The (not so) Secret to Achieving Amazing Team Results in Customer Experience

For most of my career I’ve led Customer Experience functions. These organizations are naturally very people centric. Lots of people on the team. Lots of people (customers) to interact with – and often not in the happiest of circumstances. The work can be challenging and thankless. And, these teams and the work they do are critically important to the success of the organization.

The recipe for team success is not complicated. Happy employees help create happy customers which helps create a happy business (and happy shareholders).

We were excited to recently partner with João Belo from Roche. João leads Customer Experience Operations (CXO) for the Americas. They have a fantastic team but were facing challenges of staying connected in the hybrid world and dealing with the common issue of having to do more with less.

Here are three things João focused on – that every people leader can focus on - to help increase psychological safety. This leads to better employee engagement, which leads to better overall team performance.

Building Connection

The global statistics around loneliness and isolation are crushing. Between the pandemic fear and the separation of work from home, we’ve collectively withdrawn. At work this leaves us feeling disconnected and dissatisfied. With a few simple activities we can get to know each other and connect at a deeper level.

João and his team implemented The Seven Minute Life Stories. This is a simple exercise where we hold space for each other to talk about our lives in a deeper, more meaningful way. It’s exactly the type of conversation that helps us establish connection with each other at a deeper level. João and his team experienced deeper levels of trust, connection, and psychological safety as a result.

Building Meaning

Many workers feel a longing for more meaning in their work. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, 9 of 10 workers say that they would be willing to work for less money in exchange for more meaning in their jobs. As leaders, we forget to look up sometimes. We get so focused on what we’re doing that we don’t spend enough time thinking and talking about why we’re doing it!

João made a conscious effort to discuss how Roche was making the world a better place and the team’s role in that movement. For each of us as leaders, it’s so important to connect the dots between the work our team is doing and the overall positive impact our company or organization is having on the world.

Building Great Managers

According to McKinsey, our relationship with our manager is the single biggest factor in our overall work satisfaction And our relationship with work is the second biggest factor in our overall happiness, second only to our mental well-being. Which means, our relationship with our manager is one of most important relationships in our life!

People don’t leave companies or jobs; they usually leave managers.

However, the average manager has been managing for ten years before they receive any training. Ugh! No wonder there are so many managers that lack basic people leading skills, let alone the skills to be exceptional at leading.

By all reports, João is a very effective and well-liked manager. Even great managers benefit from some help now and then. João was able to leverage the Changing Work Team Journey over the course of 3-4 months, a curated set of best practice to build high-performing, close-knit teams. He said, “These tools were such a gift for our team!”

The results speak for themselves. Over the course of a few months João’s team experienced the following:

• 50% increase in employees who believe they are on a high-performing team

• 53% increase in employees who believe the team has the resilience to effectively navigate challenges

• 67% increase in employees who agree they feel safe to communicate that need to be said with their teammates

• 88% increase in employees who agree that the team shares gratitude with each other in a meaningful way
  
  Building a high performing team isn’t complicated, but it does take both intention and attention. Congratulations to João and his team for leading the way.