“My support team is stressed out. We need you to come in and do some stress management training.” This is a common request from my clients and I love to help out. But is stress management training the right answer for a stressed-out team? Not always. Let’s see where stress comes from, what you can do to reduce stress factors, and finally what stress management techniques can do to help.

Where does stress come from for support team?

Gee, where do we start? Support is stressful, no two ways about it. Just consider

• Difficult, demanding customers
• An interruption-driven environment
• Handling problems that you did not cause, but you are now responsible for fixing

Because of the nature of the work, support centers, even when well run and properly staffed, are stressful places. And almost all support centers suffer from additional problems including:

• Supporting flawed products: you know, the ones that plain don’t work (we’re not talking about some bugs here and there, we’re talking about a product that causes more downtime than uptime.)
  
• Chronic understaffing: you would need 10 people to do the work, but there are only 7. Not just today because there is a flu epidemic, but every day. Backlogs are huge and growing.
  
• Chaotic processes: the work is organized so poorly that responsibilities are unclear and issues get dropped consistently. (Chaotic processes combined with chronic understaffing are a lethal combination).
  
• Unresponsive backline organizations: for instance, the Engineering group that’s supposed to fix bugs won’t accept them but once a week at some inconvenient time like 8pm. And you need to fill out 3 pages of justification.
  
• Unchecked customers: customers that routinely behave rudely, yet have never been asked to tone it down. They are too important to be expected to behave, I guess.

Support work is stressful. What can we do about it?

What can managers do to reduce stress?

Don’t waste your money on stress management books and training until you have removed every stress factor you can from your support center. You can’t remove each and every stressor, and in any case you can’t remove such issues as the interruption-driven environment, but you should be able to make progress with this checklist:

• Is there a clear, efficient process to handle customer requests? You have complete control on internal processes so get them right! This includes “details” such as scheduling people to watch the queue and defining exactly how to escalate issues.
  
• Do you minimize firefighting? The support environment is naturally chaotic, so don’t make it worse with ill-timed demands and interruptions for minor issues, especially tasks that are not customer-related.
  
• Do you recognize good work? As a support manager I used to give myself a weekly quota of commendations so I would not forget in the heat of the action. Make it a point to warmly congratulate several staffers daily. An informal but public approach works well for smaller accomplishments.
  
• Do you minimize mindless work? Many managers require weekly status reports. In a support environment where most everything is logged into the case-tracking system, status reports are a waste of time. See how well you can live without them.
  
• Do you fight the good fight for resources? You probably won’t get everything you want, but you owe it to the team to fight valiantly. Increase your business and financial knowledge if needed to get better results with your friend the CFO.
  
• Do you include the staff in major decisions? You’re the boss, so you should handle the administrative trivia yourself (glamorous, huh?) But if you’re wondering how best to ensure that incoming electronic cases are handled promptly, ask the staff. You still have the final say but an inclusive approach works wonders to get buy-in – and to make better-informed decisions.
  
• Are you available? If your office door is always closed because you are in back-to-back escalation calls, delegate some of them and open your door. A few trips through cubicles and to the coffeemaker (even if you are a tea drinker, as I am) are a great investment too.
  
• Do you hire the right people? It takes special people to thrive under the stress of support centers. So hire people who can bounce back. Look for prior successful experience in busy support centers, emergency rooms, and other crazed workplaces such as restaurants and be candid about what to expect.

What can stress management training do?

Although I’m a big believer in removing stressors whenever possible, stress management techniques are wonderful to handle the unavoidable stressful ingredients of the support life. There are two components to stress management

• Reactive techniques: what to do when stress strikes
• Proactive techniques: what to do everyday to make you more resilient to stress

Of course, as good support people we all know that being proactive pays off. Proactive stress management includes boring stuff – getting enough sleep, eating right, exercising – as well as some more philosophical components such as focusing on the big picture (do you know what your big picture is?) and developing a good personal network (if your job is your life, then job problems are overwhelming). Proactive stress management is a typical high-importance, low-urgency task, so you need to be disciplined about fitting it into your daily life.

Reactive stress management starts with recognizing your limits. You may think that you can just keep going after the last customer chewed you out, but chances are that you will just take it out on the unsuspecting next customer or on yourself. I’m not sure which one is worse. So when stress hits, try a short break (even a couple minutes will do in a pinch), talk it out with someone who will listen, go outside if you can (as a gardener I call it the “look at dirt” technique). Also, I recommend adopting a breathing technique, from the simple deep breath to the more involved yoga controlled breathing. Breathing techniques are wonderful because they can be used unobtrusively in office settings, and they really clear your head.

All the breathing in the world won’t resolve deep problems in the organization. If you’re faced with stressors that should be removed, don’t just breathe: tackle them.

Serenely yours.

About the author
Francoise Tourniaire is the founder and principal of FT Works, a consulting firm that helps technology companies create and grow their support operations. She offers a full range of support skills seminars as well as do-it-yourself tools for support managers and executives. She manages her stress very well, thank you.