or something similar to respond to customers, take the opportunity of personalizing them. It is not just a matter of adding a name to the top of the email, but rather sprinkle their name throughout the discourse you are having with them. Think about it as if you were having a normal, face-to-face conversation with that person.

Add a bit of personalized text to your email and you can make the customer feel that you care about him; his needs and that you are there for him. Everyone in this world wants to feel special, keep that in mind when writing emails.

Empathize

If a customer tells you about something in the body of their email, make sure you have actually read it and understand what he is saying. For example, if you are informed that the reason the internet is so important is due to a disability, you can use the words “sorry” in the body of your response without it being offensive.

A few words showing empathy and well wishes do not take long for you to type but might make all the difference – keep in mind, if they are contacting your support department, it is because a service they are paying for is not working to their expectations and at this point, customer service is where you need to put your focus. The golden rule definitely applies here and you should treat them the way you would like to be treated in similar circumstances.

It’s important with customer experience to focus on removing roadblocks. The more barriers there are, the more difficult your customers will find it to work with you.

Tone

What is your customer actually telling you? Does he sound happy/sad/angry? Is this his first email about this issue or has he sent many others? How many emails has he sent to your company on other similar issues? Here’s where a decent CRM comes into play as the more information you have about a customer the better.

All of these are clues to help you in determining the type of response you should send to your customer. While you might be restricted in the message due to the circumstances and the response you can give, HOW you tell the customer something is completely different WHAT you tell the customer.

K.I.S.S.

An old, old acronym is KISS – Keep It Simple (Stupid) – and this definitely applies here. Remember who your target is and what their skills are. If you are supporting a technical product, it should be fairly obvious that your skills in this area are going to be higher than someone not working in that field and without access to your tools and resources. There are a lot people with no or very little experience with computers. They may not use computer daily, are elderly, technophobic… when a person like this contacts us, they might have already exhausted everything they were able to do and are already feeling frustrated with the lack of a resolution.

Your response to this person should be aimed at not only resolving their reported issue (in a KISS way!!), but based on your experience what their NEXT question would be also. In addition, you should take this as an opportunity to educate your customer also on where they can find this information in the future. You will not stop receiving emails from everyone by doing this, but gradually education is the best tool to ensure that your issues are resolved.

The Terminator

A fairly famous film that you will have probably heard of is The Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger. In that film, machines have taken over the Earth and are currently at war with Humanity. This is NOT the case here.

While AI implementations are increasing around the world, you are dealing with real people and NOT machines so the way in which you speak to them should be appropriate to that.

Project Management, Tools

Top 3 Project Management Software Options for the Small Business

March 27, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 1 Comment

Small business owners, freelancers, and entrepreneurs are probably one of the most overlooked group when it comes to marketing, software management and more. In fact, not many companies aim their customer service or work efficiency products and software towards them because the consensus is that this sector of the private industry cannot pay much. Neither do they have a lot of requirements like big businesses either so there’s no multi-million-dollar business contract to be signed.

Just because this sector cannot throw millions of dollars for software development does not mean that they should not enjoy the benefits of doing business in the twenty-first century. Below you will find a list of of the top software packages that I think you can use if you are in the SMB sector.

Wrike

First on our list is Wrike. This is because it’s a very robust project management software which helps you keep track of your projects from start to finish, allowing you to manage multiple projects at the same time. It will make multi-tasking much simpler for you and your team.

This software is designed with small teams in mind and is made up of very good features which will aid you in your journey to create the best project solutions. This software is built in a manner that will allow you to grow your business. It includes a very flexible feature on managing multiple teams, so you can assign more people to different projects. This is actually very helpful as it will help you divide work between your workers so that you can distribute the workload in a way which will benefit your business and cause your staff to hone their best skills.

The software also allows you to keep track of individual contribution to a project so that you can keep track of all your employees, which will make it easier for you to decide on things like bonuses and help you identify each staff’s strengths and weaknesses.

The only downside of this software is that you can only have up to five employees on the software and you will find that the user interface is not very interesting, making it more difficult for those who are not very tech-savvy to operate.

MeisterTask

Next up on our list is MeisterTask. This is a cloud-based project management software. Freelancers will find this more useful than small business owners because it helps to keep track of individual tasks and keeps you updated with your progress. It does not offer individual progress but it’s fine because you can keep track of how your team is performing.

In addition to that, the features of this software include giving the administrator full control of the direction and tasks of the project so if your staff is untrained or newly appointed, it might be useful to use this software to help them understand how to do work. The software also allows you and your team to communicate in real time via a feature called MindMeister.

MeisterTask also allows you to classify tasks according to your staff. This means that each staff on your team will only be seeing their part of the project and not the task assigned to others. This may come in handy if your team works in the systems security service or simply if the task requires discretion. Furthermore, MeisterTask will easily connect to third-party apps like Zendesk and Slack.

The downside of this software is the limited functions when it comes to team tasks and listing. As we mentioned earlier, it will be quite difficult for you to keep track of each individual and may be problematic if you’re trying to keep track of each individual’s performance.

Paymo

Last, but not the least, is Paymo. Like MeisterTask, Paymo is a cloud-based project management solution but, unlike MeisterTask, it specifically caters to small business owners. Of course, freelancers can also use this software, but it does not leave businesses out. This is why out of the three we’ve mentioned so far. We personally recommend Paymo because it’s the best one around.

Paymo offers not only just project management features but also allows the users to create, divide and assign projects to their teams. It also allows team members to engage in discussions related to the project(s) they’re working on and helps them stay updated with the progress of the project.

What makes Paymo stand out though, is its key feature: The Visual Kanban Board which allows all the users working on a project to see the progress of every task and track the estimated time it will take for their project to finish. Furthermore, you can customize time and work reports for things like auditing, billing and reporting purposes.

It also includes an accounting function which allows you to keep track of expenses, invoices and estimate profits. In fact, users can even manage and customize each project’s accounting and budgeting requirements. Unlike the two mentioned above, Paymo has a per-user-per-month subscription plan so you don’t have to pay for a whole year in advance and can add members each month as your business flourishes.

Conclusion

As you can see, each of these packages has a specific audience in mind and it’s not just focused on big businesses. Wrike is aimed mostly at small business owners and entrepreneurs while MeisterTask is better for freelancers than anyone else. However, as we mentioned, Paymo is our favourite software because it’s great for all three.

Customer Management, People Management

How Positive Feedback Influences The Bottom Line

March 18, 2019 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Positive feedback matters. It makes a difference in employee morale and motivation. As someone in the support and operations area of business, I cannot emphasize this enough.

Let’s be honest, it’s easy to complain online if and when services that you expect do not get provided correctly or on time. To be completely frank, with tools like Twitter and Facebook at our beck and call, this has become even simpler than it ever was before. Not only can you complain about a company, but you can shout it from the rooftops and you’ll have hundreds if not thousands of people joining in the conversation.

The Power of Positive Feedback

Don’t ever underestimate the power of positive feedback. We are quick to point out to someone when they make a mistake. Sometimes we forget to acknowledge them when they do something right. As a leader, I have to often deal with the negative complaints about the service my team provides. While part of solving that problem is an additional process through things like post-mortems and RCAs, the flip side is acknowledging that there are some rare customers out there that take the time to recognize good work also!

To those rare customers – THANK YOU!! Giving positive feedback can be a powerful tool for employee motivation and your time is sincerely appreciated. For the managers and leaders lucky enough to have received such feedback, here’s how to use it most effectively:

Do it now. Positive feedback is too important to let slide. Say something right away.
Make it public. While negative feedback should be given privately, positive feedback should be given publicly. Do it in front of as large a group as appropriate.
Be specific. Don’t just say “Good job, Sally.” Instead say something like “Hakim, that new procedure you developed for routing service calls has really improved our customer satisfaction. Thanks for coming up with it.”
Make a big deal out of it. You don’t want to assemble the entire company every time you give positive feedback, but do as much ceremony as the action warrants.
Consider the receiver. It is important to consider the feeling of the person receiving recognition. For a very shy person, thanking him in front of his workgroup is probably most appropriate. For another person, you might hang a banner, balloons, and streamers in the department area.
Do it often. Don’t wait for the big successes. Celebrate the small ones too.
Do it evenly. Big successes need big recognition; small successes need smaller recognition. If you throw a party for every small success, you diminish its effect for a big success.
Be sincere. Don’t praise someone for coming in on time. Don’t congratulate someone for just doing their job. People will see right through you. Really mean it when you give positive feedback.

The Importance of Surveys

If you’re not getting positive feedback, are you sure that you’re asking for it? This is where surveying your customers comes in really handy. Many companies wrongly make the assumption that the Customer Service Team is completely disparate to the rest of the company and has no bearing on new business or in serving their existing customers aside from when they have a problem or an issue. In reality they are the face of your business and often know about new problems in the field before anyone else.

Customer Surveys allow you to collect valuable data from your customer base while simultaneously reinforcing perceptions that your organization genuinely cares about their opinions and welcomes their feedback. If your organization does not have a process in place to gather this invaluable information, it should do so quickly with the help of a customer survey. By listening to the voice of your clientele, you are ideally situating your organization to develop or maintain a competitive advantage.

Why Customer Experience Matters

Historically having siloed departments perhaps made sense in some industries. While this might have been historically true (and even then, not so much) customer experience has taken on a renewed focus in the industry. Many companies actually acknowledge that it is a key differentiator for them so anything that a business can do to improve this should be emphasized.

The impact of employee experience on customer experience has been explored in great detail. In fact, “happy employees equal happy customers” has become a motto for some of the world’s biggest brands. While this might be an old argument, it has validity and is a mantra worth remembering.

The same companies invest in employee happiness year after year. The rest continue to not invest. There’s a clear line between companies that get it and companies that don’t and there’s not a lot of .

Education, Education and Training, Management, Organizational Behaviour, People Management

An Introduction to Organizational Behaviour

March 5, 2019 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

I’ve spoken earlier about OB and how it is used within businesses, but I thought that it might be useful to be a lot more detailed. So, over the course of this year expect regular posts on this topic which you can use in your own learnings.

Organizational behaviour can be defined as the study of how people interact within groups. This study is generally applied in an attempt to come up with more efficient business organizations. The main idea of the study of organizational is that organizations can apply a scientific approach to manage their workers. Generally, the theories of organizational are used for human resources to maximize the individual output of people from group members.

A Breakdown of Organizational Behaviour

There are different philosophies and models of organizational behaviour. The focus on these different areas of study is:

Increasing job satisfaction,
Improving job performance,
Encouraging leadership and promoting innovation.

