#203 - Supporting Team Leaders & Agents

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of Get Out of Wrap. This week I was lucky enough to be asked to come and do a live presentation, webinar type thing as part of EvaluAgent's Contact Centre Performance Summit. There are some great speakers there including Erica Farmer, Keiki Stabler, Rob Wilkinson and loads of others and all of the sessions are on EvaluAgent's website.

[00:00:27] But I thought I would share my session where I talked about how our industry has changed and what that means for team leaders and agents. I hope you enjoy it.

[00:00:46] Hello everyone, how are we all doing? It's great to be here. We are live. You'd think I would be kind of experienced at these and not nervous but I am and I think that's a sign that we all care right?

[00:01:01] So really looking forward to this. Thank you so much to EvaluAgent for asking me to come in and do this. Thanks to all the other presenters for just work off.

[00:01:14] If you could have been so good, if you could have been so good, that would have been great. So I am going to take you through some thoughts around where we are right now in our industry and how that impacts team leaders and agents and then also share some tips with you.

[00:01:32] But look, I don't want to hear me talk for 30 minutes. So it would be great if you use the chat. I will answer in the moment because as I said, this is live. So anything could happen normally involving a doc.

[00:01:48] But first of all, let me introduce myself for those of you that don't know me. My name is Martin Teasdale and I'm sure like a lot of you, I started on the phones back in 1997 in a contact center in London.

[00:02:06] And I thought it would be quite interesting to compare and contrast kind of that opening, you know, that initiation into our industry then with now.

[00:02:20] After being an agent for a couple of years, I went on to become a team leader, contact center manager, head of contact center, director.

[00:02:29] And this industry, which I love, gave me the opportunity to work in places like Istanbul, Madrid, Hamburg, went over to New York a couple of times.

[00:02:40] So whether it is the morning or the afternoon when you're watching this, thank you.

[00:02:47] Oh, hi. It's great to see you too, Spencer.

[00:02:51] So, yeah, and I kind of rose up through the ranks and then some might call it a midlife crisis.

[00:02:57] But in 2019, I started the UK's first contact center based podcast called Get Out of Rap.

[00:03:05] And a value agent have been longtime supporters of that.

[00:03:10] And it blows my mind to know that it's been listened to in over 70 countries.

[00:03:15] It's had hundreds of thousands of downloads.

[00:03:18] We're on episode 202 is out at the moment.

[00:03:23] Amazing guests.

[00:03:24] And that's all I wanted to do was to put our industry in a better light and share the stories of the amazing people that work in it.

[00:03:32] And then in February of 2023, I created the first ever online community for team leaders.

[00:03:42] And we have 429 leaders in that at the moment.

[00:03:47] And it's a place where every day we come to share challenges and best practice and talk about the things that team leaders are doing every single day with their team members.

[00:03:59] And a lot of the things that I'll be sharing with you today come directly from that.

[00:04:05] So please, as Spencer's already done, make use of the chat function and I will reference you live.

[00:04:12] We'll also be doing something halfway through as well.

[00:04:15] It's going to be very, very interactive.

[00:04:18] But why don't we kick off?

[00:04:19] Let's go.

[00:04:20] So times have changed or have they?

[00:04:27] If I think back to when I started as an agent, I had one channel, which was the phone, and I had one CRM system, a green screen, and that was it.

[00:04:39] My training took half an hour.

[00:04:43] And I basically used the people around me to help me navigate it through.

[00:04:49] Now, of course, we exist and our agents and team leaders have to operate in a world that is omnichannel, multichannel, and multimodal.

[00:04:59] I don't even know what that means.

[00:05:01] But it is more channels.

[00:05:04] What is fascinating, though, is 64%.

[00:05:09] And I will be hitting you with some stats.

[00:05:11] I should have done a quiz.

[00:05:12] But I will be hitting you with some stats.

[00:05:14] Now, all of these stats come from either my community or great publications like Contact Babel, which this one comes from.

[00:05:23] So as of the end of 2023, certainly in the UK, and they also do stats for the US as well, but 64% of interactions within our industry are still on the phone.

[00:05:37] 19% are email.

[00:05:40] 6.5% are web chat.

