Shahdik vajrala

Hi. My name is Shadi. Hi. I'm Shadi. I have 8 years of experience totally. I work as a team leader in a company called 247. It's an Australian network provider. It's an Optus program. So, if I talk in-depth about my role. I started my career as an executive. Then, I had a clear vision of what I needed to become. So, I was given promotions to the roles of executive, senior executive, subject matter expert, assistant team leader, and team leader. Currently, in the Optus program, I'm a team leader, where the workflow involves managing Australian customers who contact our messaging platform. Our team resolves and handles their queries in real time to achieve an open PS score. As a team leader, my role is to set daily targets, real-time monitoring, handle escalations, upselling, and help with upsell techniques. I also provide coaching and feedback to my team, which helps them continuously improve in the long run. I manage a team of at least 9 people, up to 15 people. I take care of their attendance, leaves, incentives, and guide them on how to increase their earnings, etc.

So if there's a challenge in a company or an organization, first, we need to see what caused the challenge. So the challenge will not come just like that. It will be definitely because of multiple contacts where the issue is not resolved, so we need to find out the root cause of this challenge. So we need to dig into the data, with the drivers, what exactly is causing it? So in our role, in my program, we used to handle complaints. So where I used to take the dump, I from the chat transcript and see what are the main drivers, where we are getting these escalations. So based on that, we will see what the expert is offering as the resolution, if it is a right resolution or wrong resolution. Based on this, we've been providing coaching feedback and coaching will be provided. So in case, if it is controllable, there is something called controllable and noncontrollable challenges. So noncontrollable will be business impact where while we can't do much, but we need to highlight the clients. However, if it is a controllable thing, it would be an error from the expert or an employee where he failed to address the issue. So at that time, we need to see what can be done, or even take a follow-up if required, to resolve this issue. So usually, if my role would be here in escalation conversions to join and help the query. However, at the same time, the relevant coaching will be provided, what was missed, and how the resolution was offered. So there are instances where I would take follow-up.

Coming to sales, so usually a sale needs to be made mainly based on what the customer needs. So based on the need, the sale has to be made. If the sale is made just for the benefit of ours, it won't be a valid sale. So he might come back after a month or two months to return the product or cancel the plan. There is something called interpersonal skills, where we need to teach our experts so that they know how to handle rejection, get multiple product sales, and do upsells. The main techniques would be first, you resolve the primary issue and then see if his family or friends are using the product and how it's helping them. So if any of the family members or friends with a different company are paying high, we can pitch in our products and offer relevant offers to retain those customers. This would be one of the criteria. The second one would be to show the real need for the product. For example, a customer finds a plan because the customer is always getting late fees charged, and we're offering a plan that comes with direct debit so that he can avoid late fees. The plan is under automatic payments, so the issue will be resolved. By this, we're resolving his primary concern with a permanent solution toward the late fee and also giving a plan and upselling him with the necessary plan he requires.

So coming to team management. You need to see it in terms of the program goals and employee goals. Usually, the program calls for giving excellent customer service, handling getting 0 escalations and getting incentives. I used to mostly concentrate on my coaching, which is the basics for any employee, so that he will learn interpersonal skills and develop his way of handling the chat. He knows how to handle an escalation. He'll be aware of the upselling techniques as well. So if he's aware of the basics, this will be in line with the program goals. Whenever a metric is passed where the target is hired or lowered, the employee will be aware of what to do or how to adapt to the target, so that my supportive coaching and incentive-type coaching would definitely help my team in any organization. An employee mostly aims for a higher salary. I used to guide my team and show them money in terms of incentives, so that they will ultimately be in line with the program goals. And, also, independently, they have a job satisfaction of earning a higher amount. In this way, my team will be happy, and it will help them in the long run as well.

So if you say what strategies I would use, it would be mainly based on the coaching I am giving. So usually, when I call for a coaching, I would first analyze the employee's data before calling him for a coaching. Based on his strengths and weaknesses, I would prepare my coaching approach. Then, I would send the email before 24 hours so that the employee also will be aware of what we'll be discussing without any surprises. So once the employee comes, I would mainly focus on coaching in terms of the growth model, which will be what the goal of the discussion is, what options he'll be having to reach that goal? What would be the reality of his current position to achieve that goal, and what commitment he is giving to achieve that goal. So this will be a criterion to achieve the goal. So in this way, the coaching will be carried on, and whatever the discussion happens will be drafted into an email, which will be documented. This email will be marked with the employee as well, so they can use this email as a roadmap to know what the task for the week and the month is, and I can work on the improvement areas. So this strong, effective coaching will definitely help the employee to see what they were trending before and what they were after the coaching model. The documentation will clearly help the employee to gain self-confidence and grow.

So in terms of managing a team or multiple aspects, first, I will use to get unstuck where to manage multiple tasks in a day. So this was a mistake, where I have overcome by delegating tasks, so the tasks will be delegated mostly based on the team member's strengths. So each person will have different strengths and weaknesses. Based on my team's strengths, I would delegate tasks so that they will know what to do with the tasks given. Delegating is nothing but upskilling themselves and it will help for their betterment. For example, let's say my team has to achieve a target of five sales for the day. However, it was already mid-day and we were at 0 sales. Then, I used to run hourly contests and keep announcing how close we were to the target. Whenever a sale was done, appreciation would be announced on an open platform so that the team would be aware of the target to achieve. These hourly reminders and appreciation definitely motivated the team and they knew what the goal they were targeting. At the same time, I used to assign two spokespeople, mainly to help in real-time service and sales, so there would be no delay in passing information, getting sales or service. If this strategy is followed accurately, my team has followed this strategy very rigorously, so they were able to implement it even in my absence and get results. Delegating tasks has definitely helped.

