A Brave New World

A journey into the unknown of working from home - The Vancouver Setup Plan.  
 

When our Director, Martyn Yarwood, informed us that we had to implement a work-from-home plan - and fast - we took a deep breath and dug in. 

Together with Mike Erridge, we had two weeks to take the Compass Card Customer Support Centre for TransLink to a Work From Home (WFH) environment. 

Phase 1

Nine customer service agents working from home. The challenge at hand: learning how the laptops would take calls and what software we needed. Once the technology was enabled, we trained the customer service representatives (CSRs), got them set up at home, and ensured it worked.

Our in-house trainer, Norm Leung, and our local IT specialist, Brodie McLennan, worked tirelessly to make Phase 1 happen. With just a couple of minor bumps along the way, it was onto Phase 2. 

Phase 2

Phase 2 focused on training and issuing WFH equipment to the 23 remaining office-based CSR’s. At first, we sent a few CSRs home at a time to test and make sure all was working well. 

As you can see below, this is a very close-knit team. Getting them used to the new way of remote working was going to be a challenge. 

Enter Today

Everyone is working from home, with the exception of a few essential support staff at the office. We are thankful for the opportunity to have two leads available to work alternate schedules.

A massive part of moving a customer service team to a WFH setup was internal support for CSRs.

How do managers set their team up for success in a remote environment when time is a factor in success? 

The solution, be it archaic or not, was to set up various chat rooms through Zoom. With a couple of guidelines and a set of parameters, our internal support process was identified. 

• The Support Room: Created as a one-stop-shop for all the CSR’s questions to service customers effectively. Seniors then would respond with an answer (this has proved very effective).
• The Operations Room: General updates from management and need to know announcements.
• The Leads Room: Simply for the Team Leaders to be aware of who is working on what and cover all tasks, like reports.
• The Support Room for Leads and Seniors: Know who is listening to which live call so they didn’t duplicate efforts.

To maintain professional standards, I frequent all 'Rooms' to check for appropriateness and correct messaging to travelers. We set up extensive call quality reviews across the board. Before WFH, we were listening to 120 calls a month and random live listens, but in the first month of WFH, we've listened to over 3,000 calls.

Listening For Tomorrow

In the event WFH becomes the norm for a CSR team, we must provide extra coaching and training. While incoming customer service calls were low, we took the opportunity to put a plan in place to set up extra and knowledge reviews to enhance their standards.

Everyone Needs Support 

To make sure every team member receives support, check-ins are a daily process and emphasized that we were there for them anytime they wanted to talk. The CSRs feedback blew me away! Everyone was really enjoying the experience.  

They feel really supported and are loving working from home and over 92% of the staff says they would love to continue WFH.

So far, we have learned from this process that communication and the regular connections we have - both group and individual - with our team is critical to the success of this WFH model.

Customer complaints have reduced to virtually 0 - backed up by our post-call surveys and reviewing the 3,000+ calls in a month.

The feedback I have received has been exceptionally positive and they would love this to continue. 

We are a brave team and this is our new world.