You are not ‘just’ a contact centre!

Marcin Sosnowski is Director of Contact Centre Business at the Polish Marketing Association and one of ECCCSAs 94 judges this year. To ensure a fair and consistent judging process across Europe, Chair of the Judges, Ann-Marie Stagg, selected a credible judge in each of the countries visited to join the panel.

This was Marcin’s second year judging for the ECCCSAs and he was impressed by both the standard of the entries and the quality of the judging process.

“I assess contact centre operations against a set of standards in Poland as part of my role. It was really interesting to see and experience such a similarity in the process between my auditing role and the judging of the ECCCSAs. As a judge we are given clear criteria and proposed questions to ask to ensure we get to the information we need; which clearly helps with the calibration of all the judging. As judges we are expected to understand exactly how the finalist’s business operates and to gain a very rounded view of the team or project that has been entered. We spend time with different parts of the business during our site visit and get to see it from close range.

“Being a judge is a great opportunity to learn about other standards, projects and companies across Europe. Not only do we get to see the organisations that we are judging, but we learn from the other judges, which is a great experience and expands our knowledge.

The importance of best practice

“When we promote best practice, like the ECCCSAs do, it is good for the market. Everyone can see the gap between where they stand and what’s possible. Seeing and hearing the stories of the organisations that become finalists, or go on to win an award, makes contact centre leaders realise what can be achieved, and it gives them a good reason to continuously improve and develop their operation.

“Those organisations that are proud of their people and what they are achieving want to shout about it. They want to share their story, see how they benchmark across the industry and use it to attract both customers and more brilliant employees. The companies that don’t put their customer or their people first are the ones that don’t tend to participate in awards programmes; which is rather telling. Put simply, you need to compare your performance to enable you to get better; if you don’t then you’re very isolated in your thinking.”

Be proud of what you have achieved

“Be brave! If you decide internally that you want to share your story, then you should feel proud of what you have achieved. Enter these awards with great belief knowing that there is often not much between the winner and the finalists – and that it can come down to the detail. You are not ‘just’ a contact centre; you are doing impressive and ground-breaking things that are making a difference to people’s lives. So, don’t be shy!”