coaching – McKee Consulting

Every Job Take Ten Minutes

Managers in Contact Centers are overwhelmed, and they know it. They work; from home, while they drive, and while at the actual workplace.
They are on their cell phones doing e-mails, apps, and God only knows what else. They never take 5 minutes to “Be Quiet.” Oh! NO! They are too busy for that. They think every single thing they do is so important and they expect others to work the same way, so how can they take a break?

• They worry about production,
• Abandonment rates,
• Sales, Customer service, Customer Care
• Net Promotor Scores, and
• Customer Retention

They “think” that if they continue to push themselves very hard, without offending anyone, or hurting anyone’s self-esteem, that those who work for them will “Monkey See, Monkey Do,” then they will succeed in being Happy. At least they HOPE they will. If only they could figure out ways to get Sat scores Up and Customer Experience locked in?

“Have a Little Tea with JUDY”:
1. If you can work 10-12 hours a day and take work calls at all hours of the day and night – YOU CAN TAKE 10 minutes twice a day to “STOP thinking, thinking, thinking! AND Be Quiet!”
2. Sit down in your office, unplug the phone. (Oh, NO, MR. BILL!) Listen to the air conditioner hum and breathe in and breathe out while saying these words.
3. Breathe IN…Breathe OUT. Do not add or subtract from those 4 words. If you notice your are thinking just gently go back to Breathe IN…Breathe […]

Every Job Take Ten Minuteswebmaster2021-03-11T22:17:08+00:00

Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places

Call Center Love needed – but don’t look for it where you don’t want to find it – Find it and give it to the agents

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. We are all looking for love. My thought for this month is, let’s look for love where we WANT to find it. Call Center Agents need love too! It seems the world is bent on finding love in all the wrong places, because they think that if they can only find the problem, they could fix it. This is NOT TRUE. You can always find challenges, but “Where is the love?” Find THAT!

Call Centers have their problems, issues, and challenges. But supervisors don’t need to find them. They aren’t lost. They are still there. Issues constantly come up, and I always feel that the Agent is the one taking the heat! They bear the brunt of every irritated customer, and are taught not to take it personally. RIGHT?

Yesterday, I spoke to an Agent with my cable company; she was delightful! She was helpful, quick, and she cared about what I wanted…my way. The Agent thanked me for my complimentary attitude and said that, she sometimes gets frustrated because the hold times are so long, and when she can finally answer, the customer “yells at me.” She corrected that to say “The customer gives the me a piece of his mind! If you know what I mean.” (This is in case she is heard on the recorded call.)

I […]

Looking for Love in all the Wrong Placeswebmaster2021-03-11T22:17:08+00:00

Who Has a Conscience Anyway?

Jiminy Cricket, THAT’S WHO! Just let your conscience be your guide!

Is there such a thing as INTENTIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS? INTUITION?

Those who use their INTUITION and LIVE by INTENTION can see they have power!

With the tech world growing and the privacy leaving us, (or maybe it already left) we may have not considered that our MIND is bigger than all the technical “programs” in the world so far. What the bots are trying to do is to duplicate the way we think. The bots are trying to give us “Artificial Intelligence,” and it’s working, so far. Just remember, the machine will NEVER replace feelings. Your feelings are never artificial, and they are uniquely your own.

You know when your gut seems to say NO? Whenever you feel like you are out of sorts…or something just doesn’t feel right. You are right! When will you trust that gut? When will you give in to the small voice in the back of your head that is saying…

“Don’t do this…it’s not the civil thing,” “It’s not the kind thing.” All it is – is a scheme you have worked out.

I always use justification to check myself. I noticed once that almost everything I […]

Who Has a Conscience Anyway?webmaster2018-01-10T00:59:31+00:00

Quotas Never Work – Intention Does

Training in Contact Centers is all devoted to RESULTS based on Goals! HA! That’s funny…

To learn that words don’t teach is the hardest lesson that I know. The world’s management seems to think that the numbers they generate, and the words they use to express those numbers, work. Well, here is the bad news for them, but the good news for you. Words DO NOT TEACH…Only Experience, and Emotional Experience at that actually teaches.

Now, you understood that. So, how would the training department, the marketing department, the Supervisors, the Managers, the Coaches, and the Agents relate to that? I spent my life teaching agents to come from their experience and intention. It never fails to be successful because these words never rely on the STATS. I never have the Agents Set Goals. “First Intention Then Enlightenment.” I teach through experience of personal stories, relationships, and train the Agents to find the emotional need of the customer, the buyer, and even their own. This works because it’s the experience that teaches. When the Agent relates, they own it…they own it because it is theirs.

There is no substitute for Aliveness or the Experience of Agent Satisfaction. There is no substitute for Intention. What you call goals isn’t it! There is no substitute for The Experience of the Customer.

The Customer Experience is so big in all discussions today yet it appears that all the work is being done on the level of technology and not on the level of the HUMAN BEING EXPERIENCE. Doesn’t that […]

Quotas Never Work – Intention Doeswebmaster2021-03-11T22:17:08+00:00

What is all this talk of LAMA™

It is a Skills Training Course on Communication that works! That’s all!
The L-A-M-A Technique™

When you know the difference between “What Works and What Doesn’t Work!” you can create a Contact Center Learning System that is FANTASTIC! REVOLUTIONARY! AND one that Cannot and Will Not fail. It is based on the same principle of gravity, and you never doubt that do you? Judy McKee started in 1979 generating so many appointments, to sell or list real estate, that she was made a manager, then a trainer for a large Real Estate Company. She said. “What’s so hard about getting appointments? I get them all the time.” The Independent Agents would not do what she said. Lesson Number One in the LAMA Training. PEOPLE WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT, THAN RICH. When she got the job of training the new hires, they didn’t know any better. They just wanted to sell real estate, so Judy asked them to put their manuals under the desk because the manual said, “How to hold an open house.” Judy said, “Who cares if we hold houses open…we just want to sell them.”

