The quality of customer service, customer experience and office design – is there a connection?
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October 4, 2013Deliver great customer experience by including your customers – Interview with Mark Hurst of Creative Good
October 11, 2013The quality of customer service, customer experience and office design – is there a connection?
Here’s some insights and research that I’d like you to consider:
One, the world is full of different types of people, both introverts and extroverts. According to Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking, at least a third of the world’s population are more introvert than extrovert, and some of the world’s great artists, leaders, inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs are introverts too.
Two, here’s some insights about typical introvert behaviour:
These images come from an interesting slideshow, infographic and article that you can find here. They made me think that many modern workplaces and cultures can tend to work better for extroverts rather than introverts. Given that, I wonder how much we ‘lose’ in terms of performance, engagement, insight etc if you are introvert in one of those environments.
Three, a recent article in The Economist reported that Gensler, a design firm, through it’s research has uncovered some interesting insights about the impact of office design on performance, productivity, innovation and collaboration. Over the last five years, they have asked more than 90,000 people in 155 companies across ten different sectors for their thoughts on modern office design and, in particular, open-plan office design. They found that:
- Many workers find modern offices and, in particular, open plan offices difficult places to concentrate and focus due to general office noise (phones, conversations, computers etc);
- They also say that open plan design can work against collaboration and open communication because many of them don’t want to disturb others or want their conversations to be heard;
- Finally, to quote Gensler, they found that “The ….unexpected revelation is that the most significant factor in workplace effectiveness is not collaboration, it’s individual focus work. And we also found that focus is also the workplace environment’s least effectively supported activity.”
Now, given the focus of this blog is to explore how best to improve customer service and customer experience, I think the the insights and research above raise a number of interesting questions:
- What type of people are currently being employed in customer service roles?
- What are the best type of people for customer service roles? Are they introverts or extroverts?
- Are current customer service environments, particularly contact centres, many of which are open-plan and noisy environments, conducive to focus and performance?
- Could the cost of moving to a quieter way of working (this could involve office re-design or increased use of remote working) be offset with increases in performance, attention to detail and the solving of customers problems?
I’m not sure there are definitive answers to these questions but I thought they deserved asking.
What do you think. I’d appreciate your thoughts on this.
Thanks to Holidayextras for the image.
12 Comments
Adrian,
Thanks for always writing thought-provoking pieces. This post reminds me of the first rule of CX and of marketing: know your audience. The same applies for your employees. The introvert/extrovert classification is definitely an interesting way to look at employees and what environments, roles, etc. work best for them.
Annette 🙂
Hi Annette,
Thanks for that. I do sometimes write/post things that I am unsure if they work….a bit like thinking out loud. Glad this one made you think just as much as me 🙂
Adrian
Adrian,
Good questions. Many call centres use acoustic dampening to control noise pollution. Most headphones provide similar functionality. Booth style centres are the pits and go back to battery farming style call centres. Open plan allows for impactful design and space (in the best centres) and is a motivator.
Interesting to ask recruiters how many true introverts work in customer service. I can see their interest in 1:1 relationships. But the inherent team based working would be a turn off for most I reckon
Martin
Hi Martin,
Thanks for commenting. You saved me the trouble of sending this to you to get your thoughts 🙂
I think the introvert/extrovert continuum is a really interesting one and very nuanced. There’s even an ambivert! …..someone who is a bit of a changeling (I think I have a bit of that in me). However, useful to dig into what we mean, what the business needs and what we need as people.
Adrian
Hi Adrian, great article – we are faced with the issue all the time. It is important for decision makers to always consider that one size does not fit all. Too many of them are more concerned with getting the minimum sqm per person. Jane
Hi Jane,
Thanks for that. Great to get a perspective from someone on the design side and to learn more about the factors that are driving decisions design and space decisions.
Adrian
Adrian, I have lots of opinions, but little knowledge. It would make a fascinating experiment though.
James
Hi James,
Thanks for that. This was more of a thinking out loud piece but did make me wonder. I’m glad it made you wonder too. 🙂
Adrian
No doubt the work environment plays a factor on employee fulfillment. Different people thrive (or not) in different environments. I read a book that addresses this topic, “The Workplace Revolution.”
Hi Shep,
Thanks for your comment. There is no doubt that it does. I just wonder how much time is spent thinking about how different people need different environments.
Thanks for the heads up about the book. I’ll check it out.
Adrian
Hello Adrian,
It occurs to me that the workplaces are shaped from cost considerations and/or ideology. Looking beyond workplaces, I find the same for almost every business practice: it is either shaped by ‘shiny object syndrome’, ‘follow the leader’, ideology by some long dead consultant/guru (Frederick Taylor), or plain cost reasons. What rarely happens is business decisions made on the basis of evidence: evidence based management.
Many years ago I worked in Andersen. And whilst there Andersen studied how people actually worked in the office, what they worked on, what they needed to work effectively. The result was an environment composed of different environment: phone booths for confidential calls; cafe style hot desks for consultants on a flying visit to the office; quiet zone for people who needed to concentrate; fully equipped workshop type rooms for teams meeting up to work some challenge through; open plan office …. The arrangement worked really well.
Hi Maz,
Shows that intelligent and careful design of a work environment based around what people need to do their job works really well.
Thanks for sharing your experience,
Adrian