7 Pieces of the Call Center Culture Puzzle

Culture reigned as the supreme topic at the recent 14^th Annual Call Center Week, and, with good reason, it will at the upcoming Oman Customer Service Week. It truly represents the centerpiece of a commitment to customer-centricity.

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One can hire more constructively. One can manage more strategically. One can talk more eloquently. But at the end of the day, one can never hide his brand’s true identity, and if his organization’s culture does not align with the broader, philosophical commitment to customer-centricity, the mask will come off and the mirage will fade away.

The customer will know he was on the receiving end of deception from an organization that will day or say whatever it takes to claim his money.

As essential as culture is to the customer experience, what truly makes it such a hot topic is how difficult it can be to properly implement. It doesn’t seem difficult—after all, it does not necessarily require extensive resources or a formidable startup. It is merely a way of thinking; what inhibitors can truly prevent its adoption?

Many, in fact. While culture ultimately does come down to mindset, its successful implementation hinges on a variety of factors subject to vast human and systemic error. If any piece is rendered unfit for the cultural puzzle, the effort will ultimately prove futile—a culture detrimental to the customer will persist.

Management

Call center agents ultimately answer to management, but in an ideal environment, they must behave as if they are reporting directly to customers.

This mindset—that the customers are the ones who evaluate service and thus "choose" who to promote and who to fire—is essential for a customer-centric environment, and the burden is on management to pave the way for its existence.

By managing directly in conjunction with the customer’s voice, leaders eliminate the notion that a difference exists between satisfying those agents serve and those to whom they report. Either perspective should result in wholly-customer-centric performance.

Agents

Culture might typically be portrayed as a management challenge, but its success is unattainable without effective participation from the agents. Management can say—and do—everything under the sun when it comes to creating a culture of customer-centricity, but if agents do not welcome that leadership and adjust their mentalities and behaviors accordingly, the cultural initiative is doomed to failure.

If agents are incapable of or disinterested in espousing the corporate culture in each and every interaction—both with customers and internal stakeholders—the process will break down. Those customers conscious of the brand’s attempt at culture will dismiss it as a hollow effort to become more marketable. And those unaware of the brand’s supposed identity will never figure it out—all they will know is that when it comes to actually dealing with the business, the culture is one of disengagement and transaction, not customer-centricity.

Metrics

Call center leaders can wax poetic about the importance of building relationships through "strategic" calls, but if the metrics in place do not support that declaration, the declaration will never take flight.

Call center agents face enough difficulty managing the conflicting philosophical messages they independently receive from customers and leadership. When the specific benchmarks against which their performance is measured differ from the way customers evaluate performance, businesses outright declare that the so-called cultural commitment to the customer is all talk and no walk.

In addition to preaching a certain mindset, organizations looking to instill a more customer-centric culture must assure that metrics—which serve as a proxy for business priorities—completely align with the philosophy.

Human Resources

While agents must certainly be versatile, they are not infinitely malleable. If recruiters are putting the wrong personalities into the call center, they are inherently impeding the business’ ability to create a culture of customer-centricity.

Too often, human resources departments focus on hiring those with certain skills to perform specific tasks. In doing so, they fill a center with individuals who are perhaps capable of doing what needs to be done but certainly not being who they are needed to be.

When contact center leadership determines the appropriate culture, it must collaborate directly with human resources to assure that the recruiting and onboarding arms of the business function with that culture as their guiding light.

By building the right talent pool, human resources provides the necessary foundation for implementing a culture of customer-centricity.

Marketing

The most overt signal of an organization’s identity, marketing is an imperative part of the cultural equation.

What a business claims to its customers must be matched exactly by how it operates internally and what it delivers externally. If customers meet a brand via its hip, personal social media account but then face the same robotic, impersonal, delay-ridden customer experience when they actually call for support, they will receive direct endorsement to dismiss all branding as a faèade.

Collaboration, of course, is essential. While the call center needs to deliver on what marketing is promising, marketing must also be piped into the internal culture. Its goal is as much reflecting on what the business is about as it is broadcasting what the business wants to be about.

Technology

Insofar as culture is a human construction, it is logical for businesses to overlook the role technology plays in supporting that construction.

Logic, in this case, is not the friend of success.

No matter how customer-centric an organization is, if its technology cannot help turn the vision into reality, the customer will, again, see nothing more than a business claiming something it does not deliver.

In creating customer satisfaction, empowering agents to think like customers and assuring the business evolves in conjunction with the voice of the customer, technology can play the role of enemy or friend. If IVR systems, knowledge management systems and call feedback instruments do not enable the brand to do what is best for the customer—and live the commitment—they make sustaining the culture impossible.

Customer

Insofar as culture is commonly used to describe the internal environment, it is easy to forget the most important piece of the puzzle: the customer.

The entire reason for uniting the business around a central culture is to better connect with customers. Culture, therefore, is not simply about what creates the most harmonious work environment; it is about what positions the business—and each individual employee—to best satisfy customers.

Employee happiness is certainly a part of that, but the way a business goes about creating that happiness—and mobilizing its employees to act—is determined by the personalities, needs and wants of the target audience.

A workplace is only truly great if its greatness stems from an unbreakable link to the pulse of the customer.