Managers may adopt different management tactics to achieve the desired results. These tactics may include modifying compensation structures, reorganizing groups and changing the evaluation of performance.

Brief History of OB

The field of organizational behaviour dates back to the late 20s when a company called Hawthorne electric company set up experiments. The experiments were designed to discern how environmental change changed employees productivity.

Between 1924 and 1933, various studies were conducted by Hawthorne electric company. The studies included the study of the effects of different types of breaks on the productivity of employees. The most famous finding from the studies is what is known as the Hawthorne Effect, the change in people’s behavior when they know they are being observed.

Some people have argued that the focus on the finding is to ignore a wider set of different studies that would be credited for the development of organizational behaviour as the human resources professional and as a field of study. The idea of looking at behaviour and productivity in an organization scientifically with the aim of increasing the quality and amount of work an employee can do was backed up with the idea that employees were not resources to be used interchangeably. Instead, workers are unique regarding their potential fit with the company and their psychology.

Organizational behavior has focused on different topics. During the 1940s, organizational behavior focused on management science and logistics. The emphasis was mainly on statistical analysis and mathematical modeling to find the best answers for problems that were deemed complex.

In the 70s, theories of institutions and contingency, as well as resource dependence, organizational ecology, and bounded rationality, came to lead the study as the field concentrated more on quantitative research. These sets of theories and findings helped organizations to understand how they can improve decision making and business structure.

Since the 70s, a good amount of work being done in the field of organizational behaviour has based on cultural components of organizations, and this includes gender roles, class, cultural relativism and gender roles and their unique roles on productivity and group building. The studies take into account the ways in which background and identity can inform decision making.

Focusing On The Academic

You can find academic programs that focus on organizational behavior in business schools. You can also find them in the schools of psychology and social work. They draw from the field of leadership studies, anthropology, computer models and ethnography and use qualitative, computer models and quantitative as methods of exploring and testing ideas. One can study different topics within the field of organizational behavior depending on the program.

Organizational Behaviour in Practice

Human relations professionals and executives can use organizational behavior to understand better the culture of the business and how the culture can hinder or facilitate employee retention and productivity. Executives and human resource managers can also use organizational behavior to evaluate the skills of candidates and the candidate’s personality during the hiring process.

The knowledge or theory application from the field of organizational behaviour can be narrowed down to the following sections:

job satisfaction,
personality,
leadership,
reward management,
power,
authority, and
politics.

There is no single way of assessing the suitable way of managing any of these things, but researching organizational can be used to provide topics and guidelines to follow.

Job satisfaction theories are different, but some people dispute that a satisfying job is composed of compelling work, concrete reward system, satisfactory working conditions, and good supervisors.
Personality plays a significant role in the way people interact with groups and do work. You can know the personality of a person through a conversation or a series of tests. Knowing the personality of a person can give you an idea of whether they are the perfect fit for the particular environment you want to hire them into. You will also know how best you can motivate the employees.
Authority, power, and politics depend on each other in an organization. It is therefore essential to understand the appropriate ways and adhere to the rules at the workplace, and the general ethical guidelines in which the elements are used and exhibited are the main components of running a cohesive business.

Why Managers Should Study Organizational Behaviour

The pressures on firms continue to mount, and companies around the world need to utilize their resources in the best way possible.

The success of every organization depends on the effectiveness of the management of the employees. The people’s behaviour in an organization is governed by feelings, ideas, and activities. For businesses to effectively manage people, it is vital to perceive their needs. However, the behaviour of people can differ from one individual to another. This makes it impossible to come up with standard solutions to the problems in an organization.

For this reason, it is crucial to consider the social and psychological aspects when designing solutions to solve different issues in an organization, and that is why managers should study organizational behaviour.

Leadership, Management, People Management

How Leadership and Management Differ

February 27, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 1 Comment

We always have considered leadership and management to be similar things – most people can’t even tell the difference. To them, a leader is a manager, and a manager is a leader hence leadership is management.

Practically, we are not far from the truth. Leadership and management are two concepts with quite a range of overlapping areas but they are still uniquely different. No matter how much we try to ignore it, the difference is very important.

Leadership Versus Management

Leadership Defined

Many definitions of leadership have been suggested over time. Leadership can be seen as a skill that when possessed, provides an individual with the ability to guide others. ‘Lead’ is an action that is an example for other individuals to follow.

A leader can in simple terms be defined as an individual whom others follow or an individual who is a good example to other individuals. Leadership thus goes hand in hand with social influence – individuals who are leaders normally have high social influence. The unclear understanding of leadership has led to many arguments on whether leaders are born or made.

Management

The definition of management goes hand in hand with that of administration.

Management can be defined as the coordination and organization of tasks in an organization for the purpose of achieving the organization’s goals.

Management is thus a factor of production in business.

Is Management Different From Leadership?

Managers are people to which a task is bestowed – the task of management. The task of coordination and organization of tasks in an organization or company. The task of planning, hiring and firing in the organization.

Leaders on the other hand help set the way and direction for others to follow. Leaders don’t necessarily have to be of higher job level to lead while managers have to be on a higher job level to manage.

A leader’s most important quality is wisdom while a manger’s most important quality is rationality and logic.

We are now going to look at roles management and leaders play at different levels of business hence bringing out the difference.

Establishing a Vision

Manager

In the quest to realize the vision of an organization, a manager will plan and budget in such a way that the organization invests in projects and tasks that work towards realizing the vision.
A manager does not develop an emotional attachment towards any particular project or against it. Once the vision of the organization has been set, the manager works towards it.
A manager will develop the schedules and plans towards realizing the vision. For example – if a transportation company decides to buy 100 new trucks by the end of the year, the manager will set the timelines of buying those trucks putting the financially inflows and outflows of the organization into consideration such that by the end of the year, all 100 trucks are bought.

Leader

A leader will decide the direction the business takes and set the vision and mission of the business. A leader of a transportation company will, for instance, decide that by the end of the year, the company needs to expand and buy 100 new trucks.
A leader develops an emotional attachment to the vision of the company – or at least should appear too. A leader is supposed to be an example thus loving the direction the business is taking and acts as a motivation to the rest of the organization’s stakeholders.
The leader will develop the strategy required to achieve the plan. For example, if the transportation company intends to buy 100 trucks by the end of the year, the leader might ask the shareholders to contribute towards it or use some of the previous year’s profits or take a business loan to fund the expansion.

Personnel & Networking

Manager

A manager staffs the organization. They hire and fire. This includes doing the research on the kind of staff required and the optimum number of staff while identifying the non-productive staff and dismissing if need be.
Maintains the organization structure. A well-maintained organization structure ensures the business retains its quality and does not veer from its goals and direction.
A delegation of responsibilities to juniors. A manager assigns tasks to his/her juniors, creates deadlines and follows up making the person to who a task has been delegated is responsible for that task.
Other than delegating responsibility, a manager also delegates authority to their juniors. A delegation of authority involves shifting the task of decision making from one organization level to the other. For instance, if the manager is supposed to chair a meeting on a specific date and he happens to have to attend to a more important task on the same date, he/she can delegate the authority to any of his juniors.
A manager implements the organization’s vision. Managers have bestowed the task of transforming the organization’s vision to reality thus given that authority. A manager is thus allowed to come up with the procedure of ensuring the organization’s vision comes to fruition, and the company has to give them the resources of doing it.
A manager runs on logic rather than emotion. A manager is the brain of the organization and sometimes may have to make radical or mean decisions to make sure the company remains standing and achieves its goals. A manager, for instance, might have to lay off workers if that’s the most prudent decision to ensure the business remains standing
manager many times is not the most liked person in an organization. A manager’s responsibilities limit the choices of workers due to their do what needs to be done policy.

Leader

A leader, on the other hand, aligns the organization. This involves setting the goals and deciding what direction the business should take.
A leader will present to the rest of the organization’s stakeholders the vision and the mission of the organization.
A leader is the networking tool of the organization or company. He/she spearheads the coalition and partnering of the organization with other organizations
a manager, a leader runs on emotions. A leader has to influence people and convince them he/she is worth following hence hurting anyone’s feelings won’t work in their favor, and they have to check that. A leader thus is seen as someone who increases the choices of other stakeholders in the organization.

Vision Execution

Manager

The manager regulates and controls the processes towards the execution of the vision. The manager, for instance, might have to introduce overtime in order to increase production so as to realize the organization’s goal of expansion.
The manager identifies the problems in the organization and obstacles towards the vision and comes up with the solution of solving the problem.
The manager’s approach to problem-solving is always low risk considering he/she has a limited say in the establishment of the vision. The manager is more like the executioner of the leader and always works within a limited space.

Leader

During the whole process of vision execution, the leader’s main role is to motivate the stakeholders towards it and help inspire them. This involves simple gestures like:
- Showing confidence in the workers and stakeholders
- Seeking input in decisions.
- Giving you opportunities to shine.
- Rewarding high-performing workers.
- Respecting everyone in the organization.
- Giving credit to anyone that deserves it.
- Encouraging low Performers.

The leaders approach to solving problems is high risk. A leader might decide to take a high-interest bank loan in order to fund the organization’s vision for instance.

Vision Outcome

Manager

The manager’s role in vision outcome is results. The organization’s leadership expects the manager to provide consistent results that are consistent with the organization’s vision on a regular basis. The manager is thus bestowed with the task of ensuring an ‘all is well’ environment and will have to prepare themselves during the organization’s meetings to convince the leadership that all is going according to plan.
If and when the leadership is unsatisfied with the results, the manager is forced to take control measures and bring the organization back in line. If the task proves to be a mountain to the manager, the leadership might come in and make riskier decisions like dismissing the manager or pumping more funding into the business which may involve taking a loan.

Leader

Leaders react to vision outcome generally by either establishing a new vision and rewarding the stakeholders where the vision is realized or is moving towards being realized and making risky decisions where the vision isn’t getting realized. A leader might decide to give the shareholders and the stakeholders an end of the year treat or increased dividends. He/she might set another vision for the next year.
Accountability shouldn’t be limited to your workers.
A leader is someone who motivates and inspires. A leader can lead by simply being there and not actually interacting with their followers on a one on one basis.

CRM, Customer Experience, Customer Management, Helpdesk, Tools

How Help Desk Software Increases Your Customer Support ROI

February 19, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 1 Comment

If you want to invest in customer support software such as Freshdesk, you may be wondering if the cost of the software will pay off. It can be tricky to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of your new tools.

One of the things you need to consider is if it will bring in revenue. Most help desks are cost centers, but if the software reduces the cost of doing business it is still a benefit. This is one of the most important questions that you must get answers before you start using the software. The software can be effective in measuring the impact of your actions on the business metrics. It is possible to make customer support into a revenue generator and not just a cost center.

