WFM Unfiltered

Soft Skills in WFM | Mike Aoki

• Mike Aoki • Season 1 • Episode 21

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Dive into a transformative episode of WFM Unfiltered, featuring Mike Aoki, a renowned expert in customer service and workforce management from Reflective Keynotes Inc. Known for his passion for empowering agents and reducing talk time through soft skills training, Mike brings invaluable insights to the table that anyone in the industry can learn from. With over two decades of experience in agent training and a unique knack for breaking down complex concepts into actionable advice, Mike provides WFM professionals with the tools they need to build engaged and effective teams.

In this episode, Mike tackles the critical role of soft skills in workforce management, emphasizing how empathy, communication, and engagement drive better customer outcomes. We explore topics ranging from efficient agent request handling to the importance of viewing agents as “internal customers” who deserve clarity, support, and fairness. For those managing teams, Mike’s advice on how to give constructive "no's" while still inspiring hope is especially relevant.

As we delve further, we uncover why Mike believes simplicity and digestibility in messaging are keys to executive buy-in, and he breaks down the all-too-familiar “admin vs. strategy” debate for WFM leaders. He also shares his take on the future of customer interactions and AI's limitations in maintaining authentic, human connections.

Join us as we dig into practical and impactful advice on soft skills for workforce management. Whether you’re an experienced leader or new to the industry, Mike’s insights will leave you inspired and equipped to foster a healthier, more engaged workplace.

Watch the full episode and ensure you’re subscribed to catch all the latest from WFM Unfiltered: https://www.youtube.com/@wfmunfiltered?sub_confirmation=1


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Irina:

Hi everyone, and welcome to WFM Unfiltered. I'm your host, Irina, and today we're going all the way to Toronto, Canada, and my guest is a familiar face, and you have probably read a lot, a lot of his articles. He's a very regular guest on Call Center Helper, and he's the one that I suggest you follow and everything that he's publishing. But enough ranting from my side. I'm just going to hand over for him to present himself. Hi Mike. How are you doing?

Mike Aoki:

Good, Irina. How are you?

Irina:

I am very well. We are recording right now on Friday. So I already gave you my speech of, I don't want to be working. I want to be out, but speaking to you. So I'm really, really good. Thank you.

Mike Aoki:

Oh, exactly. Okay, good. I'm glad. And we'll make this a really fun session and very informative as well. I know you wanted me to say just a few words about myself. So I've actually been involved with the contact center industry for, I hate to say it, but almost 30 years We're actually over 30 years now. And really focused on the soft skills or communication side. So really focused in terms of how people communicate, how your agents communicate with customers, either by voice or in writing. So really focused on that, but also general trends in the industry.

Irina:

Thank you so much. First of all, for agreeing to be on the podcast with me. When we had our previous conversation last time, I got so passionate because your expertise is something that we ignore a hundred percent in WFM, even though we should not. And it's actually one of the fundamentals of our work. And we're talking about soft skills. So WFM traditionally is seen as You just need to know the numbers, you need to know the processes, you need to be good in analyzing information, which is the reason why we are confronted or working with different stakeholders. We are not engaging. We cannot communicate our message. We're just saying stuff that maybe even doesn't matter or it makes no sense for them. And we're really struggling to get our expertise and to be listened to. So I would like you actually to walk me through a little bit of your journey, specifically in a contact center. Why do we give a damn about soft skills? How do we actually incorporate them? Whether in an agent's life, team lead's life, and what can we do from WFM perspective to benefit from soft skills training?

Mike Aoki:

