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In this series we will discuss Contact Center industry trends and best practices, as well as sharing success stories and pain points with some of the most innovative professionals in the industry. Join us as we learn and grow together in order to provide world class customer service to each and every one of our clients.
Dave Hoekstra (00:01.006)
where we talk to some of the most interesting and exciting industry experts in the business here. We're talking contact centers, we're talking all things customer experience. My name is Dave Hookshire, Product Evangelist at Calab, and I am very excited today to have one of our amazing customers joining us. This is Janesh Nair. Janesh is from Hargreaves Lansdowne in the UK, and Janesh is here. We're going to talk to him a little bit about
some of the changes that he's implemented across his organization, how he's used Collabrio to kind of help some of those changes, and then just his general thoughts on productivity and how we can make contact centers better. So, Janesh, welcome. Thank you very much. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and especially about Hargreaves Lansdowne and what you do there. Hi, Dave. Nice to be here. This is my first trade rodeo, and I'm very excited about it.
About me, Janesh Nair, Head of Service Planning and Performance as he introduced. I've been in the contact center industry for about 20 years now. I mean, my hair is already grayed out, so I feel I should retire soon. But I started as an agent, funny enough. So I still remember my first call taking a, thank you for calling. And it was for a US customer. Thank you for calling Dell technical support. My name is Jack. Can I have a service tag number?
Please, that was my first call as an agent 20 years ago. I love it. Yeah, yeah, it was back in India, those days when contacts into a boom and fast forward 20 years, I'm head of service planning and performance for Hargreaves Lansdowne, one of the oldest financial services industry. do investments, pensions, founded by, so Hargreaves Lansdowne, so founded by Peter Hargreaves and Steve Lansdowne, so therefore Hargreaves Lansdowne.
So I joined Hargreaves Lansdowne December 2022. So three years now with Hargreaves Lansdowne, although feel longer than three years, but all for good. But before Hargreaves Lansdowne in the financial services, I was with Telco. So I was head of demand and partner performance with 3UK, the mobile telco company with UK. They are now three Vodafone, but I was with 3UK for almost 19 years. So it was...
Dave Hoekstra (02:19.041)
nine years in the contact center in India and then I moved from sunny Mumbai to sunny Glasgow and from Glasgow to Maidenhead and from Maidenhead to Bracknell now so I'm settled Dave in Bracknell so yeah that's me. Those two words usually don't go together sunny and Glasgow right? I know absolutely yeah but there are sunny days to be honest. I'm sure. There are sunny days in Glasgow. I call it my second home.
If you've never been there, would highly recommend. say people make Glasgow, so I would highly recommend to go. But yeah, I've been in the UK for the last 12 years now, fairly settled. I have my son who's 16 those teenager days. Dave, I'm sure you probably have kids as well, so you can know how that is. But yeah, interesting managing a teenager at the same time as managing planning and performance with Hargreeves Lansdowne. I'm sure there's a lot of similarities between managing a
contact center agents and staffing and managing a 16 year old, but I'm sure there are a lot of differences as well. Oh, there is a lot of difference. I think sometimes it's easier to manage a 350 odd agents in the contact center than one 16 year old because the different roles you play in life. I'm sure Dave you'll agree, but yeah, they are very, very different. I think you probably need more patience and more resilience when you're dealing with a 16 year old teenager than when you're dealing with 350 or people in the contact center.
Yeah, until you get that one agent that acts like a 16 year old and then you get you're like, hey, we're right back to it. True, that's true. so tell me a little bit about what you do for Hargreaves Lansdowne. I know you've got the planning background and know workforce management is a big part of what you do, but talk with me a little bit about your role. So I my role when I say planning and performance is specifically around service quality. It is specifically around service efficiency and service effectiveness.
In our Greece lands and broadly we have about 1200 odd frontline teams, know, client handling teams. And within those 1200 odd, we've got about roughly 350, 400. Those are telephone voice agents and email agents. And we've also got roughly about 750 or 800 odd sitting in the back office team. So my role is split into three broad functions. One of them is capacity planning, which is around your forecasting, scheduling, real time management.
Dave Hoekstra (04:40.558)
reporting as well to some extent. I've got one pillar on capacity planning. I have a team that looks at helpless capacity planning. I also have the traditional IVR as what we call as the Client Contact Services Management. One of my team looks at specifically managing our telephony platforms, ensuring, again, optimizing that platform and coming up with opportunities, how do we make the whole client journey on the IVR easier and really enhance the capability on the IVR.
