There are just days left before entries to the TUANZ Contact Centre Awards close at 5pm on Monday March 3. These prestigious awards are the only ones in the country in which each entrant is carefully evaluated on a written submission and - if they make it to the second round - a two-hour visit to their contact centre.
Which is quite an exercise. Not only do we ask our judges (experienced contact centre professionals) to read, discuss and argue over every written submission. We then fly them all around the country so that they can personally visit each finalist and spend the time that’s required to learn about their achievements.
But entering a TUANZ Award is no walk in the park either. If you’ve decided to put an entry into one of the contact centre of the year categories you have to sit down with your management team and work out why your centre is worthy of recognition. What are its achievements? How has the progress the contact centre’s made contributed to the organisation overall?
If it’s an individual award, you’ll need to think about how you have performed over the year. What have you done that’s lifted the professionalism of your centre? How do you relate to your colleagues - are you a good mentor, do you promote your centre to the company’s senior management?
It is hard work but at the end of it you’ll have good, hard evidence about what the centre – and you – has achieved in a year. Facts, figures and customer feedback that you can present to other departments and say, ‘hey – this is what we do, this is the value we bring to this organisation.’
So you’re ahead just by entering, even if you don’t make the final. But you want to make the final and you want to win. Because winning a TUANZ Award is the surest sign you can give to others that you are a success, that you are on the way up, that your contact centre rocks.
Writing for Mouthpiece, and before that TUANZ Topics, I’ve heard a lot of positive stories from past winners – people getting promotions, centres finally getting the resources they’ve been begging for. I’ve even had one Chief Executive crow to me about how fabulous his contact centre is because they finally got the nod. So after last year’s Awards I decided to visit one of the winners and write about how it affected their work. I chose Louise Wilson, from APN, who won the Contact Centre Manager of the Year for 26 – 75 seats. You can read the Mouthpiece blog here.
Since winning, Louise has been appointed Advertising Sales Director for NZ Magazines (Listener, NZ Womens Weekly) – a senior management position at one of this country’s top media companies. I gave her a quick phone call this morning to check that she was OK about mentioning her in the blog. She responded with an email outlining why the Award has meant so much to her, and the centre she once headed. I couldn't resist including following paragraph in this blog:
"For my Call Centre the TUANZ award really changed the way the wider company perceived the sheer scale of the change and achievement, and the profile of the business unit as a whole. The staff felt truly recognised and valued, and a number of career opportunities opened up for starperformers across the business. Personally speaking the award and the external seal of approval it gave to the Call Centre allowed me to continue the momentum of change and progression,driving the Call Centre to even greater heights. It also ensured the phone was ringing with job offers!"
That’s the calibre of people who win at TUANZ, that’s the career path they can aspire to and that’s why I would urge you to enter the Awards – today.