This seemed like perfect logic to her and to the new hires. This is when the LAMA Training was born. It was called the Statement/Question Technique until Discover Card took our training and penned the acronym LAMA. Judy McKee trademarked the name, and the rest is history, as they say.

The LAMA Technique™ is born to WIN!

Why won’t it ever fail? Because it is built […]

What is all this talk of LAMA™webmaster2021-03-11T22:17:08+00:00

Words Don’t Teach – And All That Jazz!

Words are only symbols of something else.

OMG…I am not a team player…now what do I do? Don’t I fit in? (NO…) Don’t I play well with others? (YES, I do!) Should I just say… “I am a team player!” Will I be more accepted then? Being a TEAM player is acknowledged by the best companies as The Way To Be. Often you hear, or see, great presentations about the word TEAM and what those letters stand for. Another one I’ve heard is “There is no I in T-E-A-M.” This is a very old paradigm. The word team teaches nothing…the Experience of Being on a team can teach you everything…I like to use the very ancient words from the HAGAKURI. “Learn one thing, learn a thousand.”

My favorite way to put a TEAM together would be to use the analogy of JAZZ. Each single person is an I AM or I WILL kind of person. A person who can hold his own, alone if necessary, yet allows others to play as well to the best of their ability. If you watched and heard a Jazz quintet play together, you would hear each musician do his or her own “thing.” It becomes a thing of beauty, and it’s called JAZZ. Each player can SOLO as well as join in the tune with accompaniment. It’s a joy to be in the presence of this type of TEAM. The Piano man, the percussionist, the base, the horn, and the guitar – WOW! Put […]

Words Don’t Teach – And All That Jazz!webmaster2021-03-11T22:17:08+00:00

Mystical? Magical? Vicious?

Are you caught in a Vicious Cycle that damages your self-esteem or the self-esteem of your Agents? The cycle can look like this.

This is a Vicious Cycle of Negativity

I hear something wrong on a call, I get Quality to Agree it is bad. I send out a graded form that tells the Agent what is wrong with the way she handled an issue or a person. I set up a feedback session disguised as a “coaching” session. In the meeting, I make sure the Agent sees the error of her ways. I tell her how to do it right, or how we did it in my day. I tell the Agent to fix this for their next evaluation. I hope they are repentant and willing to take the constructive criticism well and mend their ways. I watch and listen for improvement and wonder why I don’t hear or see much improvement. I am frustrated. (BTW so is the Agent and now lacking self-esteem)

This is a Vicious Cycle of Positivity

I hear the Agent make an error on a call. He said something that doesn’t please the Customer. I ‘think’ that Agent needs more confidence and maybe a lesson on Handling the Upset Customers. I am the COACH and I am responsible to help the Agent improve. AND, to give him acknowledgment and show my “confidence in him.” I set up a time to meet with the Agent for a coaching session. We listen to the recorded call. I mention that […]

Mystical? Magical? Vicious? webmaster2021-03-11T22:17:08+00:00

FEEDBACK SUCKS!

The biggest cause of turnover in the contact center industry is Negative FEEDBACK and everybody still does it! Why ? ? ?

Usually I do not use words like “sucks” but I want your attention on my intention. Thank you for opening this blog. I want to help you be able to help the agents enjoy their jobs more. I want companies to retain their agents and have much less turnover, and of course, I want everyone to use The Positive Coach Approach.

Feedback simply doesn’t work when it is negative. Agents don’t ever quit their job. They quit their supervisor, their manager, their coach, or their quality call checker.

It seems people would rather be RIGHT, than happy.

Supervisors are racking their brains for a new formula, a new way to correct, a different way to “hold people accountable.” What they really want are results that work for everyone; the Customer, the Company, and the Agent. When applying feedback or monitoring using computer based bots, or when supervisors threaten with bad grades or poor quality assessments, they have forgotten that the agent is one of the three components to the equation. I do know that they mean well…

This type of simplicity is very difficult for complicated minds. The technical methods are holding us hostage.

What do we want?

A happy atmosphere where people thrive and create a safe environment for the customers, and are wide open for the opportunity to sell something of value to the customer. This way everyone thrives; […]

webmaster2021-03-11T22:17:08+00:00

LAMA MAMA “CAVES” to ONLINE Training
LAMA MAMA “CAVES” to ONLINE Training

Blog

LAMA MAMA “CAVES” to ONLINE Training

Hi GANG! My Blog should be called, “if you think you’re so smart, you’ve got another think coming!” Is that too long?
ONLINE TRAINING comes to life!!! Well, the LAMA MAMA rides AGAIN!

Okay all you Bloggers, Sales People, Trainers and Supervisors, I love you and have finally been talked into putting my training online! I know, I don’t how this will work but you are invited to participate.
The training starts in March and I am hustling to get ten companies on board to see if this will be a huge success. I’m scared, too. Tag National suggested it about a year and a half ago but I guess I just couldn’t’ get behind it since I can’t see your beautiful faces. I have finally “caved” when I heard a small business lose a customer while I was waiting for service the other day. Small businesses just don’t have access to the type of training we provide for these big top 100 companies. Still, I think they are the backbone of our country.

February, I will be hard at work during the month creating training programs for them on line for practically no money at all. It will be like a small phone bill or something like that, and sooooo affordable.

The trick is getting the word out. You can help me there. Please let your friends […]

LAMA MAMA “CAVES” to ONLINE Trainingjudy2021-03-11T22:17:10+00:00