Leadership, AI & Burnout in Modern Contact Centers

Transcript

[00:00:05] Welcome back to the Contact Center Perspectives. I’m your host, Tracy Weinger. And my guest today has spent 12 years at BNH climbing every rung of the ladder. Agent, team leader, supervisor, manager, senior manager, and along the way built something. Most organizations desperately need a real. Lived experience playbook for turning top performers into leaders who don’t burn out in their first 90 days.

[00:00:32] He’s also refreshingly honest about ai, not anti ai, anti reckless, and I think that distinction is one every CX leader listening right now needs to hear. He’s also the author of the 30 Day New Leader Guide. We’ll talk about that pretty extensively today, and I’ll make sure you could definitely get your hands on it in the show notes.

[00:00:53] Shamal Sola, welcome to the Context Center Perspectives, and I’d like to turn over the mic to you to give a little insight and background about yourself as we head into this journey together. Thank you, Tracy. It’s really a pleasure to be here. I’ve been a listener of the show and so it’s really fun to be able to join and give my thoughts and perspectives.

[00:01:12] So just a little background, I grew up on the East coast, moved to New York City around, high school, college time.

[00:01:18] Had that experience living there. And when it came time after college, I, looking for a job and I started actually. My first role as in a sheet metal shop in the South Bronx of New York. It was very eyeopening for me, just getting your hands dirty, right?

[00:01:32] Starting literally from the ground up. Physically building a showroom in the summer, it was like there was no air conditioning oppressive heat. But it was hard work. And sometimes that’s. If that’s what’s missing and that’s what you need to really just get yourself going.

[00:01:45] And it’s interesting it taught me a lot about work and a lot about things that I use today. The skills of patience, you’re not always successful. The first time I was trying to pour concrete or some compound for the floor and they’re like, yeah, just mix part A and part B and then pour it out and you’re good to go. Because it was 90 something degrees, the chemical reaction was faster than normal. So I turn around and the bucket is literally smoking, and I’m like, oh my God, what have I done?

[00:02:10] You fail, you try again, right? And that’s something that’s so important for us as leaders, as employees. Working with customers, what does it mean to, work with a customer face to face?

[00:02:19] Listening to them, hearing them out. All skills that were foundational for me. And after doing that for a year, I was like, all right, let me try something else. And I needed a job. I didn’t know, what I was gonna do. And my wife had a friend who worked at BNH and was like, yeah, send me your resume.

[00:02:33] Came in for an interview. I didn’t even know what role I was interviewing for. I was like, I dunno, we’ll figure it out. And they’re like, how about this department enterprise accounts? And I was like, sure. Interviewed look great. Here I am 12 years later, where as so many of us who have found themselves in this space fell into it by chance and never thought they’d make a career out of contact centers. And fell in love with it. I fell in love with the space, fell in love with the work. Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard work and being on a queue is not easy. But. It’s great. It’s rewarding and you get to help people and one of the things that I try to tell my team all the time is it’s not just a phone call, right?

[00:03:11] It’s not just the interaction, there’s a person on the other line. And realizing that there’s a person involved and person on the other end. I always found was helpful. So yeah. Started there on the phones.

[00:03:22] Did that, was an agent. For about, a year or so, moved into team leader role and, really just was very, just mostly answering questions. Very not much manager involved yet. Then, about a year and a half in a supervisor position opened up in our team.

[00:03:37] I was at the point of my career where I spent time in this role and I really needed to make a decision whether I want to continue and do I want this to be a career? Do I want to go into management? Or, maybe it’s time. Look around and see what’s out there. So it was really like one of those pivotal moments of my early in my career.

