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Five Steps to Building a High Performance Organization (Part 4)      In order to have a high performance organization, it takes effort and discipline to ensure that the right processes are in place. A high performance organization involves all people in its organization providing excellent quality in both, products and services. Exceptional customer services and continuous improvement programs are also vital. The fourth step to being a high performance organization is to give your agents feedback on how they are doing by providing insight and progress. In this month's newsletter we will cover the fourth step of a five step series to building a high performance organization.      If your call center is a high performance car and your people are the engine, providing feedback will give them the tools to tune for best performance. Feedback is the process in which the output of the results of agents’ call-handling efforts are returned to them so that they can understand whether they have been successful in doing their job - a necessary step whenever people attempt to achieve a goal.      Ensuring that the feedback you provide is targeted toward your agents’ job performance goals is the most important way to show them how to excel and what a successful career will entail. Feedback is a learning mechanism, a form of training that provides people with a context for altering behavior to hone in on results. The steps to answering these questions and ensuring success are as follows: Understand methods of feedback: After you tell them what to do and why feedback can enhance expectations, with measures of those expectations clearly communicated. Using performance metrics through the use of accurate statistics, you can define a measure for providing feedback as to whether the agent is moving toward that goal. Ideally, have some sort of uncluttered and non-overwhelming dashboard of information that will give the agent an up-to-the-minute reading on how they are doing. It is important that your agent will be able to finish the sentence at all times: "Based on my performance, if I had my review today, I would ...". Follow a feedback plan: You can use an OPI (Overall Performance Index) results type of approach, in which case you would do the following: Start with the underachievers (40% of time) - The first thing you do is review the critical weakness of each agent by looking at the individual stats that make up their overall performance index. After giving some suggestions, you provide both an action plan and documentation and have the agent sign off on the plan. Move on to the peak performers (10% of time) - Spend time with your peak performers to understand what they are doing right. After you assess what skills they have excelled at, you can then partner them with an underachiever as a peer coach. Attend to the rest of the team (50% of time) - Direct your attention to the rest of the team and especially to those that are close to peak performance, as they may only need a little push to put them over the edge. Undertaking the performance review: The performance review can be anything from very effective to a disaster for motivation and overall performance and this is primarily determined by how the agent feels about their performance. If your agent has the tools to keep track of their ongoing performance, the review should not reveal any new information, but simply be a recap. If the agent knows where he/she stands, then the resulting appropriate raise, bonus or corrective action will not come as a surprise. Further, the rest of the review can then be used to discuss the agent’s future direction and goals. Common practice is to conduct reviews quarterly in order to allow enough time for both new employees and current employees to implement changes. Giving one-on-one feedback: Most of the agents’ stats should be provided automatically, but some will require some personal feedback. When doing this, the process is simple, begin with the behavior, review the results, outline actions plans, talk specifics and give examples. Keep it concise, and document your discussion. Being nice: It should go without saying, but treating others as you wish to be treated will go a long way in showing employees how to treat each other as well as customers. Also, by using the methodology of, praise in public and punish in private, will ensure that you are respected by the way you conduct yourself, and this will encourage others to do the same. Punishment is tough enough as it is, but embarrassment is even worse. Use progressive discipline: Progressive discipline is a process for dealing with behavior that does not meet expected standards. It is important to remember that the goal is to get the agent to understand that performance deficiency is a problem, that the behavior has to be changed, and that they have the power to change it. The ultimate goal is to correct the incorrect behavior and get your agent back on track. Four steps include: verbal discussion and warning, written warning, suspension of one to three days, and finally termination for those who choose not to try to improve. Defining various feedback roles: The most important person in the feedback chain is the agent. A well-trained agent who has a very clear understanding of his or her expectations will, to a great degree, manage his/her own performance provided the agent receives consistent feedback. The supervisor provides feedback and specific coaching on how to improve performance deficiencies, an agent’s performance coach. The quality department will use such tools as call monitoring to provide feedback to enhance the call-handling process and also use these calls to do market research. A regularly accepted number of calls to effectively monitor are five or six at a minimum. The training team can link feedback to lessons taught in the training class and to agents’ performance goals. The customer is probably the best source of feedback especially when taken en masse.      Feedback is one of the best tools to lead by example. In order for feedback to be effective, the information and results must be consistent for the agent at every step of development. Because we know that training never ends, effective feedback can be the tool that keeps the agent on track to achieving and exceeding goals. Step five will be revealed in next month's newsletter to help you take your organization even closer to excellence. The next step includes "Make supporting them your number one mission". Upon completing the five steps, your organization should see improvements in quality of service, employee morale, customer satisfaction and ultimately, your bottom line. << PreviousNext >>

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