The ZIZO Effect

Creating a Winning Culture Remotely with David Black

• ZIZO Technologies Inc. • Season 2 • Episode 7

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Welcome to Season 2 of The ZIZO Effect!
This season, we’re exploring the unique insights and experiences of agents, managers, and executives in the call center industry to provide practical strategies for improving team culture and performance.

Episode Overview:
In this episode, we talk with David Black, Collections Manager at National Recovery Solutions, about creating a winning culture in a remote environment. With over 20 years of experience in the call center industry, David has navigated the shift from in-person to remote team management. He shares his approach to fostering engagement, maintaining accountability, and driving productivity, all while leading a dispersed team. Tune in to learn David’s top strategies for using KPIs, regular feedback, and supportive communication to strengthen remote team culture and success.

If you're looking for effective ways to manage and motivate remote teams, this episode offers actionable insights that will make a difference.

Timestamps:
0:00 Managing Remote Workforce Engagement and Productivity
11:35 Balancing Data and Empathy in Leadership
20:24 Building a Culture of Winning

Guest Information:
David Black - Collections Manager at National Recovery Solutions.

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Don’t miss this episode packed with actionable strategies for building a winning team culture remotely. Tune in now to The ZIZO Effect; Get Ready - It's Game Time!

Jimmy Chebat:

Welcome back to The ZIZO Effect podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Chebat. In this season, we're exploring the unique perspectives of agents, managers and executives in the call center space. Today, we're joined by David Black, a collections manager at National Recovery Solutions, with over 20 years of experience in the industry. David started his career as an agent and has worked his way up through the various leadership roles. In this episode, we'll discuss remote workforce management, the impact of KPIs on performance and how to keep teams engaged in a remote environment. Whether you're looking to improve team productivity or build a stronger workplace culture, today's episode offers valuable insights you won't want to miss. So get ready, it's game time.

Jimmy Chebat:

Welcome everybody to The ZIZO Effect podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Chebat. I am the founder and CEO of ZIZO Technologies and today we have a wonderful guest. Our guest today is David Black, who is a collections manager over at National Recovery Solutions, who is a collections manager over at National Recovery Solutions. He's got over 20 years of experience in working in call centers and different roles, from sales to collections. And David, welcome to The ZIZO Effect podcast.

Jimmy Chebat:

Thank you, jimmy. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we're excited to hear from you and get your take. And just real quick before we get into some of your personal intros here, just to let the audience know, and let you know and remind our audience, I should say, this season, what we're doing. We're in our second season and we're trying to get perspectives from different roles within the contact center space, from the agents, you know, or the frontline workers, to the managers who are, you know, charged with leading the workforce, and then to the C-suite executives who kind of see things from up above. So today we've got you kind of like in that middle category. But before we get into your career, why don't you tell us a little about yourself?

David Black:

Well, I'm David Black. I'm currently in Tampa, florida. I'm originally from Delaware. I did serve time in the military US Navy veteran. After the Navy, that's when I started my career in collections, national asset management in Atlanta, georgia. Did that for a few years and then, after I left Atlanta, that's how I ended up in Tampa, florida. Did a little bit of collections and sales in the Tampa area as well, and now I'm with National Recovery Solutions.

Jimmy Chebat:

When you started your career, were you as an agent on the floor frontline worker.

David Black:

Yeah, absolutely Started off as an agent. After about two years I moved up to management with that company.

Jimmy Chebat:

Going back a little bit now outside of the Navy any family.

David Black:

Yeah, I'm a father of six. Most of my family is in Delaware or Jacksonville, Florida. We like to travel, get out, take road trips, like to spend time with the family.

Jimmy Chebat:

That's awesome. It's great to know. I am one of six kids myself, so I know what it's like being in a large family. I only have two kids, so you know, from a leadership perspective, that's awesome. You know, being a father of six, I make sure everybody's happy and taken care of. So this is great for the conversations that we're going to get into and here today. Let's switch gears a little bit. I want to talk a little bit about culture, and you know, for us, you know, culture means a lot different things for different people. Every organization has their own type of culture, and what I want to ask you is what is your workplace culture and what is your role in helping define and create that culture?