Okay that's a really great question. And, it's funny in terms of the agent talking to a customer, the soft skills piece seems pretty straightforward there in terms of being able to really understand what the customer is saying. So that includes Active listening skills to actually understand and hear what the customer is saying. Empathy skills, because customers are frequently very upset, so it's how to be able to show empathy either over the phone, through your voice and choice of words, or in writing in terms of, again, your choice of words that you type in and your formatting. But it's really being able to help express that empathy, active listening, asking really good diagnostic questions, and of course, resolving issues and explaining those resolutions in a simple way that customers like, agree, and can follow. So again, providing support. That's the straightforward part about customer service in a contact center. What I find interesting though, what you just mentioned, was the idea about internal customer service. How do team leads and managers and workforce managers actually provide that support to their agents? And I think one of the interesting things I find is you mentioned the efficiency side of things. And again, workforce management is really about that efficiency factor, right? Making sure that there's enough bodies in place to handle the volume coming in, so that the customers get answered promptly and the agents can actually do their best to help them. And that's an efficiency side, but there's also an engagement side. engagement site. And I think that's a challenge that you mentioned you say in your interview, but that whole idea of it from a workforce management perspective, how can you communicate with your frontline agents, with the team leads and managers in a way that builds relationships and increases engagement, because it's really easy to get lost in the numbers and, look at that and, and, and, forget the fact that along with those numbers, they're actually the people's side of things involved. And I know oftentimes agents will, and I know you get this all the time. An agent will say, Oh, but can I leave 15 minutes early? or, or can I take X day off, know, and, things happen. And of course they happen all the time and then you have to go back to your, your software, go back to Excel, whatever you're using to, make those adjustments. And the thing is that for most agents, even a lot of team leads, they don't understand the impact. Oh, it's only 15 minutes. I'm just one person. That's nothing. Meanwhile, you understand, no, it's a 15 minute one, one person, but there's a huge knock on effect to the whole schedule, in terms of what happens. And so maybe you have to decline it. Maybe you have to say, no, we can't do that. We can't leave at 15 minutes early. You can't take the 15th off or short staff that day, or there's too much projected call volume that day. But the thing is though, it's how do you break the news to somebody? Because you're delivering bad news. So how do you deliver the news to the agent?

Irina:

I want to check here and to ask you one very important thing that I was thinking about while I was listening to you. You mentioned something that I'm often being confronted with and I'm ending in a lot of discussions about whether agents are your internal customers. For me, absolutely. I know some people are mostly seeing them as your stakeholders or your peers. No, for me, I need to do a good job for them as well. So I am seeing them as my internal customers. In the same sense that I'm seeing team leads as my internal customers because I need to meet their needs. as well. And their need is to make sure that the quality of their agents is up to speed. They're able to communicate with the customers. They're able to do good business and so on and so on. But the thing that I started thinking from my perspective is that WFM teams are often seen as the team that's bringing bad news. So nothing positive can come out of a WFM team. So in a lot of organizations, we are actually working with team leads to basically pass on that negative message to the agents. And what actually happens is nobody wants to be in the position of giving bad news, so usually team lead is going to their agents and saying that wasn't it. The WFM team said, no, there's nothing I can do. Just go speak to them. And this is where a lot of confrontation is happening. Everyone is trying to avoid responsibility. Situations get heated. And I was very curious from exactly your point of view and your expertise. How, what, how do we bring that message in a better way, in a way that people are not getting grumpy, they're not getting offended. Don't stop caring about the company. They don't start looking for another job. They understand the reason of a no. How can we communicate that in a better way? Yes.

Mike Aoki:

thing, which is delivering bad news, and it's unfortunate because if Workforce Management does a great job, service levels are wonderful, right? Agents are happy. But again, no one says, hey, you did a great job. We actually got all the calls today. ASA was zero today, or whatever your goal is, 20 seconds. It's always a bad news piece. What happened? And specific to your question, but how do you deliver back, quote unquote, bad news? So as a workforce manager, having to say to a team lead, please tell your agent they cannot leave early. They cannot get the 15th off or whatever. Part of this is if you don't want that team lead to basically, blame the workforce management team, you have to give that team leader soundbites, actual wording they can say. Whether you're delivering this by voice or an email or chat, actual wording they can say. So it's not just saying, Irina, tell your agent they can't leave early. Okay, it's let your agent know that due to service levels at between 3. o'clock today, it's really crucial that we have all hands on deck. If even one person leaves early, everyone else is going to suffer. All the other agents are going to suffer because we're going to get backlogged. And they're going to get slammed on that. So that's the reason why we can't let you go 15 minutes early today on short notice. If you'd give me more notice though for next week. maybe look at planning that. Two aspects. One, give the team lead the soundbites that they need to say to the agent. Make it easy for the team lead to deliver the information, because if the team lead is confused or doesn't know why something's happening, they'll just say, ah, WFM said you couldn't. Blame them. Okay? Give the team lead things they can say to your agent. Second thing is, always give hope. Not now doesn't mean not ever. Okay? Not now doesn't mean not ever. Give them hope and say we can't do it today. Okay. If you give me more notice for next time, maybe we can have you go 15 minutes early. You can't get the 15th this month, but if you have a little more notice, maybe we can have you, take a different day off later, later in the month or whatever. Okay.