[00:05:42] And then we've got the rest of that is made up through self-service, SMS, WhatsApp, social media.

[00:05:54] And for those of you who still want to go super old school, letters.

[00:05:59] So our industry is definitely omnichannel.

[00:06:03] However, regardless of age group, so including 16 to 24-year-olds, 72% of consumers still want to speak to a person when they contact a contact center.

[00:06:19] So it's been long mooted, hasn't it?

[00:06:23] The phone and voice channel is on its way down.

[00:06:27] It's on its way out, but that isn't the case.

[00:06:31] Dara.

[00:06:32] Martin, great to have you on this.

[00:06:34] Your support for the TL and agent level in contact centers is so important.

[00:06:38] These are the most important people in a contact center.

[00:06:40] And sometimes they are not provided the support they deserve.

[00:06:43] Dara.

[00:06:44] Dara, thank you very much.

[00:06:46] And that last sentence is really important because it's a common phrase, isn't it?

[00:06:52] The most important people in our contact centers are team leaders and agents.

[00:06:57] Yet, do we do enough for them?

[00:07:00] So times have changed.

[00:07:02] One of the things that has changed that causes customers a great deal of frustration is that speed to answer has gone from 2004 to 16 seconds.

[00:07:16] So as a customer, you only had to wait on average 16 seconds for someone to pick up the phone and reply to your contact.

[00:07:26] That has now gone up to 116 seconds and is the number one cause of frustration for customers when they are dealing with contact centers.

[00:07:37] And it is the agents and therefore the team leaders that bear the brunt of that.

[00:07:43] Customers are waiting longer.

[00:07:45] What else has changed?

[00:07:47] Everything is complex.

[00:07:48] Everything.

[00:07:49] And I'm not just talking about contact centers here.

[00:07:52] I'm talking about society.

[00:07:54] I'm talking about life.

[00:07:57] Everything we have is complex.

[00:08:00] There has been a study that shows every day, on average, the human brain consumes 74 gigabytes of data, which is the equivalent to 16 milisees.

[00:08:14] It's overwhelming.

[00:08:16] It's overwhelming.

[00:08:17] Now, that has gone up 350% in the last three decades.

[00:08:24] So from when I started in contact centers, and it suited me down to the ground because I'm simple, we weren't consuming as much data.

[00:08:34] Smartphones weren't a thing.

[00:08:36] AI wasn't a thing.

[00:08:39] Google, Google, Netflix, everything that goes on, how we interact with each other, the world around us has become far more complex.

[00:08:47] We've just talked.

[00:08:48] We just mentioned about the number of channels and the number of choices people have.

[00:08:54] A number of choices for companies that people can get their services from has massively increased.

[00:09:00] This is potentially super, super overwhelming.

[00:09:04] And again, it is the agents that are bearing the brunt of that.

[00:09:09] And it shows itself in the call duration.

[00:09:15] So call duration in the last 20 years has gone up by three minutes.

[00:09:20] So people are taking longer to get to us.

[00:09:23] When they are speaking to agents, they are on average spending another three minutes on the call.

[00:09:33] Thanks, Rebecca.

[00:09:35] Hello, Rebecca.

[00:09:37] The TO community sounds really interesting.

[00:09:39] How can my TO sign up?

[00:09:41] And is this just available to leaders as I have team coaches too?

[00:09:45] Absolutely available to anyone.

[00:09:47] And I will just contact me later and I will share details with you as to how people can sign up to that.

[00:09:54] But thank you very much.

[00:09:56] So the world is becoming far more complex.

[00:10:01] Customer care is harder.

[00:10:05] Now, a lot of the changes and a lot of the things that we now have to contend with from an operational point of view are welcome, are absolutely welcome.

[00:10:16] Our understanding of customers and how they prefer to communicate what they might be going through, the nuance and how we cater for people is far more in depth.

[00:10:30] And that is great because we should be able to provide care for how people want to receive it.

[00:10:38] What's also reassuring is in a recent study of contact center decision makers over 400, their number one measure for their contact center was customer satisfaction.

[00:10:52] It is a number one priority for agents and team leaders.

