Our CCW Event Director Alexandra Craggs 爱丽 recently caught up with Lauren Reid, Chief Customer Officer at Navy Health to discuss #contactcentre trends, #transformation, #growth and #leadership

What trends do you expect to see over the next 5 years in the contact centre space?

As we move into an increasingly digital world, the way in which we communicate is evolving to represent this. I personally believe we should be meeting people in their channel of choice, so businesses will need to continue to expand into new digital channels as their customers do.

I don’t think we can afford not to strategically invest in this within our businesses, otherwise we run the risk of falling behind and not meeting our customer expectations.

In saying this I don’t think the voice channel will disappear, it’s still a chosen channel for some customers, so I think we equally need to recognise and respect that.

As an example, in Private Health Insurance, we receive enquiries through our phone channels from members wanting assistance with an upcoming hospital admission. This is obviously a highly sensitive and at times emotional conversation, and its hard to replicate that in a digital environment as you lose the empathy and tone people are looking for to provide reassurance and compassion.

How can you connect the contact centre with strategic business plans for growth?

Successful business strategy is usually built around a solid understanding of customer wants and needs. Your contact centre houses a wealth of information, both through the data we capture from customers, and the extensive knowledge from our staff. It’s vital we use that information and feedback to make informed business decisions about strategy and priorities.

If you’re running analysis and AI over your engagement channels, you’re able to gather the key issues and areas of feedback from members. This data is essential to providing you with clear areas of focus and development.

In addition to the customer data, we need to be bringing our frontline teams into the conversation to provide feedback and input. These people are experts in our products, services, processes, and customer feedback. They’ll help to validate ideas and assumptions.

By combining the data with the feedback from staff, you connect the frontline team with your broader strategic plan and direction.

How can you transform the contact centre, on a budget. What are the big win opportunities?

I think the biggest opportunities for leaders to transform their business is through people and processes.

If you don’t have budget to spend on new technology, focus on the existing processes and the people within your department, and usually these focus areas go hand in hand.

Gain feedback and insights from frontline staff about the existing processes. These wonderful people are experts in navigating broken processes, so they’ll have no shortage of ideas for you.

Once you’ve gathered the ideas, use the staff to assist in prioritising and allow them to work on the projects with management in partnership.

Bringing people into the problem with you helps them to feel more enabled and empowered to speak up and drive positive change at work.

Another area I’m very passionate about is staff development, especially skills within the contact centre. Nothing is more boring than a repetitive job, we’ve all been there!

Most people are calling out to learn new tasks and get more diversity in their day. So multi-skill your staff wherever possible!

Develop skilling pathways and incentivise people to move through them. This will improve your employee engagement because people feel challenged and see growth opportunities. It also supports you operationally as you get more efficiency at scale and with less transfers, a much better member experience!

What leadership skills are required for contact centres? How is it evolving?

Working in a contact centre is a tough job! You’re on all the time, likely listening to people’s issues whilst having to navigate multiple systems while displaying compassion and empathy.

So as leaders we require exactly that, compassion and empathy. Long gone are the days of command and control, we need to continue to evolve to focus on what has been called ‘soft skills’ but honestly, I just call them essential skills.

Listen and act, build trust, foster an environment of psychological safety, be vulnerable and bring your whole self to work as a leader as it will encourage your teams to do the same.

I think lastly as contact centres by nature are quite rigid and controlled environments due to shifts and scheduling, find ways to be flexible wherever possible as even a little bit of flexibility goes a long way.

What’s important to you as an executive leading and representing frontline CX and operations teams?

I’m reflecting on how to best answer this, as it’s a part of my role I take very seriously, and I take great pride in being the leader to represent these staff in various forums.

As I mentioned before I think being vulnerable as a senior leader is vital. People need to see the person you really are and be reminded you’re also human, and no different to them. Also don’t take yourself too seriously, have a laugh, ideally at your own expense!

I try to ensure I act as a voice for them wherever possible. I speak up about challenges, I share their successes (and always credit them!) and ensure they’re represented in every forum, so they’re heard even if that’s through me. I’m a big advocate for these teams internally and externally, as I’m genuinely proud to lead these functions. I believe contact centres are the heart of every business and they need to be treated in a way that reflects that.