Philosophies of Quality	Cafe Article - Improving Quality through Coaching
Monitoring for Quality
The Future of Quality	Activities & Games for Quality
Providing Feedback	Getting Buy in on Quality
Reporting Quality	Expectations for Quality Agents
Ad Hoc Monitoring Forms	More Quality Contests NEW!
	Related Books

Philosophies of Quality

Those new to the world of quality management need to be aware of the key concepts, and process that influence, measure, and drive the quality initiative forward.

While not all of these will apply directly to you, they do directly impact your organization, and as a quality professional, you must be aware of the processes in rough form.

They are as follows:

TQM         Total Quality Management

Six Sigma  Statistically Derived Performance Target represent 3.4 defects per million units

The birth of TQM…

TQM was a quality initiative that first saw its birth in Japan after the close of World War II.  The world stage had changed completely, and the birth of a new global market place was staring directly at a country that was still in recovery mode.  To compete with it’s western competitor, they brought an American advisor on board, W. Edwards Deming. 

Deming’s brought the theory that management, not the workers, was responsible for the quality of a company’s products but that the entire company needed to be involved and committed to the (quality) strategy.  It was this theory that transformed Japanese industry.  From its Japanese birth, TQM back-flashed across the Pacific to the shores of the US to begin domestic implementation where other greats (Joseph Juran, Armad Feigenbaum) continued to further the methodology and subsequent expansion of this new idea.

In the early 90’s, businesses realized that TQM was not a viable answer or “magic pill” to save them from the onslaught of global competition TQM began to lose steam.  With the popularity declining, many companies still held onto some TMQ fundamentals of on-the-job-training, teamwork, and worker empowerment.  Sound familiar?

The need for evolution…

As the shores get closer, the ongoing need for business mastery (high-profit, low-cost, complete customer satisfaction) resulted in TQM being analyzed and exploited for its strengths and then supplemented where it fell short.  The result was the birth of Six Sigma. 

Six Sigma’s foundation comes from Deming’s and Juran’s Total Quality Management, but is infused with a more aggressive, statistical driven approach.  Let’s say it shares DNA, but has taken some major evolutionary advances.  This new approach was pioneered by Motorola, Allied Signal, but made famous by Jack Welch-CEO of General Electric (GE Capital was the first service application) and is responsible for billions of dollars in savings, while increasing customer satisfaction.  This was accomplished by Six Sigma’s focuses on measuring product, quality, and cost savings by improving processes through a method called Statistical Process Control (SPC). Managers are measured no longer by stats alone, they are now measured in terms of “Sigma’s” and are held accountable accordingly. 

While the “T” in TQM stands for total, that was not always the case in terms of who drove the quality initiative.  In Six Sigma, the “T” was there and it was held in force highly trained Six Sigma specialists who were ranked by“Belts”.  The pinnacle of a Six Sigma specialist was a Black Belt.  These were truly the front line defenders, enforcers, and guides for the companies Six Sigma initiative.  Other leaders, depending on their level of Six Sigma training, were Green Belts, White Belts, and the lower being a company Champion.  With the leaders at the helm, and the followers on board, the potential for these companies were endless. 

So remember, the next time you drive a Honda, or the next time you turn on a light bulb, pause and give credence to the founders of some of the greatest quality thought on the face of the earth.

Now if you hear the words TQM, or Six Sigma, you can relate, if not contribute, to the conversation at hand and enjoy.

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Quality Centered Activities & Games for Call Centers

Motivating change and driving quality can be a challenge in any center.  Check out these Blitz days and promotions for some great ideas.  Download these documents and adapt them to your center or email us at staff@callcentercafe.com for ideas to tackle your specific quality issues.

Valentine's Blitz for Quality	Quality Courier - Quality Newsletter Template
Dash for Cash
Green & Groovy for Empathy	For editable versions of any of these documents email us at staff@callcentercafe.com.

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Monitoring for Quality

Sample Monitoring Forms

Monitoring Form Sample 1	Monitoring Form Sample 2
Sales Monitoring Form
Monitoring Acknowledgement The objective of this document is create situational urgency and understanding around the monitoring and feedback process with your reps. It ensures the expectation is understood, the process is clear, and a platform is built for how the progressive action process works in concert with the monitoring process. This tool is highly effective and can be given to a new-hire in training, or a tenured rep on the floor.
Quality Assurance Feedback Form The objective of this form is to take the actionable steps (areas of opportunity) from 1 or more monitors and collapse the feed-back into the vital view areas of improvement. The form is designed to provide a forum for a performance recap, as well as ensuring the agent understands the severity of the issue at hand, or specifically what they do well so that behavior is reinforced and encouraged. This form can be used weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, and by supervisors or QA.

Standards for Monitoring

• Monitor often.  It is best to set a number of calls that supervisors or QA's must monitor for each representative each month or each week.

• Communicate your monitoring process to the call takers.  If the floor understands what you are monitoring for and why they will be more successful on the call and easier to coach for improvement. 

• Pass out the monitoring forms to the call takers.

• Keep good documentation.  Thorough documentation of the call you monitored will help the call taker remember the call, in turn making the coaching process easier.

• Focus on improvement and Acknowledge what a call taker does well.

