Why you should encourage your Contact Centre Manager to do your job for a week!

Our Contact Centre Management Team were sent back to the front lines recently, going back to their roots and spending a week as one of our Customer Experience Specialists again. They worked shifts across all of our customer departments, speaking to our customers and dealing with their queries.

Our Contact Centre Manager was the first one to accept the challenge. He shared his experience of getting back on the front lines by writing the blog which is featured below..

DAY 1 – The Contact Centre.

My first day of Back to Basics week went brilliantly. I’ve always respected the job our team do but the experience gave me so much to think about. I’m not one for preaching but I would encourage anyone to get back to the “front line” where possible. It gave me the elation of simply fixing a customer’s problem, and found myself beaming at the positivity that our customers have, for the work we put in through the Contact Centre and beyond at AO. I did have the world’s most uncomfortable chair, but that’s an easy fix at the top of my list of things to take from today!

DAY 2 – Outbound

What a great day. Worked in arguably our most difficult department today, and I felt it. My head’s in a spin with how much I’ve taken from today. Can’ really say much more than that but my hat is well and truly removed as a sign of appreciation for the work our Outbound Team do.

Day 3 – The Social Media Team

What a day working on our Live Chat & E-mail team. Handling 2 chats & 1 email at a time is HARD, yet the team do it like some sort of Customer Experience Octopus’ working their 9 brains & 8 limbs to manage multiple customers at times. Safe to say I’m tired today. But I saw the power of Live Chat as a sales conversion tool and the need to migrate genuine complaints from email to more live communications. What this week has reinforced more than ever is, the people in my Contact Centre are awesome. Technology is the present and the future but, it will always be an amazing supplement to amazing people.

Day 4 – The Academy

Similar to day one, but I had a Coaching Session from our very own Academy Coach Jen. I left it feeling inspired & implemented all my feedback (thanks to sticky notes!) so they let me pass the Academy in 1 day! I believe that’s a record, not that I’m bragging, of course.

Day 5 – Out on a Delivery Van!

It’s was such a good day. The guys I went with were amazing at their job and represent AO brilliantly. To see our customers in their homes loving what we do was great. It feels like I’ve witnessed the entire journey from beginning to end and being part of that final stage (the only real AO face our customers ever see), was the perfect way to end the week. I’d recommend it to anyone that can do it.