It is often touted that organisations aim to achieve the popular sigma metric that this methodology of reducing errors and variation in operational processes, has come to be known by - Six Sigma. Many are still unaware that the achievement of six sigma itself can come about only after a radical change in the functioning of these operations. It involves not just a green belt or a black belt project but could entail the complete overhaul of a process in order to achieve that ultimate stamp of approval.
So it is quite common, then at least in the initial stages that they set lower standards - like 4.5 Sigma which is not bad by itself. And no, I don't want to sound pessimistic - in fact I want to be pretty realistic and agree.
Why?
Any one who has even the remotest idea of six sigma will tell you that to make a movement to 1 or 2 sigma is relatively easy. It is when you get to 3 and above that the enterprise will have to not only change processes but also the culture of the organisation itself. Major outlays for Quality budgets and resources to support such a transformation will have to be made. And not just lip service - but leadership will have to live this goal and it will tax their minds to the hilt.
Why?
It is comparatively easy to commit fewer errors in a service industry if you start with minor improvements and deal with a process that is not even 1 sigma. Once you have dealt with the low hanging fruit" - then it starts becoming a discipline, and not just one of personal choice but of policy.
Systems have to be changed. One cannot be expected to allow people to perform at six sigma for example in a Call Center. Try it. It wont work!
Unless you get to a level of automation to deal with the routine types of calls which could constitute 80-90% of the call volume, you will not be able to have associates speak flawlessly while dealing with customers, given that during certain hours you are going to observe peak call volume on an intra day level.
It is my personal experience across various call center processes and my humble opinion that these centers cannot perform at six sigma. If there are exceptions I would love to hear their case and how their achieved it without automation.
Having said this, one cannot be expected to not raise the bar. Getting a service procedure done right, every time, the first time is a big start in setting the tone for what is expected to deliver a major positive impact to the bottom line. Tangible benefits apart this also helps boost morale.
An associate would loved to create and maintain fantastic Quality. At the same time if leadership forces it down their throats and expects them to perform under increasingly stressful work conditions then a point will inevitably be reached where the Quality will drastically suffer. I've known teams that have gone from 3 Sigma to 1 Sigma in a matter of weeks.
Given that people are people - other things being equal, an associate will answer a basic inquiry with a certain degree of variation. After all, not everyone is made alike! How do you expect to reduce variation on a basic inquiry when the very basis of human existence is diversity at least in being able to deal with situations?
So it takes a culture of getting to deal with the "bread and butter" of the process and strive for the least variation, measured and displayed prominently so everyone takes note.
Drive automation that filters out these calls - so Associates only deal with the exceptions, to the extent possible. Increasingly service centers are employing that ubiquitous solution - the IVR or interactive voice response system.
To a large extent - advances in the technology of these systems have made it possible to have an effective but "sterile" experience on the part of the customer.
Some surveys have often indicated that Customers still preferred "talking" to a live person rather than to a machine, no matter how ineffective that person was....it was just something natural to be able to do.
So to counter the possible backlash of a sterile IVR solution, companies still incorporate an option to speak to an operator - but this option is not obvious, you sometimes have to be patient for the IVR to "offer" you that option.
A suitable reward plan always works to drive the culture but it is often noted that there has to be a high degree of leadership involved to drive Quality. One great and passionate leader - will drive more quality than many Black Belt projects, and no I don't have statistics to prove it..!
Quality has to be seen beyond just "Six Sigma" or and ISO or whatever else you call it. It has to be a personal way of life in the way you operate and measure your work. And in order to drive and maintain this culture - an effective leader will do more, with their leadership than with a project. While projects are effective in focusing on the "how to", leadership will address the "why to".
The results of such Quality must also be widely publicised as part of the "why to". After all if you phone in to correct an error - often it is better if you don't have an error in the first place!
The amount of Quality Net Income (QNI) must be quantifiable and deemed a measure of how much of potential cost that would have "become" had that Quality measure not been put in place.
And of course some of that "Income" must be shared as part of the "WIFM" (what's in it for me?). And not just income but also an important part of one's goals!!
Chris Francis
19th May 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Quality, Six Sigma and Operations
Watch out for organisations which have a sudden thirst for Six Sigma Initiatives - while Six Sigma projects improve processes the catch is that the scope has to be relevant to a project that deserves one. Exceptions being low hanging fruit or projects that are 'created' in order to fulfill a goal on the goal sheet. Proper supervision by a qualified Black Belt and thorough scrutiny of the scope of each project that is screened will go a long way in helping which effort merits a Green or Black Belt Project.
I remember a particular team that seemed to suddenly discover projects that had vision statements that were vague or did not seek to understand what is it that the project was improving in the first place.
After a good amount of introspective - it was discovered that the company had a policy that stated that unless you were green belt certified you did not get promoted. Never mind if you had met/exceeded your CTQ's(Critical to Quality), had great attendance, did minor improvements, helped over and beyond and even won a couple of team awards. Want to climb the ladder, get certified.
The ensuing pressure resulted in projects being discovered that would have otherwise qualified for a minor application of Six Sigma methodology to root out errors and significantly acheive success.
Not only did this pressure from leadership lead to dilution in quality projects, in the ensuing rush - a Lean initiative was rolled out - to get employees "upto speed" in lean asap.
The confusion that reined seemed to confuse and stupefy all involved. Did this qualify for Six Sigma or Lean? Was there enough "meat" to ensure that this was "significant" enough for a Green Belt Project? Or a Lean initiative?