David Black:

Well, I would say the culture at National Recovery Solutions is a fun, low-stress culture where we challenge each other to be the best version of ourselves daily. Everyone helps each other. As leaders, we set the tone by maintaining commonly shared interests of the company and our employees as well.

Jimmy Chebat:

Nice, and what do you do to help ensure that that culture is thriving?

David Black:

I would say how I help in defining that culture is being there to support your employees, your co-workers. Make sure you're giving positive feedback and you're flexible at the same time. Are you working?

Jimmy Chebat:

remotely.

David Black:

Yes.

Jimmy Chebat:

Okay, and the rest of your team? Are they remote or are they all in-house? All of my agents are remote. All of the agents are remote. So I'm kind of going to switch gears here and talk about the remote workforce Prior to COVID. Were you guys all in office or were you guys remote prior to COVID?

David Black:

Well, I've only been at National Recovery Solutions for a year, my previous employer. Yes, we were remote during COVID.

Jimmy Chebat:

Okay, and prior to COVID were you all in the office? Yeah, prior to COVID it was all in office. You've been in the industry for 20 years and there's some challenges, you know, between, you know, managing a team that's you know you're surrounded with, versus managing a team that's, you know, fragmented throughout the country and, you know on, isolated in their own homes. What do you think is the biggest challenge when managing a remote workforce?

David Black:

I would say my biggest challenge is to make sure engagement is proper throughout the day. Another challenge is you don't have that face-to-face interaction, so you may not know what someone is doing at the time. You may not be able there to address situations immediately as they come forth. So I would say those two things are my biggest challenges. Some of the things that I do to make sure that doesn't happen is I'm in constant communication with my reps daily, maybe two or three times a day by phone, make sure that they stay active in the chat when we put out certain communications as well. I'm doing my part to make sure that I can alleviate those things.

Jimmy Chebat:

I think that's communication is a key part of building a strong culture. And again, going back to the remote workforce, you know being able to kind of bring everybody to the floor, having standup meetings. It's a lot easier, but there are different technologies now that kind of allow you to do that virtually. You mentioned chat. What is your chat tool of choice? We use Microsoft Teams, okay, and you guys have a lot of conversations within those teams. You guys have breakout rooms. Is everybody in one single chat? What is your preferred? I mean to build that culture, how are you using chat effectively?

David Black:

Well, we have different chats based on the teams that we have. We have different chats for processes. We also have different chats for management. Just various chats, individual chats, obviously, but we try to keep it as simple as possible and not overload our team with too many different chats. But we definitely have different chats for different processes and communications.

Jimmy Chebat:

When you're building your culture and trying to build that engagement and using those chats. Is there certain things that you're looking for through those chats? Is it the number of communications that, whether they're silent, how are you measuring engagement outside of you having personal conversation with them?

David Black:

What I personally look for is acknowledgement of the communication and then also feedback as well. Any questions, always leave that door open. Make sure you don't understand the communication. Get with me, that way we can straighten that out. I'd look for acknowledgement and responses.

Jimmy Chebat:

Switching gears a little bit when we talk about engagement. On the opposite side of engagement is distractions, and with work from home there is naturally going to be personal distractions that are happening. What strategies to use to identify and minimize those distractions?

David Black:

I feel myself, as I like checking in with my reps, making sure they don't have any issues. That's going on. Just having a simple conversation a lot of times with your employees throughout the day will give you a determinant factor if there's an issue, if there's distractions. One of the things that I like to do is I like to manage by stats. I'm constantly looking at KPIs and things of that nature as well, setting goals if I need to. If I feel like API is too low, then I'm going to set a goal for maybe the next hour or the rest of the day Nice.

Jimmy Chebat:

And how do you communicate those goals? Do you do those individually or do you do that through your teams?

David Black:

Well, I do it through teams, but I more so like to follow up with a phone call to the agent, addressing them one-on-one, after the communication is out, to make sure there's no misunderstandings or miscommunication.