Irina:

Oh, that's amazing. Actually, first of all, I never thought about it from this perspective of give hope. For me it was always like, try to offer a solution. Think along, offer something else. But you are phrasing it in a much better way. And your expertise clearly shows you know that I'm a fan of you, but. I was thinking in a little bit of a different scenario. Right now, I'm understanding that maybe we're discussing a situation where it's not crucial for the agent to leave, leave the workplace. But what if there is really an emergency or the agents consider that an emergency and we're trying to show empathy? But we are still tight. What can we do? How do we phrase that? Or if we're to make an exception, is there the right way to phrase that we're doing an exception? So we don't go into the loop of everyone comes for exception and the exception becomes the rule.

Mike Aoki:

Okay. So part of that, again, is just the positioning piece of that. If it, if it really is that critical to the agent, it could be a family matter. It could be picking up your kid at daycare, sick child. I've got, I've got a son as well. So what that's it could be an emergency in that sense. And so part of it is to determine, can you make that exception? Can you have a different agent stay like 15 minutes later, cover, whatever, in doing that, if you still have to say no, though, it's, it's just again, how you phrase it. So letting the team lead know what to say to the agent, the fact that you have that empathy for them. And the fact that in this case possibly we can't, or really can't do that, based on service levels. But explain a bit about why, in terms of how big a hit it would take, with that. And in some cases, you might want to make an exception. Because if it is a family emergency, for instance, a medical issue, then you have to make, you want to, make that judgment call and make that exception. But you want to make it clear, though, that that is an exception due to the extreme situation. The fact that we normally wouldn't do this, obviously you need to go. Because it's your kids. Go, and do this. We'll support you in this, but it is typically an exception and just in this particular case. So again, it's how you position this very carefully, that it is an exception and that it only is due to an extreme circumstance, but you want to make sure that the agent does feel supported, in what's there and don't make them feel, Or don't communicate a sense of resentment or a sense of, Oh man, we don't want to do this. You're messing up my whole schedule here. Okay. But we're going to let you go because we're human. We want you to do this, but Oh, you made such a mess for us today. Don't put it that way in the sense of making the agent feel bad. But in the sense of, knowing it's your family, we want to support you on this because it is an extreme emergency, we'll make an exception this time and we hope everything works out well with your family, so again, a positive spin on it.

Irina:

This is so incredible and you're just solidifying something that I have been witnessing throughout my entire career is Also that kind of jealousy that I was always experiencing when I see those trainings for agents. Oh, they have so skills training. And I'm like, and why don't we have it? Because there is a very big piece of communicating with different groups, internal clients, different stakeholders. We just, for some reason, it's not seen as important, but while we were describing how to communicate with the agents and bring news or how to communicate with the team leads effectively as well, I was wondering. Is there something that we can do from soft skills training perspective to teach WFMTOs? Teams, how to communicate with senior management because I remember when I was first asked to present to operations manager and to contact center managers, I was literally clueless. So I end up standing up in front of everyone. I choke, I get stressed, I'm blushing, I'm becoming completely red. They're asking me questions. I feel their questions are more of an attack. To my work and I don't, and I'm getting frustrated. So my intonation starts raising up and I don't know what they want from me. I don't know what to say for them to get it in their brain that I have done the work, but I understand it's my limitation of not being able to translate my story in a good way.

Mike Aoki:

