Grappling With Emotions In The Call Center.(communication culture )

"Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language."--Dale Carnegie

A world class communication culture is the preeminent way to create call center operations. At its peak, it makes your call center stand out from all the rest, and exceed all imaginable performance standards. Agent feelings and desires are perhaps the most forgotten aspect of call center management.

Building on those two premises, one can begin to build a positive communication culture with recognition that communication culture and agent performance are by-products of human emotions. The way we communicate is a by-product of how we want to communicate at any particular time. Emotions play a supreme role in creating that base. Perhaps we are thrilled over a week of excellent call handling, or a month of solid sales production. Besides facts and figures, our communication is developed from and presented through our emotions; games, thank-you messages, award certificates, motivational speeches.

In addition, how we create culture and implement culture is also based on our emotions. Inventiveness is an emotional attribute, not a logical attribute. Most of the truly creative minds throughout our society are creative based upon their emotional juices to be so--their desire to be creative. It's not a surprise that in a job that demands very creative performers, telesales agents and customer service agents thrive on emotions to help them succeed everyday. The impact that emotions play stands out as one of the most critical arenas. Agents become motivated based on how they recognize and utilize their emotions, and how they receive emotional vibes from their supervisors. In addition, management motivates agents based on their own ability to understand their own emotions. Decisions are not always made based purely on data.

Indeed, emotions are the foundation for many decisions. Although management wishes to believe that decisions and successes are based on practicality and reasoning, not emotions, call centers simply don't work that way. The people who succeed day-in and day-out are those folks who have an understanding of the role emotions play.

When we discuss emotions, we discuss an intangible. The subjective comes into play. If an agent makes 20 sales in a month against a goal of 11, can we attribute the extra nine sales to emotions? Can a customer service team that manages to diffuse a threatening issue thank emotions as the reason for success? Are negative emotions by agents and management always a threat to performance? Can superior communication culture thrive when emotions are always foremost?

When management makes decisions, are they making those decisions based on well thought-out practices, or merely on emotional desires? How much do management's emotions factor in when management goes about motivating agents? When agents have problems, how much of a factor does emotion play in their attitudes and opinions?

Each question elicits a different answer from different parties. Ten managers answer 10 different ways, and 35 agents provide 35 interesting yet different responses. There is no correct answer, nor is there meant to be a correct answer. Yet what is very clear is that the emotional patterns by management and agents clearly dominate communication culture.

If I had a dollar for each time a supervisor or team lead communicated to me utilizing their emotions first, I would be a billionaire. …

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