So, definitely, in every team, there will be similar kinds of employees who are not meeting the targets. So at that time, we need to see what exactly is causing the problem. It might be either a skill issue or a will issue. So if it is a skill issue, unnecessary coaching has to be given. If it is a real issue, then we need to invest our time to know what is happening in the employee's life. So if he's okay to share his personal things, we need to invest our time and spend time with him to find out what's bothering him. Then we need to discuss this completely in a closed form so that the employee will understand that my team leader is giving his time to help him. So then we need to set a smart goal to show him the way he can achieve the goal, and what the result will be if he achieves it. So definitely, if in a month, he's able to achieve this goal, it will definitely motivate him. And this will not come just like that. We need to follow up on the given goal fortnightly or monthly so that we will know what the employee has done from the beginning, what style he has changed to achieve that goal. So if he was able to get the approach right, definitely he can sustain the organization whenever challenges come based on the strength he had. That would be my approach.

So when it comes to sales targets, there will definitely be a significant amount of pressure on the team members, the management, and my team as well. So what are the techniques I used to do? For example, if I had a team of nine members, there would be top sellers, around three top sellers, and moderate sellers, around five, and three would not be good with sales. They're only good with service. So at that time, what I used to do was if in a current month, three people had not achieved any sales and were trending with zero sales, so next month, I would concentrate on these three people first who were zero sellers. In the first week of the next month, I would show them their sales numbers. So, they would be confident about what needed to be done for the remaining month. If they could achieve the first sale in the first week, it would definitely boost their confidence. The second technique would be to align dedicated coaches with the top sellers. I would make them sit with the team members or read chats or have chat sessions so that they would know other techniques the top sellers are using. They can learn the effective probing questions. This is nothing but Pareto analysis, where if you concentrate on the 20% of the people who are impacting the team, you will definitely get higher results than the 80% of the crowd because the 80% is already performing well. And we just need to show them the way to achieve this goal.

So yeah. So if for example, I will take a team member in my team itself, where he has the ample amount of experience. He was a technical expert. He has in and out of the knowledge. However, he had a real issue where he was not concentrating on the program calls. So I had a session with him to know what is happening exactly. So first, I tried to address the issue to help him. What is causing the issue and how he can over commit? Then a smart goal is set for him to see what his commitment for that goal is. Then he started coming daily to work based on the goal I have given, and he used to show the interest and also approach me how to achieve the goal and how far he is to achieve the goal. So his mindset has somewhat changed from absent-minded to a goal-oriented mindset, so that he knows what he's coming for. Then along with this, I used to appreciate whatever the numbers he used to give. Even if he's not giving the numbers on the day, I would take a conversation, and I would share it as an email to my team to see how well he has handled the conversation, so that will definitely motivate the team member. So whenever a survey is triggered, a positive survey, it will be shared in an open platform and appreciation will be given. So these little things will definitely help the employee to get motivated. So another technique would be again, so they will not know the path they have to choose to achieve the goal. So at this time, the effective probing will help. What is the goal he's trying to go after? How long he needs to achieve the goal? If he is following a pattern to achieve the goal, was it successful or not? If it is successful, I would tell him to follow the same thing, and if it is unsuccessful, I would show him the way why it was unsuccessful. So he will align to a new method to see if this is helping or not. So ultimately, if he sees a little incentives in the next month, that will definitely change his mindset and get the technique how to crack the sales and give service to customers, which would be a primary role in the customer service role.

In terms of sales, I used to follow a strategy where in my Excel, I had a prototype, which is a dummy tool. Where if an employee, for example, for a month, needed to achieve 10 sales, he would get a certain amount, and there would be a compliance score, which are the metrics checklist that have to be followed to be eligible for the incentives. I used to follow a pattern or a tool where after 10 days, I would see how many sales the employee had done, his compliance score, and what the expected amount was, and how many more sales he needed to achieve the incentives. There would be slaps and incentives. For example, if an employee did between 1 to 5 sales, he would get a certain amount. If he did 5 to 10 sales, he would get a certain amount. If he did 10 to 15 sales, he would get a certain amount. So based on the employee's run rate, I used to give targets for the day, so that the employee would be aware of what he was chasing and what he could expect, an approximate amount in the next month. This tool has definitely helped me show employees money upfront, so they would fix the target in their mind of what has to be achieved to get the incentives.

Rapport building with the team is different, and I believe mentoring has to be there in any organization. So, it won't just come with sales, product, service, or just instructing. We just have to invest our time to know what are our team strengths and what are our weaknesses. So, what I used to do is that as a team leader, I would have heavy tasks, too many tasks for a day. So, what I used to do is be prepared with my tasks so that whenever an add-on or ad hoc task is added to my to-do list, I would invest my time there to resolve that issue. As I follow this to-do list, I know what exact amount of time is needed for that task. So, whenever I completed this to-do list at half of the shift, I would use the remaining time to spend with my team and conduct activities, so that it would definitely boost my team morale. So, they know it's not just a numbers game in an organization; people also value them. Along with this, I would know what are their interests based on their education, and I would guide them in terms of IJPs so that they can apply to higher positions and benefit themselves. This approach to invest time and get better results will definitely motivate the team, so they will be keen to learn new things from me and even teach other team members as well.