Jimmy Chebat:

It's a great point and I'm curious from all of the other contact centers there's so many of them that are now remote. What would you rank the importance of that phone communication, that one-on-one communication with individual agents as part of making sure that they're staying engaged and not distracted?

David Black:

Well, I think it's very important because sometimes in a chat you may have someone that doesn't understand the communication, but they may not want to express that in the chat. So sometimes a follow-up call will help that misunderstanding or whatever the issue that they may have.

Jimmy Chebat:

And is there a way that you identify that there's a miscommunication or a misunderstanding? When I follow up, I make sure that?

David Black:

hey, did you look at the chat? Did you see what needs to be done? Any questions? Yes, no, and then move on to the next important.

Jimmy Chebat:

Oh, so you're touching base with every single one of your agents, absolutely, oh nice, very cool. I want to go on to leadership and management styles. It seems like you're very hands-on. You're making sure that you're touching base and communicating individually with your employees. There's a report that reveals that 92% of employees are more likely to stay with a company that provides opportunities for professional development. How do you define your management style and how has it evolved?

David Black:

Well, as you mentioned, my management style is more hands-on. I like to manage based on stats. I have a sales background as well, so I like to manage by the stats. The stats will pretty much give you an indication of how your representative is going to finish the day or finish the week or month as far as hitting KPIs and their goal for the month. So I'm more of a hands-on manager. Manage my stats as well.

Jimmy Chebat:

Okay, this is what we call objective management, where it's not an intuition or a gut feeling. It's based on empirical data that will show you whether somebody's performing not performing. When you're looking at these KPIs, sometimes we break things down, kpis down by different categories, things like behaviors, their activity, their attendance, things like that. So what kind of behaviors they have? Then there's effort how many calls are they making, how many accounts are they working? And then skills, like you know, how many right party contacts or how many deals have they closed? Then there's results, which is okay. Well, what's the outcome? How much money, how many dollars have they brought in as a result of their work? Effort which KPIs, from your perspective since you are kind of data-driven do you focus on, or is it a combination and do you change it up? It's definitely going to be a combination.

David Black:

The two that drive me the most is going to be the amount of calls that they're making and the amount of accounts worked. The more calls you make, the more accounts you work, the more contacts you're going to have, and the more contacts you have you're going to have better success and hit your goal.

Jimmy Chebat:

And so do you focus on what we call the top of the funnel I mean being from sales is how many accounts can you throw in? And you hope that the numbers you play the numbers game that a certain percentage is going to actually result in success. Do you try to look at things where maybe the effort isn't quite there and what the success is? I mean, do you see those sort of results where there's some people who just have higher skills and just don't have to work as many accounts?

David Black:

You do. You do see those situations with certain certain reps, the first ones that I that. I mentioned the KPIs that I like to address first. That leads me up to being able to listen into calls. If they're making enough calls, obviously they're going to have more contacts, so that gives me the opportunity to give them feedback based on what I've heard on the call. So, yeah, that leads up to being able to coach in and coach and monitoring and do one on ones and additional training and development as well.

Jimmy Chebat:

So you're using the data not just to make sure that people are doing their jobs and then identifying areas where they need to improve. You're also providing the training and the coaching to help them improve.

David Black:

Absolutely yes. On a daily basis it's nonstop, nonstop coaching.

Jimmy Chebat:

The importance of the different roles and responsibilities that a manager has in a contact center, whether it's administrative pulling reports, analyzing those reports, whether it's the accountability just touching base with your team and ensuring that everybody has what they need and that they're doing their jobs. Maybe it's the disciplinary component writing people up and making sure that they're held accountable, and the coaching and the training. So you know, just prioritizing your role, what would you say your top responsibility is, and then working our way backwards.

David Black:

Well, I would say the top responsibility is looking at the data and then coaching from there. Coaching is very important. It makes employees feel that they're getting the proper feedback. It also helps with retaining those employees because you are developing them to be the best that they can be on a daily basis or monthly basis. So I would say looking at the data and then coaching. I don't really have too many issues outside of those two.

