Judy's and Sally's Blog

Hi GANG,

Everybody in the call center needs motivation. Here are a couple of ways you can encourage, entice, motivate and inspire your agents to bigger and better things. I love to inspire the mind but sometimes it works to start by giving gifts.

First of all: Change your mind from the thought that “You are getting paid so you don’t need motivation.” Yes, they do and why? because sitting at the same job station and doing a repetitive job causes more turnover than anything else. Negativity doesn’t work. Positive Coaching Works and good ideas work.

Try these two things:
Games and inspirations that cost little and create a lot: www.motivatedincentives.com This company is devoted to you and your call center. (817) 912-1072 The WEBSITE will let you sample things for FREE. See if this will work for you.

For Customer gifts and things: Contact: Sherri Flibsen, a funny name but a wonderful person. sherrip@nadel.com www.nadel.com

Judy and Sally
See you in the call center….

Here is a way to handle a problem in customer service.

• Never make the customer feel wrong or stupid.
• Don’t fight against the policy of the customer with your own policy.
• You only succeed in causing irritation.
• All under the guise of following the company rules. 

This doesn’t work.  It never has worked but why do companies continue to teach their agents about it?  It is a mystery to me.  It seems the company would rather be “right” than solve the problem.

If you have an issue with different policies, you must come from a place of support for the customer and the company not either or.

Here is one way to handle it.  You can tell everyone you learned it here!  Try this at HOME, Try this at WORK.  It really opens the door to a conversation instead of slamming it shut!

That’s my blog for today!

Sally

The Positive Coach Approach Tips for New Trainers

Clicking With Inspiration
This is the sixth and final article on Tips for Trainers, and I would like to close out the series in the same way I close every training session, which is with a short motivational and inspirational message. Training programs should be designed to deliver solid useful materials and skills that trainees can readily use to enhance their performance coupled with the motivation and inspiration necessary to make the trainees want to excel. So, let’s click with inspiration!
Let’s begin with a quote from Faith Popcorn and Lys Marigold’s wonderful book, Clicking:

Let’s put clicking as it applies to the trainer and inspiration together.

Give your trainees a vision of the future. Plan the end of every training session to be inspiring.
Inspiration will breed self motivation. Click.
Trainees want life-lessons as well as work lessons. Collect stories describing successes of individuals who persisted and achieved lofty goals in spite of hardships, setbacks, lack of talent or physical attributes. Stories can be readily found in biographies of scientists, athletes, inventors, adventurers or campaigners for human rights. Select quotes that move and inspire you. Click!
Personal stories work best. If you have had a life / death experience or a particularly life changing experience, tell it to your trainees. You will endear yourself to them and inspire them to take what you learned and make it their own. Click!
Throughout my twenty years working as a trainer and consultant, I have experienced many rewards, but the most fulfilling and precious memories I have come from seeing my trainee’s faces light up when they seize a concept, idea or skill they are anxious to put to work. The act of teaching someone and watching them expand their horizons is an absolutely priceless experience. Click!
There is an old Samurai adage in the Hagakure, which says: “The way is in the training.” This means there is only one training, the one in which you train yourself. Click!    If that’s true, you who are developing others have a great purpose in life. Train yourself first, and keep your own saw sharpened. Most of all, believe your trainees want to learn, grow and become successful. If you believe in them, give them a vision, the tools and your total support, they will someday outshine the trainer. That’s what you want isn’t it? Click!
The mission of our company is to provide high quality professional training programs that yield measurable results at affordable cost.

Judy McKee
McKee Consulting LLC 760-738-8200
www.ThePositiveCoachApproach.com
judym@tyccpro.com

Four ways to de-tox and get rid of the Blahs, the Blues and the Stresses in the Contact Center.

Everything seems to depend on time in the call center.  No time to eat, no time to talk to your neighbor in the next cubicle, no time for a break outside by the back door, no time to be friendly. That is because time is only used to crunch numbers, check ratios from call to sale or shorten call time and lower the abandonment rate.   This sounds like no fun at all.  So, let’s see if we can open that door of opportunity even if the knocking you hear is the person in the next cube banging their head against the wall.

1 Minute

If you have only one minute to spare, you can:

• Subscribe to Comics on the Internet and read 2-3 of them – laugh – laugh – laugh!
• Spritz some Citrus Scent around you and breathe in calmly for one full minute.
• Move your shoulders up and down in a vertical motion to release tension on neck and back
• Check posture, sit up straight. Your back deserves a break, too.
• Drink a glass of water for your voice. Your body is a sponge and needs hydration.
• Make a secret list of two things that really make you mad – tear it up and throw it away.
• Billy Joel said: “she never gives in, she never gives up, she just changes her mind.”  You can too, take a moment and “Lighten Up!”  That’s what enlightenment is all about.

8 Minutes

• If you have two or three or four minutes – really eight minutes – Listen to a CD of calming music, no rap or angry stuff.  OR, put a recording on your i-pod of  soothing affirmations or positive sounds,  relax and you will handle the stress better. You can buy these kinds of CDs. (Call me.)  It’s very inexpensive and they work.  You go back to work cheerful and energized.  Why doesn’t everybody do this?
• Go outside and sit on a bench and just BE….no talking, no thinking, just SIT and BE.

4 Minutes

• Ask someone for direction.  Ask people what you should do with your life and Listen.
• If you are angry, sad, lonely, or depressed, Put on a Happy Face and pay it forward.
• Buy a candy bar and give it to someone else.
• Call a friend and say: “I miss you.”  Remember you only have 4 minutes but that’s all it takes.
• If you are worried, sit in a chair and try very hard to worry, for 4 minutes…bet you can’t do it!

