A Strategic Approach to Leading Change, Starting with the Contact Center.

Transcript

[00:00:02] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and today we have a super interesting guest on, Tracey Djordjevic.

[00:00:09] Steve MacDonald: Now, Tracey, you’re the Director of Customer Service at Clarion Medical Technologies, and you’ve had a career in technology and then a career really mired in constant change. That constant change has been a reason you have adapted your leadership style. You have had to constantly educate yourself in order to not only properly position and manage your team, but be a leader within the organization. I know that you are doing that right now. You have a seat at the table. You are talking about the long-term growth and development of the business in what you are doing.

[00:00:50] Steve MacDonald: That all plays into what we are talking about today, which is a strategic approach to leading change, and how we do that starting from the contact center, because we have more conversations with the customer than anyone else. We have the insights of the highest voice of authority in the business.

[00:01:08] Steve MacDonald: So, leading change, leading the organization, leading your team, all part of what you are doing and what we are going to be talking about today. Before we do that, I would love to turn it over to you for a minute and have you explain a little bit more about your background before we get started.

[00:01:26] Tracey Djordjevic: I want to start by saying thank you, Steve. Thank you for having me on. I look forward to our conversation. I have been in customer service pretty much my whole career, and I have worked in a lot of organizations that were very growth driven because I have worked in the technology space and multiple organizations.

[00:01:48] Tracey Djordjevic: As you know, with technology, it is constantly changing. Thankfully, and I think it has been ingrained in my leadership style now, I am someone who embraces change. I think Tony Robbins once said, “If you are not growing, you are dying, any living thing.” I have that mentality, and I embrace change because I know it is necessary and absolutely necessary for growth. I think I have done a good job in my leadership roles to assist my team and support my team through multiple changes as they arise.

[00:02:30] Steve MacDonald: I think the idea of change is not just in technology companies. It is everywhere. The one thing that we know about our customers is that they are complex and constantly changing, which means for us, our business is complex and constantly changing. You talked eloquently about how there is a growth trap in that. Lots of times, change happens so much that we are reactive. We are not planning. We are not strategic. I would love to have you talk a little bit about that and what we do to address the growth trap.

[00:03:06] Tracey Djordjevic: I think a lot of organizations, especially when they are in an in-between phase, might be small or medium, and they are striving to get to that next level, or they are experiencing rapid growth that they cannot keep up with. They get stuck in that trap you mentioned. They get into survival mode, and then they tend to become a little bit complacent, relying and leaning on that historical behavior of, “Well, we have always done it this way,” because they are stretched by the growth and stretched within the organization. Lots of times that can mean constraints in resources or finances.

[00:03:47] Tracey Djordjevic: There are people in the organization wearing multiple hats, and they are stretched on a daily basis. That is what I mean by survival mode. They are just trying to get through the things they have to get through in a day, and there is no time for planning or being strategic. It becomes a much more reactive environment than a proactive environment. I think it is really about finding ways to work within those constraints to allow time to plan. It is the proactive planning that is going to set you up with the ability to execute. If you are not doing that, I have seen it be detrimental to companies.

[00:04:34] Steve MacDonald: That planning cannot be planning for planning’s sake. There has to be a foundation underneath that planning where we are learning as an organization and making very informed decisions. You have a strong point of view, one that is shared by many of the world’s largest consulting firms, that the voice of the customer is the most important voice in the business.

[00:05:05] Steve MacDonald: They are the highest voice of authority. They are the customer. Everything we do is to solve their challenges, and you, as the head of the contact center, talk to more customers than anyone. Tell me a little bit about how you are learning to adapt to all the change in understanding the customer, and how that starts to fit with growth and planning for the company itself.

[00:05:32] Tracey Djordjevic: I think you have to start with your customer insights. You have to be gathering customer insights because you are right. Customers are the piece driving your business to grow, and you want to be meeting those customer needs as you grow and adapt to their changes as well. You need to be aware of those changes in order to adapt.

[00:05:55] Tracey Djordjevic: The first thing you need to do is make sure you are gathering customer insights. Then that can follow with the next steps in your planning, which would be building your customer personas, building out the voice of the customer, doing your customer journey mapping, and tying all that into your strategic planning. Customer centricity should be a key element of your strategic planning as an organization, and then you need your other strategic objectives to tie into that from the bottom up. I think you take a bottom-up approach, but then it has to be pushed from the top down, if that makes sense.