And that's a critical thing as well. And I find that, from a technical perspective, it's sometimes can be very challenging when you're coming from a very high level of expertise, knowing workforce management very well, and explain to somebody who, although they're a senior leader, may not be a workforce management expert. And therefore, you have to really simplify that message. And a couple things that will help. One of them is, in this situation, if it happens again, would be to actually find out from the senior managers, senior leaders in the room, What do they want to learn? when the meeting organizer comes up to you and says, Irina, can you please do a, 15 minute presentation on workforce this month, ask that person or find out who's going to be in the room with you and just ask quickly, what do you want to know? You can do a simple email or a quick little message to go and say, I'll be speaking at the staff, the senior managers meeting this Friday, just ahead of time though, what are some key things you want to learn from this, or what do you want to find out about? Okay. Because you want to find out what they want to learn. And by doing that, you can actually tailor your presentation. It's not you're pushing information out there and seeing what sticks. It's asking your audience, in this case, the director or VP, what did they want to learn or what did they want to know? So you can tailor your message. That'll allow you to prepare your presentation for them and make you feel more, confident cause you are prepared for that. So that's one key is ahead of time, find out what are they looking for? Second key is to find out how can you simplify your message? you know what they're asking then, think about how can you simplify your message. And it's not, showing the, say, a big spreadsheet on screen, but rather what's the top line of that, What's the simple message about that? We're getting slammed Mondays due to extreme call volume. We haven't anticipated, okay? Marketing's hitting us with sudden promotions and it's driving weird call volume variances, with that. So we need a better condom with marketing to find out, and they tell us when they're going to launch or drop a new ad, so we're prepared for it. So what is your top line message? What do you actually want to get out of this? And it should be, in your presentation to senior management, one or two key themes. So it could be a couple of key messages. We're getting killed on Mondays due to marketing ad drops. Please help us be able to find out and get warning ahead of time so we can adjust our staffing. Okay, it should be a simple message that the VP or director can take away. If they're asking, why are we, what's going on with attrition? Okay, then you want to prep for that and have a very simple message. It's due to X, okay, with this. Those two things. Find out ahead of time what do the senior leaders want to learn and secondly, tailoring your message to answer that will go a long way towards making you feel prepared and also it'll help you look good in front of them because you're answering exactly what they want to know in a way they can understand.

Irina:

Advice. And I'm reflecting so much on the start of my career where. If only somebody have told me, because it sounds rather simple, right? Simple advice that's very transformative for your career, for the way that you're doing your job, because I have done the opposite mistake. First of all, I started assuming that I just have to be prepared end to end to actually explain my work in a big detail. And this is what was expected from me. So not necessarily, I was asking them the question, tell me exactly what, what do you want to take out of it? But it was mostly like, Oh, you want to see the service level? Okay. And then blabbing a lot of details that they wouldn't even understand. The second mistake for me was rather than simplifying when I was Seeing that they're confused, I tended to go into much more detail, to throw numbers at them, to throw connections. Why is it like that? And I was actually gradually seeing their, their face going blank. They, they stopped listening to me. They didn't know what the heck am I talking about. And quite frankly, it's not their job to be an expert, right? They just need to digestible insights in order to make a decision or to be aware why the situation is as is. But I love how you're able to phrase that in such an elegant and simple way. And I I genuinely think that in every single contact center, we can benefit from having WFM teams going through soft skills training. And, I'm going to throw a curveball at you right here.

Mike Aoki:

Okay.

Irina:

Uh, starting from those conversations with senior stakeholders, one of the major topics that we have is discussing budgets. And recruitment needs and hiring plans and cost efficiency and so on. So our current situation and environment is AI is making quite a lot of impact in a lot of business leaders. In the direction of we, we're going to be able to replace everyone on the floor. Just, just tell us exactly how we're replacing everyone. We have a hundred people. We feel like we need to purge at least 50 percent of them like yesterday. So just get rid of them, fire them all. And I was wondering how, what, from a communication perspective, what, what do we do in those meetings? And. Actually, is it your opinion, even for your job, that now talking about Gen AI and chatbots and voicebots, even what you're doing is going to become obsolete because we're going to have those bots taking over and they're going to be able to see the sentiment of, of the customers and being able to reflect or react much better to, to their question or issue?

Mike Aoki:

You're right, that's a really great trend right now in the industry. And I've heard that before from senior leaders is, let's get rid of all the humans and just go with chatbots,

Irina:

Every day, every day.

Mike Aoki:

of that is they're looking, of course, at, unfortunately, at the contact center as being a cost center. And so looking at headcount, salaries, as well as real estate, desks, square footage, office space, although with hybrid that or remote, that's not as much of a deal. But they're still looking at it as being cost or overhead, as opposed to being a benefit. Which is being a channel that your customers can use to get more information. There's also a whole other aspect as well about upselling, right? The contact center can actually be a revenue center through skillful upselling, if your industry allows that, et cetera. But at a really basic level, I think the challenge here is two things. One of them is that generative AI isn't quite there yet. And the second thing is, do customers, do all customers want to deal with a chatbot? So for the first thing with, Degenerative AI, is it really ready or not yet? I got to say as a customer I think it's really great to handle basic interactions to be able to look up, very straightforward, factual information. I find sometimes though, it gets challenged when it comes to recognizing more complex inquiries and it will get better. I think as technology develops as a large, language model training bases get better, et cetera. But even with that, it's amazing how customers always have these weird one offs, these bizarre situations, or they can't quite explain things. fact, actually, it's funny. I had this exchange with someone else recently where I was talking about the fact that I was using a chatbot and. know, it gives a response back of, we do not understand your inquiry. Please, please try again. it put me in the game as a customer in this case, the game of trying to figure out how to word something in a way as a customer that the chatbot would understand

