Executive Insight: You Have to Have Passion

Reynolds & Reynolds North American centers (Dayton, OH, and in the Canadian cities of Montreal and Toronto) has 450 associates supporting their automotive industry customers. They support more than 300,000 devices and support more than 900,000 installed customer applications.

Robert Adams, TAC Senior Manager, Reynolds & Reynolds took a few minutes to talk about what makes his organization work.

SSPA: How important is it to develop and maintain relationships within the organization, particularly with executive management?
Adams: I’m a level 2 manager and I report to a vice president who has more communication with executives in our Executive Management Committee, i.e. CFO, CEO, CIO, etc. We regularly review our metrics with our vice president, and he spends time with our executive management committee on our goals and progress throughout the year. It’s important that we have that connection and have a way to communicate with executive management, so they understand the pulse of our business, associates and customers.

SSPA: What makes a good support manager? What attributes make it work?
Adams: From a front-line supervisor’s standpoint, the skill set must include the ability to adapt to change. Our environment changes weekly, daily, and sometimes even more frequently than that. Change is constant so adaptability is tops on my list.

They should also have good problem-solving skills, good analytical skills, the ability to coach and create a positive work environment, and be able to consistently give both constructive and negative feedback to allow associates to grow from their leadership. They need to be able to support their associates very well, give directions, follow up and follow through, and be proactive when possible. They need to understand the business and the budgetary model; and they need good planning and organizational skills.

Finally, they need to have a focus on the customer whether that’s internal or external customers.

SSPA: How do you see the role of support managers changing?
Adams: We’ve started to focus more attention on the coaching, the development, and career growth paths of our associates. For a while, we were too focused on the numbers – the operational metrics we use to measure the business. No matter what support center you go into, you have to count the calls, how long the calls take, first call resolution rates, and so on. What we’ve found is those things will improve and progress if you do the coaching, provide feedback, and encourage the professional growth of your associates.

From my center’s standpoint, support managers are taking a more active role in associates’ growth as well as the company’s goals. Support is a “feeder group” into the rest of the organization. We’re the first people customers touch after we leave the installation, and we’re the face of the company for all Reynolds & Reynolds customers. It’s important that we teach our front-line staff to solve problems, deal with customers, and more.

Our managers will be doing less email, less voice mail, less sitting in their cubicles solving problems. They’ll be more involved in what associates are providing to customers and providing their knowledge and resources to those associates who are solving problems.

SSPA: What made you aware of that problem?
Adams: Attrition was one of the indicators. Our business model is becoming increasingly complex and more integrated with the enterprise and customers. Even with that complexity, and having other third-party applications hooked up to our applications, our customers pay us Cadillac support fees and they expect us to fix the problems. We give away some services we should be charging for.

That’s not to say we haven’t done a lot right. We’ve won five SSPA STAR Awards, we’ve been certified five times, and for people looking in from the outside, it might be a case of, “Why do you need to change anything?” My answer to that is, “If we don’t, we’ll get left behind.” We’ve been in a rut, albeit a good rut, but a rut nonetheless. But our business is changing, our customers are changing, our environment is changing – and if we stand still, everyone will just pass us by.

SSPA: As you invest in your associates, what’s been the biggest motivator?
Adams: Training was one of the biggest parts of it and people are taking to it. A career path was important because a lot of level 1 and level 2 associates thought it was hard to become a team leader. We’ve mapped paths not only within support but within the rest of the company. This lets individuals look for opportunities outside of the technical areas of the company. We’ve always looked to maintain equal compensation across business units. Where we can’t equal out the pay, we offer more balance between work and family – we try to do a better job of limiting overtime, on-call responsibilities, etc.

SSPA: When you look to invest in associates, what skills or attributes do you expect?
Adams: You have to have a passion for the business and for your customers. If you ever lose that passion, you won’t make it in service and support. It’s like an athlete that retires not because of age, injuries, or reduced ability but because they’ve lost the passion for the game and it isn’t fun anymore. I believe there’s a particular breed of people when you talk about managers in service organizations. You have to have that passion and you can’t teach it, you can’t learn it.