[00:03:55] I was looking at it as, do I wanna go into management and be a supervisor where I already deal with problems, right? that’s what I deal with all day. I’m just gonna deal with bigger problems. Is that what I wanna be doing? And I had a conversation with my current supervisor and shared my thoughts and she said something to me

[00:04:09] was simple but yet profound and really changed my outlook and had a real transformation for me. And she said, I look at my role as not solving problems, but I’m helping people solve problems. And it sounds so simple, right? And in leadership 

[00:04:23] It’s just, they’re very basic. I would say, fundamental point, but it’s also the most profound statement that you have in leadership. Because the real leaders are, they’re not managers, they’re leaders. They’re leading you, to solutions. They’re helping you get better.

[00:04:35] They’re helping you grow. It was like one of those wow moments for me. I interviewed for the role. I got it and thrown in the deep end. It was like, here you go. And I was like, oh. I had no idea what I was doing. There was no training, there was no playbook. It was like, we’ll learn as we go. Which is obviously we know one of the things that I have thought about over my career is there needs to be something. Absolutely. We have to absolutely be better. And that turned into manager and then senior manager.

[00:05:01] We did a restructuring a few years ago and something that I’ve spent the last bunch of years is really helping people grow and helping those. frontline staff go from that individual contributor to manager and what does that look like and how do I support them as best as possible knowing that I didn’t have that, and now how do I make that possible?

[00:05:21] And how do I do that for them? It really was a big focus. And, to that point, when you have somebody who looks like a good new manager, talk about the first 30 days. What is The first 30 days look like for them? What should they be doing?

[00:05:33] And most importantly, what should they stop doing? Yeah. Sometimes that’s the more important question. Yeah. I’ll say the most important. Thing in the first 30 days, but it’s also the most important thing always is relationships.

[00:05:44] Oh, absolutely. And I mean that intentionally not as A checklist, not as a platitude, right? With your team, it means genuine connection. Not saying oh, how’s your weekend? Just because you feel like you have to, but because you care and you want to know and you want to hear about their life there are good things and there are challenges and that’s what’s building trust with people, right? It’s, that foundational relationship building so that’s what it means with your team, but with your boss, it means having a direct conversation early, building that relationship early

[00:06:11] what does success look like for you? What are you looking for in this role? For me? How do you wanna be communicated with? What are you expecting from me? I didn’t do that once and I was new. I was figuring it out. And I was like, I am drowning here and I need help. And weeks went by and I was like, am I doing something wrong? I feel like I’m failing. And it turns out when I finally said something, they were like, oh yeah, I’m waiting for you to come ask for help. And I was like, okay, if I would’ve asked up front what are your expectations of communication? I would’ve. Saved myself those weeks of stress and anxiety. So that was something also that taught me, you have to ask, right? Ask, what are you looking for? We don’t know what someone else is expecting of us unless we ask them.

[00:06:50] And sometimes we’re afraid to. I don’t wanna like rock the boat. I don’t wanna ask, but we gotta get over it. Just talk. Absolutely. Because as somebody new into that role, you don’t wanna look like a failure, you wanna try to figure it out on your own. It’s, how can I fix this? How can I make this right? Without. Having that conversation, right? Yeah. Exactly your point. Like you don’t wanna look like a failure

[00:07:10] you say confident, Hey, I’m gonna do this right, so tell me what you need from me. So it’s just having that experience of someone to tell you this is how you should approach it. But yeah, of course you don’t wanna look like a failure. You’re trying to carry it on your own.

[00:07:22] Absolutely. And to your second question about what should you stop doing? I would say you gotta stop. The one thing you should not do is make a change right away. You come in on a new team and I know, managers do it, right? You wanna prove that I got this and I deserve this role and I deserve to be here.

[00:07:36] But what it’s really signaling to your team is that you think you know more than them. Absolutely. You walk in day one, you think, I’ve been doing this job for 15 years. Don’t tell me, Right there. You’ve got a lot of ways to climb back up.

[00:07:46] Yeah. So that’s, I would say, just be open, be curious. Building relationships in the right way is, I think will set you up, in your first 30 days, but also 10, 15 years down the road as well.

