When I wrote my first book, I addressed how and why contact centre operations differ from other business operations: primarily because staff activities are concentrated, monitored, micromanaged and more reactive within “close quarters”, human behaviour is the key to improvements.
The cycle of focus with our business:
- has shifted off the customer
- onto the staff member
- and now onto cutting costs and time to benefit “stake/ shareholders”.
In working on my studies in Behaviour Economics, I see a natural application of these principles within the non face-to-face world. Behavioural economics draws on aspects of both psychology and economics:
· Economics assumes our ability for perfect reasoning as humans (called rationality), is the foundation for economic theory, predictions and recommendations.
· Psychology reminds us human behaviour is not controllable and sometimes not even influenced; yet can be temporarily modified, certainly observed, researched, measured and sometimes predicted.
Over our lifetimes we’re exposed to a “common understanding” of how the economy “works”. We’re sure we’re capable of making the right decisions for ourselves...and because of “collective wisdom”, any necessary course correction to ensure overall stability, will be made by the majority.
The truth is we’re far less rational than assumed, yet our behaviours are neither random or senseless. We have a systematic way to make decisions and these decisions can be observed, measured and predicted.
With this in mind, the goal of this blog is to stimulate your thinking (with research examples) so you can fundamentally consider and leverage what actually motivates you, your staff and your customers to behave in certain ways; then use this wisdom for your own business advantage.
In the future weeks, we will consider values such as uncertainty, procrastination, fairness, mistakes, little thiefts, loyalty, etc. Join me on this adventure and be sure to add your own comments and observations for all of us to benefit from.