I've also got a dedicated function which I call it as a COE for operations, which is focusing. We've got a different platform for operations there, but those are back-office specific. Again, we do forecasting, but we don't do scheduling and RTA for a back-office function because the SLA is different, can be managed operationally, but we definitely do forecasting, budgeting, resourcing, and reporting for the COE function. I've got three broad pillars.
Like I said, capacity planning for help desk, I've got the IVR function and I've got the COE for operations. But broadly, I'm accountable for about 1200 odd frontline teams performance and ensuring we've got the right people at the right time doing the right thing is what my team looks after. That's what, you know, people have live, laugh, love on their wall. know, yes, workforce planners are right people, right place, right time, right? time. Yeah, that's.
That's our live, laugh, love in our language here. Now know you said you've been with HL for going on just about three years. I'd imagine it's probably a little bit different today than it was when you got there. So what kind of things have you done in your time there to kind of really increase the productivity, proficiency, right? Making sure that the right people are in the right place at the right time. What are some things you may have you've done there?
Yeah, having done this stint for about, I said 20 years now. So I was bought in one of my directors said I need you in this organization really quick. There was a point today where I was doing two jobs and I had to sign an NDA. So was doing my usual telco roles Monday to Friday and Saturday, Sunday I was working for HL without joining for HL and I realized yeah and the Omni channel director then said realized and I've worked with the Omni channel director before at 3 UK and she'd moved there and she said.
Dave Hoekstra (06:58.224)
she started to realize that a service planning or workforce planning capability is such a foundational role or a capability that every organization should have. I think I started talking about service stability and what she was really struggling with having this capability land in Hargreaves Lansdowne because she could see that they were about to get into a stage where service drivers are about to struggle, the abandoned rates are gonna go 20 % plus, the brand reputation was at stake.
Net promoter score as we all know about was declining and she needed somebody in the organization That's where she poached me to say can you come and join how Greece lands down? And would you believe it or not within the first 30 days? I was right in front of the chairman of the board to talk about why help desk as one of our primary Service was about to struggle And I realized what was the problem?
After your time there, did you determine that there was a one or two kind of major issues or was it a combination of a of them? A combination of lot of them, Dave. So I typically say an operating model. You you have your technology. We didn't have the right workforce management solution in place. We didn't have the right capability in place. We didn't have the right process in place. We didn't have the right tools. Reporting was in place. A broad operating model when it comes to service, when it comes to workforce planning or service planning.
as a capability and as an op model was really missing in that function. And it's just how HL has been operated traditionally. contact centers, you probably know, you've met a lot of them, has evolved so much in the last 20 years. And HL being in the industry for 40 years, I thought they were well ahead in the organization. But HL was equally going through a technology transformation at the same point in time. one of the things that HL at the point in time missed was
they baked in the technology transformation benefits right upfront and start thinking that they will start to land as we designed. And they started not recruiting for those headcount. Therefore they were losing people and not backfilling that headcount. Okay. So give me, give me an example of kind of what you mean by that. So is it something to the effect of like, Hey, this should actually reduce the number of like back office agents you need, but they expected from day one that it starts and not from a year.
Dave Hoekstra (09:18.33)
from day one? Is that kind of thing? Exactly that. So day one it starts, but again, predicting that it's three months out. So you're already planning for three months out, but there's no way of scientifically proving the benefit realization. It hasn't landed yet. There is no way of reporting the measure of success. Did we have the right capability in the organization? Did we have the right talent who can produce that information? Not there. We lost schedule adherence as one of the capability when we launched that in.
to that new platform. So we basically switched from Avaya to Amazon and Dave, we lost schedule at the end straight away. Clearly we went two steps behind. So not having the right tech, not process, strategically not thinking about longer term investment, everything just added up. And that's where I was brought into the organization to really stand up. Like service planning and performance didn't really exist as a function. There was an operational reporting and optimization team. So really rebranded the team to say why this function
is important for service stability. So started off with Scratch, and that's how my collaboration with Collabrio picked up in the first six months to say, how could we get a state of the art tech that can give a lot of autonomy to agents, makes it easier, intuitive, powerful, have additional KPIs that can help manage the operations effectively and efficiently. So what kind of things did, speaking of agent autonomy, what kind of things did you bring in there that maybe
talk about what it was like before and then some of the things you brought in. So pre, I mean pre when I started in post, so we had an RTA function. So I'll pick it. Pre-Ginesh. Pre-Ginesh. We call it PJ. Yeah. PJ. PJ. Okay. I'll take that. So, you know, we had an RTA function, Dave. So we had an RTA function and we have a separate scheduling function.