Jimmy Chebat:

Feedback is a real critical part of your role. Right Providing that feedback? How frequently do you provide that feedback and what would be the ideal feedback loop from your perspective?

David Black:

Well, I provide feedback on a daily basis. I tend to not hone on the things that they did wrong, but I tend to hone on their strengths. First compliment them, give them positive feedback on that and then tie into the things they could have did better on the call Not necessarily, hey, you did this bad or you did this wrong. This is how we can do this better and then following up to make sure that they are implementing the feedback on the next call that they get or the next situation that they have.

Jimmy Chebat:

So you seem to be a very direct sort of leader, data-driven objective, ensuring that everybody has the tools and resources they need. How do you balance that, being somebody that is approachable, that is kind of a coach, almost like a friend? Where does that play a role in your leadership style?

David Black:

Well, I mean, you definitely want to.

Jimmy Chebat:

You want your employees to feel that they can come talk to you about anything. So that's definitely important. There's a human element. I always say there's. It's an 80, 20 rule. Like that you can get most of your story through the data. It's only 80%, though. There's a human element that's in that you have to kind of inject yourself and pull from conversations. If you're looking at data this is an example If you're looking at data and you're seeing zero productivity and you're now super upset like what is going on here? You're not doing anything. You super upset Like what is going on here, you're not doing anything, you're not working here, there's no performance. So you have that conversation with somebody and realize like, hey, I've been sick throwing up in a toilet for the past three hours. You have to have that conversation to get that information. But then also there's a follow-up, like that empathy. How do you handle that? Is it just about the data? Or how do you balance data database management versus? You know that human element. You balance data database management versus.

David Black:

You know that human element Data is going to be an important factor into it, but you do have to talk to your employees to see if there's something that's driving that data, whether it be low or it be high. You have to conversate with them and kind of dig in sometimes a little bit deeper to see if there is another issue that needs to be addressed that may not have nothing to do with work being in a contact center space, and you've been around the space for 20 years.

Jimmy Chebat:

Another issue that needs to be addressed that may not have nothing to do with work being in a contact center space and you've been around the space for 20 years. It's repeatable tasks. You're doing the same thing pretty much all day, every day, and that usually leads to burnout. How do you monitor when somebody's on the verge of burnout and how do you address that monitor when somebody's on the verge of burnout.

David Black:

and how do you address that? Well, I mean, usually when someone is burnt out, it usually starts with their attitude not coming to work, missing days, leaving early, things like that. Typically, when you see those things starting to happen, you want to address those, see if there's any issues, see if there's anything that you're doing wrong. It could be your management style, it could be something that someone said to them on the phone. No matter what the case may be, you just kind of want to get that understanding of what's going on and then help your employees come up with some kind of resolution. There's a solution to every problem. So you have to have that conversation to find out what exactly is causing your employee to burn out. They may need to take additional time off. They may be an employee that's just a hard worker that doesn't like to take time off. So you may want to recommend hey, take some time off to yourself, get yourself together, reset, come back.

Jimmy Chebat:

Sometimes burnout can be confusing or confused with mental health right or vice versa, and that can stem from personal situations, personal issues or just having mental health issues. How do you recognize and address mental health issues within your team?

David Black:

Well, everything starts with a discussion. Actually, I had this situation yesterday with someone. They weren't burnt out or anything like that, it was just an issue that they hadn't addressed with me because I'm a new manager to them, but I had a discussion. I said, hey, thank you for letting me know this information, because that lets me know I need to manage you a little bit different than I manage some of the other representatives. So to identify that, you definitely have to look at some of the things that's going on, like I said, missing time, not coming to work or statistics are low and then, once you have that conversation coming up with a solution.

Jimmy Chebat:

So are you usually looking for cues or clues into somebody kind of being slightly off, or are you proactive in addressing things before they actually get become problematic?

David Black:

Well, I would say it's a little both you want to be proactive, but every situation is not going to allow you to be proactive. Sometimes, when I do notice those things, then you want to address those immediately.

Jimmy Chebat:

Is there any initiatives that you guys have implemented to promote mental health in the workplace?

