By
Sarah Stealey Reed
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Date Published: January 08, 2013 - Last Updated August 22, 2018
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Comments
We here at ICMI are so excited for 2013 and all the great customer service strategies, resources, stories, and best practices that we will get to share. Our intention is to feature one big call center concept each month, so that you can align your initiatives right along with us.
We couldn’t think of any better way to kick off the year than with Culture and Morale. You will see great content all month long that highlights high-performance, leadership, incentive programs, and internal partnering for culture and morale success. We will also show you culture-in-action from some of the award-winning and high-performance call centers in our community.
So let’s jump in! If you are like most contact centers, you have new programs and projects that you are trying to launch right now, and it helps if everyone on your team is as excited as you are. One great way to make that happen is through positive leadership!
I came across a great article recently that talks about HOW to bring leadership into your support team. Chase Clemons from 37signals is the founder of Support Ops, and their entire site is dedicated to "bringing humanity to customer support." How awesome is that?
All of Chase’s suggestions around leadership are feasible for a contact center to implement TODAY. They are low-cost, creative and applicable to just about any size call center. The thing that really jumped out is the idea that leadership does not always need to be at the C-level in order to be effective. Here are just a few of the other highlights that resonated with me:
- Make sure to give your support team "leads." It doesn’t matter what you call the role, but people do need someone to escalate to, and to emulate.
- Have your Team Lead write up a weekly summary of what’s happening in your support center. 37signals calls it the "heartbeat."
- Rotate people in and out of the role so that the ideas, the leaders, and the knowledge stay fresh and innovative.
January is a great time to try new things! Let us know if you have a great leadership success story or some unique ways to keep culture and morale thriving throughout the year. In the meantime, you can check out Chase’s article in its entirety here.
Related: Customer Service Strategies That Connect with Your Customers