We had a technology platform. So I'm going to give you an essence of structure. I'm going to give you an essence of how it worked as a process. And I'm going to give an essence of the technology we had at that point in time. So we had a technology partner. We had a RTA function. We had a scheduling function. Both never spoke with each other. And we had adherence as a KPI, but never reported out of the system. It was manually kind of generated.
Dave Hoekstra (11:40.305)
and we didn't have an end-to-end accountability of right from forecasting to scheduling to RTA to reporting, that whole cycle we talk about, that never existed. So when I joined the organization, there were a couple of things I did. First of all, I rebranded that team because nobody really recognized this team. There was this one team sat in the corner. One of the teams sat in the corner, they can do your schedules, they can do your RTA. That's how the brand image was for that team.
But it's really trying to rebrand that team and the value this team creates and why it is important for stability, efficiency and effectiveness is where I started to engage with the key stakeholders across the business and why this team is important. This team is not just about the here and now, but thinking about how do we give value over the next three years. So I had to articulate the story in each of those efficiency and effectiveness KPI, how if you start investing in the right people, in the right tool and the right processes.
we will start to see the financials eventually start to come. So I had this one slide Dave that I had to pull together. spoke about, I mean, I had this vision of hashtag go for gold as the best performing team for the European Contact Center Customer Service Awards. That was where I want to get to, but how to get that was trying to have the right people, the right tech, the right process, which will eventually drive the financials. And what will drive the financials Dave, we articulated that the
for example, shrinkage, you've probably heard about shrinkage, the time that an agent invests, right? So how do we move from X to Y? We were operating at 43 % shrinkage at that point in time. So significantly higher investment in training and breaks and just the whole model was not where it needed to be. We had transfers, in a team of three, 43, 50, we had about 25 different departments, which was a lot of transfers going from one department to the other department going on, right?
So I picked up every key measurable upfront. So how do we move shrinkage from X to Y? How do we move transforms from X to Y? We know if we reduce our transfers, we say client, not customers in a finance world, but how do we make sure they feel that they are answered one and done? You don't need to just keep ping ponging between different agents in the contact center. So how do we improve the process around it? So we defined clear outcomes of where do we want to get to.
Dave Hoekstra (13:59.823)
And we knew what technology, for example, we knew we were going from Avaya to Connect, but how do we really maximize the opportunity of the Connect platform and multi-skill agents upfront? So we did move from 20 or different departments to five or 60 departments, Dave, so we grouped them together. But when you do multi-skilling, Dave, this is why you need a platform in our workforce management that has the capability to understand competencies and able to do forecast predictions.
that looks at multiscaling as an environment and gives you the right measure. This is why we struggled with would say we could meet 5 % abandoned rate and could never take the complexity of multiscaling, but we ended up with a day 15 % abandoned rate. So you can see what we were struggling. So we really went out to the market to say, what else can we see in the industry that can actually give us a more enhanced capability that will allow us to manage a complexity of multiscale environment.
yet do accurate predictions modeling and start to unlock basic foundation like scheduler adherence. You spoke about autonomy. The autonomy that we really wanted is we didn't want to grow the RTA team. In the old world, we would have emails to an RTA team, can you change my shift? Can you change my lunch? Can you change my break? That was all manual. We wanted to make sure that we give that autonomy and self-serve to the agents back.
We didn't have an app. example, Calabrio has an app. We didn't have an app at that point in time. So if you change the shift of things or anything, there was no notification. know, agents can't check. We have 30 % of our resource working from home, Dave. So sometimes it's not easy. So we did a lot of change with the ability for the agent to do shift trades or swaps without the involvement of an RTA because they are real-time analysts. I don't want them to do management overheads. I want them to analyze the performance rather than changing the shift from X to Y. Does that all make sense?