[00:11:01] When you look at that, though, and we think that certainly in the UK and across Europe, and I'm sure it's the same in the US, customer satisfaction scores have never been lower.

[00:11:15] We have greater technology.

[00:11:17] We have better trained people.

[00:11:20] We've got different ways of contacting contact centers.

[00:11:24] And we have a greater understanding that people may be vulnerable, that they may communicate differently.

[00:11:31] They may have other challenges going on and we try to meet them where they are.

[00:11:36] So we've got we're doing all of this.

[00:11:46] We've got great data.

[00:11:49] We're consuming loads of data that is telling us some of the stuff that we need, and we're perhaps not matching it through what we're providing with our frontline team members.

[00:12:00] Certainly in a study in June of 2023, in readiness for a forthcoming regulation, there was a comprehensive study that showed 56% of the UK population could be considered vulnerable.

[00:12:16] Now, I never had to deal with that as an agent going back 10, 20 years.

[00:12:22] Now agents have to be aware of it.

[00:12:25] They have to be mindful.

[00:12:26] They have to be trained.

[00:12:29] And John, thank you very much.

[00:12:30] John Garcia.

[00:12:31] Thanks, Martin.

[00:12:32] Definitely lots of good information.

[00:12:33] Good.

[00:12:35] And Victoria Patton.

[00:12:37] Thank you.

[00:12:37] Thank you very much for that.

[00:12:39] So this is where we are.

[00:12:41] Customer care is harder.

[00:12:43] There is no two ways about that.

[00:12:45] Customers are more frustrated when they get to us, perhaps because they've had to wait longer.

[00:12:49] Perhaps they've tried other channels and it hasn't quite worked for them because, as we talked about earlier, people still want to speak to a human being.

[00:13:00] Leaders are under pressure.

[00:13:04] You know, the number one reason that decision makers in our industry tell you that their leaders are under pressure when that comes to performance and managing their teams is they do not have enough time.

[00:13:20] That's just one.

[00:13:21] That's just one thing that team leaders have to deal with, that they don't have enough time.

[00:13:26] The other thing that is a massive change, and I know I would have struggled with this as a team leader, but in 2008, only 12% of contact centers within the UK, of which there are 10,000 plus, only 12% of them had any of their workforce at home working remotely or hybrid.

[00:13:52] And no surprise, due to the pandemic, but we're still here in the end of 2023.

[00:13:59] So going into this year, that figure had risen from 12% to 94%.

[00:14:05] So as a leader, where you have some of your team working remotely, some of them in the office, maybe they're all remote and they come in for a set number of days.

[00:14:15] It's really hard to help them.

[00:14:17] It's really hard to be there for them.

[00:14:19] It's really hard to help them in the moment.

[00:14:21] And yes, we have made leaps and bounds and there's some great companies out there providing remote support, in the moment support.

[00:14:29] So an agent can highlight something to a team leader, but these are significant changes, complexity, pressure, time pressured, some of your team not working there.

[00:14:42] And that's before we even get into the things that we ask our team leaders to do.

[00:14:49] If someone had said to me, when you're going to become a team leader, you are going to be a psychologist, a teacher, a parent, the police, a doctor, a social worker.

[00:15:01] You know, all of these different things that come with managing 10 to 15 to 20 other human beings.

[00:15:09] Managing the team alone is a full-time job.

[00:15:14] Now let's think about what else we also ask team leaders to do.

[00:15:18] And bearing in mind it's within the context of our environment is far more complex.

[00:15:24] We ask them to go through reports.

[00:15:26] We ask them to do quality.

[00:15:27] We ask them to get involved in projects.

[00:15:31] We ask them to deal with complaints.

[00:15:36] We ask them to deal with escalations.

[00:15:38] We ask them to get involved in recruitment and training.

[00:15:42] And I think they're going to do that.

[00:15:43] Every team leader I know in the community loves all of that.

[00:15:46] Absolutely loves it.

[00:15:47] But we need to help them.

[00:15:49] And I will get to that shortly, how we can help them.

[00:15:53] Yes, all of the things, says Faith.

[00:15:56] Yes, it is.

[00:15:59] The to-do list is never, ever going to get done for a team leader.

[00:16:04] They are under a huge amount of pressure.

