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Frontline teams of a company, business or organization directly impact business success through their actions as they are the people that customers communicate with first.
You also need to motivate and boost the morale of those who get the job done—those who design, manufacture, and sell products or provide services to customers. These individuals are critical to a company’s business strategy as they oversee its implementation.
Hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing… all of these industries rely on frontline workers to get the lion’s share of their work done.
What is a frontline team?
Simply put, a frontline team is a team of people who communicate directly with customers and are usually their first point of contact for any information they need. They don’t do the more important part of their work behind a desk (that is, they’re always on the go).
How come, then, that frontline workers are typically physically disconnected from the technology and left with inefficient tools to do their critically important jobs?
This is the main catch, because the efficiency of frontline teams’ skills can propel a company in a good or wrong direction.
For this reason, it is important to brainstorm ideas and develop a sustainable strategy for building a successful and engaged frontline team.
Communication comes first
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That proper communication is critical to team development should be clear to anyone who has ever attempted to lead a team.
As already mentioned, frontline teams usually don’t have access to the latest technologies, including modern and practical communication tools. Not even a simple tool to track employee hours!
Effective communication requires empathy and assertiveness and certainly contributes to a smooth understanding between the team manager and the team. Make sure you encourage communication and set clear guidelines on which channels should be used. Provide appropriate training when needed.
Factors involved in team communication include mood, communication preferences, personality, language, incongruity, and thinking style. Taking each of these factors into account makes communication easier. Suppose the team members’ language, mood, and communication preferences don’t match yours. In this case, there will be a communication barrier.
Always offer new technologies
Always offer new technologies. The fact that this is not a standard is devastating when you consider that frontline workers make up 80% of the global workforce!
According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, frontline workers often seek better job prospects because they feel underpaid and have a poor work-life balance. 63% of these people look forward to the job opportunities that technology creates. In comparison, 56% say they feel pressured to adapt to new technologies for fear of losing their job. In comparison, 55% were forced to learn new technologies on their own without any training being conducted or offered.
These statistics clearly show that frontline employees need to prioritize new technologies, but no less important that individuals or companies need to create good training programs to learn from.
The new technology can come in the form of carefully designed applications or websites that mix communication and information in their digital tools to create a more effective work service. In this case, never by email. Email isn’t enough when you have important information like an emergency, the introduction of new work practices, or something as informal as sending out encouragement and commendations.
It also makes sense to use software designed for mobile devices rather than desktops to better reach customer-facing agents.
It is also recommended to provide training to learn the new technology. This would help them feel more connected and increase employee engagement.
Set up a job management system
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Most frontline employees who are looking for other job opportunities say they have poor relationships with management.
This is a big no go!
You can set up a job management system to keep things running smoothly and learn on the go by listening to employee feedback.
Even if management seems like a rocket science, it is clearly defined:
- Customer Acquisition – Use marketing, advertising and sales promotion
- Estimate and Quote – Estimate the cost and solicit customer feedback
- Task Breakdown – Break down the job into smaller tasks
- Scheduling – Allocate necessary resources and staff +
- Timesheeting – record the working hours of the employees
- E-mail dispatch & document exchange – Send order-related documents to stakeholders
- cost management
- Work in progress management
- billing
- Reporting – Gather the data for further reference
Think artificial intelligence
For frontline workers working in construction, there is an extra mile for the manager to walk. It’s important to stay up to date on field service trends:
- IoT for wealth management
- Cloud-based remote work software
- Artificial intelligence for business automation
- Supply chain inventory management software
However, remember that employees need to be told that AI will not jeopardize their jobs. As Darryl Willis, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of energy and sustainability says:
“I meet a lot of people who are worried about being replaced by artificial intelligence, by machine learning. One of the things I say to people is that you have to see machine learning and AI as assistants and not as a substitute for expertise.”
Use knowledge management systems
Knowledge management systems can help you better manage frontline teams and make their jobs easier.
What is a knowledge management system?
In plain language, it is a platform combined with different processes and people that collect and store information in one central place. Their main purpose is to make the exchange of information seamless and keep it circulating.
Modern knowledge management systems integrate with existing processes and pull data from multiple sources to provide instant access to information.
Using such a system to help your frontline teams perform better is a perfect opportunity to support them in their daily activities that are in dire need of new technologies.
Offer training for your frontline managers
These strategies will be in vain if you fail to educate your frontline managers. Just think of a trading company with poor frontline team management and this practice affecting customer care.
Not good.
The main problem with this is that classic frontline management training usually consists of theoretical knowledge delivered in a classroom that lacks actual knowledge from practice.
A combination of theoretical knowledge and frontline expertise should be built, maintained and presented to frontline managers from day one, that is – starting with onboarding.
Offer onboarding training
All new and transfer employees must be trained from the first day they join the company.
However, be careful not to overload employees with too much information, as this is undoubtedly more detrimental than encouraging.
Today there is no excuse for neglecting continuous learning. With eLearning and mLearning on the rise – and even some creative techniques like gamification – everyone can keep learning and enjoy the whole thing.
Take the time to create the perfect blend of programs that make learning enjoyable while getting the message across.
Finally, you should reconsider the working hours of the employees. Flexibility should be a priority as frontline workers often complain about a lack of free time. Also, make an effort to offer career opportunities. Frontline workers deserve it!
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Implement an employee feedback system
Frontline employees are the people who interact with your customers every day, so they’re a great source of feedback.
While surveys, focus groups, and suggestion boxes are appropriate activities and implementations, first-hand feedback is essential to the growth of the frontline team, and inevitably the company.
Regular face-to-face interviews with frontline employees will not only help you get feedback about the customers, but you will also understand what’s going on in the customer service department, how customers view your team and the company as a whole, and many more of your skills and weaknesses Frontline teams in customer communication. Additionally, valuing the opinions of their employees for feedback helps to build and improve a competent frontline team.
Recognize and praise high performance
Over 67% of managers think they offer enough recognition, but only 23% of employees agree. Employers who don’t feel recognized are twice as likely to quit within a year — something you want to avoid, especially if said employees are hardworking and doing a good job.
A social intranet that enables collaborative communication has built-in discovery tools for managers and employees. Such software allows managers to recognize and praise good performances with a touch of a finger.
Increasing recognition efforts is a great idea as it helps build the morale, confidence and work habits of frontline employees. Providing Growth Opportunities for Excellent Employees This approach will encourage frontline employees to be more loyal, dedicated and increase worker turnover, knowing that the opportunity for growth is on the horizon.
The central theses
There is still a lot to be done and standardized when it comes to frontline team management, but any organization can start with small steps.
Train your frontline employees and managers, provide learning opportunities, be flexible, set up appropriate communication channels and deploy new technologies whenever possible.
Don’t let your frontline teams feel left behind (as they often do, especially compared to remote teams).
Please strive to make the workplace perfect for your frontline teams and listen to their feedback for more ideas.
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