[00:07:55] Every bit, because this is still. A journey, right? Your career is that journey and you take the experience and the learnings and you just build upon that as you move forward. I know one of the topics that you and I talked about in a pre-meeting is about mentorship and how.

[00:08:11] Important it is for you, for your persona, for the way you manage and the way you look forward with your team members. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Yeah. So it’s really, it is something I look at as who I am and as how I operate and how I perform. And it’s not just in my professional life, but it’s my personal life as well

[00:08:31] I was a volunteer chaplain in a correctional facility for about a year and a half. And it is hard, right? But part of who I am is I’m trying to connect, I want to help, I wanna support, so it’s another way for me to demonstrate or to give back is in that mentorship role of you’re helping people that really need help.

[00:08:49] I’m not, getting to any of the politics of it, There’s still people and people need help. And that’s what you’re there for. So for me it’s, you need that mentorship in whatever position you’re in or life situation that you’re in.

[00:09:01] It’s not about and you have to fill different roles, when you’re a leader, right? Do I need to manage or do I need to lead? Do I need to coach or am I a mentor? And you gotta know that, know the situation, right?

[00:09:10] if there’s a fire, you’re not coaching, you’re managing, get out of the building. So it’s like you gotta know when to ask the right questions, you’re not gonna grow if you don’t have that mentor in your corner. Where somebody can feel that trust and say, Hey, I don’t know what to do.

[00:09:23] I need help. And they know that they can come to you and you’re not gonna be like, you don’t know this. You are gonna say, Hey, let’s talk about it. Tell me what’s going on. what have you done so far? What have you looked at? What do you think? And that’s, what it’s all about.

[00:09:35] You gotta be there for people and back them up in their corner. And to go back to leadership management. I think with our listeners, those that are getting into management for the first time, what is your insight when there’s that kind of peer dynamics, right?

[00:09:50] That yesterday they were all teammates and now one of them is now a direct report. How do you help them manage that from a mentor leadership role? Yeah, I’ll say I think that was the most challenging thing for me. Switching to management was, and I struggled with it like I was their, teammate, I was their peer and now they report to me.

[00:10:09] And it was, it’s hard. And you should not undersell that and undervalue that the importance and realness of it. Because it is real. And I think what’s most important that I learned was. Communication and say, sit down with, eventually I sat down with whoever it was, and I was like, look, this is weird.

[00:10:28] I get it. This is awkward, right? we’re gonna figure it out together. Here, we can still be coworkers in a sense or friends, this is where our relationship is here and this is what it can be somewhere else. But, it is important to recognize and it’s important to address it.

[00:10:43] And it’s important to show them like, I’m here for you in a different way than I was. Yes, I know now I’m gonna have to hold you accountable, but still gonna support you and still be there for you. But yeah, our relationship is different. And you can’t pretend that it’s not because I have seen that blow up.

[00:10:59] Yeah, absolutely. No, and it’s just not healthy for anyone in that relationship. Like it’s not good for you because you’re not doing your job as a leader potentially of holding them accountable for something. It’s not good for the employee because they’re not getting the feedback that they need.

[00:11:13] And it’s not good for the teammates because they know and they see it. And they’re like oh, they’re buddy. Okay. And it’s just you’re gonna end up creating that a culture or a vibe of negativity. Sure. No, that’s so true. Again, I’ve, in my journey, I’ve seen that all too often, And it does come back to communication and being at the forefront of, making sure that everybody understands what the relationship is and That favoritism. It doesn’t work. Yeah. And then expectations, like something I constantly come back to is expectations, right?

[00:11:43] Like in any role, you need to know what your expectations are. you need to communicate what your expectations are of your employees. And same thing here, right? Like our relationship, this is what I’m now expecting, right? This is how it has to be for the success of all of us.

[00:11:55] Just clear communication and clarity and expectations just goes so far. Oh, very true. Yeah. Shail, I’m gonna switch gears a little bit. And during our pre-meeting we did talk about, the big elephant in the room. Ai, right? Yeah.

