At a dinner party recently, a friend who is a high school English teacher la
mented that his students often google answers to their English homework rather than take the time to read.
Of course plagiarism is terrible and it’s critical to teach students skill development through hard work, but another friend questioned his logic: “Is knowledge of an English passage that important? Aren’t search skills critical as well?”
You can imagine the direction of conversation from here—the table was evenly split among liberal arts and math/science majors—but applying this thought to a service and support environment, it’s an interesting question: Do we need to train staff in critical thinking or do we simply need to provide better access to the answers?
My answer: Both. But it’s important to consider this in terms of a short-term and long-term strategy.
In the short term, it is worth reconsidering building rep certification programs that require detailed tests and qualifications (of course only if it not a legal requirement). Instead:
- Reinvest these resources in knowledge bases and reinforce use—Particularly in an industry with very high attrition, knowledge retention through faster and easier-to-use knowledge bases can eliminate the need for substantial training hours and enable more consistent customer experiences. And as more companies turn their knowledge bases outside in, more customers can self-serve.
In the long term, as customer issues continue to become more complex, critical thinking becomes even more important. A simple process flow doesn’t work for a multi-faceted, nuanced problem—there is good reason that technical support organizations hire engineers with advanced training. But the implication here is not to fire all staff who lack PhDs; there are ways to upskill talent:
- Teach staff how to root cause—Considering the underlying reasons to an issue helps ensure that the issue is appropriately diagnosed and resolved. While true root cause analysis is a very rigorous economic exercise, a modified version, like that CCC teaches in our Teaching Supervisors Best-In-Class Coaching Practices Workshop, is helpful for the entire organization.
- Incent collaboration and brainstorming—Sometimes issues must be resolved creatively, and obtaining peer perspective and comparing multiple ideas can be very effective. A technical support organization we work with uses team-based resolution incentives and metrics in addition to clustering teams for better knowledge sharing, leading to a 90% increase in same-day case closure.
The good news is that the short-term strategy of searching directly supports the long-term strategy of thinking: If the knowledge base is easily accessible and understood both internally and externally, companies can increasingly focus efforts on upskilling talent with critical thinking.
What’s your current book-smart/search-smart strategy?
CCC Members, for best practices in knowledge base design and tactics for boosting utilization, refer to our research on Creating Sustainable Knowledge Management. And learn how to incent collaboration and brainstorming through team-based resolution incentives and metrics.
No related posts.
on April 22, 2010
Respond
I recently re-designed our new hire training for our contact center. Our old way of training was very much “here is the process you will follow when the customer needs xxxx”.
Our redesigned training assumed our new hires are already accomplished at searching for facts. We also assumed existing process documentation was understandable, and a new hire could read and follow direction. We spent the bulk of time in discussion of why we would perform a procedure, and much less time on the how, as that was already well documented and searchable.
Our biggest challenge (and I’m not sure we completely solved is yet) is how do you measure and test competency in critical thinking skill. Our old assessments merely asked new hire to regurgitate facts learned in class. It’s a challenge to create scenario based assessments that may have more than one “correct” answer.
Any suggestions?
on April 29, 2010
Respond
Thanks very much for your comment, Emily. Great to hear that you have been down this path already—I’m sure there are many things that many can learn from you here.
Regarding your specific question about measuring critical thinking—it’s certainly a challenge, particularly as there is no one-size-fits-all answer, something many service and support organizations have become accustomed to. In fact, not only do we need to shift our thinking about upskilling talent but also about how we hold talent accountable.
The best advice here is to have an understanding of the ballpark right answer—understand not what the ideal answer is but rather a sense of what would comprise an effective answer. So your answer key should read something like, “Look for these types of things,” not, “Look for precisely this.” This will require training at the supervisor, coach, and team lead level as well. CCC’s Teaching Supervisors Best-in-Class Coaching Practices Workshop has some helpful guidance here.
One of the most effective ways to test critical thinking is through case studies and scenarios, either service- and support-specific or general. The key here should be to give a hypothetical situation and examine the staff’s approach, framing, inferences, organization, and rationalization of the problems and solutions. Facial expressions, quality of questions asked, framing of solutions, methodology followed (e.g., root causing)—all of these provide good insight into how someone thinks about the issue at hand. Certainly many external vendors offer such assessments—typically through standard passages and questions asked based on them—but standard criteria and situations can be established internally and used in 1:1 assessment sessions.
One other note: You mention you assume that existing process documentation and directions are understandable—I would challenge you to continue to focus here and see if anything has changed. Given that existing climate and skills sets staff have that everything is up to speed. What we find in our research—and the movement behind Knowledge-Centered Support addresses this as well—is the importance of continually examining processes and content to ensure they are utilized, current, and maintained on a regular basis.
on May 7, 2010
Respond
Dalia,
Interesting post. Thought I have lots of thoughts on the matter, I prefer to leave it Daniel Willingham, cognitive psychologist at University of Virginia, to discuss why critical thinking is so difficult. Here is a link to his publication:
http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer07/Crit_Thinking.pdf
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
-Joel