Nowadays, things are changing, and more customer support teams are focusing on driving growth in businesses and proving their worth to the business. Using the right software can make your customer care more effective in generating revenue. Freshdesk, for example, can help you streamline your customer conversations, automate your repetitive work and collaborate with other teams to solve problems faster. Software for help desks should save money and bring money into the business in order to create a return on investment.

How to Measure Your Investment in Software

If you are at the stage of putting processes into place to support your business’ customer of if you want to fix some gaps in your system, the right help desk package will ensure that you get back to all clients in a timely manner.

This is an important baseline to meet. If you miss one email just once, you can cause your customers to stop doing business with you. 86% of customers quit doing business with companies because of poor customer service. 51% of customers quit doing business with a company for one poor customer experience. All the lost customers lead to lost revenue. Read on to understand different ways of investing in help desk software, save revenue in your business, and increase your customer service team’s ROI.

Move to a Streamlined Queue

Help desks were originally made around the idea of tickets. This can still be seen at the butcher. You take a ticket number and get services in the order that you came in. Nowadays; your businesses shouldn’t treat customers like tickets anymore.

It is important to adopt a nuanced approach to organizing questions from customers. You can become adept at managing messages from customers by using modern help desks. You can achieve this by prioritizing customers who seem to be more upset or customers who have a high opportunity of converting to paid customers. Businesses should invest in help desks that offer better management of queue. This will make customer support teams to more effective.

Self-service Should be Part of Your Customer Service

Businesses should have the ability to offer content in the form of FAQs and knowledge base articles to help customers be able to help themselves. Businesses should understand that self-service is another form of customer service. Self-service carries the highest ROI for different reasons.

Customers like being able to help themselves. 70% of customers like to see an option on your website where they can help themselves. If you don’t offer this service, your customers will be frustrated and will need to contact you. On the other hand, 73% of customers prefer researching for answers on their own instead of talking to a human over social media and live chat. 81% of customers also try to help themselves before contacting human support.

Investing in software that allows self-service keeps the customers happy. Customers will keep coming back when they find it easy and convenient to do business with you. Apart from customers helping themselves, self-service also benefit you as a business owner or manager. Self-service is a cost-effective way of helping customers to resolve issues versus other business help channels. When you get self-service right, it is a cost-effective way of making your customers happy.

Personalize Each Transaction

You can build your customer loyalty by investing in your customers. You can focus on building good relationships with your customers beyond transactions. We should form holistic relationships with customers instead of treating the problems of our customers as a series of events that don’t relate to each other.

You should, first of all, know who your customers are before you think beyond the transaction. If all your customer service team can see is the question at hand, they won’t have a nuanced and personalized conversation about their customers’ needs.

Your help desk can provide additional context with different conversations. For instance, they might show you the last four conversations the customer initiated. If you have integrated your help desk with your CRM, you can see when the renewal date is coming up. You will also see how many users they are paying for. When the context revolves around the history of the customers, you can tailor your approach. You can easily see what your customers need and offer it.

Provision of valuable data

The return of investment of customer support is not always tied to sales . Businesses can also use customer support for research on users. This includes knowing what customers think of your product and how they use the product. You can also know what your customers think of your competition. You need help desk reporting that will capture trends for you to get all the information you need from your conversations.

You can use important data from your customers to enhance the efficiency of service delivery and improve the quality of your products to suit your customers’ needs.

Investing in Helpdesk Software – Money Well spent

Calculating the customer experience return on investment is a critical requirement for frontline teams. It is important to know how our actions affect the business. When we connect our customer support goals to the business goals, we move from making our customers happy to the value we create.

A Help desk plays a crucial part in the journey of connecting customer interactions and making money. This can be through increasing the power of your support team, improving the loyalty of your customers or uncovering important data. With all these, a help desks can deliver a huge ROI.

Business Planning, Education and Training, Project Management, Tools

DIDs and SIP Trunking for Dummies

February 4, 2019 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

With regard to real-time communications, there are two aspects that businesses focus on. They would like a system that not only saves them money in the long run but is more efficient than the system they already have in place. This way, they can seamlessly upgrade their system while at the very same time keep their more sophisticated users happy.

From the point of view of telecommunications, one of the most sought-after new technologies is SIP or Session Initiation Protocol Trunking.

Earlier, a PBX telephone system and later PRI (Primary Rate Interface) Line, integrated with TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) interface. This allowed 25 to 30 individual voice lines for a single connection and was the most used business telco system in place. It was easy to use and manageable at the time.

Various employees connected to the same system could call one another using the employee specified extension or use a programmed digit – “7” for instance – if they wanted to get an outside line. The way these lines were connected to one another is how branches of a tree are connected to the trunk of that tree, hence the term “trunking”. Even though the system worked for decades, it was not cost-effective and it had problems. Thus, as soon as companies saw a way out, they took it and what we call SIP trunking emerged.

How Does SIP Trunking Work?

As mentioned, the PBX and later the PRI system worked well for a long time, but as soon as SIP trunks utilizing VoIP (Voice over IP) was introduced businesses realized that additional alternatives existed. SIP trunks, coupled with VoIP, were faster since it used a data connection to connect users to a network, often the same data connection that the business used to access the internet for other reasons also.

With the development of technology in use, SIP trunks with VoIP services could easily-manage voice signals through a data connection. This helped businesses realize significant cost savings as they were able to make a call and video connection as well as hosting cloud services and managing an e-commerce business all through the same network.

ITSP

SIP trunking used a carrier called the ITSP i.e. Telephony Service Provider that offered the VoIP Services. It relied on internet services and protocols as opposed to circuit-switch voice protocols in use for the purpose. This enabled businesses to merge their voice connections and data usage under a single data connection, allowing them to save serious amounts of money annually. Additionally, it also provides a private system with public access, serving the purpose fulfilled by the traditional circuit-switched voice i.e. transport and termination of SIP trunk calls.

SBC

The key purpose of using SIP trunking services is to provide a seamless transition between different VoIP gateways. Here, VoIP is the device handling the calls and video conferences, while SIP is the protocol that enables smooth handling of both calls and video conferences. The one element here that keeps this system running smoothly is the SBC i.e. the Session Border Control. It is the device that protects a private network by managing traffic and preventing spammers and blacklisted users, such as telemarketers from gaining access to the network. This keeps the system running smoothly.

What Role do DIDs Play In the Process?

DID or Direct Inward Dialing is a series of numbers that are primarily used to dial into your PBX i.e. Private Branch Exchange or networks. These numbers are allocated to the customer and then forwarded to your respective PBX through SIP trunking services.

The PBX is distinguished on the basis of the last three or four numbers in the series. These digits are known as DNIS i.e. the Dialed Number Identification Services and are responsible for routing the information to the correct telephone extension directly.

Presently, DID services are provided on a PRI circuit. DID services also play a similar role with VoIP communications, using PSTN to reach users directly. It works as a gateway to route and translates calls between the two networks. It is also worth mentioning that with a DID in place, your business can get the much needed local presence which plays a significant role in increasing your profit margin. Not only does it enable number portability but it also provides you with local number availability lacking the toll-free 800 number. This can help you build a local presence without having to change your number.

Why Prefer SIP Trunking Services?

When all has been said and done, as a business owner, your primary concern is probably how the service could best benefit your organization. Thus, here are a few reasons to prefer SIP Trunk Services for your business.

SBC and Networked Policy Management

SBC is the one element of your SIP Trunk Services that keep all the spam at bay while securing your network and keeping it from overloading. Thus, it goes without saying that many SBC based solutions require hands-on policy management as well as configuration, especially if you require a big deployment.

This may cost a bit in the initial stages, but if you keep your needs in mind and choose wisely, it will definitely be money well spent for you and your business. Plus, they handle bulk traffic, which makes your entire system run efficiently.

Media Support and scalability

With trends in the world of communication changing on a daily basis, it is a given fact that business will continue to move into better, more efficient forms of media which can improve the pace of business. This includes video conferencing and high-definition audio among the few things.

Thus, equipping your business with state of the art SIP trunk services will ensure that it is always able to keep up with the changing megatrends of the telecom world, keeping your business a step ahead of the competition.

Additionally, most SIP Trunk Services are scalable. Meaning, as soon as you have more traffic that needs to be handled, you can easily just upgrade a few components and you are ready for that extra capacity.

Ironclad Security

Most highly ranked SBC and SIP trunking services have a network firewall in place which is backed up by a highly efficient intrusion prevention system. These not only keep spam at bay but also deter data based attacks, enabling it to work with various different systems.

Robust Session Management

As you increase the range of your PRI to SIP services, expanding to VoIP apps, one thing that you will notice immediately is the robust session management of the new system you have in place.

The Bottom Line

At this point, you have a general idea of what of the various aspects of real-time communication dealing with business SIP Trunking services. It is one of those efficient and always evolving systems that can be modified at any time to fit the needs of your expanding business.

Management, People Management

Management and Technical Problem Solving

January 28, 2019 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Managers are often stuck in a very hard place. Organizations depend upon them for their ability to manage the teams, but at the same time, they are often called upon to be the escalation point when a problem inevitably goes sour. This is quite difficult as managing people often means giving up managing technology simply due to the pace of change.

Some of this can be mitigated by offering tiered support levels where agents with increasingly more complex and technical skill sets handle customer issues prior to the management level, but unfortunately, not many companies can afford this level of complexity or cost.

I’ve worked in a variety of industries around the world and this pattern tends to repeat itself in almost every organization I’ve worked in. Frequently businesses assume that by promoting managers from the team working the issue, then the problem should solve itself. After all,

“the individual was a great technical resource so they should easily make the transition to management – right?”

Management & Technical Skills

Unfortunately, this rationale simply does not work. During the time the manager was simply a technical resource, they were rewarded for gaining new and more complex technical skills. This reward could be in the form of compensation, but it could even simply be by the peer recognition of skills. While continued growth in technical skills might work in lower level management positions, it simply will not suffice in more senior positions, where managers are expected to demonstrate more strategic abilities. If managers demonstrate conceptual and human skills as well, their promotion prospects and, more importantly, their performance potential are both greatly enhanced.

A great example of this from the early days of my career was working with a senior network administrator – the manager of that team. As the leader of the support organization, I was frequently forced to interact with him when dealing with complex customer issues. I quickly learned to dread those conversations as his initial reaction was always the same:

“It’s not us! The customer is doing something wrong!”