Irina:

Oh, no,

Mike Aoki:

as a customer now, having been in this business for 30 years, I'm thinking, okay, so I wonder how the knowledge base keywords were written. What can I type in now to make the chatbot connect with and look up the right thing in the knowledge base? Wait, why am I doing the role of the customer service rep trying to translate what a customer is saying to what to look up in the knowledge base? And so that's a gap that's there. So that's one aspect is, although GenAI is good and getting better it's amazing that customers can thwart AIs by asking weird one off questions or they can't articulate it properly in a way that the chatbot can usually understand. So that's one thing right there. And so having people who can actually understand what someone's saying. And ask follow up questions and figure out what is the customer asking, first of all, and then how can I help them is crucial and still needs to be there. But the second thing about this is even if generative AI, chatbots, voice, virtual agents, etc. become amazing like super science fiction amazing. Ask yourself this question as a contact centre leader. Are there still going to be customers out there? Depending upon, again, it could be the demographics, we can go into all the age groups, etc. But customers that are out there that will still want to talk to a person. That won't want to talk to a chatbot or virtual agent.

Irina:

That's me.

Mike Aoki:

very and there's still people like that. You know, I think the best analogy I can use is this. One of my first jobs was actually in banking, and this is a time when automated teller machines, automated banking machines were just, beginning to be rolled out in a widespread area. And I remember one of the senior leaders saying, you know what, by like the early 90s, there won't be any more bank branches. won't need it. People just go up to automatic tellers, get their money out, do all their banking there at the machine, and that'll be it. No more tellers, no more bank branches. And of course, look now, 30 years later, there are more bank branches than ever. And there's still humans, people in the bank branch. But they're doing higher skilled roles. They're not just making, taking deposits and taking out cash, they're doing retirement plans, stocks, there are a lot more higher valued roles. And so part of this is that generative AI will free frontline agents from doing the really routine, boring stuff. But it also means they have to be upskilled now to go and handle more complex tasks. Or more emotional inquiries. it's almost like you're asking now your tier one agents to move up their skillset to being tier two agents now. Okay. More advanced agents. That's a challenge in terms of training and hiring, to do that. So those are a couple of things there. One of them is the fact that GenAI isn't quite there yet. And two, even if it is, there'll still be some clients that won't want to use it. So there'll be, I think, a lot of good future ahead of time in terms of having, people, workforce managers, trainers, agents, team leads, managers in the contact center. that's just sort of my, my own opinion about that.

Irina:

I don't know how to unwrap that because I want to comment on millions of stuff that are coming in my head when I'm listening to you. And what you're saying is exactly how I feel about it. And you know that very well. We're often talking that majority of contact centers are understaffed, right? But we still ask our agents to do very stupid tasks that are not Right now, five years ago, ten years ago, could have been automated. It's just that right now we're talking about AI as a trend and it's becoming that kind of a hype word and everyone wants to suck everyone. Nobody has figured out yet exactly how to work without humans. But the thing is, for me, and I'm trying to think Only from my customer issues, not even from my professional standpoint is that if I have a major issue and something is happening or I'm stressed or I'm anxious and I won't answer it, my natural desire is to speak to person because I trust a human. AI probably will give me the very same answer. Most probably, maybe it will give me better answer. I don't know, but I could only trust a person. In that moment, so for me as a customer, if I have to choose between company A and company B and company A is standing me, A, I can give you all the answers that you need. I would still go for the one that if I need to, maybe I would not need them ever. But if I need them, I'm going to be able to speak to someone and kicking. That's my opinion as a customer.

Mike Aoki:

Exactly. And the thing is that, there is that need for that sort of human connection when somebody is upset about something. And we're looking at agents handling more Complex or more emotional issues, in terms of being able to help with that. And, it can vary again. And I saw this one stat, which was about the fact that I think it was 29 percent of customers would like to deal with a human being. When it comes to more complex or more emotional issues, even further when it comes even more emotional, so there really is that sense of wanting to go and talk to you and trust a human,

Irina:

exactly.

