One day, a veteran professor of the National School of Public Administration was asked to give a lecture on “Making the most efficient use of one’s time” to a group of some 15 CEOs of leading American companies. The session was one of five scheduled during their workshop, so the professor only had an hour in which to get the message across.

As he faced the group of prestigious leaders, all with their pencils at the ready, the elderly professor looked at them one by one, and said: “Let’s try a little experiment.”

Reaching below the table which separated him from the students, he then pulled out a large earthenware pot, which he placed carefully on the table in front of him. Then he took out a dozen stones, each about the size of a tennis ball, and placed them delicately
in the large pot. When the pot was full to the brim and it was impossible to add any more, he slowly raised his eyes to the class and asked them: “Is the pot full?” All replied: “Yes.”

He waited a few seconds, and added: “Really?” He then bent down again and from beneath the table brought out a container full of gravel. He carefully poured the gravel over the large stones and lightly stirred the pot. The pieces of gravel slipped between the stones to
the bottom.

The old professor again raised his eyes to the audience and once more asked: “Is the pot full?” This time his brilliant students began to understand what he was up to.

One replied: “Probably not!” “Well said,” answered the elderly faculty member. He leaned down once more and this time brought out a jug full of sand. He gently poured the sand into the pot, filling the spaces between the stones and the gravel. “Is the pot full?” he demanded.

This time, without hesitation and with one voice, these star students replied “No!” “Good!” rejoined the old professor. And as his high-flying class had expected, he took the jug of water which was on the table and poured it in, filling the pot up to the brim. He looked at the group and asked them: “What great truth does this experiment demonstrate?”

The sharpest of the students, thinking of the theme of the workshop, answered: “This shows that even when you think that the daily schedule is completely full, if you really want to you can always fit in more appointments and more things to do.”

“Not at all,” replied the professor, “it’s not that. The great truth this experiment shows us is the following : if you don’t put the big stones in the pot first, then you will never be able to get all the others in afterwards.” There was a profound silence as this sank in, and everyone in the room realized how true it was.

The old professor then said to them: “What are the big stones in your life ? Is it your health? Your family? Your friends? Is it your dreams? Is it learning something? Defending a cause? Taking your time? Or… is it something else?” “What you have to remember is how
important it is to put the BIG STONES in your life in first, otherwise you are in going to be danger of wasting that life. If you attach too much importance to peccadilloes, like the and and gravel, then you won’t have enough precious time to devote to the really important things”.

“So, don’t forget to ask yourselves the question: What are the BIG STONES in my life? Then put them into your pot – your life – first.” Raising his hand in a friendly wave, the old professor turned and slowly left the room.

(The source of this story is unknown)

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Can you change people’s habits and attitudes? Can you take a task and change people’s conduct and attitudes by making something seem fun? Watch what a group of scientists did using fun or pleasure to get people to use a long staircase with a moving escalator right next to it. At first no one took the stairs; almost 97% of the people took the escalator. Notice how scientists changed how people reacted to climbing a long staircase as first choice. Now 66% more people took the stairs. This is not a joke but a practical value in life. In the video, you can observe what the scientists did and how they completely reversed human behavior by inserting fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=player_embedded

See other examples of the fun theory in action at:  http://thefuntheory.com/

“This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

I’ll bet we could come up with some great ways to change behavior in the contact center by making it more fun!

Well, recently I discovered the “why.” According to research there is a positive relationship between the emotion displayed in the service encounter by the agent (whether through facial expression, voice, gesture, or body movements) and the emotion of the customer. Research refers to this as “emotional contagion.” 

Evidently customers are not aware of the emotional impact the agent is having on them. We all tend to automatically mimic the other person in any interaction because we want to converge emotionally. We literally “catch” our partner’s emotion. 

Now that I understand “why,” I believe we can develop ways to teach and reinforce this desired behavior rather than to simply ask agents to smile. I also understand that there are other critical issues surrounding emotional contagion (e.g., what if the agent doesn’t feel positive – won’t the “real” emotion leak through even if he or she makes a conscious effort to put a “smile” in the voice?). 

I’ll deal with some of these issues in future entries (smile).

Related Articles

• Smiling – Not Just for Customer Service (customerthink.com)
• I Feel Your Smile, I Feel Your Pain. (psychologytoday.com)
• Gretchen Rubin: The Surprising Benefits Of Smiling (huffingtonpost.com)
• Emotional Contagion and Beyond (neurosciencemarketing.com)

“There is a regular tension between things that are urgent and things that are important — and far too often, the urgent wins” ~ Charles E. Hummel, “Tyranny of the Urgent”, 1967

I have been “preaching” the tyranny of the urgent for years. This lesson teaches us that the “urgent” often crowds out the “important” in our daily lives. While many things may appear urgent (especially in the contact center) there are a limited number of “importants.” 

So, read these entries and act on some as “important” while tucking the others away as “future.” 

After all, just like Rome, the contact center can’t be built in a day.

Related Articles

• Why working with priorities often doesn’t work? (facilethings.com)

Image by lamont_cranston via Flickr

I wanted to hug the author after I read this quote: 

“Performing under the same stressful operating conditions that will be encountered in the real work environment is essential to quality training.”[1] 

Stress?  In training?  Intentionally? Most people shudder at the thought.  But, for years, I’ve been embracing the idea but never knew there was research supporting my peculiar idea.  Also, I have to admit, early on in my career more student stress came from my less than stellar training skill rather than me consciously designing it into the curriculum. 

But I digress.  First, let’s agree.  It’s not optimum to have an employee perform a job under stress for the first time “on the job.”  Better to learn how to deal with the stress in a simulated world environment.  This goes for agents and management alike. 

I’ll never forget my first day as an agent.  When that initial call came into my headset I remember thinking, “So this is what they mean when they say ‘like a doe in headlights!’”  Talk about stress – do I listen, talk, or type?  I was paralyzed.  My hands started sweating and I started to stutter.  All my training flew out the window with that first beep.  To this day I feel sorry for that poor customer and wonder what he thought about our company after listening to me I stammer through the call.  I won’t go into the details here but I have an equally disastrous story about my first supervisor assignment.  I’m pretty sure I was one of the root causes for the increased agent turnover rate that quarter. 

Figuring out how to design stress into training isn’t easy but we have progressed beyond my Jurassic agent and supervisor days.  People use role plays or side-by-side monitoring to expose students to job stress.  The problem is these techniques don’t create the same type of stress that the student encounters when they are on their own.  

My “hug the author” quote above came from an article describing how simulations can be used to design stress into training and how this kind of “situated learning” can catapult us to a new level of quality training.  (I’ll write more about situated learning later – tons of great research.) Pretty neat.  What I like about a simulated environment is that the student gets to experience real-work, stressful situations but in a safe, non-customer affecting environment.  The simulation, just like your typical video game, can start out on the novice level and get more and more challenging as the student (er, gamer) progresses. 

How have you incorporated stressful conditions into your training environment?  Have you used any type of simulation in your contact center? 

[1] Seaton, L., & Boyd, M. (2008). THE EFFECTIVE USE OF SIMULATIONS IN BUSINESS COURSES. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 12(1), 107-118.

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This blog is dedicated to learning in the contact center.  Over the next weeks and months I’ll be discussing training methodologies, learning concepts, and technologies.  I’ll be exploring anything and everything that will help us develop our most valuable resource – our people.  Thanks for taking this journey with me.    Let me know what interests you.  I highly value dialogue.