[00:12:09] AI adoption. Speed, all of that. And the one thing that I recall is the fact that, you weren’t obviously worried about AI itself, but worried about the pace and the impact to contact centers today. So what do you see from that? What is your lens as you look into that and, bring forth that type of clarity. Yeah, sure. like you said it’s the elephant in the room. You can’t go one day without talking about it in some way or fashion. The truth, obviously, like AI is revolutionary, right? Absolutely. There’s no underselling it, there’s no denying it.

[00:12:40] I genuinely believe it is game changing in so many ways and industries. But here’s the truth, If you haven’t done the work, AI is only gonna make your inefficiencies more visible. It’s gonna be more problematic if your processes are broken and your knowledge is not up to date, your QA doesn’t have structure, AI is just gonna amplify that.

[00:12:59] it’s just gonna expose the problems in a more visible way. you’re not gonna actually see the value and the success that you’re looking for. And you talk about, okay, now we’re gonna do a rollout. What does that do to your people and your team?

[00:13:11] Where I didn’t do a proper change management of, making sure I have all the steps. Now it comes to my team and you don’t have the buy-in. You’re not gonna get the ROI that you’re looking for.

[00:13:20] And, I’ve watched companies buy tools, skip the work, and six, 12 months later, write off millions of dollars as a loss. And it’s crazy. there’s no clear strategy. It was just, you gotta buy ai, just go buy it, turn it on.

[00:13:34] And it’s not a technology failure. The product was fine. It’s a leadership failure. A hundred percent. But the part that. Worries me the most or concerns me the most is the people aspect of it. People are not naive, right? People have seen CEOs stand up and got on record and saying, AI is not gonna take anyone’s jobs.

[00:13:51] And then what happened? Yeah. Six, 12 months, thousands of jobs have been right. Yeah. And people aren’t buying it anymore. They know and they’re sitting there at their desks wondering if they’re next. Yep. Absolutely. And instead of addressing it, honestly, you’re now seeing organizations tracking AI usage.

[00:14:07] We’ve spent millions of dollars on this tool. Now I wanna make sure you’re using it to get my money’s worth. So now they’re tracking you need a hit, whatever. 60% usage. Whatever that may be. And that that’s not change management, that’s surveillance dressed up as adoption.

[00:14:22] Talk about destroying trust and sending the exact wrong message about what leadership is values. Absolutely. Nobody’s buying it. And the organization’s getting it right are the ones saying what are we trying to solve? What is our actual issue that we are trying to solve?

[00:14:34] How are we gonna make our people more successful? Exactly. We’re gonna empower our team to be more efficient to be more knowledgeable, let’s upskill them. And it’s different than how do we do it fast, just to satisfy the board. Very true. And from a societal perspective. people are concerned what does this mean for society?

[00:14:52] What does this mean for environmental challenges? Oh my gosh, there’s so many questions about it. What I really believe is that people are looking to make standards and regulation and. It’s not gonna, we’ve seen this play out many times, right?

[00:15:04] Look at Big Tobacco, how many decades did it take for meaningful regulation and they knew what was going on. Absolutely. And just now with social media, you’re finally getting some regulation about limiting it for minors and you’re seeing some big lawsuits come out of it and just, it is gonna happen again.

[00:15:19] Absolutely. It’s just a matter of time. And it’s sad. It’s that who’s gonna get hurt because of it. No, very true. And when you do, sorry, be a little depressing. Yeah. No. It’s absolutely true. There’s so many it’s just impact through every. Attribute that we have here, right?

[00:15:35] From the economy, from environmental, it definitely impacts everything. But taking that lens and, with the marriage of AI and context centers and new listeners that are in different levels, in their journey and everything. When you coach, when you go through any type of mentorship, knowing that with ai what do you think about with the human side of this, like what is one leadership behavior that.

