ING's David Bradshaw Builds the Call Center Vision From the Ground Up
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When David Bradshaw, Vice President and Head of Sales and Service, was asked to turn around the ING call center he looked at five key areas. Bradshaw eventually increased call center engagement over 80 percent by looking at the following: the rocky economic environment, the amalgamation of two call centers and business lines, organizational changes, call volume and the overwhelming amount of new hires. Tasked with a complicated challenge, Bradshaw and his team also focused on getting CEO and leadership buy-in. Bradshaw launched a program that helped ING exceed sales targets and decrease absenteeism rates 30 percent year over year. He also brought attrition down to 18 percent. Bradshaw, a speaker at IQPC's Call Center Summit in January, gives Call Center IQ a sneak peak of the case study he'll be presenting.
What do you do for ING Direct?
I lead all client facing functions (with the exception of Mutual Funds). These functions include our:
- Cafes (face-to-face, non-branch physical locations in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver
- Financial Advisor Channel for Savings Products
- The Lending and Savings contact centers in Toronto and Ottawa
What or who inspired your work in customer service?
- I love being around people.
- I love helping clients solve problems or achieve goals.
- I love the speed of the business. When you try something new you can see the impact immediately.
- I love developing people to do better each day.
What defines an impactful vision within the call center?
- Compelling and complete with a call to action
- People get it
- It’s something people want to be a part of
- You truly believe it
- It’s authentic
Why is your vision a three-year vision?
We wanted it to be time bound. We wanted it to be achievable.
How do you get call center representatives to "own" pieces of the vision by taking a role in achieving the vision?
- Don’t have all the details mapped out
- Stay away from call center metrics
- Ask for the participation
- Provide engaging videos
- Get call center representative commitment
- Progress updates
- Visual and Branding
- Making it part of every day call center life
How do you roll the vision to the front line of the call center and get frontline call center workers engaged and emotionally connected?
Our key was to focus on call center employee engagement, by making this a great place to work, then we followed up with:
- Videos
- Employee commitment
- Progress updates
- Visual and Branding
- Pledge cars where our teams put in writing what they will contribute towards the Vision and we have this posted in our call centers
- Making it part of every day life
- Communicate, communicate, communicate
We started with my CEO to get organizational buy-in and commitment, then our leadership team, then our associates, then the leaders in the entire company, then the entire company using a video and a follow up presentation .
What are some tools and tactics to get the call center team mobilized and thinking about the future?
- Talk about what is in it for the call center representatives
- Talk about our future accomplishments and how the call center representatives play is important
- Talk about the call center representatives sharing in success
