Building a Quality Program That Drives Business Success

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1 sponsor spotlight / dec 2011 Building a Quality Program That Drives Business Success by Linda Duba, Business Consultant, NICE Pipeline White Papers

2 Building a Quality Program That Drives Business Success Linda Duba Business Consultant, NICE Linda Duba is a business professional with over 25 years of Contact Center experience supporting services operations, training, project management, branding and customer experience management for a worldwide financial services company. She is viewed as an expert problem solver, negotiator, presenter and customer-focused individual able to forge solid relationships across an organization, as well as with strategic partners with expertise in consensus building across multiple organizational groups and levels. Linda has a Bachelor of Science Degree from South Dakota State University. Linda can be contacted at linda.duba@nice.com So, you ve just assumed the role of quality manager and have been tasked with redesigning the Quality Program, including the monitoring form. Where do you begin? How do you proceed? What steps do you take to ensure that the new program meets everyone s needs from the agent to the executive? These are challenging questions that require a thoughtful and structured approach. The right Quality Program has the potential to transform your contact center into a powerhouse that drives business results. This transformation begins by changing the quality culture from a monitor environment to one of focused and proactive change management. The following Quality Redesign Roadmap is based on work with thousands of contact centers of all sizes: 1. Establish the Strategic Vision, based on corporate business objectives. Assess current Quality program 2. Establish new Quality guidelines 3. Design new monitoring form 4. Communicate change 5. Coach, coach, coach 2

3 I. Establish Strategic Vision One of the keys to building an effective Quality Program is knowing what to measure and how those metrics help drive business success. An executive sponsor can help you establish a strategic vision for the program based on corporate objectives. This guidance will drive your process and form design. Your sponsor can define key business initiatives and business goals: Overall business vision and brand What is the vision statement and how is this vision practiced within the organization on a daily basis? What message/image does your business strive to project to customers and employees? Market share and/or customer acquisition What are the specific initiatives planned to acquire new customers and how does the contact center support those plans? Revenue What are the current revenue sources and channels? How does the business extend/expand the customer relationship? Are there new strategies to increase revenue per customer? How can the contact center support those strategies? Customer satisfaction How is satisfaction measured? Is Net Promoter a key measure? Is FCR a key business metric? What comprises FCR? Does customer satisfaction and feedback drive organization change? Is there a Problem Incidence/Service Recovery process metric? These corporate objectives are the basis for your strategic vision a simple statement of how the Quality Program will support these goals. For example: The ABC Company Customer Service Quality Program ensures that the Customer Service organization achieves the highest levels of customer satisfaction, while meeting our growth objectives and operating in the most efficient manner possible 3

4 II. Assess Current Program The next step is understanding how agents, supervisors, and managers feel about the Quality Program, and how well the program supports the strategic vision. You may find that supervisors as well as agents are somewhat mistrustful of the current monitoring process and the evaluation form. Agents feel like they re being watched and/or corrected. Supervisors struggle using the monitoring form and helping agents improve their performance, versus just monitoring for errors. In many cases, you will also find misalignment between the strategic objectives and the specific behaviors and skills being evaluated. III. Establish New Quality Guidelines At this stage, establish a Quality Council comprised of key stakeholders in the quality process: agents, supervisors, trainers, sales coaches, and managers. Members will gather peer feedback and ideas they can bring to the table, as well as draw upon their own experiences and ideas. Through a series of meetings and feedback sessions, the Council will review the strategic vision and begin the process of translating those into pragmatic Quality components. Map behaviors that relate to each of the business initiatives and goals. For example: Sales effectiveness Problem identification, ownership, and problem resolution Effective listening Relationship building and rapport Courtesy Empathy Effective Call Management Document the need to have components based on: Legal or regulatory requirements Customer security or privacy The Brand if branding drives your business Assess all components using these statements Are they actionable; will they lead to better business results, process change, or customer satisfaction? Can they be objectively defined? 4