Internally we started to call him Dr. No. However, he was simply doing what he was used to which was defending his team and department, instead of realizing the larger issue. The customers pay all of our bills and if we lose them, we have no team or department, or company! With Dr. No, there was a simple solution – have him meet the customers. Once he understood the problems and could actually see the impact our service (or lack thereof in this case) had on their business, he was able to conceptualize it in different terms.

Over time I’ve come to realize that many organizations have a “Dr. No” or the equivalent. Someone woefully lacking in people skills but a superstar in the technical department. Unfortunately, individuals like this tend to reduce a firm’s operational effectiveness.

Perspectives on a Manager’s Job

We’ve talked previously about a manager’s role and their importance in greasing the wheels of operational effectiveness. Businesses in today’s more decentralized workforces need these skills even more than in year’s gone past and manager’s need to evolve from an authority-derived ‘issuer and interpreter of rules and orders’ to a role responsible for creating an entrepreneurial work climate that facilitates teamwork regardless of where a person physically sits while doing the work.

As someone interested in management and managing teams in general, I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that research has stated a manager’s day is “a series of discrete, fragmented episodes.” What this means in simpler terms is that managers are often pulled in hundreds of different directions at the same time! Managers are often unable to spend more than 5% of their time on a single discrete task and technology in the modern office with tools like Slack, Chat and Chatter only make the interruptions more frequent.

To understand what managers do, it’s important to realize their job comprises the following:

Managing employee performance (supervising).
Guiding subordinates (teaching and training).
Representing one’s staff (advocacy).
Managing team performance (facilitation).
Allocating resources (decision making).
Coordinating interdependent groups (collaboration).
Monitoring the business environment (scanning for adaptations).

Regardless of where you are in the management hierarchy, these tasks are common across all companies. What does change is the amount of time spent at each level as strategic planning (tasks lower in the list) tend to take a greater amount of focus as you rise in levels in your career. As companies and employees continue to migrate to digital tools and remote working, managers that are only comfortable with exercising authority and command are being retrained or replaced by those who know how to coordinate the work of interdependent teams. Customer expectations are changing. Now and in the future customers will support only companies that deliver high-quality goods and services at the best price anywhere in the world. All firms have easy access to the tools of total quality management (TQM) (continuous improvement) and use it as a principal method to sustain operational effectiveness. The successful twenty-first-century manager moves easily in the environment of continuous improvement and develops in his subordinates the dedication to improve products and customer services.

How can Managers Grow and Evolve?

Well, that’s really the point of these series of articles! While there isn’t a single “magic bullet” that can solve all problems there are things that can be done to improve managerial skills in a timely and effective manner.

When managers are interviewed about the problems they face, they invariably turn to annoying workplace issues. They talk about the fact that their employees “won’t go that extra mile”, or they simply “aren’t customer focused.” Many managers talk about their teams basically being “seat warmers” and complain about the siloed organizations they work in where teams simply do not talk to each other! If you’re in that type of an organization you have my pity. I’ve been there but I’ve also managed to turn things around. Feel free to reach out if I can help.

Customer Experience, Management

What is Customer Journey Mapping and Why is it Important?

January 21, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 2 Comments

Most people have the wrong view of customer journey mapping, and that is why they get intimidated by it. They think that it has to be an accurate representation of every degree of customer’s experience. This is impossible.

It is better to think of it as a persona. Customer maps are like personas. The only difference is that they focus more on the questions and tasks. They express the experience of customers over time and not as a snapshot. This means that they work together. A customer journey map focuses on the customer experience while a persona focuses on people or the person.

The Meaning of Customer Journey Mapping

According to Forbes, customer journey mapping can be defined as a way of visualizing the experience of customers and how the customers interact with your business. The primary goal of mapping the journey is to remove any obstacles and improve efficiency while also making the process intuitive. The customer experience will improve if you create a seamless experience. Laterally, it is mapping out the best way for the typical journey of the customer. We can refer to it as an archetype representing the underlying complexity and nature of a real journey. There is no way a customer journey map can be 100% accurate. This can leave a lot of people wondering about the importance of customer journey mapping.

Importance of Customer Journey Mapping

It is not easy to create a customer journey because it requires a lot of effort to create. For this reason, you will create fewer of them. People often create customer journey maps for each of their primary audience. Rather than digging into too many details, they focus on the overview of the whole journey. You can polish out the journeys over time. You can also think of customer journey map as a story designed to give insights into the journey of the customer.

Companies Can Refocus With an Inbound Perspective

Customers can discover your company with the aid of inbound marketing rather than using outbound marketing to discover your customers. Using outbound marketing is not effective because it involves using tactics that are poorly targeted at uninterested audiences and it can interrupt customers from their activities.

You can spend a lot of money on outbound marketing and achieve undesirable results. This can annoy customers and deter them. On the other hand, inbound marketing involves creating interesting content that potential customers are already looking for. This can grab the attention of the customers at first and focus on sales later. By mapping out the journey of the customers, you can understand the helpful and interesting things to your customers about your website and company. You can also understand things that are turning your customers away. You can also create vital content to attract the customers to your company and improve customer trust.

The New Target Customer Base

You won’t be able to know the psychographics and demographics of your customers if you don’t understand the customer journey. This can be dangerous and can waste a lot of resources to target an audience that is too broad repeatedly. It is important to target people who are likely to be interested in your content, products, and services. You will get a good picture of the types of people trying to achieve a goal or get services and products from your company if you research the needs of your customers and map out their journey.

Creation of a Customer-Focused Culture

It can be difficult to coordinate different departments in your company as it gets large. This will make it difficult to be customer-focused. Your company will, therefore, have marketing and sales goals that are not based on what the customers want. You can share a clear customer journey map with everyone in your department. The maps will help you understand every step of your customer’s journey from the first time they interacted with your company to the post-purchase support. You cannot deny the importance of customer journey mapping based on this rationale.

Timing

Timing is an essential factor for businesses to focus on when looking at the customer journey mapping. Businesses can use the maps to observe the time it takes customers to complete specific actions.

Identifying gaps in Communications and Service

Businesses can use customer journey maps to reveal gaps in customer service. This can enable business managers to make the necessary adjustments and improve service delivery. For example, one department may prove to be understaffed, and this can cause frustration to customers who interact with that department. Problems in communication between departments and among employees may be revealed and solved accordingly.

Reduced Costs

Businesses that use customer journey maps reduce costs. Research done by the Aberdeen group indicated that brands that use customer journey maps improve in the cost of customer service more than ten times. The research also found out that brands that use customer journey mapping grow by 21% within a year while those that don’t use customer journey maps experience a yearly decline of 2.2%. Customer journey mapping also increases referral marketing, and this reduces the costs of marketing.

An Example of Customer Journey Mapping

This is an example of a customer journey map, and it clearly shows the steps that dapper apps believe customers go through as they interact with them. The company goes beyond the purchasing phase and incorporates the post-purchase needs and initial research.

The map helps employees to get into customer’s mind and understand the questions they have and their emotions. This makes the map effective. The dapper apps take incremental actions in response to the customers’ questions and feelings, and this helps it to solve the current problems that customers have.

Reasons why Customer Journey Maps Fail

There are many different reasons for failure when it comes to customer journey mapping. Here are some of the most common ones that you need to be aware of.

Speaking to Like-Minded Colleagues Alone

When employees are expressing their views on customer journey, they can gravitate towards views that only reflect their own opinions and common wisdom. This can lead to employees expressing their opinions, and not views backed up with concrete evidence. This can be very dangerous if the opinions of the employees are taken and accepted as facts. It is therefore important to seek out a wide range of opinions from different groups of employees.

Lack of Clear Governance

Customer journeys cut across different organizational structures. This makes it useful to form a functional group that cuts across all the structures to reflect different departments’ experiences of the customer journey. It is important to have proper governance in place for this to be successful.

Failure to Involve Stakeholders

It is important to involve all parts of the business to participate in the creation of the map. Strong support should come from the senior leadership to ensure that customer journey mapping is successful. An initiative such as customer journey mapping will fail without executive sponsorship.

Not Speaking to Customers

During customer journey mapping, it is important to take the opinions of your employees. But as we had earlier seen, some employees will only give you their opinions and not hard facts. To solve this problem, it is crucial to validate the views of your customers by talking to the customers and not relying on your employees to give you information.

Spending too Much Time on Research

It is important to do enough research, but this doesn’t mean that you should spend too much time on research. You can result in a lot of problems if you do too much research. Researching for too long can make the project too be too expensive and complex. You only need research to create a detailed and helpful map and not to improve functions.

Conclusion

The process of customer journey mapping creates an overview of customer experience. It also maps how your customers navigate through the sales funnel. Customer journey mapping is useful across both refinement process and iteration as new elements get designed while the old ones get refined or discarded. You can use customer journey mapping to identify opportunities and enhance the overall experience of your customers. Customer journey mapping can help content creators create the best way to approach the creation of their content. For the designer folks, customer journey mapping can help them to identify the missing connections in the navigation and help to eliminate various customer frustrations. With customer journey mapping, you will be able to put your customers at the center of everything you do. You won’t only look at your needs and priorities and make assumptions about ways you can motivate your customers to meet your business goals. It gives you a reason to consider the customers first. To get started with customer journey mapping, you will first need to choose the processes you want to analyze and deconstruct each step taken to complete each process. This sounds easy but you there are some challenges. Nevertheless, every business needs customer journey mapping, and you need to make a decision now because there are numerous benefits that you will enjoy later.

Customer service, KPI, Management

WHAT IS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT RUNNING A CALL CENTER?

December 28, 2018 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Customer Service

Customer Service – the simple explanation from Wikipedia (here) is that it is “… is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.”

Now regardless of the type of Call (Contact) Centre you run you are always providing Customer Service. You can call the center a NOC (Network Operations Centre) a Technical Service Desk or a Help Desk but regardless of its name, its purpose is the same. The people that make up that team are there to provide a service to your customer and they are there to do it in the most efficient and useful way possible.

The 4 Types

Depending on the stage of the transaction that you customer is, with your organization, they will be dealing with one or more different types of customer service teams. At a high level, they fall into the distribution below:

Support: Including dealing with account issues (billing information, new account setup, order taking etc…). This team ties closely together with the technical team and often provides a first level support function if it is in their remit.
Technical Support: More detailed troubleshooting is carried out by this team. Often referred to as “after Sales” Support they ensure that existing customers have a useful and worthwhile service and deal with any problems or issues that they may have.
Sales & Marketing: Inbound and Outbound sales teams, web chats and email responses. In addition to this, offsite events, telemarketing, surveys, and other events are handled by this group.
Quality Control: Review of customer interactions and problem analysis. In addition to this, this team would also ensure that the company was compliant with standards in dealing with customers and would perform random audits.

