A New Sound Foundation is one step further. What started more than a year ago with a call on Linkedin has led to hackathons, the establishment of the foundation and recently the announcement of a traineeship for up-and-coming talent. Or in the terms of the foundation: for the new generation of managers in customer contact. An update.

 

With the traineeship the foundation has laid an extremely concrete egg. What will come out of that egg remains to be seen. In any case, the ambition is that the new generation of managers will help the industry further, according to Anne Hettema and Chantal Rovers, directors of Stichting Een Nieuw Geluid. They consider the traineeship a bit like “the youth wing of a political party”. For this group – people who are at the start of their career in customer contact, with no more than two years of managerial experience and who, as Rovers puts it, have fallen in love with the field – “there is very little organization.”

“There are a few initiatives, such as the sessions of SUSA which are very valuable. But there is no structured development program where people can gain knowledge or a safe setting where there is room for new ideas and discussions. It is nice if you have a manager who gives you the space to develop further and to orientate yourself in the industry, but where can you go as a young professional?”

It starts with you

The traineeship is a nine-month development process that includes input from the hackathons. Two training agencies from outside the customer contact industry were engaged to design the program. That is a conscious choice, to give space to a new sound. “Both agencies are active in the hospitality industry, we think there is overlap with how we look at service from a customer contact point of view. Both agencies mainly take care of the part that is aimed at personal development.”

The A New Sound traineeship starts with a somewhat traditional part, Rovers acknowledges: a two-day meeting where participants get to work with their DISC profile, among other things. Nevertheless, as far as Rovers and Hettema are concerned, this is a logical starting point if you want to get started with personal effectiveness: relevant if you want to use your influence to do things differently.

“I think that thinking and acting differently will quickly apply to the new generation,” said Rovers. “In my team, colleagues who are, for example, 24 years old really look at the world differently than I do. They set different priorities, ask different questions, deal with digital resources differently and can help us with new ideas.”

Our ambassadors

The intention is that fruitful interaction will take place within the program – within the group of participants, but also with the nine ambassadors who have committed themselves to the program and the purpose of the foundation. These ambassadors (eight men and one woman) are professionals aged between 35 and 50 who have earned their spurs in the customer contact industry. Don't you run the risk of having to deal with old thinking patterns or old ideas again?

Rovers responds: “It was not a conscious choice that there is only one woman. We have looked at people who have been open to the conversation in the past period. We also wanted to stay away as much as possible from the names and faces that you already see in many clubs and groups. That didn't quite work out, but I think we have a really good group; the ambassadors are people who are not afraid to speak out, they are evenly matched, they can facilitate an open dialogue and familiarize the participants with our field.”
The agreement is that the ambassadors will in any case leave their commercial hats at home, Rovers and Hettema are explicit about that.

'The entire customer contact industry'

Rovers and Hettema also want their traineeship to enable participants to get to know 'the entire customer contact sector'. What exactly do they mean by that?

Rovers: “I once started as a customer contact employee and grew into team leader. I have always fulfilled these roles at various facility parties. They are quite similar, but they are certainly not representative of our entire field. So we want to take trainees on the road: to in-house contact centers, to facility services of various shapes and sizes, to other players in the industry.”

Hot issues

De call from Rovers in January 2022 led to dozens of widely differing responses: 'no people over 45 present', 'we need to talk about actions directly instead of just brainstorming', and 'I suggest creating a new standard starting with a converted salary threshold of €16 per hour'. 'Files' were also mentioned as low wages, no pension, no prospects, high turnover, data breaches and poor management. In short, there are plenty of pain points to address.

One of these is explicitly addressed in the traineeship in the form of a training day with the theme 'sourcing strategy'. What will be the new sound when it comes to moving jobs to low-wage countries because costs need to be cut?

Rovers: “As with other subjects, it starts with having a conversation. And show very openly and honestly what flavors there are. Scale is often a determining factor in our industry, but that is not the only taste there is: there are also smaller parties that organize it in a different way. We want to enable participants to talk to each other about which variants there are, why which choices are made, and how the participants view this themselves. I think we can get people to make a new sound by showing them the whole picture.”

Black box

What are the expectations of Rovers and Hettema when it comes to the outcome of the traineeship? Hettema: “We ourselves are not the new sound. I hope we ourselves are really amazed at what it delivers in terms of new sound. For us it is a bit of a black box that we can open later and hopefully an inspired group of young people will come out of. With a network with which they can really change something. On a smaller or larger scale. Many people have been involved in our initiative in recent months. Now there is something concrete that is based on the input of many people. It is now up to the industry itself to show whether they are really ready for a new sound. Whether they want to get started with this or whether they say: well, the way things are going now, it is actually fine.”

 

If you would like to know more about the program, please contact info@stichtingeennieuw Geluid.nl register for a personal introductory meeting or for one of the online information sessions on Thursday, April 13, 2023 from 15:30 PM to 16:30 PM, Tuesday, April 18, 2023 from 12:00 PM to 13:00 PM or Thursday, April 20, 2023 from 09:30 AM to 10:30 am. Or look up A New Sound.

(Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

Event, Featured, Human Resources