That's what Collabria kind of helped us because it unlocked a lot of self-serve where agents can do things without the dependency on RTA. And I combined RTA and scheduling as one function, Dave, rather than as two different functions. Sorry, I'm just going to pause. I'm conscious I've said a lot in that. this is great. This is the best thing. The only thing I was going to kind of reiterate is how important it is to... In a lot of cases, it's funny.
Dave Hoekstra (16:21.061)
We see a lot of organizations, a lot of contact centers that pay their agents, let's say 15 an hour, right? Let's just put a number out there. And then you have your RTA analysts who make 18 an hour, you know, whatever, you know, they make more than the agents. And then we see these RTA agents doing nothing but doing schedule exceptions and minor updates all day long. And they're being paid more.
but their job is significantly less challenging than an agent because all they're doing is typing in schedule changes all day long. And I really like how you approached it because getting rid of that minutia in a day to day for an RTA analyst or a scheduling analyst is so critical because at the end of the day, we need those people to be analysts and strategists, not data entry clerks.
And that's what happens. And so did you do some analysis on what your schedule adherence was? Have you seen some improvement in that spot? Yeah, when we launched through Calabria, our schedule adherence was at 82%. We're now at 91%. So I think 92 % is industry best is what I know so far, given the complexity we've got. So we've moved up almost nine percentage points when we started and where we are so far. A couple of weeks to do, but...
I think you spoke about that RTA journey. You're spot on in terms of how RTA is perceived versus RTA where it needs to be. And the key thing is it is analyst. Remember I said I started as an agent. I moved my rank into head of service planning and performance from an agent to an RTA to a senior planner. That's how I moved into the organization. And any successes I've had, I've always passed on to my function as well. and I've always seen, you know, RTA is a ladder to where I want to be. I think you start to develop and hone the skills of
How can you really help the client and start to contribute in terms of the financials eventually? Most of us who started the journey don't see that as a part of the journey. But somebody who's lit in the fire through stones, you know what I'm saying about? Like it's not about I know how to do the fire through the stones. It's about teaching somebody how you can light the fire through the stones, right? That's my role as a leader. And that's the change I wanted to bring into the role. Hence I changed the RTA's role.
Dave Hoekstra (18:43.194)
from an RTA to a scheduler combined, I call them as business partners. Not RTA, I call them as business partners with the function. So they partner with the function to drive the business outcomes. So they are equally measured on service levels. They are equally measured on HD. They're equally measured in driving the right outcomes and quality in NPS as well. So they've got access to all of that richer information. And take the...
You know, those overhead work of schedule. That's why the autonomy was important because I had to create space for the RTA. So start thinking about how do I add value and let's not call them RTA. Let's call them as business partners that drive the outcome for the organization. It puts them in a silo, right? When you call somebody an RTA analyst, you're like, Hey, stay in your lane, stick to analyzing RTA. But if you tell them that they're, they're a business partner that they are, that it's their job, they're the ones that can say, Hey,
I'm seeing this, let's do this. And, and everybody says, stay in your lane, RTA weirdo, right? you know, we don't, don't have that, that problem anymore. And I really liked that approach because I think we see this a lot too, with, you know, traditionally workforce management teams and quality teams have been separate, right? You you, you, you stay over there and do your quality. We'll stay over here and do the scheduling. And, we're starting to see a lot of those teams start to integrate.
a lot because the function of, let's say, an RTA analyst, hey, all of a sudden, a whole bunch of people are taking extra long and after call work, what's going on? Instead of just yelling at them for being an ACW forever, they switch modes and say, well, what's going on? And then, oh, hey, we're getting a lot of these really complicated calls. Why are you getting these complicated calls? Oh, it's because this particular notice went out.
and people are confused and we didn't do a good job explaining to our customers what's going on, right? And when you can empower one person or one team to kind of switch that mode and do that research, you really do start to notice a lot of the benefit. 100%. And that's why I call it shared goals or shared accountability across the operations because they know whether it's operations or MI or quality, they know it's a shared goal. We are all in it together to get the right outcomes.
Dave Hoekstra (21:00.112)
I think that you're spot on in terms of analyzing the performance, but there's sometimes also about the colleagues on the phone at the end of the day. Remember, we probably can have a client who's really frustrated, has been multiple times, can also get to abuse sometimes. So an agent can feel the pressure. So sometimes the conversation and understanding, if an agent is really struggling on the day, has barely taken 10 calls, should have taken 20, it's also the RT can actually help in understanding what's driving the conversation. Maybe you need a half an hour break.
