ATA Awards
AWARDS 2010 - Follow the Judges
Principal judges John Connolly and Paul Claassens are travelling around the countryside performing the all important centre site inspections for the ATA 2010 Awards. Accompanied by a second state judge representatives, the site visits are always a memorable and insightful experience into a Centre's culture, people and processes.
As the judges make their way through hundreds of visits, we will follow some of their journey and share some insights and highlights.
Week 1
The Judging commenced. John & Paul commenced Judging in Sydney on the 5th May, and visited sites nominated in the <5O fte category. After an entertaining drive down the F3, being guided by John’s Homer Simpson GPS, they made it on time.
Although small in size these sites were very big when it came to passion for their centre, the work they do and what they have achieved. It was great first day and a great introduction to the 2010 judging experience.
Week 2
After speaking to some members of the centre we then attended the R&R festivities where prizes were being awarded for all sorts of fantastic reasons - a lot of teamwork type awards and peer recognition. The colour theme continued as the staff were asked to bring in food for the R&R that represented their colour - I can tell you we were blinded by the blue / green / yellow / whatever colours of the food (note - neither of us ate anything!). Ceremonies concluded with the cutting of the "Four Pillars" cake that represented the key values of the centre - nice way to wrap up.
Week 3
South Australia - Notes from Paul Claassens
SA judging has been completed. Leanne and I visited sites in Adelaide over a two day period.
During these two days we were given back stage passes to a news show, met the Adams family and were welcomed by Kenny the Kidney and Mr Easy. Blown away by the creativity and effort everyone is putting into their presentations.
Queensland - Notes from John Connelly.
We are welcomed at the door, the building is quite deceiving as it looks huge on the inside (very few internal walls) but small on the outside - a veritable tardis!
We enjoyed the presentation and then did a tour of the centre - this centre services many rural and remote areas in Qld and they often do secondments of staff and rolling road shows which are quite special. Lots of focus on R&R which is normally quite difficult in a Govt organisation - nice one!
Back in the car at 10.45 for the wet drive back to Brissie. Sun / rain / sun / rain - where's the "Sunny one day........"?
Arrived a bit early at our next stop...In the last 12 months this centre had launched 2 new brands and had made significant inroads on their systems. These guys have all the bases covered - great recruitment initiatives, great training programs, fantastic support mechanisms for staff, state of the art systems, an awesome remuneration / bonus / R&R scheme, and fabulous accommodation.
WA Judging complete
WA judging has been completed. Paul & John van Der Ende judged WA sites over a 3 day period, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday of last week.
Sites visited covered all 3 centre size categories & IT, Government, Insurance & Financial services Industries.
Paul brought the grey raining weather with him from NSW & SA, but it was all sunshine in the Contact Centres. It was great to see so many centres put themselves up for nomination and all the effort put into centre presentations. As always we where made very welcome and looked after as very special guests.
As we entered our first site we did not know what we had got ourselves in for, and felt like we had been transported back too many years for us to say, as we were welcomed by all our friends from playschool. Although a little hesitant at first both John & I were singing along with the team by the end. A memorable visit!
It was an inspiring three days, and John and I would like to thank all centres for making us feel so welcome and looking after us, you are all shining examples of what is so good about the Contact Centre Industry and great advocates for your respective businesses.
Some insights from the NSW Judging
What an amazing journey the category judging has been filled with such talented and driven people… The innovation that has shone through has excited and motivated me with creative staff engagement programs to the stories of going above and beyond customer expectations and delivery of 1st class customer experience. These companies should be proud of the people that they are nurturing as they are leading the way in business excellence!
Iinet - Interesting fact: Iinet have agents specifically employed to access social media sites and broadband forums to support these medias and promote / support / defend / communicate their position on all things to do with their services.
The site visit revealed a centre split into 2 areas , east and west.
Great facilities with r&r results, social activities and all sorts of cool (relevent) info displayed - even performance stats! What was really cool was an NPS score displayed on the TV's that was actually REAL TIME! It is updated throughout the day as the results come in - very cool!
HSBC - Great emphasis on people development was also evidenced in their "Career Adventures" program where high performers are rewarded with a 1 week secondment to any other department of their choice! Strong succession planning activities, staff engagement, customer satisfaction and internal support where also highlights of the visit. The visit to the centre revealed a crisp clean environment - professionally presented with performance data, TV style dashboards and engaged staff..
CMC Markets - a stock broking contact centre.These guys have the most fabulous 360 degree view of the city - breathtaking!
We had an enjoyable presentation from a group of energised employees who gave a passionate account of who they are and what it is they do on the global CMC network. Due to their small size they have taken a deliberate move to include peer feedback into their coaching processes to enable "calibration". Nice idea.