[00:16:06] Now, one of the things that unfortunately, if you think of our contact center and the team leader

[00:16:14] is the pilot of a hot air balloon.

[00:16:17] If the hot air balloon starts to lose a bit of altitude, what are some of the things that get thrown out?

[00:16:23] Coaching, quality, feedback, training.

[00:16:27] Things that are really, really important that agents really, really need.

[00:16:31] And your center really, really needs.

[00:16:33] Those are some of the first things that are thrown out of our hot air balloon.

[00:16:41] I, within the community, spend a lot of time on coaching.

[00:16:46] And you'll be amazed that 50% of the team leaders within that community have not had what we would say is significant training in coaching.

[00:16:58] They don't have a agreed upon coaching methodology, nor do they have fixed time for coaching that does not change.

[00:17:09] And in reality, you know, that number should be zero.

[00:17:15] Everyone should have coaching training.

[00:17:17] Everyone should have a methodology that they use and still reviews.

[00:17:21] They still want to bring it up to up today.

[00:17:25] But coaching, let's say at the moment is sporadic.

[00:17:31] There are, Gara says they do so many things to enhance a business, however, and not given the time to do what a leader's core responsibility should be.

[00:17:39] And that's spending time supporting and developing their people.

[00:17:43] So, so true.

[00:17:46] And often, it's a big, big frustration for team leaders and for agents.

[00:17:52] They value that time so much with their team leaders.

[00:17:56] Given that time is so valuable, we need to make sure that when the team leaders are sat with their team members, that they are really competent at coaching.

[00:18:06] That they're really confident at the people skills, that they aren't just reading through a list and going, well, you didn't do this well, so you need to do it better.

[00:18:15] This needs improving.

[00:18:16] So go away and improve it.

[00:18:18] Okay.

[00:18:19] And often, especially for new team leaders, that's what happens because they haven't been given the training to be able to coach effectively.

[00:18:28] It's a skill.

[00:18:29] It's a skill we'll always continually evolve and learn.

[00:18:33] Now then, I think we are up to the poll.

[00:18:40] Now, there are some people co-piloting.

[00:18:43] Here we go.

[00:18:45] So, which of these challenges most resonates with your contact center?

[00:18:50] Complexity of customer problems.

[00:18:54] Delivering great CX is harder.

[00:18:56] Team leaders are under more pressure.

[00:18:59] And difficulty prioritizing coaching time.

[00:19:04] The guys behind the scenes are amazing.

[00:19:08] There's no way I could have done that.

[00:19:10] I'm having enough trouble doing this.

[00:19:13] So let's have a look at what we have got.

[00:19:16] Oh, it's very, very close.

[00:19:19] It's very close.

[00:19:22] Probably team leaders under Joe.

[00:19:26] Joe's here.

[00:19:27] Joe Bonser-Story.

[00:19:28] All four.

[00:19:29] Yes, if you could vote for all four, that would probably be the answer.

[00:19:33] I think the fact it is so close is indicative of you are a well-informed audience who are living this probably right now.

[00:19:43] And that this stuff kind of resonates with you.

[00:19:47] And perhaps what you see from your team leaders or yourself or your own kind of experiences.

[00:19:55] Another poll I probably would have done if I was a little bit more prepared was, if you have been a team leader in the past, you think it's harder now versus when you're a team leader.

[00:20:05] I would be answering in capital letters a big fat yes on that one.

[00:20:10] So just edging it, we have difficulty prioritizing coaching time, followed by team leaders are under more pressure, delivering complexity of customer problems is inferred, and delivering great CX is harder.

[00:20:29] But there is a hair's breadth between all of those.

[00:20:36] As Fabian says, Fabian Vasquez, hi, hello, CX is harder because there is so much data to manage.

[00:20:42] So true.

[00:20:43] And I haven't even really touched on that, have I, Fabian?

[00:20:46] So thank you.

[00:20:48] Thank you very much.

[00:20:49] Now, I really don't want this to be about me painting a picture of doom and gloom, okay?

[00:20:56] Because we have a great opportunity.

[00:21:03] Whilst I've said all of those things, it's not too bad, is it?

[00:21:08] We're doing okay.

