Contact Centre Manager of the Year 26-75 seats

Contact Centre Manager of the Year 26-75 seats -  Rowena Fulham, NZ Post

Our thanks to Rowena and her team at NZ Post for the interview and supplying the Contact Centre photos.
















1. Congratulations on your win. NZ Post has certainly evolved in
recent years from providing traditional post office functions to new
products and services. Can you tell us what role the contact centre has in NZ Post now and for the future, and/or how does the contact centre fit into the NZ Post strategy (ie: what products and services is the centre responsible for)?

New Zealand Post has three centres located in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, we fit into the Postal Services Group within the structure of Post and and we are an integral link between our business and all New Zealand Post customers.

Integrated channels and a focus on customer connections see us in a vital role in any strategic planning to introduce new products and services or implement process improvement. New Zealand Post has certainly evolved, so has customer expectations, we have to constantly review our systems and processes to stay relevant to customers and their needs.    


2. As part of your winning award entry, you would have outlined some of
your targets - are you able to share some of them with the TUANZ contact
centre community?  If so, what are the and how do you meet them?

Obviously in our environment there is always an emphasis on performance based statistics and achieving targets usually set by the business. One of the key components of running a successful contact centre is achieving those results through valuing your people.

That’s been a focus this year through recognition, their wellbeing, personal development and individual growth. Programmes of work we have invested in over the past year have included these aspects to allow our people to grow with our success and feed the results of that through the business and onto our customers.

The measures of success are reflected in our customer satisfaction results for my centre.

3. In your opinion do you think entering the awards (evaluating the
metrics you use & how you manage your team) was useful? If so, can you
provide us with tangible examples of what you learned during the process?

There’s a lot of work involved when putting an entry together and it’s something all centre managers should do even if it’s just for the exercise. Self awareness is a powerful asset.

Often we can be consumed in the business as usual and fire fighting or so focused on strategic planning for the future that we don’t stop to appreciate just how well we’re actually doing. For me, the measure of success has been the performance and growth of my team leaders since the award and successes they are now achieving with their own teams. Engaging our people has seen a shift in attitude and personal responsibility, the results since speak for themselves.


4. What difference has winning made to you and the contact centre?

I’ve entered my centre in the TUANZ awards three times over the past four years, and we’ve made the finals but never got across the line. Each time I studied the winners and networked with other managers to understand what we needed to do for that last push.

I changed my strategy and entered myself, for the reasons above - self awareness, catching people doing things well, goal setting and I’m competitive by nature. I was so proud of the changes we have made to ensure we valued our staff and shifted our focus from being stats driven to a developing and supportive culture resulting in high performing attitudes.

Even though the award was for myself as manager, my team are the reason I stood on the stage back in April and we won’t lose sight of that.

5.  After this success, it would be easy and very human, to
sit back and bask in the glory. How do you motivate yourself and/or your team to achieve even more for the future?

It’s what gets me out of bed each day. If you don’t enjoy the work you’re doing or the people you work with, then change it. New Zealand Post is a fantastic employer and I truly believe our vision and purpose is real - we learn it, own it and live it everyday. Every day New Zealanders trust our brand and I have loyal trustworthy CSRs answering their call. It can be a tough environment at times, but it can also be rewarding.

Great results and being the best, motivates me. My team will concur that I’m a little competitive - we lifted the bar and we’ll keep checking that to make sure we don’t become complacent.   

Purpose: “We are people connecting people, helping New Zealand run”