Measure, Do, Act

Now, depending on the type of call center you are running, your first and probably most important starting challenge is determining the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you wish to have in place in your organization.

Once you know what you want to measure and why you can then set about ensuring that you meet, exceed and surpass those requirements in short, medium and long terms. To determine the most important KPI though, you need to know what services are important to your customers so that you can ensure that your teams are in the right place with the right knowledge to provide those answers to your customers to minimize any service disruptions or service impacts.

Once you’ve determined KPIs the next step is determining how you go about achieving and surpassing those requirements. To do this, you need to ensure that you have the right caliber of candidate with the right skill set available and the right tools in place to expedite a speedy resolution for your customers.

What is a Helpdesk?

In its simplest form, a helpdesk is a group of people assigned to assist customers in solving their problems. There are many different types of helpdesks and they are called by a variety of different names…
Should you Outsource your Helpdesk?

To outsource or not to outsource … while not exactly a question that plagued William Shakespeare (hence the lack of any really good quality plays about it!), is a very valid question for the small and…

Practice, Practice, Practice

Just like athletes, your staff needs to have the appropriate skills and knowledge to ensure that they are able to resolve your client’s issues as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is via training. This includes initial training – ie. when they first join your company – and ongoing training to ensure that their skills do not get rusty. It is possible to throw them into the deep end and see if they swim, but this is hardly an efficient use of your resources and should be minimized if at all possible.

Appropriate teams and methodologies need to be in place to ensure that information flow and tools are available to your frontline staff so that customers get the appropriate answer as quickly as possible – things like FAQs and Knowledgebases are great, but they need to be kept up to date. You must also ensure that you have a robust and effective system to track customer interactions.

People Management, Staff

Employee Attrition – What Can YOU Do To Reduce It?

September 28, 2018 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Employees usually come and go and at some point, you can expect to lose a few workers. The service sector is notorious for high employee turnover at 30% with the average for all industries standing at 13%. Millennials are also partly responsible for the increased employee turnover since they are more likely to switch jobs than their older counterparts.

There are some costs attached to losing employees and an organization with high employee turnover can incur heavy losses including the time taken to find new workers. When the bounce rate for new hires gets too high, you cannot get a return on your investment especially when you factor in costs for training and recruitment.

A high bounce rate for new employees is an indication of something wrong with your hiring process. Here are a few ways to reduce new hire bounce rate:

Formulate a Comprehensive and Competitive Benefits Package

One way to retain new employees is to compensate them handsomely. Apart from needing enough money to pay for living expenses like food, rent, and utilities, employees want to know they are compensated in other ways too. Moving to a better paying job is one of the major causes of employee turnover and paying well can prevent this.

To get a feel for a fair salary, research on what competitors pay for similar jobs in your area e.g. how much do accountants make in your area. In addition to salaries, add some benefits like life insurance, disability insurance, 401K and pension plans to retain new hires. When dealing with millennials, keep in mind that they’ve witnessed the financial mistakes of their parents and are keen on additional benefits.

Hire the right person for the job

When interviewing new employees, make sure you hire the people who are most capable of doing the job. This way, you get a return on your investment. Do not hesitate to hire smart people or people with the ambition and potential to become stellar employees.

Smart people are more flexible and their versatility will be of benefit. One major reason that people give for leaving a job is that it was not what they expected. To counter this, clearly, define the roles to the interviewee and ensure they are familiar with what will be done on the job.

Another consideration for hiring is choosing someone who will fit with the company culture; that is if it’s important to you. Cohesion with other employees will encourage new employees to stick around and consequently reduce new hire bounce rate.

Reward employees and recognize their efforts

Employees are humans and will greatly appreciate if you recognize their efforts. When your workers go overboard and produce excellent work, complete a project well before the deadline or perform any other notable action, congratulate them. Doing this in front of colleagues is more effective as they will feel motivated by your acknowledgment.

You don’t have to shower them with praise for everyday tasks, only for notable achievements. Another effective way to reward employees is to tie tangible, financial rewards to certain feats. Giving bonuses to high performing employees in front of the colleagues will encourage new employees to work towards the preset goals and reduce employee turnover.

Additionally, you can create a career path for your employees so that they don’t feel like they landed in a dead-end job. Although it may seem obvious, most companies do not offer opportunities for growth like raises and promotions. When career advancement options look bleak and a new hire finds the other employees looking miserable and downtrodden, they won’t think twice about leaving for greener pastures.

Create a positive working environment

To create a positive work environment you have to factor in a good work/life balance. This involves flexible starting and ending times so that they have enough time for other activities. Many a new employee is put off by inflexible working hours and swaps jobs for more flexible hours.

A study by a Boston organization concluded that 80% of workers and 76% of managers agree that flexible hours contribute to employee retention. Remember that workers spend close to half of their day at work and a positive environment will go a long way to increase engagement.

Additionally, a conducive environment will improve the worker’s performance and boost productivity which works in the company’s favor. A good example of a superb work environment is Google, whose Googleplex building looks more like an adult playground than an office complex. Google also offers free food, health benefits, massages and haircuts, video games, gym and swimming pools to employees. Although this increases the running costs, it effectively cut down employee turnover and dissatisfaction.

People Management, Training

How Storytelling Helps in Customer Service

July 9, 2018 Hutch Morzaria 1 Comment

Agents as the Organization’s Ears and Voice

Call center representatives play the vital role of being the ears of the organization. Most customers find filling formal surveys and questionnaires to be too cumbersome and a lot of feedback is left uncollected. However, customers give out titbits of information during phone conversations which can be eye-opening for the company. Call centers are data rich for this reason and as such should be more efficient in collecting customer stories.

Agents at the same time are the voice of the company and customers will often judge the company according to their support team. How your agents carry themselves in conversation and share information adversely affects your brand image. This is why the reps shouldn’t give stories of how they are in a powerless situation where they would like to help but their hands are tied. It gives off a negative impression. Encourage agents to create their own hero stories where they are the main character in the story, who gets the job done.

Why you Should use Storytelling in Contact Centers

The reason storytelling is so powerful is that it assists in getting buy-in from both the customers and top executives. After collecting data from various feedback channels like surveys, CSAT, NPS and CES, it is best to deliver the insights in form of stories. Bombarding agents with charts and presentations to show them how to make changes to the customer experience is highly ineffective. Telling a story instead helps the agents to comprehend how they are going to fit changes and improve the customer experience.

At the same time, the stories that agents collect are supposed to be shared with the team since they are a rich source of data. CX managers ideally should come up with a framework for sharing stories e.g. a roundtable discussion or channels to communicate with top-level management.

Another overlooked advantage of storytelling is that it helps the story-teller to fly under the radar. Stories are so effective since the listener gets to learn a lot without knowing it consciously. Nowadays, a lot of companies are being exposed and ridiculed for their blatant attempts at advertising themselves, especially on social media.

These range from awkwardly referencing social media trends to tracking website cookies and conspicuously sending tailored adverts based on the viewer’s browsing history. Storytelling is a more covert way of spreading information in an engaging way that makes the customer recognise that certain steps lead to the expected outcome. Customers can also be hesitant to be open and honest when they are asked for feedback about a certain feature or product. But when telling a story about their experience with the new product, they unknowingly offer a sea of valuable and honest information. As highlighted before, stories are also easier to remember and a well told story will leave a lasting impression on the customer.

How to Create Customer Hero’s out of Your Agents

Doing this might mean some organizational changes as well as training. Not everyone is a good storyteller but it is a skill that can be taught. A recent study by Microsoft and Nucleus discovered that companies with successful contact centers have designed their organizational structure and leveraged technology to their advantage. As such, the structure can be renovated to accommodate more internal exchange of stories and insights.

To teach storytelling, one should break down stories into individual parts e.g. the usual details, the customer problem, the business problem, the steps to take, the actions to take and finally the desired outcome.

It instantly becomes easier to relate an interaction into a story and advise the customer. The agents should weave in their own anecdotes or prior experiences to show empathy, but shouldn’t resign themselves to the victim role. Stories should also stay on topic to avoid diluting the message. Integrating storytelling into call center conversations will make the organization more productive and improve the customer experience as well.

Customer Management, Customer Satisfaction, Customer service, Management

Nine Commandments

May 24, 2017 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Customer service is an integral part of our job and should not be seen as an extension of it. A company’s most vital asset is its customers.

Without them, we would not and could not exist in business.

When you satisfy our customers, they not only help us grow by continuing to do business with you but recommend you to friends and associates (remember, that while it seems only complaining customers tell others, this isn’t actually the case!).

The Key Commandments of Customer Service

Know who is boss.

You are in business to service customer needs, and you can only do that if you know what it is your customers want.
When you truly listen to your customers, they let you know what they want and how you can provide good service. Never forget that the customer pays our salary and makes your job possible.

Be a good listener.

Take the time to identify customer needs by asking questions and concentrating on what the customer is really saying. Listen to their words, tone of voice, body language, and most importantly, how they feel.

Beware of making assumptions – thinking you intuitively know what the customer wants. It’s key here to not only listen to the question itself but also what the questions “means”. A key example is when a customer asks

What time is the 3pm parade?

At first glance, this seems like a stupid question, but when you realize that the customer actually means:

What time does the 3pm parade ARRIVE HERE (where I’m standing)

it makes a lot more sense! (nb. this example is taken from Lessons from the Mouse – a training course that teaches Disney customer service excellence).

Do you know what three things are most important to your customer?

Identify and anticipate needs.

Customers don’t buy products or services.

They buy good feelings and solutions to problems.

Most customer needs are emotional rather than logical. The more you know your customers, the better you become at anticipating their needs.

Communicate regularly so that you are aware of problems or upcoming needs. Make customers feel important and appreciated. Treat them as individuals. Always use their name and find ways to compliment them, but be sincere. People value sincerity. It creates good feeling and trust. Think about ways to generate good feelings about doing business with you. Customers are very sensitive and know whether or not you really care about them. Thank them every time you get a chance.

Help customers understand your systems & terms.

Stay away from jargon and industry-specific “speak”. While these terms are completely understandable to you with your years of experience – to an outsider they don’t make any sense at all! Remember, you’re the expert in your field, but your customer is the expert in theirs and quite often the service you provide to them is not their core business!

Your organization may have the world’s best systems for getting things done, but if customers don’t understand them, they can get confused, impatient and angry. Take time to explain how your systems work and how they simplify transactions. Be careful that your systems don’t reduce the human element of your organization.

Appreciate the power of “Yes”.

Always look for ways to help your customers. When they have a request (as long as it is reasonable) tell them that you can do it. Figure out how afterward. Look for ways to make doing business with you easy. Always do what you say you are going to do.