• Provide feedback from the monitoring as soon as possible.  Kudos for great calls, and corrections on errors can impact the customers the call taker speaks to down the road.

Here are some great Quality Standards to Listen for when monitoring.  These traits will ensure a quality customer experience.

• Be courteous
• Provide accurate information to our customers
• Ask the right questions
• Explain things in away that the customer understands by giving complete responses
• Handle calls efficiently; the customer will appreciate a prompt clean cut interaction
• Understand customer request – really listen to what the customer is saying
• Be willing to work with the customers making each customer feel their concern is important
• Handle calls correctly the first time – take time to respond fully to all customer questions
• Explain fully actions to be taken
• Remember to be courteous – treat every customer with kindness and respect

 

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Expectations for Quality Agents

Everyone works better when they know what is expected of them.  To ensure high performance from your Quality Monitoring Agents you may consider using these expectations for theor performance.  A clear understanding of their goals will provide a work path for success.

  Expectations for Quality Agents

The Future of Quality

How is Your Centers Quality? You probably would say that your center or team scores in the 90's, right?

Almost all success in business is determined by numbers, right? Hmmm, well maybe. It all depends on who you ask. And it all depends what factors you look at.

Profitability of an organization can be judged by margins and growth, but when it comes to quality we all have to remember that the judge is not final based on a number.  The judge is you and me and the many other customers out there in customer land! What do they have to say about things? What do they care about?

Here is a list that I bet you can relate with:

Provide the customer with a good Customer Service experience. Even if the customer cancels their accounts, they should be leaving with a satisfied experience. We may not save the customer today, but they may return to us in the future due to this experience.

If you and your team follow those rules and answer every call with the above as a guide you will have "Best In Class" Service.

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Getting Buy In on Quality

The best way to get buy in on any quality initiative is to communicate, communicate, communicate.  It is also a good idea to test your communication.  Here is an example of a simple survey to learn what your teams have learned about your Quality initiative.  The questions can be changed to suit whatever program you have rolled out recently. 

Quality Survey

When was the last time you recieved feedback on your quality performance?

How would you rate the feedback (1 - 10, 10 bing the best possible rating?

Was the feedback helpful?

Do you have any questions about the call quality rating system?

What suggestions do you have for improving call quality?

How can Training & Quality help make your job easier?

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Providing Feedback to Improve Quality

In many centers quality is measured by call monitoring.  Whether monitoring is the responsibility of the team supervisor or a dedicated quality assurance representative, feedback on the actions taken on calls is vital to improving and sustaining a high quality score.

Here are some tips for providing feedback to those who are monitored:

• Be honest.  People have to know how they are doing right and wrong in order to do their best work.
• Remember to give positive as well as negative feedback.  Pointing out what they did right.
• Be courteous.  Rudeness is counterproductive.  Consider the other person’s feelings as you choose your words.
• Frame criticism in a positive manner. 
• If you are giving negative feedback about a call, explain your reasons.  Focus your criticism on the action rather than attacking the person.
• Provide specific suggestions for improvement whenever you can.  State how the type of call should be handled in the future.

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Reporting Quality

Productivity Report

This is a daily productivity tracker designed to increase situational awareness and organization for both quality personal as well as providing a tool for inspection for Quality managers. It is designed to filled out daily in either hardcopy, or on a shared drive.

The document tracker shows how many monitors were completed for the day, number of Side X Side or remote monitors, and how many were Exceeding, Meeting, or falling short. All daily data is then auto-calculated for WTD trending. Week ending reports can then be e-mailed to the Quality manger, or printed and turned in hard copy every Monday for the prior week.

The report is easy, simple to modify, and provides a level of organization and detail to a process that can be easily neglected.

Quality Tracking for New Hires 

This report is an example of how we begin to track QA right out of training.. Once we made that point, we would move past this report. It's more of a training report, than quality.

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Ad Hoc Monitoring Forms

Mariam Webster Definition of Ad Hoc- 1 a : concerned with a particular end or purpose b : formed or used for specific or immediate problems or needs

An ad hoc monitor form is a tool, or tracking device created to track specific criteria to capture additional data that is needed for feedback.  An ad hoc form can be used in conjunction with, or to replace the existing monitor form to measure a specific aspect of the call flow.  The data captured is not limited to rep behavior, but can also track feedback or reactions from the customer.

As an example, let's say that reps feel that (AHT) average handle time has increased because "all" customers calling in are complaining about a rate increase for a product or service. The management team can build an ad hoc form to supplement the existing monitoring form, then track how many customers actually are complaining about the rate increase.  The objective will be to determe if reps are accurate in their assessment, or if the issue was mis-diagnosed.

The ad hoc forms can be as simple as keeping a running total of a specific criteria on a scratch sheet of paper, or as indepth as building a specific ad hoc form that resembles the structure of a more traditional monitoring form. 

If used alone, the forms also allow for quicker data capture, because not all call components need to be reviewed.  Using the above AHT rate increase example, all the person monitoring would need to hear is the customers reason for calling before disconnecting and dialing into another associate.  A more detailed analysis can be completed by timing the call once the customer refers to the rate increase.  This will provide an ad hoc AHT analysis in conjunction with tracking the reason for the call.

Below are two examples of ad hoc forms: One tracks AHT, the second tracks specific call components, but is shorter than the traditional call monitoring form.

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