Mike Aoki:

there and also demographic things in terms of, again, age groupings. And again, this is stereotyping. Everyone's different. Okay. But again, in terms of boomers, Gen Xers wanting to speak more to a person Gen Zs, under 25s want to deal more in terms of texting or live chat, whether it's a chatbot or a human typing at the other end, so again, there's, there's channel issues there. But one thing I'll mention is this, the fact that unless your business is, is really primarily your, your client base is primarily very, very young, you're probably still going to have to offer. The voice channel, for at least, and I hate to say this, probably a few more decades, because again, depending upon your demographics, boomers, gen Xers, older millennials, they'll still be customers, hopefully 30 and alive 30, 40 years from now. And so you're going to have to have some human agents to be able to help, communicate with them. The second thing you said that was really interesting about the fact that, although AI, when it comes to being able to help customers directly, Still has some challenges, but is advancing very well, I will say that. One place where I think it does help tremendously is as an agent assist tool. you mentioned about the fact that agents are still doing things manually that, could have been solved five or 10 years ago. That's where GenAI, I think, really does help as an agent assist tool. you mentioned customer sentiment. One of the things is, After a call, having to go and type in some, summarize and type in notes. Okay, AI can actually do that for you summarize that for you. So your after call work ends up being lessened quite a bit. Automating processes. So putting something through. So again, your after call work gets reduced. And so I think there's some good advantages there for Gen AI to be able to help reduce the workload in agents. And simplify their life. It can give you a pop up screen, from the knowledge base saying suggest this to the customer, based on what the customer is saying. So again, those sorts of functions as an agent assist tool, I think are really strong and can help tremendously. So there are some very good positives and strengths there as well. It's just the idea that it will somehow replace 100 percent of the agents, 100 percent of the time with 100 percent of the customers is overly optimistic in my opinion.

Irina:

I think, and I'm going to make a very strong statement here because again, I fully agree with you and your sentiment. I love AI, I love automation. I love technology, but I think a lot of people are using it very immaturely to sell you marketing bullshit right now and thus causing more issues to your business and making you do rush decisions and firing people and creating a problem for you. Just because, that's, that's trendy. That's the best on the market right now. You need to jump on this train and get it done in your organization. And then you have AI doing what, what, what do you want it to do exactly? Because just having AI, that means nothing on its own. And I love that how you're, you're phrasing it. Like it can be enhancing. Your, the work of your agency can do a lot of stuff that they shouldn't be doing, or they can do faster and better, but you still have that element of a human being that is able to do the tasks, or at least some of the more complicated tasks. One other question that I wanted to, to ask you coming back to the empathy, I actually wanna twist that into a completely different angle. I understand the soft skills and maybe it comes in the shape of also we need to be politically correct. We need to understand the customer and be polite and react accordingly. But is there an element where in your trainings you would see or you would actually teach that you can still use your personality? Depending on your target group. So to give you an example, sometimes when you see or hear someone speaks, you can match their energy, you can match their personality, you can use words or phrases that wouldn't be necessarily part of that politically correct training, but your customer will be able to relate to you much more. So I was wondering, how can we still incorporate our individuality at the workplace?

Mike Aoki:

That's an important question as well, because people want authentic connections and they don't someone who sounds like they're actually reading from a script that's been approved by marketing and HR. So part of that is really being able to help your personality come through. And, and so part of that is during training and coaching as well as to establish those parameters. And, it might be an example would be, say, for live chat, having a style guide, a description in terms of, what you can and cannot down. And a style guide could be as simple as saying, use, you can't use contractions, or you can use contractions, you can use slang words, you can use emojis, things like that. really depends upon the industry. Some are very heavily regulated. literally they have to read from a script. Okay. Other industries aren't as regulated. We can have more freedom in that. So it's really find out what's appropriate for your, for your particular industry and then find out what you can do to help free up your agents to let their personality shine through, in terms of doing that. So it's just really giving those parameters and some examples, to it. But as far as being friendly, as far as, if it's, if it's a certain industry, being able to go and use slang, being able to go and speak in a more direct fashion if that works for your industry and for your corporate culture, you definitely want to free up your agents to go and do that. Okay, I know there's some, I deal a lot with financial clients where they have to give, they have to read the disclosure word for word, even with that, though, make it sound human. Again, there's two ways to deliver that. One way is to simply. Talk and then just start reading the disclosure statement word for word. And your customer is wondering, wow, what happened? Irene, Irene sounded so friendly and now she sounds like a lawyer for her company. The second case though, what you really should do is just announce the fact that you're reading the disclosure to go and say, and Irene, I'm just going to read the legal disclosure. We have to do this because of the product you've just purchased. So I'm just going to read this for you. Okay. And then you read it off and then the customer understands, okay, that's where there's been a tonal shift.