Know how to apologize.

When something goes wrong, apologize. It’s easy and customers like it. The customer may not always be right, but the customer must always win EVEN WHEN THEY ARE WRONG! Deal with problems immediately and let customers know what you have done. When a customer makes a mistake, don’t make them feel foolish, but rather treat them with dignity. The key thing to remember here is the Golden Rule:

Treat Others, the way you Want to be Treated

Make it simple for customers to complain.

Value their complaints. As much as we dislike it, it gives us an opportunity to improve. Even if customers are having a bad day, go out of your way to make them feel comfortable. Give more than expected. Since the future of all companies lies in keeping customers happy, think of ways to elevate yourself above the competition.

Consider the following:

What can you give customers that they cannot get elsewhere?
What can you do to follow-up and thank people even when they don’t buy?
What can you give customers that is totally unexpected?

Get regular feedback.

Encourage and welcome suggestions about how you could improve. There are several ways in which you can find out what customers think and feel about your services – I talk about this in a bit more detail here. Listen carefully to what they say. Check back regularly to see how things are going. Provide a method that invites constructive criticism, comments and suggestions. Whatever issues are identified need to be addressed and not ignored!

Treat employees well.

Employees are your internal customers and need a regular dose of appreciation. Thank them and find ways to let them know how important they are. Treat your employees with respect and chances are they will have a higher regard for customers. Appreciation stems from the top. Treating customers and employees well is equally important.

Project Management, Project manager

The 5 Key Requirements of a Successful Project Manager

May 17, 2017 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

1. Be a Leader AND A Manager:

Leaders share and communicate a common vision (of some future state); they gain agreement and establish the forward direction. Leadership is more than just telling someone what to do – it is inspiring them and motivating them by giving real world examples and ongoing guidance Good Leaders motivate others. Managers are results driven and focus on getting work done against agreed requirements. A good project manager will constantly switch from a leader to a manager as the situations require. .

2. Be A Team Builder AND A Team Leader:

Because projects are often cross-functional in that they use people who may not have worked together before. It is up to the project manager to set the ‘tone’ of the team and to lead them through the various team development phases to the point where they perform as a team. Often, the team individuals have their own line manager, and so the PM has no implied authority – yet still needs to motivate the individual. This is particularly true in a ‘Matrix’ organization.

3. Be A Problem Solver:

This is a skill that can be learned – it just needs a little ‘detective’ work up-front! You will want to first identify the possible ’causes’ that lead to the problem ‘symptom’. I talk a lot about the difference between Incidents and Problems here, but the key thing to remember is that causes can come from a variety of sources. The next step having found the root causes is to analyze possible options and alternatives, and determine the best course of action to take. Take care to agree what ‘best’ really means here!

4. Be A Negotiator AND Influencer:

Negotiation is working together with other people with the intention of coming to a joint agreement. It doesn’t have to be the eye-ball-to-eye-ball power struggle you may be thinking of! For example getting one of the team to work late to meet a deadline when they would prefer to go to the Ball Game. And for all these, you need to have some influencing skills. Influencing is getting events to happen by convincing the other person that your way is the better way – even if it’s not what they want. Influencing power is the ability to get people to do things they would not do otherwise.

5. Be An Excellent Communicator:

Being a communicator means recognizing that it’s a two-way street. Information comes into the project and information goes out of the project. A good way of summarizing this is that all communications on your project should be clear and complete. As a project manager, you will have to deal with both written and oral communications. Some examples are documents, meetings, reviews, reports, and assessments. A good mental guideline is “who needs this information, who gathers and delivers it, when or how often do they need it, and in what form will I give it to them”.

Management

THE HELPDESK

July 21, 2015 Hutch Morzaria 2 Comments

What is it?

In its simplest form, a helpdesk is a group of people assigned to assist customers in solving their problems. There are many different types of helpdesks and they are called by a variety of different names depending on the function that they serve, however the main point to make clear is that their purpose is to resolve a specific issue for a paying customer.

Types of Help Desks

At its simplest, you could break down Help Desks into two main types. There are definitely sub categorizations within each type and quite often they are called different things, but from an end users point of view there are really only two different types:

Customer Service – this type of helpdesk is generally more administrative in function and scope. They would provide customers with account information and perhaps act in a sales capacity with regards to new services and other offerings that might suit the client’s needs.

Technical Operations – break/fix or tech support or network operations or the NOC. The names are many and varied for this type of team, but their primary purpose is to resolve a specific incident or problem and restore the customer’s service in a timely manner as possible. Frequently this team is considered the 2nd level and is senior to the Customer Service team but this is not always the case.

Customer Service Helpdesks

Often referred to as a Contact Centre, these types of teams are more administrative in function and responsibility. They are frequently called upon to provide customers with account information or deal with billing concerns. While they may arrange visits with or escalate issues to the technical team, these individuals do not generally have the skills in-house to troubleshoot and resolve customer “problems”.

Quite often you will find that companies outsource this function to other companies and even other countries as it is more of a generic job then Technical and Operational Support. However, in recent years this trend has been reversing as regardless of the cost, companies are striving to present customers with a more intelligent and higher quality of service. Please note, outsourcing is not inherently bad by any means – if done properly, customers will receive a faster response time and all the information that they require to resolve their account issue. However – to provide this level of support, companies need to provide the outsourcer with a significant level of access into their own internal systems and customer records. In addition to this, the training that the outsourcer provides to their own staff is generally at a lower level than that provided internally – hence the quality of the answers provided are generally not at the same level.

In addition to the quality issues mentioned above, companies are actually using the fact that they provide service “in house” as a selling point, hoping in some cases to garner more customers simply based on “national pride”.

Incident & Problem Management

As mentioned previously, these teams are known by a variety of different names, but probably the most accurate name for them is the Service Desk. Based on the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework, the Service Desk is a component of the Incident Management team and they are responsible for resolving incidents and escalating problems.

What is an Incident?

Simply put, an incident is anything related to customer contact (incidents are also reported by automatic means via monitoring tools and I will discuss those types of incidents in greater depth in later posts).

Please note – Incidents are not restricted to technical teams, but can be something that a Customer Service team deals with also.

Incidents related to customers can be anything really – Information requests, Account Updates, Issue reporting are all examples of Incidents. All of these different Incidents coming from/through different sources would get routed to your Incident Management tool. For smaller teams this could be something as simple as a spreadsheet but in larger organizations either in-house customer built applications or enterprise level tools prevail.

Incident Management (in a nutshell)

Your helpdesk is responsible for reviewing the information in each of these incidents and checking if there is an appropriate solution already available to the customer.

For those instances for example where the customer wishes to update their Account Information, the helpdesk would look at the Incident, obtain the correct new information (& assuming that all appropriate security questions had been reviewed) log into the customers account and update the information. Once the information had been updated, they would inform the customer and then close the Incident. This is probably one of the simpler examples of an Incident from start to finish.

If the customer is reporting a problem or an issue, the Helpdesk staff are responsible for updating the Incident with all the relevant details as supplied by the customer. If the customer’s issue matches a known fix they are able to inform or supply that fix to the customer, however, if that is not the case they would need to escalate the issue to the Problem Management team.

The simplest way to think of the Incident Management (Helpdesk/Tier1) team and the issues they resolve is that if a “band-aid” exists they can apply it. If more drastic attention is required they will need to call the Doctor!

Problem Management

Problem Management is where the interesting work really happens. Incident Management due to its repetitive nature can get tedious and is definitely a drain on the more skilled staff in your organization … if you have people like that, think about moving them into Problem Management if you have such a team or create one if you don’t!

Problem Management is more in-depth. It’s where more often than not a single Problem is the cause of multiple Incident’s from multiple customers … as such you want your best people at this level. you would consider this Tier 2 or Tier 3 from an escalation and staffing perspective and dependent on your product or service you would have some very technically oriented people there. Their goal is not to just provide a band-aid, but rather to find out why the problem happened in the first place and fix it. they should be looking at ways to fix it in such a way as to ensure that it doesn’t happen again!!

KPI’s & Metrics

Regardless of the type of Help Desk you are running or dealing with there must be specific requirements in place to ensure that they are performing to peak efficiency and that they are resolving customer inquiries in a timely manner. A common industry term for these metrics is KPI – Key Performance Indicator and there are hundreds of different ones depending on the product and service you provide as well as what you want to measure and what is most important to your business.

Now each of these teams would have different metrics in place. However, some that are common to both Customer Service and Technical Teams are as follows:

Response Time –

Obviously, your team (Incident Management/Customer Service/Helpdesk) needs to get back to the customer in a timely manner. Their goal as already mentioned is to fix it, fix it fast and move on.

A band-aid will not always reattach the finger though, so it’s up to the Tier2 team to ensure that the surgery goes smoothly which obviously takes a lot more time as you don’t want the surgeon doing a shoddy job! So with that analogy in mind … you want to have an aggressive goal set for your Helpdesk – try to work with the 80/20 rule (The Pareto principle) … 80% of incidents responded to in 20 seconds (If you have the resources, otherwise maybe 20 minutes? Or 20 hours (that’s less than 1 day so might still be good – especially if you’re doing email support)? Or 20 days … well that’s probably not really worthwhile) but hopefully you get the point?

You want to set a specific goal for measuring how quickly your customers are getting a response.

Resolve Time –

Notice that I have separated these out. As much as you’d like to be able to resolve 100% of issues at that first contact, it’s not always going to be possible. However, you can have another measurement in place that tracks this which is the Resolve Time (sometimes called MTTR (Mean Time to Repair)).

The Goal here is also to get that band-aid on as quickly as possible so you need to ensure that your Incident Management system has some sort of a knowledge base which helps your staff find the solution to commonly placed issues/questions. If they have the answer every time, then a 100% resolution at 1st contact is achievable! If not, however … it gets a bit more complicated because all of a sudden your Incident Management team becomes the customer and the team they go to is the Problem Management team. Guess what? They have a different measurement for Response Time and Resolve Time too!

Problem Management Response Time –

Now as previously mentioned these are generally your more senior staff and as much as you’d like them to be available 24/7 unless you have an extremely large organization this is probably fairly unlikely.

So you are going to have build or determine some relevant response times based on their availability. In addition, as these escalated issues are generally issues that cannot easily be resolved, your resolution time is going to be extended also. Pick some appropriate intervals that meet your customers SLAs.

Your main goal for this team (in addition to resolving the problem of course) is communication, communication, communication!!! They must inform your agents what the issue is, what they are doing to resolve it and when they expect to have it resolved. If they cannot provide an estimated resolution time, they MUST provide your Tier1 team with an estimated update time.

