I was proofing the monthly SQA reports for one of our clients last night. This team has had a tenacious supervisor. He held a high standard for his team and used our monthly reports, both team and individual CSR reports, to hold his team accountable for delivering a high service standard. Just over a month ago the supervisor moved on to a new position and the supervisor role was not immediately filled. The call center manager has been filling in during the interim, but knowing her job and all that’s on her plate, I don’t expect that much direct supervision is actually taking place.
Wouldn’t you know it? The team’s service performance plummeted this past month.
In recent years I’ve heard a cacophany of industry voices saying that QA is old school and ineffective. Most of the time, it seems to come from the technology sector who have a new widget to sell which promises to measure quality better (without actually involving humans) with the click of a mouse – or who want businesses to direct dollars spent on quality to their latest technology fad.
Last night’s report was a good reminder to me, and to my client, why the old fashioned discipline of setting an expectation, measuring behavior, encouraging, coaching and holding your people accountable works. You can set the expectation, but without the measuring, encouraging, coaching and accountability you’re not going to know if your team is delivering on that expectation (and it’s likely they won’t). It may not be glitzy. I may not be glamorous. Because it involves humans and human interaction it can even get messy at times. But, it works.
Ask my client, who this morning can go into her team meeting with the data to know how her team performed, what they did well, and what specific service behaviors they stopped demonstrating once they thought they weren’t going to be held accountable. She knows specifically what they need to do and can efficiently communicate the game plan and expectation for improvement.