Do you need to go for a break and come back? I can help you. I can manage the conversation. it's also understanding eventually they are humans as agents, like I was an agent. So it's trying to help the business, but also helping the colleague on the phone to make sure that if they need a downtime, RT can actually enable to give them a downtime. Because you really need to build those relationships. And I think RT builds a stronger relationship with every agent on the phone. They're the most connected than anybody else. I get asked the question a lot. Why?
Why are contact centers the way they are today? I don't get that specific question, but the general idea. Why all of a sudden do agents have this autonomy? Why all of a sudden does an RTA analyst have the ability to step up and say, we need to change this, right? And my answer is that people like you and me, Janesh, are not running these organizations. People who grew up in this
in this industry who like you said, 20 years ago, you took your first call for Dell and you probably remember how aggressive your goals were and how if you even stopped for two seconds to take a sip of water, someone would appear over your shoulder and say, get back on the phones, Janesh, what are you doing? And knowing what that does to a person's psyche, to their ability to be empathetic and caring to a customer, that's why things are changing.
is because we now have an entire generation of leaders that have been through the dark ages. I guess that's the best way to say it. And it's really refreshing to hear you not only give your agency autonomy, but give your RTA analysts or your business partners, as you would put it, the autonomy to say, no, no, no, hey.
Dave Hoekstra (23:20.961)
once you take 10 minutes off the phones, just go breathe, get a drink of water, relax, know, think about, just, you know, take a second because that we we've learned over the course of a few years that, the, perhaps the key metric to a contact center surviving and really delivering good customer experience is attrition. And if we can, if we can lower that attrition,
we can have a significant impact on our CX. And I think those are the little things that lead to people going, you know what, I like this job and I want to stick around because they treat me like a person. Yeah. I would take a one step ahead, Dave, because attrition is once somebody has lost and left the organization, you start to get the themes of the attrition much earlier as a part of the engagement feedback. So this is why I think the RT or the schedule or any planning that so should be invested in what your people are trying to tell you.
and really give the opportunity to listen. difference between listening and hearing, you know that, right? I think a lot of us wants to speak first and not listen first. So it's important to listen to feedback first. And it's a gift, I always say feedback is a gift. So I think it's good to listen first and see what the general sense of the organization is, what people think about a certain process, what could we do differently? And you really start to get a lot more from that conversation. So you can really
before it impacts as an attrition, you know, can take actions much prior. So that's what I think. think it's better. It's, time to get those feelers much earlier by being engaging with the organization upfront and having the opportunity to listen and listen to the feedback. What, what the operation has to say, what the colleagues has to say. So we've talked about a lot of good. We've talked about a lot of cool things that you've done. And I'm going to ask you, is there anything you wish you could have done differently?
Anything you you've realized midway through? I probably shouldn't have done it that way. Have you learned? What have you learned in this journey?
One thing I would change in the last six or 12 months is create one dedicated MI function for HL that is agile, not dependent on technology and costs. OK, that's great. We always like to teach a little bit as we can and we let other people make mistakes for us, right? And then we learn from that.
got one more for you. spoke about structure in technology, which we're already getting onto, is trying to integrate our Calabrio with Workday platform. I spoke about time and all of it takes. I don't need an agent to have multiple platforms to do one thing. If I'm requesting for a holiday, why do I need an RT or a scheduler to put that on a Calabrio platform? yeah, you would know this probably. So I'm moving to that as well. How could I just take combined two platforms for one?
which makes it easier for the agent easier for the scheduler. I'm often surprised at how many people don't realize that something that can be done right that you know just going back to my days of OK, request it in WFM and then then when it gets approved, turn around and add it into your payroll system and then and then when that's done.