Management

MATRIX MANAGEMENT AND PROJECTS

May 26, 2015 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Diagram of a matrix organisation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With large projects having all the required resources to hand is sometimes a difficult job in itself. While systems and hardware are easily acquired, the skills and specializations that people can bring to bear need time to develop. You could “hire” for it, but to some extent, that is a losing proposition as someone coming into the company fresh, will often not have the necessary internal knowledge or skills required to get the job done. This is where Matrix Management comes into play.

TAKE THE BLUE PILL

Matrix management is something that has been around for quite a while and despite your initial thoughts, it really does not have anything to do with Keanu Reaves and a long standing war between humanity and the machines! Rather, Matrix management (with respect to Projects) is a way of utilizing resources that exist in other teams so that you are able to accomplish your objectives. These resources are on temporary “loan” and must revert back to their previous home when the project or task is completed.

ADVANTAGES OF MATRIX MANAGEMENT IN PROJECTS

A significant advantage of this method of sourcing your resources in your project is the fact that you can get the best people possible to assist you in completing your project. While it is possible to hire externally and get the same or better skills, anyone that has come in from the street will not have the “company” knowledge that is sometimes the key requirement in getting things done. By obtaining resources from other internal departments and teams, you are able to bypass this bottleneck and ensure that you have got the team you need to get the job done.

Another significant advantage of this Matrix Management is that while you have the resources you need – you (as a manager) are still not their direct line manager. This means that you can leave the minutiae of people management tasks by the wayside and focus on what is of interest to you – completing that project!

DISADVANTAGES OF MATRIX MANAGEMENT IN PROJECTS

While not having to manage your new resource is a definite plus, the fact that you are not their manager can sometimes be a disadvantage also. Often – unless clearly defined – staff get pulled in multiple directions between the demands of their new project team and their existing team. If this is not addressed quickly, it can become quite a drain on your team and their morale.

Customer Management, Management, Training

MANAGEMENT TRAINING AND SELF IMPROVEMENT

March 17, 2015 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

As a manager, it is a key requirement to ensure that your team is appropriately trained on the minutiae of the job. How to find customer information, how to respond to customers, dealing with Irate customers and troubleshooting issues are obviously all things that you would ensure that your team receives. However, how important is it to you to ensure that YOU are receiving the appropriate training and improving your skills?

It almost goes without saying that the only constant in our world today is that “change is inevitable”. If you understand this fact then dealing with the constant pace of it is something that is fairly easy to take in stride.

The Importance of Training

From year to year, and inside each subject itself, what is taught at school and the way it is taught itself changes. This is natural – new things are being researched all the time and what was considered FACT one day is quite often flipped on its head the next. With the constant growth and change that we experience every day of our lives dealing with the pace is an issue in and of itself as more often than not, the greatest discovery of the day is just a piece in the puzzle to something much larger.

Now while you could afford to just “coast” along in school as you were being rated and graded against others being taught exactly the same material, in the “real world” this mentatility just doesn’t work. Your competitors in business and in your own workplace are constantly advancing their skills in an effort to be more efficient and provide an even better product or service at a lower price all the time – after all we live in a capitalist society and thats the hallmark of it isn’t it? The customers determine the leader and if you want to be part of that crowd you cannot afford to neglect your personal developement.

While its clear that this is a message that has been learned at the Senior Level, most employees don’t realize this and think that Senior Management just decide which way to steer the ship and then step back and let it go on its way. If you really look at it though, the readjustments and refining of technique are something that Senior Managers do all the time and they base this new direction on what they are learning from other companies and even their competition!

The transition from an average Manager to a top tier Manager is gradual, but knowing the latest trends and information definitely play a factor in this. This is obviously NOT just a matter of being able to spout the latest and greatest “buzz word” that is currently in vogue. The only way to truly advance is to actually understand what you are talking about and to believe in its value and potential. Being ISO certified is easy – understanding that ISO is NOT just paper-pushing which is the common misconception is something else altogether.

For those at the starting point of their management career the focus should be on Soft Skills. Things like Team Work, Leadership, Dealing with Change, Time Management are all crucial skills that are useful for the young Manager and also show a demonstrable return for the company.

With this knowledge in place (and keep in mind, retraining is key as if you don’t use it … you lose it!) the focus should be shifted towards industry and technology specific disciplines. You should aim for courses that not only provide you with an improvement but that can demonstrate an obvious return on investment to your company.

Things like Process Improvement and Cost Minimization are both emphasized in ITIL and Six Sigma certifications. Ensure that you are keeping abreast of the latest trends in your industry – read trade publications and technical journals, network with your peers in similar positions … SPEAK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS! … find out what they are interested in and what they would like to see your company provide to them.

While Managers today have less time then in days past – if training if structured correctly it can be useful and relevant and should be able to show an immediate impact to the organization. It is key to remember to that training cannot be a single event and should be considered a constant – just like change – as that is the only way to stay in the race and eventually – WIN IT!!

Bell Curves;, Business Planning, Management, Planning

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF PERFORMANCE MANAGMENT – USING A BELL CURVE

November 6, 2014 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Management of teams in a call center environment is never easy. Depending on your industry and your hours of operation not only do you often have to provide services and support during holiday periods, you often have to do it with a skeleton staff. If those employees are on the bottom end of your performance bell curve – well let’s just say, you might not have a good holiday season!

With any business, not only do you need to ensure that you have the appropriate number of agents to deal with the incoming issues, but you also need to ensure that these agents have the right skills and abilities to handle the volume that they get. You are forced to juggle resources based on the type of issues you might get – based on your historical trends – but you also need to always keep in mind the SLA you are offering to your customers and partners.

Phone calls & online chat need a significantly higher response rate than emails and the volume of issues while it can be planned for, can never account for emergencies and issues outside of your control (this is why they are called emergencies!)

One tool that you can use to help you ensure that you have the right number and type of resources is the Bell Curve. Utilizing this tool along with other KPIs that you have in place will help you in your planning and assist you in ensuring that you have the right people available to answer the customer’s query at the right time.

How to Create Performance Bell Curves

Bell curve graphs are called histograms. By reviewing individual performance (let’s take output as an example) and grouping it together across your team you will have a simple scale that graphed out shows a distribution. A normal distribution will have equal numbers on either side with the bulk of your team grouped in the middle.

Importantly, the bell curve (like any statistical distribution) describes a large number (or population) of individual things. The horizontal dimension (X-Axis) of the curve describes a range of values. The vertical dimension (Y-Axis) describes the incidences of “N” occurring. If we stick to our example of output, we would have a count of the number of emails responded to (for example) on the Y-Axis with a corresponding group of employees on the X-Axis. By determining where your employees fall in the distribution you will see where they stand in the distribution.

Now this can be done for quite a few of your KPIs (calls handled, average talk time, speed to answer etc…) and the more data of this nature that you add to your employee scorecard the better as graphical representations are extremely powerful and can tell you at a glance how an employee is “doing” in comparison to his peers.

What gets measured?

You will need a reasonable sample size to create an accurate assessment – do not judge your teams performance on one months data, but gather several months and ensure that your measurements are accurate by taking account of time away from the job (supervisors and other special projects that would impact their output and performance) and averaging your output over the course of the period in question.

In addition, you really need a sample size of at least 20+ agents to get a proper distribution – it’s even better when you get into multiples of that! As a rule, the more data you have the better your analysis will be.

You would take that data on a weekly/monthly basis and average it out over a specific period for all of your CSRs comparing their performance against your target goal. For example, if the output is to be 40 emails/day your distribution would have staff spread around that number in a fairly equal proportion (based on the size of your sample of course). Statistically speaking, the bell curve is defined entirely by its mean (average) and its standard deviation. But for our purposes, we need to know only that its shape can tell us a lot about agent group performance.

Understanding Bell Curves

As you can see in the graphic above, the peak is where the majority of your employees are in relation to output. You have some staff on the high side and some on the low side. You will see that the majority of employees are at the average with others above and below that average. By reviewing what the above average performers are doing in relation to the below average performers you will be able to compare and contrast behaviors and determine what actions you can best make to improve your lower performers. (NOTE: if you have a “double hump” curve that’s something I will look at in future posts so don’t think that you’ve done something wrong – double and triple humps happen … a key case in point is called volumes by time of day where you will have several different peaks).

Remember if your skew is towards the lower end of the scale you have a problem that you need to address immediately! Depending on your customer base and type of business this might be fine for you – those on the low side could be your slower performers with regards to output, but conversely, your higher performers in relation to customer retention just because they spend more time with each customer. However assuming that this is NOT the case and that all you are interested in is output, your goal is to “skew” your employee’s output towards the higher end of the scale. This can be accomplished through training – both technical, and product – as well as feedback from other more senior staff.

How does the Bell Curve impact staffing?

At its simplest, it doesn’t … however what you need to take into account when scheduling that coverage on a holiday or even earlies and lates, is the quality of the team doing the work. The Bell curve analysis helps you put that into a very clear picture and by combining multiple different curves on a single graph it is sometimes very obvious who your lower performers are.

Prince2, Project Management

What is PRINCE2

January 25, 2013 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

PRINCE2 stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environments and is a very popular method for effective Project Management.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

While PRINCE2 is one way of managing Projects, it is worthwhile defining what exactly a project is and why it needs management in the first place!

A project is specific task/role that needs to be completed to meet certain objectives. In a managed project, you would have a defined beginning and end and certain “check points” throughout the process itself to ensure that you were on target to meet your overall objectives.

These checkpoints are referred to as “gates” and at each gate, you would have certain deliverable and targets to check your progress against. By managing a project in this fashion, you are able to ensure that you stay on track and that any issues or concerns are identified and dealt with at an early stage of the process versus waiting till the end.

The defined “end” to a project is necessary as it creates a clear distinction between business as usual and the new objective that you are trying to accomplish.

WHERE DID PRINCE2 COME FROM?

PRINCE2 is the standard that is used extensively throughout the UK government and by millions of organizations world wide. PRINCE was established in 1989 and was superseded by PRINCE2 in 1996. Similar to ITIL, PRINCE2 provides Project Managers – regardless of the industry or sector – with a common language and terminology. It also provides a “best practices” framework for project management and ensures that – if done correctly – all relevant parties are kept informed and appraised of the progress of a project from start to finish. A few of the key features of PRINCE2 are:

A defined structure for the Project Management Team
Product based planning with a clear focus on Business and Customer needs
A staged process allowing the project to be divided into manageable chunks

QUALIFYING AS A PRINCE2 PROJECT MANAGER

There are two primary levels to the qualifications available for PRINCE2.