We were a bit cautious about the site visit as the market had crashed over 300 points the previous night but these guys seemed to have everything under control (however we did have to tip toe past their trading floor!). The centre was well set out with nice amenities - probably one of the best lunch room / kitchens we have seen - especially considering the views - WOW. One of the funkiest things these guys had was a "worm" on their TV dashboards that tracked their customer satisfaction results real time!
ATO - We arrived on time and were greeted by the "Librarian" and despite her modest demeanor she had some pretty special plans for us! After a quick tour of the amenities on another floor (meeting rooms etc) we were introduced to the book of the the "call centre like no other". We then progressed to the contact centre where, due to the ATO's centenary celebrations, we were treated to the before and now theme across a number of key contact centre priorities.
Each of the teams had picked a decade over the last 100 years to demonstrate the progress that had been made. Each team presented a skit to emphasize their key points and we would both have to confess to having tears rolling down our cheeks with laughter at some of the bizarre and very talented presentations - we visited Charlie Chaplan, Elvis, The Beetles, Michael Jackson, an hilarious group of soldiers hell bent on saving the environment, the Village People (we danced with them!) and many many more, culminating in a demonstration of what the ATO world will look like in 2030! All of these items were in the book.
We then had a "book review" where we covered off a lot of the bare bones of the contact centre and their presentation. We left whilst being serenaded by 3 or 4 of the staff.
CBA Property Ops - Whilst only a small centre they have huge responsibilities in looking after all of CBA's properties. Some highlights include great staff engagement and their excellent abilities to manage their stakeholders - an example of this is their recent achievement in converting 60% of their customer base to online issue reporting, therefore saving huge resources - nice work guys.
Tasmania and Victoria
Well, Paul and Glenda are doing their tour of Victoria and Tasmania, with Paul as usual bringing the rain and cold weather with him. Judging has commenced and covers all categories with all industry's represented, from outsources to local government, insurance, finance and superannuation we are visiting them all. Passion for the customer continually stands out, as well as ensuring centres are servicing the needs of the client and stake holder. Lots of travel but we are kept motivated by the centres desire to provide service excellence irrespective of the industry they are in. We have experienced some plane flights where the planes are just too small for our liking.
Competition is tough, with all centres highlighting how they differentiate themselves and why they are the best. With cakes and treats of every size and description available for judges during the visits we are getting concerned whether we are suffering from malnutrition and in need of a feed. Overall we are continually being surprised by innovation and dedication to success. A tight tussle for honors and let the best centre win!
By the way, Glenda and I love sandwiches, just in case you are wondering :)
More revealing insights from the final week of NSW judging
Singtel Optus - Tanya and I set out early foam Parramatta on our way to Singtel Optus at Macquarie Park - a reasonably short drive but we knew the traffic going into Sydney would be bad. We got there bang on 9am, 1 and a half hours to travel 13klms! We both really appreciated our Novacastrian traffic!
When we arrived we marveled at the enormity of the Optus Campus - it was just like a small city in itself with many multiple story buildings, restaurants shops, bars etc - over 6000 people work there - truly amazing.
We were escorted past the Optus shop to a small meeting room where the Centre Manager, Stan, gave us a good run down on the centre via PowerPoint. They have a fantastic induction and training model utilizing development specialists, 1 per 3 new staff, when the staff go live they are then supported by induction support specialists and people involved in their leadership program - all of these roles support strong succession planning within the centre.
Another key feature of their overall coaching and development activities is that they put aside every Tuesday and Thursday as coaching only days where the team leaders stay away from their email and other duties to specifically focus on coaching of staff. At the end of each of these days they have a huddle and calibrate of the days activities. They even have what they call IDP (Individual Development Program) weeks where career opportunities are discussed in detail and they have staff from other departments visit to road show what thye do.
Flexigroup- We had a smooth drive from Macquarie Park to our next visit - Flexigroup in St Leonards. Now I had to remember where the parking was from my visit last year so Tanya called the centre manager, Duncan, on his mobile - just as she did but we turned left off the Pacific Hwy there in front of us was a little bumble bee waving a bright yellow sign saying"ATA Judges this way". There were 3 little bumble bee helpers in totlal who safely guided us to our park.
We were 15 mins early so our bumble bee took us upstairs to the shopping centre, seemingly oblivious to the laughs, waves, stares and calls from the people around us - very funny indeed until the bee confided that he had been a tin of Pringles in a previous job!
We arrived at the centre which looked fabulous in it's yellow and black theming and the whole bumble bee theme became alive. It was a new corporate vision based on the themes Innovate, Collaborate and Deliver, they had involved their staff in the changes and when asked to thing of a mascot for these themes the bumble bee was an obvious choice due to it's industrious and supportive work ethic - a real team connection too as the bee moves from one place to another gathering and delivering!
Their mission statement was the old Aussie favorite "Too Easy" and it was fantastic to see how well this simple statement was integrated into the business.