Dave Hoekstra (28:02.405)
have your team lead check it. And it's like all that can be so automated and so much easier and can save hours and hours of time. And just like, just like we talked about, get, gets rid of the minutia, a lot of, a lot of the day to day. And the problem with workforce management as a function is there's a lot of minutia. There's a lot of little updates that have to happen day in and day out. And any of that you can automate, you're going to have an immensely easier day.
for sure. So that's great to hear. I love to hear that. And that's something that we hear from a lot of people is that the payroll integration changed my life, right? Those, those things. I can't wait. Yeah. I can't wait. I'm sure easily it will take about X percentage of the time away and people will love that. Yeah. The problem is, what do you do with all that free time, right? Invest. Yeah. There's so much. There's so much to do. Yeah. All right. So as we get, this has been great. And as we get closer to wrapping up,
You know, I love the things that you have done. We learned quite a bit about kind of an approach, right? And I think that's, that's the, the ultimate goal is there are, there are things that we should focus on in the day to day. But if you don't have that beacon, that driving strategy, that light at the end of the tunnel, that, pushes you towards it. I go back to your point about how, when you sat in front of the board and said,
Here's where we are today and here's where we're going to get to. And here's the KPI and here's the journey. So critical. We get asked a lot. Like, how do I get, how do get the VPs to listen to me? How do I get people to, to listen to the things that I want to try to do as people try to really enhance their journey towards leadership? And that's such a big part of it is you have to have a map. have to have, you have to have a GPS or a sat nav, as you might say in the, in the UK.
You need to have that roadmap laid out in front of you so that you know where you're gonna get and you have to track and plot that. And I think that strategy that you've kind of laid out is very, very helpful to a lot of people. But as we get closer wrapping up, one of the things I do with all of my guests is I give them the call center lifer quiz. So are you game for the call center lifer quiz? let's go for that. Okay, all right. Well, the first question I always ask,
Dave Hoekstra (30:28.561)
You've already answered. The first question is this. Have you worn the headset and you you tell you told us that your your first your first call center was Dell technical support in Mumbai. Anything you remember from those days that that's interesting. It was a midnight shift Dave. So this was US customers. I was in India so imagine starting a shift at 1 AM 2 AM 3 AM. Your you know your pickup is there at 1113 tonight. So Bradley it's like an overnight.
throughout the shift and it was so tough because we're barely talking about, I won't even tell you what my first salary is because it's ridiculous now 20 years ago. if the schedules changes, you'll end up working 10 days at a stretch here, so there's no notice for you. The team leader might just ask me to do overtime for an extra five hours. So it was a proper groundhog continuous. I used to have nightmares waking up at 2 AM thinking about a-
a customer's asking me to change their floppy drives and I used to wake up, shit, I didn't do it right. So it was hard. It was really, really hard. I'm talking about contact center 20, 2005, right? So you can imagine how that was, you know, every experience teaches you a lot. So if I'm resilient today, if I'm strong today, it's thank you to my experience I've had 20 years ago. So that's my tip of why you need to have those tougher days in life that helps you to get stronger when you grow up.
Yep. All right. Question number two is what was the moment that you kind of said, hey, I really like this. Did you have that aha moment where planning, workforce management, that kind of thing really kind of struck you as maybe a career? I was obsessed with forecasting a lot. Yeah. So it's not weather forecasting, Dave, but it's about contact forecasting.
And I used to be strong in my mathematics in school and college days, right? So the moment when I entered into the world of forecasting and numbers and I've started to realize my predictions and actual started to come closer for a longer period of time, that was my aha moment. I said, I can do this. I know how to do this. I mean, this is again 10, 15 years ago, but that's the moment I realized I've understood RTA, I've understood a of scheduling because you follow a process.
Dave Hoekstra (32:52.22)
But predictive modeling is slightly more complicated, right? Because you've got the whole demographics involved. And when I started to see the actual results coming to life, and I realized this is great, I'm loving it. So that's the moment, know, when I was an analyst saying, this is what I want to get to. Plus in the opportunity of working with a lot of people, because, you know, I can see this workflow spanning function actually does work with a lot of functions within the organization, finance, marketing, you know, people.
HR team. think one function that touches many. it's the ability to start building relationships and credibility. The rule was like, wow, I can do this. So I've enjoyed that. Well, speaking of that, that's kind of the next question. there a singular person that you would maybe want to give a shout out to that really had an influence on your
I had many people who's influenced me in my career. have many leaders who have inspired me. But if I want to give a shout out, I'm in HL today and I'm in front of you having this conversation. My director, Rohini Mehra, she was the Omni-Channel Director. She's a Chief Integration Officer now with Bromford Housing. I would definitely want to give her a shout out. She's been with me in my career for about 20 years when I was an agent to now.