Irina:

All right. Oh, that's great.

Mike Aoki:

It's important to let your personality shine through and to not make it sound or have that weird disconnect where your client's wondering what just happened here because that builds trust or distrust in the process.

Irina:

Wow, I, I, before we wrap up, I have one personal story for you that I'm just curious to get your opinion on. But the second, and maybe I would start, no, actually I'm going to leave the, the question for last. So my personal story is that my cultural background, my personality I'm very open person. I'm very friendly. And this is how I've always been communicating with friends, with colleagues. Of course, I can adjust and adapt to more strict and more formal organizations, but I'm usually good at matching energies and personalities as well. So whenever I'm in an environment, when I see that, Oh, Mike, you're very open with me, I'm going to be open with you. I'm not going to be like, Mike is my client. I'm going to be like, Mike, we just discussed that Excel sheet, and please, please do not tell me you have a family, I don't want to know about that. But I have been given that feedback that, oh, you know what, you're too friendly with colleagues and clients, in the sense of I'll ask you, hey, if I know that you have a daughter, how's your daughter doing? How's the university going? How's your home? Are you still having issues with whatever injury? But What do we do in case of, sometimes you're a great match personality wise and communication wise with your peers, whether these are again, clients or colleagues, but they're not good match with someone who is superior of you.

Mike Aoki:

Okay. And in terms of how you interact with them.

Irina:

Yes.

Mike Aoki:

Okay. All right. So part of this is when it comes to communication skills is the more flexibility that you have. The wider range of people you can adjust to. And it sounds like you're pretty good at that. You're able to pick up on those cues and adjust to them. so part of this is, if you are dealing with somebody who ends up being very task focused, very much blunt and to the point, is just to adjust your approach to them to really help suit them with that. So understand the fact that they really don't want to make small talk. They just want to get right to whatever the key issue is. And not because you're being rude, mean, or don't care, but their communication style is very data focused and very task focused in that sense. It's just having that flexibility to, to read that. Look at those cues that they're giving you. They're not saying, how's your day? They're not saying, how's, how's the weather over there? Just cutting right into what's going on at two o'clock is just to respond back to that. And, and to communicate in that sense, and you can say it in a friendly fashion. You can maybe after you've asked that, you can answer their question, maybe just ask, how are they doing? See if that has any traction, with them or not. And if it doesn't, they may just be a very data focused person, or they could be in a hurry, or they could be in a very tough situation where they just want to get to the point or whatever, but it's just reading the clues and adjusting. And it's the same thing I would say to an agent when you get, all those communications coming in just to adjust to that. And again, always err on the side of being human and friendly, but if it really isn't working or they're making it very clear, I don't want to be your friend. I just want to find out about the service level at three o'clock today. Give them that answer then, and go do that. So part of it is the person who's got the wider range of responses can cope with the widest range of people. And that's a key.

Irina:

Love it. And maybe the last two, again, two things, because I told you every single time when I hear a sentence of you, I just have 75 more questions because this is how much I enjoy listening to you. But what if you're tasked? To provide soft skills training to a group of team leaders, managers, or people that needs to be able to engage and coach other groups of people. But they are dead very hard to, they're just data focused or they're just. Unable to break that kind of a conversation basis. And they're very much, just tell me about the date. I don't care how you're feeling. I just want to know what can I do to increase your productivity? What can we do about these people for them to communicate better?

Mike Aoki:

Okay. Well, it's funny you brought that up because I do a lot of training with IT service desks, IT help desks. so that group, when I train those particular groups, again, very technical, very data focused. They're Microsoft certified, they're, they're programmers, et cetera. And, and training them on, on customer service skills or soft skills. Cause again, they're dealing, answering questions from the entire company. Why does a printer not work? Why do I have the blue screen of death on my laptop? That sort of thing and, and training them. And the thing about this is. two keys. One key is that because they're very technically focused is to give them a process for how to use those soft skills. it's not just saying, just paraphrase, repeat back key things your customer, your internal customer said, but give them a process. When do you say that? What do you say? What are some suggested phrases? Because again, being very data focused, much like workforce managers, They used to follow the process. You can't just drop one little thing and say, go do it. given that background, that framework. When do you use it? How do you use it? Suggest your phrases to say, here's the process of how you string it all together. And now let's practice this in training. Giving that makes it easier. It's just like learning a brand new software language, learning a brand new, software program, for workforce. It's given that background and that framework for it to make it an easy process for them to follow. big one I found though, was this. It's giving them a reason to care about this because I've had pushback sometimes early at the very start of a training session of well, why do I need to go and be all warm and fuzzy? Why do I need to go and say those things? want their printer fixed. Okay. Why do I need to go on and make them feel better first? And so it really, it'll actually, work through a couple of exercises to really help them understand the fact that if you can get your internal client, To buy into what you're doing and to help them calm down and make them feel cared for, it makes everything else easier. If you can invest that first 30 seconds, first minute, okay, of this, everything else gets faster and easier for you, okay, in terms of doing that. And once they realize that, and once they have a process to implement this, okay, it's not just warm and fuzzy. That's all the, the weird touchy feely stuff. Rather, it's now part of, Okay, I do this with this process and everything else goes easier and that the client's happy and we get the thing fixed faster because they're cooperating now with me, not fighting me every step of the way. that's the key. So let them understand the motivation about why they should learn it and the how part, the process of how to deliver it in a systematic way that fits in with their data driven focus goes a long way towards helping. And all of a sudden now clients are happier. The, the, the team is happier because you're able to help people more, and it builds onto their skill sets. So it really does help them an awful lot. Oh,

Irina:

I, I have mixed feelings about your message. First of all, I really love what you have said. Second of all, I hate it because this was my last question and you screwed up my finale of this episode. I'm just messing with you. I was just about to ask you, what's the point? Why do we invest in it? Why do we care or give a damn about soft skills and how to communicate better? But you already said it perfectly well. Wow. Go ahead. Go

Mike Aoki:

add a couple of things to that as well from a workforce perspective. One of the things about workforce management is that it's one of the most vital parts of the contact center, obviously in terms of staffing and customer service levels, but also for employee engagement and retention. Because think about it this way, to an agent, their schedule, okay, their time freedom, that really is what the schedule is, right, freedom to be able to, hopefully, go to classes, freedom to be able to go and take care of their kids, freedom to go and be able to, do whatever it is in their life becomes crucial, and agents will quit. they can't get certain vacation time, can't get certain shifts. know, shift bid time is chaos. Okay. When it comes to, it comes to this. So Workforce Management has a crucial role to play in terms of employee retention employee engagement. Okay. And there's a cost to that turnover. So that's one critical thing there. So that's also why those soft skills are so crucial. The way you deliver these messages will either build engagement and build employee retention or cause turnover. And that can be very costly. Second thing up is this, in any industry, many cases, the best communicators are the ones who get promoted. You can have vast technical knowledge, but if you want to become the manager of the workforce team or a director of a bigger contact center's workforce team, okay, or that sort of thing, the best communicators. are the ones that actually get promoted. And hopefully they've got the technical skills. We've all seen it sometimes where they maybe don't, but they're good at talking sometimes too, but hopefully they have the technical skills and they're good communicators. But if they have the technical skills and they're not good communicators, they tend to go and stay just at the entry level because they can't and influence people at a higher level. So that's another reason why it's so crucial just as career development for you.

Irina:

I couldn't love that episode more and thank you, Mike, for spending the time with me and with all of the listeners. You have provided so much action points that people can implement and organizations can implement. Again, it was amazing and you're always welcome on the show and I hope to chat with you soon enough. But before we wrap up, I just want to leave you to maybe share how people can find you and again, how can they use your services?

Mike Aoki:

Oh, of course. Thank you, Irina, for doing that. Thank you for having me on the show as well. I appreciate that. And for all the listeners that they want to follow me, they can follow me on LinkedIn under Mike Aoki. So M I K E, last name is A O K I, four letters, and on LinkedIn to be able to go and follow me with that. In terms of, of things I post or talk about quite a bit as well, we can have the website link. I know you'll share that as part of the part of the podcast as well, so they can follow me there. And again, the, the whole key is this, just being able to communicate and being able to listen, understand and communicate your ideas as well, exchange that, that value is just really crucial. And by the way, Rena, I love our exchange here of information and value as well. So thank you for having me on your show. I really appreciate it.

Irina:

Appreciate that. Thank you, Mike, and speak soon.

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Irina Hollatz (Mateeva)

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