[00:21:10] Yes, customer satisfaction could be higher.

[00:21:12] Yes, we could have better EX scores.

[00:21:15] Yes, we would want to see lower attrition.

[00:21:19] But in putting this together and in some of the other live streams I do when I go through a lot of stats, there hasn't been too much changed predominantly down to the negative.

[00:21:32] We're doing okay.

[00:21:33] And what an opportunity we have.

[00:21:35] What an opportunity we have.

[00:21:37] And I'm not just saying this, but there are companies like Evaluagent doing amazing things with great technology purely designed to help people.

[00:21:47] And I think we've just got to embrace that.

[00:21:49] Now, in this next section, I would just take you through some of the things I believe we really need to focus on to be able to really thrive.

[00:21:58] Because I would say we're surviving and we're surviving with a smile on our face because that's what we do, right?

[00:22:05] So where am I at?

[00:22:08] Okay.

[00:22:10] Now then, we know that if you can include your team leaders and teams in process design, they're going to be far happier in our industry.

[00:22:24] Not only that, they're going to make massive improvements.

[00:22:27] They're going to make massive improvements.

[00:22:29] These guys know what's going wrong and they know how to fix it, but they need your help.

[00:22:35] Better knowledge systems and empowered to make decisions.

[00:22:38] These are the two top things that over the 400 leaders that were polled said thought that would make the biggest difference to both performance and morale in their contact centers.

[00:22:50] Getting knowledge quickly.

[00:22:52] Getting help.

[00:22:54] Getting help.

[00:23:20] Yes, it's tough, but we're doing a great job.

[00:23:25] Spencer says, how about assign reflective exercises that the coaching can do outside work, like become a football referee?

[00:23:32] This can foster independent problem solving and personal growth.

[00:23:35] Well, that's high level coaching right there, Spencer.

[00:23:37] And that's the kind of thing that we need to be doing.

[00:23:40] So Joe says, we have some great leaders and agents doing a tough job.

[00:23:44] Absolutely.

[00:23:45] This should be a career of choice.

[00:23:48] You know, very, very passionate about that and what's possible.

[00:23:52] But are we, number one, let's include team leaders and teams in our process design.

[00:23:59] I'm sure, like me, you've all worked in an operation where somebody has said, oh, by the way, our service has fundamentally changed and we're going to be scoring your teams on it right now.

[00:24:11] Just some small heads up would be nice.

[00:24:16] Technology as a liberator.

[00:24:19] So did you know that over 50% of agents right now are dealing, are having to use more than four applications on the call?

[00:24:31] Now, what that means is that call duration, 30% of that is actually just spent navigating, navigating from system to system.

[00:24:40] So let's look at that and let's use technology to liberate, to liberate our agents and our team leaders.

[00:24:50] Fabian mentioned data earlier on.

[00:24:54] I also talked about coaching and QA.

[00:24:57] If you just take a value agent's bit of kit, I would have loved that as a team leader.

[00:25:01] If I could have had something that had scored every contact my team had had, not only that, I populated a scorecard and highlighted where I might want to coach to get the biggest bang for my buck.

[00:25:13] I would have been all over it because then just purely on the amount of time that saved me, but also energy.

[00:25:20] I could have then used all of my energy to work with my teams.

[00:25:24] I can validate the information, of course, and say, well, I'm not really sure I'm going to do that.

[00:25:29] But if I had something ready-made, accurate in the moment that I was then able just to go and take and coach one of my team members, amazing.

[00:25:39] Because then we'd be spending more time coaching.

[00:25:43] But if you think about those number of applications that people, the agents have to navigate and the impact it's having on the call when they could be building a real relationship with customers and really tapping into communication skills, we are missing a trick here.

[00:25:58] Yeah.

[00:26:01] What's interesting as well, sorry, I was just checking my notes, is AI is prevalent and I think it's a real positive in our industry.

[00:26:10] I know I talk to people outside the industry and I tell them we are at the forefront of the application of AI in reality.

[00:26:19] We're using it right now.

[00:26:21] What a great feather in the cap that is for our industry.

[00:26:25] And there's a lot of naysayers out there.