5 If they can be defined, are there tactical ways to coach for improvement? Will they help identify and close process and satisfaction gaps? Will they help motivate agents, supervisors, Coaches, and trainers towards continuous quality improvement? Finally, the Council develops themes and groups the accepted components within these themes, such as: Opening/Greeting/Customer Verification Probing/Problem Identification Fundamentals/Policy or Process Adherence Finesse/Soft Skills Sales Effectiveness/Expanding the relationship Closure/Ensuring Customer Satisfaction IV. Form Design Now it s time to design the actual Quality monitoring form. Start by strategically placing the strategic vision on the form. It will serve as a reminder and reinforcement to quality, coaching, and agent development. Next build the questions, statements, and supporting coaching points that will be used for measurement. Ensure that the question or statement has supporting coaching points within the form where possible. Refer to your assessment criteria to clearly define each question/ statement. Ensure the sections and questions provide a logical flow. Agents and Quality Analysts will provide valuable insight here since they service/listen to calls on a daily basis. Effective flow will save time for Quality Analysts. Finally determine the importance of each section and questions/statements within those sections. Refer to the strategic business initiatives to help make these scoring decisions. Look for critical questions that support compliance, regulatory, customer satisfaction objectives. Weight the form according to the behaviors you wish to drive and can support with positive coaching. 5

6 V. Communicate Change Few organizations put enough emphasis on the critical step of communications. Providing information updates throughout the development and design process goes a very long way in making your program a success. Use bulletin boards, intranet sites, team meetings, desk drops, etc. to keep employees informed of various stages and decisions being made. The more they know, the more likely they are to process the changes and accept them. Ensure they have feedback channels. Design a launch process that incorporates a nesting phase for the new form. Use parallel testing with both the existing and new form to understand how agent performance is impacted. This also allows agents, supervisors, coaches, and analysts to adapt to the changes. VI. Coach, Coach, Coach John Wooden, former UCLA Basketball coach and the Wizard of Westwood said, A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment. The entire purpose of evaluation and measurement is to improve and improvement happens in the direct feedback, encouragement, and guidance provided between agent and supervisor/quality coach. The best coaching practices involve both virtual and sit-down coaching. Virtual coaching gives the agent the opportunity to receive written feedback and review evaluations and call recordings on their own, as well as conduct self-assessments. Almost always, this time to listen, consider and reflect creates an openness to truly hearing the feedback and learning from it. When that virtual coaching is then followed by a sit-down meeting, the impact grows tremendously. Great coaching is a dialogue, not a lecture. The agent is receptive and the learning and growth happens at a dramatic rate. And, when the coaching and feedback is firmly rooted in important objectives for the company, it becomes an experience of working as a team towards common goals, vs. an interpersonal and subjective evaluation. In summary, the roadmap laid out in this document will help your transform your Quality Program to a strategic asset for your organization Establish Strategic Vision and sure that the Quality program is aligned with corporate objectives Assess current program Find out what works and what doesn t 6

7 Establish new Quality Guidelines Assemble a Quality Council who represent peer ideas, provide positive feedback, and clearly communicate the quality message as change occurs Design a new form. Use a clean slate approach to quality form design ensuring that possible components pass the assessment test: Support the strategic vision Provide actionable and objective metrics and coaching points Drive positive business and customer satisfaction change Communicate change through multiple channels Motivate and engage employees in constant improvement via coaching Remember, Quality is a journey with great challenges and tremendous potential rewards. Employ these principles to avoid a bumpy ride and guide your organization to gain utmost value from this important process. Contact Linda Duba at linda.duba@nice.com. About Contact Center Pipeline Contact Center Pipeline is a monthly instructional journal focused on driving business success through effective contact center direction and decisions. Each issue contains informative articles, case studies, best practices, research and coverage of trends that impact the customer experience. Our writers and contributors are well-known industry experts with a unique understanding of how to optimize resources and maximize the value the organization provides to its customers. To learn more, visit: Online Resource This issue is available online at: December 2011, Contact Center Pipeline Pipeline Publishing Group, Inc. PO Box 3467, Annapolis, MD (443) info@contactcenterpipeline.com 7