[00:06:41] Steve MacDonald: Absolutely. I am trying to connect the dots because a lot of the executives listening here are CX, customer support, and contact center executives. We often feel like we are a support department, that we do not have a seat at the table, and that leadership looks at us as a cost center.

[00:07:02] Steve MacDonald: All the KPIs are around how we contain. What I am hearing you talk about is how one of the pillars of growth in the company is customer centricity and talking to the customer. The voice of the customer is where we get that. Those are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the importance of what we are doing. We have not yet talked about how we have to take care of tickets, answer questions, make sure the customer is taken care of, and foster loyalty. I want to get to that, but how did you and your company get a seat at the table and get leadership to understand that you are much more than a cost center that answers questions and keeps clients happy, that you are a source of insights that will drive the entire business.

[00:07:57] Tracey Djordjevic: I think one of the first things we did was revamp our KPIs. We have KPIs that tie our activity and our resource hours to revenue. If you build your KPIs in such a way, you are not going to look so much like a cost center. You are going to show that your team is a strong contributor to the revenue that the company is gaining. I think you can start with that, and then as you gain your customer insights, you can also tie those into your KPIs. That helps you prove your return on investment, your ROI.

[00:08:39] Steve MacDonald: Can you give us some examples of KPIs that are coming out of your group that are tied to revenue, and then the kind of conversation you are having around those with leadership?

[00:08:51] Tracey Djordjevic: Yeah. Again, we tie all our activities that our CSRs do to resource hours, and those resource hours are tied to supporting the sales organization. If you are supporting a sales organization, it is pretty easy to do because for my team they are entering orders and producing orders. That is a huge part of their activity and their transactions. Those orders are tied to revenue. Without those orders, the company would have no revenue.

[00:09:26] Tracey Djordjevic: That is one way we tie those activities into revenue, and we have what we call value-add activities and non-value-add activities. We also utilize that to create continuous improvement. The goal is to reduce some of those non-value-add activities, so we have more time to focus on the value-add activities.

[00:09:52] Steve MacDonald: Boy, if we could just underline and put an exclamation point on the non-value-add activities and the value-add activities that are queuing up sales conversations. Every time you hear the voice of the customer, when you are talking to them within your department, you are seeing opportunities for cross-sell and upsell. I am sure every organization should be looking at their NRR, their net recurring revenue. Retaining customers is a revenue activity as well. Expanding customers is a revenue activity. That is what I am hearing from you and that you have a significant role in that within your department. Is that the right takeaway?

[00:10:38] Tracey Djordjevic: Yeah, absolutely. Another thing we have done is create a new role on my team that is inside sales for the purpose of focusing on retaining our customers, like you said, as well as expanding our market share. It is a multi-level touch point when you have outside sales, inside sales, and customer service all working together to support the customer. We can advocate for a multi-level support system within our organization that is working for the customer, and it gives us a competitive advantage to have multiple touch points with the customer.

[00:11:30] Steve MacDonald: If you could, in a basics 101 explanation, this is very intriguing. You have a defined, titled sales role within your department. What is the specific role, and how do they coordinate with the rest of the department?

[00:11:51] Tracey Djordjevic: The role is evolving, to be honest with you, because it is new. We built it on the business model we thought would work best for the organization at this time. Something they are focusing on is dormant accounts, so win-backs, as well as small accounts so they can grow that revenue. They are also working on new accounts. It is lead generation, reaching out to new customers and new potential, and introducing our products. It has also been a great way to expand the customer service department and provide opportunities for CSRs who might be interested in sales.

[00:12:31] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, and we all know that the culture and the career path we provide for our agents is so important. This is one of the most strategic conversations we have had on here, and I hope everybody is really listening. Sometimes it is hard. You have to track things like CSAT and NPS scores, and our C-suite wants to understand that. They want to know about that, but it is sometimes hard to tie a CSAT to revenue or even an NPS score.

[00:13:04] Steve MacDonald: There are studies out there that say for every increase in an NPS score, there is a direct impact on revenue. When you are talking to your C-suite, my impression is that with all the KPIs and the inside sales and the opportunities you are taking, you are talking their language. You are talking the language of the C-suite, which is how this has a bottom-line impact on our revenue and growth of our company. We get very good at talking to our external customers, but I would say that your internal customers are the different departments in the C-suite and getting them to buy in.

