2024 could be a major pivot year for customer driven small and medium sized businesses. Consumer sentiment has moved steadily into the positive but growth and profitability will be driven mostly by increased efficiency and productivity. Frontline teams that have direct engagement with customers are crucial in the success of any operation. An ongoing question that managers should ask is: “Does my frontline team have the skills and resources they need to do the job we expect them to do?” Organizations that invest time in skills development see longer term positive results from staff that have the resources they need to do the job accurately and efficiently.
Look for Missing Puzzle Pieces
When it comes to business, there are always opportunities to be better. Managers who understand how a particular organization works, can look at a balance sheet and identify potential areas for improvement almost immediately. Managers can take that initial analysis a step further by identifying specific skills that would directly influence that particular line item. Establishing what skillsets are needed and then developing frontline staff to meet those skills creates a long term solution for operational improvement as well as maintaining and elevating team morale and worker experience. Ultimately, a more efficient and productive frontline team will result in lower costs, reduced staff turnover and improved profitability. Managers can also discover potential skill gaps by communicating with frontline staff and taking in their feedback through their own experiences working day to day.
Identifying Skills Gaps
Managers and supervisors who can quickly identify strengths and weaknesses in their people are the ones who can get the most out of the business’s human assets. Every personality is different and everyone may also learn at a different pace but highlighting the importance of development within the team will promote a culture of constantly striving for improvement. Customer driven businesses should promote skills development in areas such as:
- Initial customer engagement
- Identifying potential transaction opportunities
- Communication and tonality when engaging with customers
- Identifying potential for loss
Businesses that sell items and manage inventory could benefit from extended skills such as:
- Organizational methods
- Spatial or layout training
- Advanced merchandising skills
- Workflow management and prioritizing
Small and medium sized businesses that want to maximize productivity and efficiently must ensure that frontline teams have the skills, tools and resources they need to perform at a high level. A high performance team translates to controlled or reduced costs and increases in profitability.
Leaner and Meaner in the Contact Center
The current focus on efficiency and productivity also holds true to contact centers. Successful operations for outbound and inbound marketers really depends on how optimized the campaign is and how skilled the calling team is. There are so many potential nuances when engaging potential customers over the phone that reps should always be hungry for learning and development. Contact center managers should be always evaluating their team to be aware of each rep’s strengths and weaknesses. Some important skill sets for contact center reps are:
- Being able to quickly define the personality of the potential customer
- Conversation control
- Rebuttals and managing adversarial situations
Contact center representatives also need strong organizational skills to manage leads and have confident conversations with potential business. Refresher mini training for customer engagement and organizational habits will sharpen the skills and improve performance among the frontline calling team.
The Bottom Line
Driving the bottom line in 2024 means fine tuning operations across the board. When it comes to training frontline staff, managers must ask this question: Are there skills that would make the team more productive? Analyzing Profit / Loss sheets can reveal a lot about a business but defining what skills are necessary to improve specific areas is how to establish long term growth for the business. Encouraging feedback from front line employees can also reveal skills that are needed for higher performance. Improving and adding skills can benefit the sales floor as well as backroom operations if handling inventory is part of the organization’s business. Training and skills development is an ongoing feature of contact center operations as successful customer engagement is critical to any campaign. Efficiency and productivity is the name of the game for 2024 and small and medium sized businesses have that ‘size’ advantage when it comes to fine tuning skills and training for the all important frontline team.