David Black:

Well, what I tend to do is make sure our employees know all of the resources that they have. They are going through a situation, also letting them know they can talk to myself. If they don't feel comfortable talking to me, they want to talk to another manager. I'm totally okay with that, because sometimes employees may not feel they can talk to you about everything, even though I know that they can. They may not just feel comfortable. So we keep that open door with everyone. If you don't feel comfortable talking to me, you can talk to someone else and we'll help you out.

Jimmy Chebat:

Do you feel like you guys have that safe space that gives people that comfort level that they can talk to either yourself or other people within your organization? I do, I do Honestly. I do yes, yeah, and that's good. We've been talking to a lot of organizations and that seems to be becoming more and more important and a priority, as opposed to the recent past. I know coming up that normally nobody talks about their personal lives, let alone their personal mental health issues, and so just creating that safe space for people to be able to come to you and just be honest and just let you know that there's resources available to help them through that tough time and making sure that they have a safe space to talk to somebody.

Jimmy Chebat:

I want to switch gears again here and I want to bring up a topic of compensation versus incentives. A compensation is what people get paid, their hourly rate. There's a bonus structure, how they can earn commissions above and beyond their rate, whereas incentives are going to be those contests, those tournaments, those giveaways. Incentives are going to be those contests, those tournaments, those giveaways, those promotions that you guys do. How important do you feel that incentives are as part of the culture that you guys have created for your organization, and is that as important or less important or more important than the compensation that you guys pay?

David Black:

I think the incentive is definitely an important factor in that. Compensation is great but given the industry that we're in, incentives are what's going to drive most of your production with your employees, so the incentives are definitely important. I would say it's probably more important than sometimes the compensation.

Jimmy Chebat:

What are some of the ways that you guys build out some of your or you use your incentive budget?

David Black:

We have a different contest throughout the week or throughout the month outside of your platform. So we typically try to budget a few hundred dollars for each team each month to give them a little push, maybe middle of the month or the beginning of the month. They're getting that one check, that, and they're getting the bonus check at the end of the month, so they may need a little push at the beginning of the month because they paid bills and things like that. So we tend to run our contests at the beginning of the month to help them out. We do different things, from gift cards to lunches, things like that.

Jimmy Chebat:

I know that it's used as a tool to help boost productivity. How do you measure the importance of an incentives, a contest and tournaments and things that stuff that you're talking about as part of a culture builder and a way to engage your staff? Is it more just to get the productivity or is it? Do you consider it a tool as an engagement tool to keep them engaged in their work and therefore resulting in better performance?

David Black:

Well, yeah, I mean you want the production, but you also want the engagement, you want the teamwork from each other. And because some employees I mean especially want the production, but you also want the engagement, you want the teamwork from each other. And some employees I mean especially with the newer ones that work remote, because they are remote, they may not know everyone. So it has a multifaceted purpose not just a production but engagement, getting reps to know each other, because you're pairing someone up that may not know their teammate. It's all done with different purposes in mind that may not know their teammate.

Jimmy Chebat:

It's all done with different, different purposes in in mind. So we have, uh, as you mentioned, your you guys are using our zozo platform, and we have different contests and tournament types. Just to name a few. You have your one-on-ones, uh, your team versus team, and you have an individual goal, and then collaborative goal, where everybody's working together, and then your classic tournaments, which battle royale is what we call it, where it's everybody versus everybody. What do you find to be the most effective type contest, or is there a purpose for the different types of contests? As to what your goals are?

David Black:

it's really no contest. I would say that's specific to goals, even though we do run those contests from time to time. I personally like the team, the team battles and then the battle royals. It builds morale, helps the team be competitive with other teams. So it's just not for the production. As I mentioned before, it's all about everybody working with each other and competition is fun. It doesn't have to be nasty or anything like that. Competition is fun, it's a morale builder and it keeps the reps engaged as well, and that's what we need as far as with a lot of our employees being remote, we need that engagement and we need that communication and them getting to know each other as well.

