When it comes to delivering standout CX, the highest-performing teams have strong leaders who operate based on a deep understanding of the brand’s purpose and goals. As leadership guru John Maxwell says, an effective leader is “one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.” 

Successful CX leaders are capable of doing all three: having a clear vision, pursuing that vision and helping their team members succeed. In order to achieve that degree of leadership – the kind that creates fast proficiency and ongoing high performance – you need to ensure managers are ready to lead your CX program from day one. 

That’s the core idea behind the proven philosophy and methodology known as Wave Zero. Using Wave Zero to launch CX teams ensures leaders are trained and invested in your brand before the first agent is even hired.

Why Wave Zero?

Studies show that the top workplaces of the future will rely on manager development for their success.

Recent research by Gallup reveals that, globally, the cost of poor management approaches $7 trillion – or 9% to 10% of the world's GDP. 

When it comes to your CX, a lack of strong leadership can result in disruption and inconsistency from one customer contact to the next – a problem that can be disastrous for a brand, especially as complexity increases across your business. 

Wave Zero ensures consistency from day one by quickly equipping leaders to effectively launch and manage CX programs.

Through this leadership-first development approach, we have successfully onboarded over 23,000 agents at 30 worldwide service delivery locations, deliver over 100 million interactions annually, and recently announced the expansion of 2 additional centers and 8 new clients!

Wave Zero methodology

Training leaders ahead of agents using Wave Zero allows you to lay a strong foundation, launch flawlessly and get to green KPIs faster than anyone. The following methodology and best practices are based on our experience successfully launching CX programs for leading global brands.

Know the way

Many leaders and managers find themselves thrown into roles in which they’re expected to “show employees the way” before they fully understand the brand mission or how to achieve it. In CX leadership, knowing the way means leaders have internalized the brand’s goals and understand what it takes to get there. 

In order for your CX team to hit the ground running, leaders need to be prepared to make smart, strategic decisions based on a clear vision. And because first launches establish the foundation—good or bad—for all launches to follow, we always invest in strong upfront management training to build the strongest start possible.

As part of Wave Zero, all leaders, managers and support staff (e.g., QA, trainers) are hand-picked ahead of the program launch. The leadership team completes training together as a group to ensure they’re completely proficient and ready to lead before agents are onboarded.

Go the way

As part of their preparation process, leaders learn how to follow the brand vision and mission by getting practical, hands-on experience with real customers. All leaders take live calls for as long as possible to develop a deep understanding of the customer and their pain points.

This practical knowledge augments their ability to lead by ensuring they know firsthand what kinds of opportunities and challenges team members will face in their roles. By understanding the path to proficiency, they can ensure they’re able to support agents in getting there as quickly as possible.

To encourage full investment and buy-in, the Wave Zero team is immersed in the brand from the very beginning. More than just having a logo on the wall, brand immersion involves deep engagement with the values of the organization, intricacies of the processes, scorecard metrics and systems. Leaders gain a full understanding of the customer journey and begin to formulate strategies and enhancements – including tech-led training simulators, AI and self services.

Show the way

When it comes time to onboard the CX team, leaders are well equipped to guide their reports in navigating a path to success. All leaders interact with their teams while agents are in training, so they know each other well before wave one hits the floor.

Having this strong synergistic foundation from the get-go allows you to quickly deliver performance that’s above your network average. There’s a reason we call them “bar-raiser launches.” Immediately delivering above-average performance means you see results right away and quickly turn your cost center into a profit center.

Keeping that momentum going over the long term requires a conscious effort. By implementing a closed-loop process with recruitment, HR, training and operations, you can understand the next level you need to achieve and recalibrate as required to ensure, not just a successful launch, but ongoing day-to-day performance delivery.

Speed to proficiency

By combining the philosophy and methodology of Wave Zero in launching CX programs, businesses see positive results fast.

In one recent example, we worked with a leading digital payment brand to accelerate proficiency and performance across their CX team. In just 10 weeks following the launch, the program was already in the green across the board.

Using Wave Zero to train leadership in advance of agents also helped us deliver fast proficiency and performance for one of the world’s largest e-commerce providers. When launching their contact centers in Jamaica and the Philippines, we achieved an exceptional speed to proficiency, helping the brand quickly elevate their customer experience and satisfaction.

In less than 8 months, we ranked #2 in the network of 52 captive and outsourced sites and subsequently were asked to expand operations.

Built on selective hiring, advanced training, upfront management investment and an agent-augmenting technology stack, we launch flawlessly, get you to green KPIs faster than anyone – and keep you there. Interested in learning how our experience and proven methodology can help your business?    

Learn more at www.ibex.co