Merry Christmas everybody, People seem to like my stories, I can hardly get through a training program anymore without telling a few. This story is true and I used it in a newsletter this Christmas. (Maybe I will put it in my next book. that’s the one I am writing for Oprah so I can get on the show with my LAMA Technique) Here is a sample. After you read it, share your “how did you handle hard times at Christmas?” Inspire us all. We all love to hear a real true hard luck story with a happy ending. Please, will you write one for us all? Maybe I’ll put your story in there, too. I know you have one….put it down on paper.

Dear Judy,
Everybody is so plugged in about money. Is that all there is? Everybody talks about it but like the weather they don’t do anything about it. Here is the Christmas Season, we are supposed to be Happy but all I hear is “I hate this, and I don’t have that…I have to pay this, my check is too small and my pocketbook is empty.” “They” blame the President, the mortgage companies and the banks, etc. yada yada. You get it? Don’t you? How can we have the Christmas spirit when it’s hard out there and everybody is scared?
Yours truly,
Down and out in Beverly Hills

Dear Down and Out,
It is hard out there and that is why you have to look in here…..(point to your heart) Do you know the only Christmas my kids remember is the one we made candles ? (yes, they were big in the 70’s. too, we also had madras blankets over our bare light bulbs) They remember the fun of using old crayons to color the wax we put in empty milk cartons, the fun we had and it cost practically nothing. We decorated a rubber tree plant with the old lights from the year before and went to Grandma’s for Christmas Dinner.

I was making about $108 a week with three kids . I was one of those single, working MOMs they all talk about. We got some food stamps and my eldest is still embarrassed about that. Anyway, it is still the only really meaningful Christmas absolutely all of us remembers vividly. Why is that?

Because we didn’t stress over money, we worried about if we had enough old crayolas to color the candles with multiple colors. We were too broke to worry about it and so we created a mood of giving. We created a plan of making gifts. It’s always hard out there for somebody, so instead of hoping “they” will all change, you do it. YOU CHANGE and you will see that the world will reflect it immediately. Your happiness doesn’t’ come from out there, it never has, it never will, it always comes from in here, (point to your heart again.) So start pointing and stop complaining that the world will not align itself to make you happy. Bring the HAPPY to It. What’s your Christmas memory? Let us all know how you made it in tough times, it may be an inspiration to someone. M e r r y C h r i s t m a s – Happy Holidays

Dear Friends, associates, bloggers and clients,

This is our favorite time of year. Sally is on-site a lot and I am here creating e-learning sessions and webinars.
This is has been a wonderful year with time to create and re-brand ourselves. Instead of TrainYourCallCenter, we are now The Positive Coach Approach.
We thank all those of you who helped us by telling us that you love the book The Positive Coach Approach .

We have so many wonderful clients and customers and we are grateful for all we have. Our goal is always the same, make your contact center more productive and you have given us the chance to that so often. We are thankful for so many things.

We do this Thanksgiving List every year and it keeps us in check with the gifts we are given and the opportunities we have had each time we write it all down. Make a list for yourself, your company, your agents, your family. You will see how blessed you are. Happy Thanksgiving.

List of Things We Are Thankful For:
Living in America, the land of the FREE
• Our good health so we can keep working.
• Client’s who all believe in us.
• The many Coach-Training jobs all over the USA
• People who use our L-A-M-A Technique and WIN!
• Sally’s Book sales all over the world.
• Webinar Attendance – It’s catching on!
• Quick Fix Friday was a winner. Do again in 2010
• Judy’s Book “Sales Survival Guide” Sales are good
• Affirmations CD made one of our clients $10,000.00.
• Sally’s Long Term Programs with three companies.
• Client’s Contributions/Ideas for our Training Programs
• ATA, The DMA and their Constant Support
• The acknowledgment and letters you send that make us feel so good about what we do. We feel honored.
In general we are thankful for a new President and send all of our blessings and hope for our country’s future with our prayers and wishes for his good judgment on behalf of the USA.
Send lots of Love and Thanks to our troops all
over the world. God Bless America.
Happy Holiday Season

A group of trainers with Sally and me, See how happy we all are? Have a great Turkey day, a Holiday, a Thankful season from both Sally and myself. We are joyous to have you in our database. We hope you like it, too.
Picture of Trainers at Uni-syn.com

From the Mind of McKee:
Happy Thanksgiving

The Coach Approach

Bagger Vance the Coach and Teacher says: “The way a man sets his hands on a club will inform you infallibly as to how deeply he’s thought about the game, how profoundly he’s entered into its mysteries.”

Lessons: The Authentic Swing

“I believe that each of us possesses inside ourselves one true authentic swing that is ours alone. It is folly to teach us another or mold us to some ideal version of the perfect swing. . . Then our task as golfers according to this line of thought is simply to chip away all that is inauthentic, allowing our Authentic Swing to emerge in its purity.”

Find what is inauthentic about the person you are coaching and chip away at it. Even better, let the agents tell you what is natural and what is unnatural or inauthentic and see if you as the coach can assist them to use their authenticity to assist your customer or sell your product.

This is the perfect coaching method. Appeal to the heart of the matter. Appeal to the agent’s sincere desire to help the customer instead of some clever or sly method. It always works and the agents will really be sincere, the customers will “feel” the sincerity and the company goals to serve will be authentic at last.
Judy McKee co-author with Sally Cordova of The Positive Coach Approach

www.ThePositiveCoachApproach.com