[00:26:28] However, again, going to these decision makers within our industry, 100% of them agreed with a statement that said we're going to use AI to support agents rather than replace.

[00:26:42] 100%.

[00:26:43] So that should be the aim.

[00:26:46] Sorry, Ben, I have missed.

[00:26:48] As a people who will be living the process every day, agents and TAs have some of the most valuable insights.

[00:26:53] So true.

[00:26:54] How many people are getting coached and performance insights on every single customer conversation their contact center handles?

[00:27:02] Not many.

[00:27:02] But it's there right now through you guys, right?

[00:27:06] So there's absolutely no reason why people shouldn't be looking at it at the very least to see what's possible.

[00:27:13] So technology really is a liberator.

[00:27:17] Show people career paths early.

[00:27:19] Now, as I mentioned earlier around one of the numbers we all like to focus on within this industry is attrition.

[00:27:28] Back in, I think it was 2003.

[00:27:34] So quite some time ago, attrition within a 12 month period based in the UK was 15%.

[00:27:41] Fast forward to now and it is at 23%.

[00:27:46] So, okay, I'll leave that to you to decide whether that is a significant change.

[00:27:52] We know we will lose people from this industry.

[00:27:55] We don't have to.

[00:27:56] And one of the things, one of the top reasons that people leave, one of the top three reasons, it's in the top three, is that no one has talked to them about what is possible.

[00:28:07] Certainly, my progression happened by accident.

[00:28:10] No one sat me down and said, do you know there's this route you could go in operations.

[00:28:17] You could go, the one I took actually, team leader, contact center manager, head of.

[00:28:22] But for everyone else, I said, do you know what?

[00:28:25] You could go into finance.

[00:28:27] You could go into training.

[00:28:28] You could go into HR.

[00:28:29] You could go into facilities.

[00:28:32] You could go into tech.

[00:28:35] Nowhere else is there where you can sit and within a building or within an organization see so many different disciplines where people are, had maybe originated from the phones.

[00:28:49] Sorry, Spencer.

[00:28:52] Technology like closed captioning is vital for enabling people with a disability to participate fully in society and pursue their goal confidently.

[00:29:03] Couldn't agree more.

[00:29:04] We need to start showing people what's possible within our industry.

[00:29:08] We need to both when we're recruiting in induction and then when they are actually working for us, we need to show them that we are focused on their development and their career.

[00:29:20] And that doesn't necessarily mean progression in a new job or hierarchical change, but we want to help them gain skills.

[00:29:28] And if those skills mean that they can go somewhere else within the contact center or even outside of the contact center, we need to do that.

[00:29:38] I've always thought that we should start considering time on the phones unless you really want to spend your time on the phones permanently.

[00:29:45] But we should consider time on the phones as your university where you will learn the skills of what our customers want, how to communicate with them.

[00:29:57] Okay.

[00:29:59] I'm being told we've got, I've got to rattle through this.

[00:30:02] But Joe says, went to a Dojo CX engagement event.

[00:30:05] They do this as part of their induction.

[00:30:07] Great.

[00:30:09] Skills for the role.

[00:30:10] And then where do they want to be?

[00:30:12] And then choose a path.

[00:30:13] It was fab.

[00:30:13] Brilliant.

[00:30:14] I love that.

[00:30:15] Absolutely love it.

[00:30:17] Okay.

[00:30:18] Quickly.

[00:30:19] Fostering connection with breathing space.

[00:30:21] There seems to be a rush to fill, and it's not just because it's the name of the podcast.

[00:30:29] There seems to be a rush to fill wrap time.

[00:30:32] We already know calls are longer.

[00:30:35] They're more complex.

[00:30:36] We have to be more considerate of customers' idiosyncrasies and what makes them human.

[00:30:42] There's loads of data.

[00:30:43] What we're saying is let's take all of the transactional interactions away with technology.

[00:30:50] We'll only leave the agents with complex cases.

[00:30:55] And what we can do is if we auto-populate the nodes, we'll take their note time, and we'll just hit them with another customer contact.

[00:31:03] Please don't.

[00:31:05] And I'm not just saying that as an agent who liked transactional stuff, who used my wrap time as a bit of a break.

[00:31:13] We are loading up.