We then enjoyed a walking presentation from fantastically engaged people - at each "station" we were told of the many things this centre does to ensure success.
Flexigroup had everything covered at a high level, a great recruitment and induction program, $1500 finders fee for new recruits, an Academy team, fabulous ongoing training programs (56% of staff we involved in some sort of additional training - most popular was a cert 4), trainee team leader program and the list goes on. Their WFM team even has a kpi to ensure everyone has a coaching session each week AND that it actually goes ahead!
There was obviously a high level of staff engagement, not just from the staff presenting, but from all staff in the centre - shows the true value of finding a common denominator through clear vision and great theming - sounds "Too Easy"!
Flexigroup Collections - It seemed a bit weird to us to be coming back to the same room to see what was supposed to be a whole new presentation. That weirdness soon fell away as the people from Flexigroup Collections started talking about their centre. Of course the "Too Easy" and "Bumble Bee" themes were still there but they were adapted in a fabulous way to the job of collections. In fact everything they seemed to do was designed around collection!
Flexigroup had themed their centre on a soccer team (I think that might have been before the world cup!) so that the 30 day arrears were the "Strikers", the 30 to 90 day arrears were the "Midfield", and the 90 to 120 day arrears were the "Goal Keepers". All teams worked under the theme "Bee the Keeper" (get it?). After 120 days the debt goes to an agency.
Where this gets really funky is that the individual skills sets required for each of these roles were assessed and people are recruited specifically for the role that needs to be filled. As a result of this and many other engagement activities, attrition in the centre had reduced from a whopping 150% 12 months ago to just 15% currently - a truly astonishing result.
Like the previous Flexigroup centre we had visited, Collections have a number of home based agents. To demonstrate this, and without our knowledge, one of their home agents, Adrian, was listening to the presentation the entire time via conference phone. When it came time for Adrian to do his part of the presentation he spoke up loudly from the speaker directly in front of us - I swear that Tanya jumped at least 2 inches up from her seat! I had a real chuckle when I noticed that the speaker phone had Adrian's name tag carefully placed upon it.
The tour of the centre showed more of the fantastic Bee theming did I mention that most of the drawings used for the theming were done by actual staff members?). The visit culminated in a value discussion from Doc, the 2 up manager, in front of the entire team and the whole group sounded out their "Too Easy" catch cry, a nice way to end our day.
St George Outbound - After St Leonards we drove to Kogarah to visit the St George Bank Outbound team. The centre was adorned with corporate theming, scoreboards, tallies and R&R boards - very colorful and energetic.
The presentation included the centre manager, a very energetic team leader, an agent and 2 stakeholders form the business who had recently engaged the services of the outbound team. They had developed a great scorecard for outbound and a successful reward and recognition program that allowed for all sorts of reward, including team rotation and peer recognition.
The team are supported by great systems that interact with their people at a high level. Of special note is the "what if" reward points tracker and the ability of the esme information system to track escalations and points of high contact to provide direct feedback to team leaders and L&D areas. The "Mr Easy" program is not what you think- it's an easy way to provide ideas and suggestions to the organization that are then tracked and progress emails sent to the contributor!
Site tour revealed a bright sunny environment with lots of focus on the people that use the facilities - the massage chair was a nice inclusion!
We were also luck enough to be there whilst a home agent open day was being held so we enjoyed having a chat with some of the people in the team that work from home.
Sydney Water - Our last visit for our stint in Sydney was Sydney Water.
When we arrived we were treated to a stars night at the movies - as we walked in there were stars on the floor representing the centers individual catergory entrants - a nice touch.
The centre is quite deceiving - very unassuming on the outside - but large, uncluttered, clean and spacious on the inside. It used to be a Sizzler restaurant apparently!
We had a great time talking to the agents and team leaders, all the while being tantalized by the smell of freshly cooked popcorn - where's mine! A great deal of work had been done in staff engagement including the formation of teams and committees that meet regularly to ensure the peoples needs are being met.
Systems were of a high order - in fact the contact centre manages the information system for all of Sydney Water, a truly unique set up but who better to manage it than those people who use it the most? The centre had started to automate some of their low value call types like water restriction details and property change information and were about to launch an automated payment arrangement service. This has enabled the agents to focus on the more complex enquiries and has obviously improved their job satisfaction due to the variety of the work. Something of particular note was the focus of safety in the workplace - an obvious focus throughout the organization. What made the contact centre safety special was that the longer they go without a lost time accident, the more money they accrue from the organization to donate to charities of their choice.
As we walked around the centre we had time to look at a number of stars on the floor, each person in the centre had created a star to briefly describe themselves - a nice engagement activity. The visit ended in the chill out area where people can read a book from the library or play the wii. Up and coming social events adorned the walls as did photos of previous events and peoples family photos - a nice place to be - especially because we finally got some of that yummy popcorn!
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