Managing Member - Lynnette Morris

Lynnette Morris the Managing member of the Contact Centre Coach is an independent specialist Contact Centre Management Consultant and Executive Coach. She has 20 years experience in the contact centre service and sales industry from defining customer contact strategies, facilitating the development of best practice contact centres; auditing and assessing contact centres; deploying quality management and customer experience initiatives, developing bespoke skills development programmes and implementing standardization initiatives across 15 operations in Africa to support the achievement of developed service strategies and operational support plans.

Lynnette has worked as a contact centre consultant in 17 countries across Africa in the following industries- banking, retail, emergency services, insurance, transport, PayTv, telecommunications, energy, facilities management, outsourcing and management consulting. Conducting best practice assessments, deploying contact centre improvement programmes (implementing operational improvement initiatives, quality management and customer experience management services. coaching, managing operations, and transferring operational skills through the Contact Centre Academy), developing customised skills development programmes, facilitating the development of customer contact strategies and managing the implementation of “green field” contact centre operations.

Lynnette’s hands on experience has provided her with an in-depth understanding of the importance of good customer care strategy balanced with excellent customer interfacing skills, the need for customer-focused products, processes and support infrastructure. This understanding plus her passion for skills transference led her career to supporting these channels, by providing consulting, training and skills development that is aligned to customer’s needs, expectations and business objectives to achieve best results for the organisation. Her approach to facilitate the development of strategic or operational contact centre skills is always with colourful enthusiasm, energy and a practical methodology that she can proudly look back at her delegates who have attended her programmes and admire their development as customer service brand leaders or contact centre professionals that are passionate about service delivery and improving the customer’s experience.

Lynnette is known for building long-term relationships with her clients by ensuring that all products and services provided are used to achieve their defined outcomes. This methodology has led her to provide individual attention to her customer base and therefore seen as part of the organisations that she works with and not only as a “Consultant”. The achievement of incremental improvements across telecommunications contact centres in 17 countries (Anglophone and Francophone) in Africa, resulted in the appointment as Strategic Customer Care Consultant  (2006 – 2009) responsible for the development of a defined customer care strategic direction, policy manual and to develop all contact centre management functions from the Customer Care Director, the Managers for Inbound, Outbound, Service Centre, Support function, all the supervisors within these functional areas, the development of the Contact Centre Support teams and the accreditation of all trainers to train the customized contact centre approved programmes.

Lynnette started her career informally at Clientele life in 1992 and then formally into the Call Centre industry in 1994 at M-Tel (Pty) ltd and developed her career to being appointed as the MTN Call Centre Training Manager and then as the MTN Subscriber Operations Training Manager. She left MTN to start a Call Centre Consulting company - mma; Margie Middleton & Associates with her two partners and in 2002 formed her own company – The Skills Facilitator which was renamed in 2010 as the Contact Centre Coach.

The Contact Centre Coach and Contact Centre Academy* was established as Lynnette believes that with the growth and pressure to succeed in the industry, it has led to the dilution of skills and experience in the support teams, middle and senior management levels. These tiers are often being fulfilled from internal placements or recruiting staff from other call centres who have been exposed to the role as a development position. Limited access and time availability to attend Contact Centre Strategy and Operational Management programmes has perpetuated the fact that we have our middle management tier performing functions that they actually still require support in to fully understand all aspects of their role and the implication of decisions on their teams and achievement of business objectives.

Lynnette actively participates as a speaker at contact centre conferences and has built strong alliance partnerships with colleagues who promote the positive development of the Contact Centre industry and placing the customer at the centre of all decision-making and actions. Lynnette is the Treasurer for the Independent Contact Centre Association that is comprised of industry specialists that are able to join forces to provide a fully customised consulting solution for any size project.
The following interventions are just some of the many highlights of work that Lynnette has managed and delivered, for her clients:

• Urban Nest (2012) facilitating the development of a customer contact strategy, project management and implementation of the student registration process for students from Tshwane University and Pretoria University.