[00:31:15] We're cognitively loading agents.

[00:31:17] We're in danger of burning them out if we do not protect their breathing space, their breaks.

[00:31:24] And I do think, and I am by no means a WFM expert, but we do need to look at breaks.

[00:31:32] I'm not sure we've changed massively from when I started, and I don't think it's fit for purpose.

[00:31:39] If we are going to be telling agents who are now complex problem solvers who will work with customers on the more complex, intricate stuff, then that has to be matched with breaks that reflect that, that absolutely reflect that.

[00:31:55] And that does not mean that we say, well, you have a break in the morning, break in the afternoon, and we'll give you 35 minutes at lunch.

[00:32:01] That doesn't work anymore.

[00:32:04] Right, moving on, moving on.

[00:32:07] Give your TLs clear priorities.

[00:32:09] So I mentioned at the start, and there was some chat here as well about everything's a priority.

[00:32:14] Now, this is the biggest one that's come from the community is they are very rarely told, today, your priority is this.

[00:32:25] Now, from my point of view, and has already been mentioned in the chat, it should be people.

[00:32:30] The priority is spend time with your people.

[00:32:33] Formally coach at least one or two, depending on your team number, but have an interaction, a meaningful interaction with everyone in your team on a personal level.

[00:32:42] That would be my priority and was when I was an operational leader.

[00:32:46] But whatever it is, please give your team leaders what their priorities are.

[00:32:53] Because right now, they are chasing 10, and they're all number one priority because there's so many silos.

[00:33:00] They're involved in so much.

[00:33:02] There's so many silos of people saying, no, you must do this today.

[00:33:05] And we're in real danger of burning people out so that they're not delivering their best on their tasks, and they're not doing what they should be doing for their agents.

[00:33:17] Invest in people skills.

[00:33:19] I haven't mentioned emotional intelligence yet.

[00:33:22] It is the key thing we should be talking to our team leaders about.

[00:33:27] I talked about all the different roles we asked them to undertake.

[00:33:31] Emotional intelligence is so important, and we should also be doing that with our customer-facing team members so they can really deliver true customer experience by understanding key listening skills, how they show up through self-awareness, social interactions.

[00:33:49] All the different component parts of emotional intelligence are so vital in an industry that is based on communicating, human-to-human contact.

[00:33:59] Yet we do not spend enough time with people on emotional intelligence.

[00:34:05] And once you've done that, the other thing I would look at is cultural intelligence as well.

[00:34:11] Communicate frequently.

[00:34:12] I've communicated for too long, so I'm going to go through this very quickly.

[00:34:15] If you're a senior leader, you can't communicate enough.

[00:34:17] If you can, do it in person.

[00:34:20] Give people community.

[00:34:21] And no, this is not a plug.

[00:34:24] Contact centers for me have been such a central part of my life through friendships, shared interests.

[00:34:31] Make sure that we are doing that for our agents and our team leaders, that we're encouraging them to set up social groups.

[00:34:38] Whether you're interested in rock climbing or knitting, the contact center should be the hub of that.

[00:34:46] There we go.

[00:34:47] Sorry, I have run over.

[00:34:48] I've talked through it.

[00:34:51] Thank you for all of your comments.

[00:34:54] If you do want to get in touch with me, LinkedIn is probably the best place.

[00:34:59] Again, thank you, EvaluAgent, for your time and asking me to do this.

[00:35:08] Thank you so much, Martin.

[00:35:09] Thank you, Victoria.

[00:35:12] Thanks for all of you that stayed with this.

[00:35:16] Thank you, Lucy.

[00:35:18] You can tell how short-sighted I am.

[00:35:19] Ben, thank you, mate.

[00:35:20] And Joe, thank you very much.

[00:35:22] Dara.

[00:35:24] Great.

[00:35:25] Thanks for all of you.

[00:35:27] I hope you have.

[00:35:40] Thank you.

[00:35:44] Thank you.

[00:35:45] Great.

[00:35:50] Thank you.

[00:35:51] Lovely comments.

[00:35:51] Thank you for all of your…

[00:35:52] names. You guys are awesome and I know you're doing some brilliant stuff with your team so

[00:35:59] hopefully you are all doing that.