It was my first day of work as the Director of Operations for a contact center outsourcing company. I had been working about three hours when the CEO walked into my office and made a request that sent my head swirling. “Vicki, I am not going to be able to make payroll this week. I am wondering if you will hold onto your first paycheck and not cash it for about a week.” I looked at him in disbelief. Less than three hours on the job and this was the first request coming from the CEO? Did I not ask the right questions during the interview process?
This was not a tiny operation. In fact, they had been in business for over 10 years. Their operations consisted of a large fulfillment center, the contact center, and a large client services organization serving almost 100 clients in the business-to-consumer and business-to-business industry verticals. It was not a company where payroll should be an issue. My head continued to swirl as I stared at the CEO. He must have sensed that I was having trouble getting my mind around this because he quickly tried to explain. “I really need your help. Everything I own is wrapped up in my business. If anyone can move my company forward and out of this hole, I think you can.”
My thoughts quickly turned to my two children (whom I was raising as a single mother), my mortgage, and my bills. Yet in the back of my mind, I could hear the familiar voice of my dad telling me that the people are the key to being a successful leader. Even though I needed that first paycheck, I looked at the CEO and said, “Not a problem. We can talk about it later. Let’s get this business turned around.”
Not Your Normal Corporate Ladder Climb
Though most contact center executives were agents that moved up the corporate chain, my journey is very far from that. There lies the reason I believe my teams have seen such growth and success. My background is sales management. I led my first outside sales team of 40 people right out of college. I was an outside frontline rep for less than six months before I was promoted. I had no idea about contact centers.
I was hired by this CEO to change the culture from customer service to sales because 95% of this company’s clients were in the consumer products and services industry. I had absolutely no idea that when you put people into cubicles, an organization takes on a life of its own! I looked out at the agents lined up in cubicles in two different wings, realizing they were driving the revenue of the company. I thought about the warehouse full of employees that were waiting to ship out orders the contact center teams took, and I thought about the dozens of account managers that were depending on the contact center teams to sell products and make their clients happy. But then reality sunk in. I thought of my mortgage due on the first of the month, the child support I wasn’t consistently receiving, and feeding my two children. As my mentor early in my career had taught me, failure just wasn’t an option.
The Biggest Gap
My biggest gap was not understanding the contact center business, and the second was never being an agent. However, this all turned out to be my biggest asset. The reason was simple: I didn’t know what I didn’t know. When that happens, what do people do? Some fake it, and their organizations suffer. Others, like me, start asking questions.
Of the 70 to 80 hours a week I worked, I spent 5% of my day meeting with the account executives trying to calm down clients and in the warehouse trying to calm down employees that thought we were going to go out of business. The other 95% of the time I spent on the operations floor in the contact center. I spent hours listening to live calls on the floor and talking with the agents. Some days we had 2,000 calls in the queue at a time. This company didn’t even have a training department. Attrition was close to 100% annualized, and most days 20% of the agents didn’t show up to work. The systems were proprietary, everything was hand calculated, and the agents’ scripts were in huge eight-inch binders. Every script change had to be printed out. I had no real reporting coming out of the proprietary systems, and since I was new to the industry, I didn’t know about telephony reports. Did I mention the agents made minimum wage?
Over the course of the next few months, we started making changes to the operations and processes. Everything was driven by what the employees told me. I would harness their ideas and run the game plan by them; then they would give me feedback. I did the same thing with the account managers and clients. I restructured the teams and trained supervisors and senior leadership. I worked on sales talk tracks and upsell guidelines—all with frontline employees by my side. NOTHING was done without the frontline employees. NOTHING was done without constant feedback. I made NO decisions without frontline approval.
Everyone was giving feedback and engaged. I started noticing the quiet ones speaking up, helping new agents, and becoming very decisive about their input. People were stepping up. They were dressing nicer, fixing their hair, and wearing make-up when they didn’t normally wear it. People started registering for college courses. Some signed up to take their GED. Their personal lives were evolving because of how they were engaged at work. They were part of the solution, and they had a stake in the success of the organization. They felt empowered.
Developing Leadership
I also realized that if I took first- and second-level leaders in the contact center with me on the journey, I could infuse leadership skills and strategies into them—just by them being by my side. By taking leaders at all levels and departments along on my journey, their leadership skills evolved, and they were able to see the results. The organization moved forward faster and faster.
A Happy Ending
Everything turned around because of the employees, and they grew personally and professionally because of the success of the organization. Runaway attrition went from almost 100% to less than 10%. Absenteeism went from 20% a day to less than 3% a day. Sales conversion on our top clients and the ones that drove the most revenue went from 2-3% to over 30%. The clients were ecstatic! We built recruiting, new hire training, nesting, and leadership development programs. We took on new clients and let the clients go that weren’t cost effective. The company turned a profit for the first time in 11 years.
I stayed for a year and then left to take care of my dad in the final stages of his life. The CEO paid me for six months after I left and took care of my healthcare for my family to show his gratitude.
The Key to Work-at-Home Leadership Success
Over twenty years ago, my career turned to the work-at-home environment. I took these same principles of tapping into the front lines in REAL time, running ideas past them and then getting their feedback in REAL time, and morphed them into strategies and leadership skills for the remote environment. Accelerated results—faster than CEOs ever thought possible—have been achieved.
By taking multiple levels of leadership along on this same journey, new leadership strategies and skills specifically for the work-at-home environment have been infused into organizations.
Confusion in the Industry
I’m consistently confused as to why we make leadership in the work-at-home environment all about technology. We need it in this industry, but this overreliance on technology instead of spending time with and money on our frontline employees and leadership causes real gaps in our organizations. I believe leaders are just doing what they have always done. First- and second-level leaders are waiting for their executive teams to help. Many new leaders and those on the front lines don’t even know what they need. Leaders are leading in a vacuum.
Companies deserve a hero. Company leaders, especially on the first and second levels, need a real leadership hero to open the door and lead the way to help them evolve their leadership strategies and skillsets for the work-at-home environment. Your leadership, company brand, top-line revenue and bottom-line contribution may be on the line. Your company is waiting for a hero. They are waiting for you.
Vicki is a CCNG member and the architect of Virtual Live Labs™, a transformative methodology that combines interactive consulting and leadership development, simultaneously, to drive operational excellence and increased leadership skills for all levels of leadership, including front-line supervisors.