[00:13:46] Tracey Djordjevic: Yes. I always say sometimes we need to train our customers, internal and external, how to do business with us. With inside sales we knew there was a need for that. It fills a gap for outside sales with customers they are not getting to or do not have time to focus on.

[00:14:07] Tracey Djordjevic: That will always speak to the C-suite because they want to maximize revenue where we might not be gaining it at this moment. I think that was a really good way to fill a gap. Filling a gap also means meeting customers’ needs, going back to the customer, and being customer-centric.

[00:14:28] Tracey Djordjevic: Those customers are being neglected, and that is why they are not customers of ours anymore. That is why we are not growing revenue in their accounts, because they are not getting the attention. We are hearing that, and we are utilizing that feedback to hone in on meeting those needs.

[00:14:47] Steve MacDonald: You know, meeting the needs of the customer, customer centricity, voice of the customer, there is not an organization out there that would not say, “No, we are not customer focused. We are not customer driven.” Everybody says that, but it is in execution. I know that as a change agent, and you have talked so eloquently about how you are positioning your department and how you are helping the rest of the company. Lots of times we fail between saying we are customer focused and actually executing on it, and I would love to understand more about how you are ensuring, not only in your own department but across the company, that you are actually executing on being a customer centric organization.

[00:15:35] Tracey Djordjevic: Well, it is aligning everybody across the organization and having everybody understand the impact they have, and their department has, on the customer experience. So, it is showing that through customer feedback, through customer journey mapping, through building the voice of the customer.

[00:15:55] Tracey Djordjevic: If you do not show other departments where the gaps are, of course customer service teams are always customer focused. That is what we are there for. But that does not mean the accounting team, or the purchasing team, or the warehouse team necessarily is, because they are not dealing with the customer right in front of them like we are. They are not on the front lines.

[00:16:17] Tracey Djordjevic: So, it is aligning everybody in the organization to understand where their impact is on the customer and showing that by doing continuous improvement, that can improve the outcome and the end result to the customer, which in turn improves the whole customer experience. As well, the improvement of customer experience should equal company growth and customer growth.

[00:16:45] Steve MacDonald: Yes, and in fact, you said another couple of things that were really important there. Most customer support organizations do not even have direct meetings and direct conversations with other departments, like customer support having a conversation with procurement or with operations. But you are talking about doing two things.

[00:17:07] Steve MacDonald: One, showing them where you can benefit what they are trying to do, their piece of the puzzle, by demonstrating where the gaps are. So, I would love to ask you, is there a story, take procurement, take operations, take any department, where you have been able to identify a gap, where you have been able to help them, where they are seeing customer support as an asset, somebody on their side, so that together you are helping the customer.

[00:17:43] Tracey Djordjevic: Yeah. I think you have to dig in and do root cause analysis. Another thing that has been helpful to us is to have project plans, because when you have a project plan and you are actually tracking, you can make certain departments accountable, and you can collaborate, and see where you are falling off on those projects or that continuous improvement.

[00:18:06] Tracey Djordjevic: It holds the right people accountable, and it keeps a tracking system in place where you can see, “Oh, that one is going off track. There is a red light there. We need to dig in and look into that.”

[00:18:20] Tracey Djordjevic: I think also tracking customer escalations, doing a root cause analysis, and then engaging with the departments involved and collaborating to see where we can improve a process or where we can fill this gap and create a better result for the customer. Not only that, it will cut down on that department’s processes, sometimes cut down on issues, and create efficiencies to show, “Oh, this part of the process is not working.” It is creating some friction, and if we adjust this a little bit in the process, you are going to have a smaller error rate. It is going to be less work for you, say in a warehouse situation, to reship product to your customer. It is going to reduce costs because we are not having to ship something twice and backtrack on all those errors. Not to mention the resource consumption of someone having to do root cause analysis and go back and do all those things.

[00:19:24] Tracey Djordjevic: So, I think it is really the continuous improvement piece. Getting that data and making sure you are closing the loop on the feedback, gathering that data, and actually doing something with it to make improvements, which in turn makes everybody’s lives better, internally and externally.