Jimmy Chebat:

We recently ran, we did a takeover. One of the departments wasn't within your organization, but another one of our clients and where our customer success team started to design and build all of the concepts for a month, and I just wanted to share this with you and our audience. And it's something new that we're working on to share with all of our customers where, when setting goals, we've seen managers in the past, specifically in this department that we were working with, set the goals very high. It's a pretty decent reward and they're setting the goals pretty high, almost near I don't want to call it impossible, but very difficult when we were talking to the staff and saying, hey, how do you feel about these? Just getting some feedback, they're like. You know, some of these goals are just, they're not realistic and they're very difficult.

Jimmy Chebat:

So we set out to create a culture of winning is part of the initiative that we're having. So creating goals that are slightly above what they've been doing on average over the past week or month. You got to factor in seasonality. The rewards were nominal, they weren't that crazy, but people were excited for these contests because they were easy to achieve, or at least they felt they're within reach, and so they won and they got really, really excited about that victory, and then we would set that next goal, just slightly higher than that. We're writing up a case study for this and we'll definitely share it with you, as we do with all of our clients. But just creating that culture of winning, making it achievable and within reach and it doesn't have to be anything crazy but building a culture where everybody wins and it's always an opportunity to just get slightly better, it doesn't have to be crazy. But what are your thoughts on that? And how do you feel about having goals where they're again they're not extraordinary, but they are again getting people engaged?

David Black:

I think it's a mindset thing. A lot of times I think I have seen myself where reps are saying that the goals don't seem attainable. But as you work with each other and you're like you said, you hit the smaller goals, then you bump it up, then it gives you a little boost that, hey, you know I can do this. So I personally like it because it's going to drive production, that in the end you're going to have people making more money and it's a win-win for everyone.

Jimmy Chebat:

A couple more questions and then I don't know if, uh, if emma and jill are producers, share with you, but we are a gamification tool. We are going to play a game. I don't know how your trivia skills are, but we've got a trivia game between you and I. We'll play here at the end. Before we get to that. David, this has been great. Your insights have been very helpful, especially coming from your perspective. We have a game here. We are a gamification platform, so we're always excited to create a level of competition and some giveaways here, or at least a level of pride to win. So we do what we call just a trivia contest. I'm going to have Jill jump in here and she's going to tell us the rules and then she's going to share with us what the questions will be in that trivia. Are you ready? Okay, I'm ready.

Jill Fecher :

What is the largest reptile in the world?

Jimmy Chebat:

I'm going to say an alligator.

Jill Fecher :

What type of whale is actually a dolphin?

David Black:

Hmm, a blue whale Beluga.

Jill Fecher :

Who was the Queen of France during the French Revolution?

Jimmy Chebat:

Queen Mary.

Jill Fecher :

What year was the moon landing?

Jimmy Chebat:

Got it 65. Seven.

Jill Fecher :

Name at least two planets in our solar system that have rings.

Jimmy Chebat:

Saturn and Uranus.

Jill Fecher :

What are two countries in the United Kingdom?

Jimmy Chebat:

Northern Ireland and UK.

Jill Fecher :

Which direction does the sun rise from?

David Black:

East. How many bones are in the human body?

Jimmy Chebat:

168. 206? No 212. 212. What are diamonds made of?

Jill Fecher :

Coal? I thought it was compressed coal or, I guess, carbon over like millions of years. Which planet is known?

David Black:

as the blue planet Earth.

Jill Fecher :

Why is honey called a convenient pantry staple?

David Black:

Because it doesn't go bad.

Jill Fecher :

Who gave the US the Statue of Liberty?

Jimmy Chebat:

I don't know, France, France? Yeah, I tried to give you an opportunity there, David, but I was like all right, he had enough. Thank you to David for joining us on The ZIZO Effect Podcast. That wraps up today's episode of The ZIZO Effect Podcast. That wraps up today's episode of The ZIZO Effect podcast. Thank you to David Black for sharing his thoughts on managing remote teams, creating engagement through communication and using data-driven insights to stay on top of performance. These strategies are essential for building a resilient, results-driven culture. As you think about your own team, consider how these insights can help drive your own results. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming episodes with more actionable insights. Get ready, it's game time.

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Jimmy Chebat

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