• Singular Systems (2011) consulting support in the development of a “Greenfield” call centre operation, to manage the Phuthuma Nathi/ Multichoice scheme

• African Bank (2011) completion of best practice assessment

• TOPTV (2010 – 2011) completion of best practice and achievement of standards audit with an interim operations director role to assist with the deployment of a continuous improvement programme

• Afrisam (2009 – 2010) Implementation of Mystery Shopper and Customer Experience Management programme to investigate service improvement areas and quality issues, development of the 2010 service improvement recommendations for the internal Continuous Improvement Team to implement

• ER24 (2009) development of a Customer Contact Strategy Workshop, assessed the contact centre against global best practice standards to identify service improvement initiatives, implementation of contact centre change management workshops. Review all Customer Contact processes, systems integration and management practices to identify areas that are negatively impacting on service delivery.

• Afrisam (South Africa, 2002 - 2010), implementation of Continuous Improvement Project and Quality Assessment programme. Implementation of a Customer Satisfaction Survey and Quality Monitoring programme to review the internal standards being achieved versus customer’s perceptions.

• Zain (2006 – 2009), development of a Customer Contact Strategy that is defined for all operational areas into systemic processes and tactical steps. The strategy was developed into a “Policy & Quality Guide” that defines all roles, objectives, operational requirements and quality criteria to perform role. This “Policy” is the set standard for recruitment, workforce management, performance management and achieving defined objectives.

• Zain (2008 – 2009), appointed as an Independent Group Customer Care Strategic Service consultant and Service provider for all operations, providing consulting support, audits, improvement recommendations & plans, coaching and training support.

•  Zain (Celtel) (International and all Opco’s, 2002 – 2008), development and delivery of fully customized Group Customer Care Training Programmes aligned to group customer care strategy (Anglophone & Francophone) for all functional areas within Customer Care (Inbound Call Centre, Campaign and Outbound Call Centre, Walk-in, Back office and support functions)

• Zain (Ghana, 2008 – 2009),development of operational strategy and provision of all customer care training for all the customer touchpoints for the launch of the operation

• TTCL (Tanzania, 2007- 2008), facilitated the development of a Customer Contact Strategy and implementation plan.

• Celtel (12 Opco’s in Africa,2005), performance audit against company and internationally recognized benchmarked standards, development of operational improvement programmes and project monitoring.
• GloMobile (Nigeria, 2003 - 2004), Greenfield project – assist with launch of GloMobile, development of the Customer Contact Strategy, customer contact processes and training of all newly recruited Customer Care Staff (call centre, retail and back office) on customized Glo Induction, product and service programmes.

Organisational Development Specialist - Jenny Mamdoo

Jenny Mamdoo is a Contact Centre & Organisational Development Specialist,
with over 13 years experience in Customer Service, Contact Centre, HR and
Training Management. Her passion for people development and business
processes has enabled the highest standards of service excellence and
business best practice.

She began her career in the Contact Centre industry as a Personal Banking
Consultant at NBS Direct in 1999. She moved to Gauteng in 2002 and worked in
recruitment for a brief period, before temping for the agency she worked
for. She set up the Customer Satisfaction program at Unisys and developed a
soft skills program for the Helpdesk. She developed her career in
recruitment, by joining the agency she worked
for: Callforce Direct and grew into the role of Mentorship Manager, where
she managed 150 - 200 temporary staff across various sites in Gauteng. Her
passion for training and development saw her move to Quest Learning
Institute, as Head Coach, where she managed Learnership programs for various
clients; then Prior Learning Centre as a Consultant, providing training,
development & assessment support.

She actively participated in setting up Contract Central - a Contact Centre
designed to provide support to the Career Centres & give learners valuable
work experience. She later moved to World Outsource Learning Centre (CCX) as
part of the Executive Committee, as HR and Development Manager. Her role was
to manage the Organisational Development function for the company, as well
as the development of training & assessment material aligned to National
(NQF) & International (Btec qualifications with Edexcel) standards, up
skilling & management of Trainers/Assessors, management of quality across
all areas, management of new projects and setting up of  an incubator
program for a leading Telecommunications organisation. She moved to Spescom
DataFusion as Training Manager  and later to TopTV as Service Support
Manager. Her role at TopTV was critical in the development of business
processes for the Contact Centre and Customer Services environments,
providing support to the Operations teams, quality management  across all
customer touch points, management of change and training management of the
service provider.

Jenny joined Contact Centre Academy as a  Development Specialist, where her
generalist organizational development and specialist contact centre people
development skills complement the company's objective of providing support
that assists individuals in achieving their defined strategic and operational objectives.