Back in June, Lauren wrote a blog post launching CCC’s most recent research initiative on quality assurance (QA). Judging from the comments on her post, Lauren seems to have touched off a nerve that sparked widespread interest in the future of the QA function.
Just a few months later, CCC has finalized its research on QA – Modernizing Quality Assurance. Given the huge amount of interest in the topic, we’re experimenting with a “Web first” release of our findings. Don’t worry – we’ll have meetings on this topics in early 2011, but we wanted to get this material to you as quickly as possible so that you can start using it immediately.
What I like most about our findings is that it explores solutions to long-standing QA struggles not by pushing more and more resources to tackle the problem head-on, but by taking a step back and considering the larger causes of ineffective QA programs to identify new solutions that often side-step original problem altogether.
It’s a bit like having blinders on while searching for the exit to a hedge maze. Keep the blinders on – and blindly push forward until the hedge stops you from going forward. Take the blinders off – and sometimes the exit is right there on your left. For example:
Think your QA scorecard isn’t customer-focused enough? Don’t internally keep on refining your scorecard based on what you think matters most to the customer. Do what a Australian-based telecommunications company does and just ask the customer instead.
Don’t believe that you have a large enough sample size of QA score to form meaningful opinions about reps? Don’t keep trying to increase the number of scores per rep per month. Do what Pitney Bowes does and track rep trends over a 2-3 month period instead of evaluating them every month.
Worried that your reps are optimizing to the scorecard? Don’t constantly tinker with the line items on the scorecard to make it harder for reps to game the system, move to a competency-based model like National Australia Bank that provides a flexible quality framework that no rep can game.
Trying to improve the relationship between QA and frontline reps/supervisors? Don’t just schedule more QA-rep coaching sessions on the scorecard, do what Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania and a telecommunications company both do and move QA coaching as far away from the scorecard as possible to establish QA as development coaches not enforcers of the assessment.
What we have found is that these solutions, plus a host of CCC tools, helps service organizations re-structure their QA teams to:
- Shift the source of QA inputs to incorporate the customer’s point of view
- Improve the actionability of QA outputs by surfacing true coaching abilities
- Gain QA credibility by embedding the function in coaching activities
This new QA function is one that turns out accurate and actionable information that is well-respected by frontline reps and their supervisors. Now, isn’t that a change in outcome that we can all begin to achieve – by looking at the challenges we face in a different way.
What about your thoughts? We know that over 88% of service organizations believe their current QA processes are ineffective, despite many recent tweaks and changes. What do you see here that you can use to make substantial changes to your QA function?
Related posts:
on December 29, 2010
Respond
[...] quality assurance processes and bring the customer closer to the process. Leading companies are successfully rebuilding QA by: asking the customer to measure quality, using evaluations to identify staff performance trends [...]