That's job of a leader, right? So identify potential and then try to shape them into something well. Rohini Mehra, definitely would like to give it a shout out. That's awesome. Well, thank you Rohini for giving such sage advice and being there for Janesh as we go through. right, second to last question. What is your favorite KPI? My favorite KPI, wow. Hard one. My favorite KPI. I'm going to say net promoter score.
Okay. Any particular reason? Is that your last question? No, no. That's an added question. This is 4.1. I think it's the pulse of the organization. It generally tells you whether the organization is going to stay or not. And it just gets, you know, it's an indirect KPI on effectiveness and efficiency. just feel it takes financials, brand, everything into one. So I just feel the Net Promoter Score just talks about everything. Perfect.
Dave Hoekstra (35:11.953)
All right, final question. Is there a mistake you made in your career that you wish that someone else could learn from?
that is a tough one. Is that a mistake I made in my career? Some could learn from.
That is a tough one. Yeah. I'm thinking I'm thinking. That's the point of the quiz. know some some people have and I'll give you mine. I'll tell you tell you mine and then maybe it's spur on my mistake. I made very early in my career was thinking I was alone in doing it. And granted back then the networking was a little bit different of a process or a lot. Yeah, LinkedIn didn't exist, know.
there weren't these organizations out there that do that. And so I just always tackled everything on my own. then when I did finally realize that there was a network of people out there that did what I did, it was like just eye opening for me. And so my mistake early on was thinking that I had to do this alone. I think that's a good one. I think you've just probed me to think about the experience I've had where I felt
And because probably I'm more emotional about the work I do, I sometimes don't distinguish between work-life balance, but this is spot on, right? So I've had these experiences where I have to ask for help. Don't assume that you're just yourself. So yes, I've reached out to colleagues in the organization when I struggle, so you're spot on. So I've had those examples as well. But Dave, can I also talk about, because I'm from Hargreaves Lansdowne, we are in the finance industry. One mistake I did in the finance, what I've learned from Hargreaves Lansdowne.
Dave Hoekstra (36:50.193)
in my career is invest early, start early. I only started in 2022. I would definitely recommend that we should start early. Okay. All right. And have Hargreaves lands down and make sure to manage it for you, correct? Yes, please. Absolutely. 100%. All right. Well, that's fantastic. Great job. That's the call center life for quiz. See, wasn't too hard. The final thing that I always like to give our guests is a chance for just one final thought. Anything you'd want to say to everybody listening?
Yeah, so I think I've always said this to my team as well. I always say stay curious and I say stay humble. It's very, very important. I think somebody comes from a planning background. You've got to constantly stay curious about what's driving, ask the question, seek for help. So, you know, beat performance, beat people, beat anything else. But I think that as a value system really help you grow, you know, whatever role, whatever title. So and I spoke about staying humble as well. Sometimes it's OK. Things might not go the way you want it to be, but that's OK.
Just recognize the moment. Life is hard, but that's fine. But like you said about asking for help, so I'm gonna definitely say stay curious and stay humble. Curiosity is what separates the coffee from the cream, my friend. It is truly the most underrated attribute, I think, in business and in life. 100%. It just needs reminded, generally, I think it doesn't come subconsciously at all. I think it's how do you get that constantly?
It's hard, but I think as leaders, our job is to make sure we drive that consistently across, regardless of whether it's your team or not your team. Absolutely. Well, Janesh, it has been an absolute pleasure having you join us here on Working Smarter. Thank you so much for the time. Really looking forward to maybe having a follow-up, spending a little time maybe out with you guys in the UK sometime. But really, really glad we got a chance to catch up and do some of the main things here.
I really appreciate it. So thank you for joining us. Thank you for spending time with us. Really appreciate it. No problem at all. I really enjoyed it. Like I said, it was my first radio, so I was a bit nervous, but this was very good and you made it really comfortable for me. Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. You were great. You were fantastic. So thank you out there to everyone listening. My name is Dave Hoekstra, Product Evangelist at Collabrio. This has been the Working Smarter podcast. As always, if you have any questions, please find a way to get in touch with me. It is not that hard.
Dave Hoekstra (39:13.273)
If you want to be a guest on the podcast, let me know. We're happy to have as many people on as we can, but we're always looking for new episodes and new things to talk about. So appreciate all of you spending some time with us today. And we'll talk to you again on the next episode of working smarter from collaborative.