Are the robots coming for our jobs?

Welcome back to our 5 Top Challenges for Digital Leaders series!

We’re talking about the art and science that is Driving Channel Strategy.  (Here’s the previous instalment about channel migration and customer effort, in case you missed it).

This week I want to talk about how you help your staff get on board with digitisation.

I believe that the single most important success factor for digital adoption is how your staff talk to customers about your company’s digital tools.

That’s a big call.

But really, it’s the difference between:

“Did you know it’s very easy to do that on our app and let me help you set that up now”
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versus

“I’m not really sure how that works” or worse still “Head Office haven’t told us about that”.

AGGHH!

Human beings (with the possible exception of Gen Z) generally like other human beings to teach them about new digital tools.

It might just be watching the person in front of us in the queue use the new self-service check-out, or a friend recommending a new app.

Or it might be a helpful person on the other end of the phone talking you through a new digital offering.
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So, here’s some insights to help your staff talk positively about your digital channels:

One: Be explicit with your people that their job is digital advocacy. Especially the people leaders. 

It’s very easy for customer service staff to think that talking with customers about digital is not part of their job:
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• It’s seen as an “either or” situation. Either they’re getting great service from me, or they’re using a digital channel, (and it’s not really my job to talk about that other channel). Turns out that it is much less black and white than that. As you grow digital usage you may also grow digital support calls or chats with your contact centre. Digital can also be an excellent source of cross and upsell leads for your sales teams. No channel is an island.

• Digital adoption is “someone else’s job” (presumably someone in head office).

 
But the reality is that your customer service staff have to be prepared to be advocates for your digital experience because the customers they deal with every day are asking about it.

Tell them explicitly that it is part of their job and then track how they’re going with digital capability and adoption metrics in their performance objectives.

Digital advocacy is even more critical for people leaders because they determine the real focus of their teams. You need people leaders to show the way in terms of learning and promoting your digital channels.

Two: People need hands-on experience.

“Is there an app store near our office?” – that was one of the questions I used to get when I first started out in digital!

Happily, there’s a relatively low likelihood that you’ll get that question now, but the underlying insight is still the same. It doesn’t matter how great you are at customer service; you won’t talk about digital tools with customers if you haven’t had personal experience with the tool yourself.

It’s easy to give your frontline teams the access and knowledge they need to capably talk about your digital tools.
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Videos, clickable demos, quick reference guides, training material, quizzes. You should even provide access to devices if that is an issue for your teams. A regular and engaging communication programme is essential to growing and maintaining frontline knowledge.

Three: Have expertise where your staff are.

Staff are humans too! And humans as I mentioned earlier like to learn about new digital tools from other humans.

They might be digital champions, coaches, ninjas, buddies. It doesn’t matter what you call them but your customer service staff will value having a person within their team to ask for help if they are learning a new technology.

​I’ve also seen reverse-mentoring programmes work really well too, when a more junior digital native takes a senior leader under their wing.

Four: Address objections upfront honestly and transparently.

“My customers don’t want to use digital when they can talk to me”. *
“Older customers don’t use the internet”.*
“Are robots coming for our jobs?” **

It can be a difficult conversation but wherever possible you need to be honest about what’s driving your digital transformation.

Most companies have a push/pull strategy – pull because the majority of your customers are demanding improved digital services and you HAVE TO keep up. Push because let’s be honest, digitisation helps with operational efficiencies and allows your projects to be self-funding.

You need a plan about how you’re going to talk about this with staff. If you’re in growth mode then digitisation is going to help you keep up with customer volumes without needing more staff. If you’re maintaining (or shrinking) market share then are you able to offset staff turnover with digitisation savings?

Whatever your strategy, have a clear plan for what you’ll say when those questions come up (don’t wing it).
 
Best of luck and see you next week!

PS Last week I was talking to my friend Kerry Topp, at The Kerry Topp Collective about prioritising your transformation roadmap with the Prioritisation Trifecta. You can check out the video here.

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* yes they do
**maybe