[00:19:49] Steve MacDonald: Absolutely. Here is a big takeaway that I have. As an industry, we as customer support people do not always advocate for ourselves very well. What you are doing is taking the bull by the horns and saying, “Look, we have information that we know is going to impact this process, this gap, what you are trying to do. It is going to save you time, it is going to save you resources, and at the same time, it is going to be a better experience for our customer.” You are the glue, the voice of the customer, between the customer and the different departments that do not interface with the customer. They do not have the perspective and the insights that you have.

[00:20:35] Steve MacDonald: I am looking at what you are saying, and just as you brought inside sales into your team, you are constantly a salesperson within your own organization, in terms of how you can help others. There are not too many customer support people who think of themselves as a salesperson or feel they have to have sales qualities. How important is it to advocate for yourself in order to accomplish everything that you have been talking about here?

[00:21:04] Tracey Djordjevic: Yeah, I think it is key. If you are not advocating for yourself and your team, you are not going to get something you do not ask for.

[00:21:11] Tracey Djordjevic: I think for me, I have had the benefit of doing sales myself, so I really understand the sales side and the sales cycle, which has always been to my benefit in my role on the customer service side and in supporting sales organizations. I have had lots of salespeople and sales leadership say to me, “It is really great that you understand that side of the business.” I never really looked at it that way, Steve, that I was doing that sales job as part of my role for advocating for things in the organization. But I guess it is true. That is really what I am doing. It really comes down to always being a leader who feels the need to advocate for my people, which I think is essential to any leader.

[00:22:04] Steve MacDonald: Having your background in sales and customer support and a seat at the table with leadership, what are some of the things that you have learned from that? If you want to impart some wisdom to the audience, CX leaders who are watching today, what are some of the most important things that you have learned that you want them to know?

[00:22:28] Tracey Djordjevic: I think a big part of it is to not be afraid, to be honest and transparent, and to speak up. I always say to my team, “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth. If you’re not being honest or you’re not telling me what’s going on, I can’t help you. Without that information, I’m lost.”

[00:22:48] Tracey Djordjevic: I feel the same about giving feedback to the organization. If you’re not asking for help or you’re not giving honest feedback, nothing is going to change, and you’re not going to be able to influence any of the decisions. I think the most important piece is to be honest and transparent, and do not be afraid to provide that valuable input.

[00:23:16] Tracey Djordjevic: I think people are afraid there is some sort of risk in that, but I also think if you’re in an organization where you’re at risk to speak your truth, you might not be in the right place.

[00:23:27] Steve MacDonald: I have one last question that I want to ask. As humans we can only retain about two or three things at a time, and we have talked about so much. There is so much great information here today. If there was one thing that you wanted to leave the audience with, if there is one thing to take away from this entire conversation, what would that be?

[00:23:54] Tracey Djordjevic: I would say be proactive, have a plan, and keep yourself accountable. One of the best things project planning has done for me is to hold me accountable and keep me on track, because we all know things get busy and we have so much on our plates.

[00:24:11] Tracey Djordjevic: Like you said, we can only keep two or three things in front of mind. It is very easy to put off things you need to complete or to procrastinate or decide something is not a priority and ignore it. If you have a plan in place, it does not allow you to do so. It forces you to execute on those things, prioritize what is important, and stay on track. That is probably one of the biggest things I have learned at this point in my career that has been of value to me.

[00:24:46] Steve MacDonald: Absolute words of wisdom there. Here is one thing I do know, especially with your sales background, the new KPIs, inside sales, and how you have a seat at the table. People are going to have questions for you. Is it okay if we give out a link to your LinkedIn profile so people can reach out?

[00:25:02] Tracey Djordjevic: Absolutely. Yes, for sure.

[00:25:06] Steve MacDonald: The mission of this entire podcast is to bring on different CX support executives who have different points of view, insights, perspectives, experiences, and ways of creating change inside their organization. If we do that, that is the rising tide that lifts all boats. I just want to say you were an amazing rising tide today, and thank you for coming on.

[00:25:34] Tracey Djordjevic: Thank you so much, Steve. It has been an absolute pleasure. I feel honored that I was asked to be on, and I am glad to be part of something like this. I will absolutely lend any expertise I have to anyone out there in need. I like to help and support other people and their success as well.