PRINCE2 Foundation – The first level of qualification, the Foundation, provides the basics and terminology used in PRINCE2. Foundation training is appropriate for those looking to make a start in Project Management or working towards a supporting role in Project Management.
PRINCE2 Practitioner – Unlike some other technical certifications, PRINCE2 only has the 2 levels instead of a whole tree. The Practitioner level is the highest qualification and is appropriate to those looking to manage Projects in a PRINCE2 environment.

Management, Project Management

Managing in a Matrix Structure

June 27, 2011 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Matrix management is somewhat different to the standard way of managing people and processes; however for a Project Manager, this is generally the only way of getting things done. Most projects operate in some kind of a matrix environment where resources to actually get the job done are acquired and released from other teams. In this fashion, the Project Manager is able to call upon the skills and excellence of staff throughout the organization to assist him in accomplishing his project, without having to build a huge and immense team internally.

What is Matrix Management?

Matrix Management is sometimes referred to as “dotted line” management and is fundamentally different to standard line management. With matrix management, you are responsible for some elements of that person’s role, but only in how it applies to your overall project. The day to day management of that employee including salary reviews, performance and so on, still remain the responsibility of their overall line manager.

Pluses and Minuses of Matrix Management

One of the biggest pluses of Matrix management is that you are not responsible for the tedious tasks of managing people and teams. Your responsibility is to the overall project and that person is simply a resource that you are utilizing to get the job done. However this comes with a downside – as you are not their day-to-day manager and do not have any overall influence on them from a managerial perspective, there are limits to what you can get them to do.

Pluses –

No need for line management tasks like pay reviews and disciplinary meetings.
Clearly defined objectives (project goals) are provided with a defined completion timetable
Your job description and focus is well defined, as is that of each of the team members
You are able to “poach” the best and most suitable resources from other parts of the company to accomplish your objectives versus having to make do with the staff in your team

Minuses –

Who do they listen to? Unless its very well defined, your new resource can be pulled in too many directions between the requirements of your role and the work they were doing for their manager.
Projects have a well defined timeline and due to these time constraints there are often issues with allowing staff to have time away from the job for personal development.

Management

Myers-Briggs Preferences

January 3, 2011 Hutch Morzaria 1 Comment

Your type does not determine your behavior. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is simply a categorization of how you “prefer” to behave and even this is to some extent situation dependent as while someone might be a “E” type personality (i.e. Extraversian), after a full day at work and meeting/greeting/interacting with people – their inclination at the end of the day might be towards the “I” spectrum (Intraversian).

People generally have both competing types inside them at all times – the MBTI however simply describes which type is more likely during normal circumstances and which type you have a preference towards.

The Voice of the Customer

October 19, 2010 Hutch Morzaria 2 Comments

There are many ways of learning what is essential in your business. However probably the most powerful and least practiced is that of Customer Feedback. Having the greatest widget in the world is useless if your customers don’t want to buy it and if it doesn’t resolve a perceived need. Getting that information from your customers can be accomplished in a variety of ways though and it pays to ensure that you are doing as many of them as possible. (One point to note – conducting a survey is important, but if you don’t actually do anything with those results, then you shouldn’t have wasted the time or the money in gathering that information!)

Customer Feedback Is Critical

In order to drive continual customer service improvements, companies need to focus on obtaining the information from their clients, analyzing that information and acting on that information. Remember, as stated earlier … if no action is taken – don’t bother!

Capturing Customer F

Capturing what your customers want can be done via a variety of different means now a days. Web and surveys are common as are physical surveys that are mailed out to customers. Depending on the size of your business and your customer base, there are many large organizations that can assist in gathering, collating and analyzing this information for you, but if you are just starting out a simple spreadsheet with the feedback that you’ve received from your customers is a great starting point!

Listen to them NOT just in your surveys but also in your daily interactions with them via your support and customer service teams.

Another great way to get information from customers is via focus groups. Often used at the beginning of a product stage to determine WHAT customers want, it is just as effective afterwards to determine HOW you are performing and if you are meeting or exceeding expectations.

Another point to note – DO NOT over survey your customers. It is quite common for different parts of the same company to send out different surveys to the SAME customer. While it is obviously important to that division, the information that is returned will not be as useful as the customer will NOT be providing an unbiased response.

It is best if all survey’s are done via a centralized team or department and then the results of that survey shared among the company as a whole. Customer feedback collected through surveys, e-mails, phone calls, online chat and other channels can be combined into a single instance, integrating both structured and unstructured data into a central platform and enabling companies to extract maximum insight from the information collected in a cost-effective and timely manner.

Analyzing the Data

Customer feedback is subjective. It always will be and this needs to be understood by the group running the survey and appropriate steps taken. Another very significant point is that when survey’s are sent out it, it is essential that steps are taken to “tie” the response to a specific issue so that you are able to make the most use of this information. In addition, decisions via survey should never be taken unless the sample size is large enough.

Solving the Issues

Once you’ve determined what your customers want, prioritize those issues based on the 80/20 rule (Pareto principle) and let your clients know what you are doing to resolve the issues. What your plan is, how soon you expect to have the issue resolved and what the benefits to them would be. There is no harm in sharing a commonly perceived error with your existing users … THEY ALREADY KNOW IT’S THERE! … and if they see that you are going to take steps to resolve the problems they will understand that their best interests are in remaining with you. Remember that these are already your customers – you just want to treat them the right way and sharing information with them is a simple and effective way of doing this.

Customer Satisfaction, Management

Managing Technical Teams

October 12, 2010 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Managing technical staff

is becoming more of a challenge daily. Even more so, when your staff are MORE technical than you are – which to some extent is expected … you are a manager and responsible for multiple area’s of the company, they are specialists and able to focus on their area to the exclusion of everything else.

In most cases technical staff are those who prefer to perform their work with little or no supervision and they often view Management “oversight” as a hindrance to their – getting the job done. They also quite often forget that at the other end of the phone line, there is a customer (or customers) that has been impacted and regardless of the fact that they “think” they can resolve the problem, there are timelines and SLAs in place to ensure that issues get escalated. Now, while “techs” are members of the team that managers depend upon heavily to resolve the problem, it is the managers responsibility to understand the “big picture” and also the challenges faced by these key members at a non-technical level.

The manager is responsible for balancing the needs of the company against the needs of these key resources and obviously directing technical staff can be a challenge. It is made even more of one, by those managers that are unable to step back and release control (or delegating). The understanding between a manager and his team must be such that trust exists at either level. You trust them to get the job done in a timely manner and escalate those problems that they are unable to handle & they trust you to keep their best interests in mind, work with them to get more training (which is something a “true” techie will never have enough of), ensure that they have the resources and training to resolve the problems that you are assigning to them and in those instances where its necessary … pull them back and away from a problem so that they do not get defeated. This mutual respect MUST be in place if the team and organization is expected to be effective.

The manager of a technically oriented department MUST have a reasonable grasp of the technologies and issues that his staff will face. They should be able to understand it at a “high” level, but it is OK to let your staff know that they are smarter than you! Remember they are skilled in their unique discipline and while you could not do their job, they are not managers and could not do your job either. It is far more important for the manager to be able to direct the staff to the right resources, tools or training when working issues. If the employee cannot perform the task with his current level of knowledge, it is incumbent on the manager and the company to ensure that appropriate and relevant training is available in a timely (& frequent) manner. Technical skills “rust” when not used and with the plethora of new technologies constantly being developed and launched it is very difficult to always be current with the newest while maintaining a grip on legacy tools/applications and knowledge.

Managers are constantly expected to do more, with less resources, regardless of the economy (think about it – in good times, the number of customers you have are increasing whereas your resources won’t (at least not at a comparative rate) as the company is in business to make a profit … in bad time, you lose staff and have to service what customers you have left with fewer and fewer resources) and unfortunately is probably one of the few constants in our world! Now, not only do you always have to do more with less, but you need to also ensure that the staff you have you KEEP! The cost of hiring/training and integrating new staff and making them useful is a topic for another day, but suffice it to say, if you have a “good ‘un”, you want to keep him! Its a fine line between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction and its a tightrope you’ll be walking every day. I generally tend to err on the side of employee satisfaction – if you have good staff, doing a good job who are happy doing that job … customer satisfaction just comes naturally!

Leadership, Management, People Management

Leadership on the Front Line

April 14, 2010 Hutch Morzaria 2 Comments

OK – its great to have friends at work. In fact I think its a necessity – there are very few of us who would do this (or any) job for no pay and as such work is just that … its work. If it was easy and always fun it would be called PLAY. So with that being said, having someone to talk to at the water cooler is a good idea … however … there is a difference when you are a manager! There is a line that shouldn’t and mustn’t be crossed and that is the line of professionalism. So how do you lead these people without seeming like an unapproachable monster? Well here are some hints and ideas for you:

Be honest – there are obviously things that you can and cannot share with your employees – terminations and reviews to mind! – but as long as you make it clear to your staff that there are some things that you cannot answer that should suffice. Let them know that in whatever you are telling them you are being as honest and as candid as you possibly can be. Remember if you get caught in a lie, it’s not only going to impact the employee that you lied but everyone else also once they hear about it … after all if you could lie to one of their peers about something, whats to tell them that you’re not lying to them also?

Communicate ALWAYS – talk to your team. Constant and continual feedback on performance is imperative. They need to know how they stand in the company and in their team, what they can do to improve and if they’ve done something wrong this is even more important. Most employees are in the job to do the best that they can do – there have been very few instances in my career that an employee just didn’t care and actively campaigned to get terminated (that’s a story for another day!) – and its up to you to tell them how to do this. In addition to keeping your staff informed and motivated however this has a direct impact on you – do you remember my previous post about Performance Appraisals (if not, click here) – trying to do a year end performance appraisal without giving the employee feedback throughout the year is going to be extremely difficult unless you’ve decided to grade them at the highest possible level. If you’ve not been telling them what they can do to improve and trying to help them to do this they have every right to rip you apart in the review meeting!

Now where do you go to blow of steam? Lets be honest (which I always encourage – see point 1!) managing is a hard job. If you’re in a difficult situation with your company or a member of your team you sometimes need to be able to say things that are outside the scope. This is where your manager comes in and if you have a large enough and established enough company – your peers – come in. They will be able to assist you in your decision making process and give you clear unbiased opinions on any decisions that you are concerned about. If you’re not comfortable utilizing that framework – heck ask me! I’ll give you a completely unbiased opinion and off course there are also tons of networking related groups available online that you can frequent that will be able to provide you guidance in your field too.

Leadership and management isn’t easy … well managing badly can be very easy … its becoming a great manager that takes work. I hope you choose to make the effort.