[00:16:04] Would help and support the agents? Or what is that one leadership behavior maybe that would actually keep agents from quitting? Just the retention? Sure. Yeah so I guess looking at it the opposite way, right? So what can we do to support our people and build that trust and culture?

[00:16:21] It’s about what I said before about relationships. And that intentional relationship building. And are you really there for your team and your people because you really care. And, we’ve all been there, we’ve all been on that tough call customers, whether rightfully or wrong they were upset, they were screaming as the situation spiraled.

[00:16:38] Nothing, even if you did your best. It happens. And what are you doing about it in that moment when your agent hangs up the phone, are you getting up, walking over and say, Hey go. Take five minutes. Go walk around the block. I saw that was tough and I want, I wanna support you and I want, make sure you’re okay.

[00:16:54] And then when they come back, are you sitting down with them and saying, talk to me about it, what happened? And how can I coach you? Maybe we can do some role playing. Maybe we can help with your skills. Maybe I can work on some deescalation techniques.

[00:17:05] There’s so many ways that we can just be there for our people when it really matters, if they’re going through a challenging personal issue. Just being supportive for them. That listening ear. And I think those things really do go a long way.

[00:17:17] And for people to feel they belong in a place that cares. Giving the positive recognition, right? Everyone always wants the positive recognition and it’s always better than how are you developing that culture where whoever it is, whether that’s their direct manager, whether that’s their senior manager, whether that’s even coworkers are giving each other that positive feedback saying, Hey, I saw you were involved in this earlier. Wow. You really did a great job. You documented everything. I was able to just jump in and take it over, how nice is that for you to get that feedback and say thank you?

[00:17:45] And even sometimes, like when it comes from a another coworker, sometimes that even means more. absolutely. A manager has to tell me I did a good job. They’re getting paid to do yeah, sure. But if that’s your culture where everybody’s just we’re one team, we help each other.

[00:17:58] So as we close down this podcast what is one thing that you want the listeners to remember from this podcast? What kind of advice would you like to give them right now? That’s a good question. I would say the most important thing, What’s the takeaway, right? I would say it’s about, I’ll focus again on relationships. and thinking about what that really means in a relationship and different ways that impacts, right? Is that relationship with my boss?

[00:18:22] I need to work on making sure I’m clear on my expectations as my employees, and making sure I’m humble and I’m open to them that I wanna work together with you. Is it relationship with yourself? are you kind to yourself and know what you know, and know what you don’t know and that you’re gonna give yourself grace that this is new and challenging but being open and curious to growth and never stop asking.

[00:18:43] I’ve been doing this 12 years in this job. I still learn things every day, and what are you doing to support that growth and what does that look like for you? And this has just been generally a very practical, candid conversation that we’ve had for the show. Chael I really appreciate you being here.

[00:18:58] It’s been a pleasure, having you as a guest. Why don’t you take everybody through how they could find your 30 day new leader guide? ’cause I think it’s a very important resource that the listeners could have and utilize in their day to day.

[00:19:10] Yeah, definitely find me on LinkedIn. It’s probably the best way to find me. Schmo and I have my, my 30 day guy as a featured post on my profile. So that’s definitely a good way to find me.

[00:19:21] Also the leadership hub.org is a good spot for me. That’s where you can find my resources and just reach out. I’m a helper, right? That’s what I do. And I’m happy to have a conversation with you. Let me know what you need and how I can support you and support your growth.

[00:19:33] This is wonderful, and listeners, if this episode hit you, do me a favor. Follow contact center perspectives. Wherever you’re listening. Drop a radio on Apple or Spotify and share it with one of your leaders on your team who needs to hear it. That’s how the show finds and follows the people that it’s meant for.

[00:19:48] I’m Tracy Weinger. Been a pleasure having you on contact Center perspectives, and we’ll see you next week. Thank you, Tracy. This was wonderful, great insight. Great. I really appreciate it. This is really fun. I love just, going back and forth and just having a honest conversations