And then you had "Kaizen" which advocates continous improvement albeit even a minor effort as long as there was continous improvement.
Where is the starting point? Where is the point at which you segregate every effort. What about leading teams through a consistent policy that sought not to penalise but improve a process rather than link it to survival? Typically the reaction was Darwinian with every one wanting to improve something and "somehow" get "certified"!! That way you could get out of a process and get to demand a role that got you on the fast track to management!
The ambitious ones (and there were many) would ensure that they stretched to way beyond anyone's imagination so that management would "notice" thus setting standards that were not justifiable within normal working hours. Want to work on weekends? OK sure how many weekends...!!
Now once these precedents are set - how do you expect your entire team to be motivated if you notice that they perceive it as the way to go if you needed to complete projects AND do your daily normal routine.
The Quality management team took this as a golden opportunity to enhance their own careers by riding the wave of "enthusiasm to survive and grow" by getting potential associates to piggy back on "black belt projects" thus ensuring that they got all the "leg work" done while they had ample time to sit and study for the black belt certification exams - and after the work was done, and backs were slapped - presented the projects and got promoted themselves. Some of them consequently quit when they realised that their ambitions were not to be fulfilled in the company. Leaving teams completely in the lurch.
It is imperative that the right "Quality Culture" be driven so as to impress upon employees that quality is continous, should be done right the first time and any potential large scale improvements be rightly staffed, planned for and realistic goals set so as NOT to upset a daily productive routine while at the same time dedicate a Quality resource who actually provides the business with their money's worth. Quality support/Audits are an necessary cost but one that any organisation strives to justify and rationalise each and and every day.
It is vital to have a Quality function and initiative. But the basics of good Quality has always been "To do it right the first time, every time"!
The post mortem that may follow as an audit or the random sampling that is taken from a live system provides leadership to understand potential areas of improvement and the costs benefit analysis associated with it so as to justify a 'quality initiated project'.
At this stage one would definitely be able to qualify the project as something that can be done on an ongoing continous basis, in that case you have no "project" as such.
Others could be the tweaking of a process/procedure in order to fine tune it to deliver higher efficiencies and accuracy.
And yet another way would require a complete new approach, which could warrant a major six sigma project that may require a green belt and/or a black belt certified mentor and supervisor or leader to see the project successfully through.
Can you link promotions to being certified as a green belt/black belt?
Personally I have observed that leadership takes the easy way out by demarcating a clear certification as the way to go....the harder/softer stuff like daily effort, initiatives, chipping in above and beyond are often never even recorded let alone that systems are designed to reflect these initiatives.
Call centers may be the exception and so does the manufacturing sector. They typically are set up with a nice set of feedback mechanisms that ensure that leadership spot potential areas of improvement unlike the service sector.
Bottom line if leadership has a set of feedback metrics to measure to the extent possible (and special efforts have to be insisted on by leadership) every single activity and effort that an associate churns out in the course of their work day/week/month/business cycle and have a thorough definition of what those efforts would lead to - associates are always going to be compromised in being recognised for their efforts. Quality teams would do well to ensure that metrics are set up in place and monitored by them, in order to generate data in the first place - without placing any need on the part of the operations team to participate, to the extent possible.
Work with existing management tools to tap into and do a proper first hand analysis of the data on hand so as to weed out low hanging fruit, segregate potential project plans and determine what kind of an effort would rationalise the necessary quality effort. This will ensure a fair system of measurement and the right focus on areas of concern, which may be focused upon to deliver maximum satisfaction to their internal customers.
I remember a particular team that seemed to suddenly discover projects that had vision statements that were vague or did not seek to understand what is it that the project was improving in the first place.
After a good amount of introspective - it was discovered that the company had a policy that stated that unless you were green belt certified you did not get promoted. Never mind if you had met/exceeded your CTQ's(Critical to Quality), had great attendance, did minor improvements, helped over and beyond and even won a couple of team awards. Want to climb the ladder, get certified.
The ensuing pressure resulted in projects being discovered that would have otherwise qualified for a minor application of Six Sigma methodology to root out errors and significantly acheive success.
Not only did this pressure from leadership lead to dilution in quality projects, in the ensuing rush - a Lean initiative was rolled out - to get employees "upto speed" in lean asap.
The confusion that reined seemed to confuse and stupefy all involved. Did this qualify for Six Sigma or Lean? Was there enough "meat" to ensure that this was "significant" enough for a Green Belt Project? Or a Lean initiative?
And then you had "Kaizen" which advocates continous improvement albeit even a minor effort as long as there was continous improvement.
Where is the starting point? Where is the point at which you segregate every effort. What about leading teams through a consistent policy that sought not to penalise but improve a process rather than link it to survival? Typically the reaction was Darwinian with every one wanting to improve something and "somehow" get "certified"!! That way you could get out of a process and get to demand a role that got you on the fast track to management!
The ambitious ones (and there were many) would ensure that they stretched to way beyond anyone's imagination so that management would "notice" thus setting standards that were not justifiable within normal working hours. Want to work on weekends? OK sure how many weekends...!!
Now once these precedents are set - how do you expect your entire team to be motivated if you notice that they perceive it as the way to go if you needed to complete projects AND do your daily normal routine.
The Quality management team took this as a golden opportunity to enhance their own careers by riding the wave of "enthusiasm to survive and grow" by getting potential associates to piggy back on "black belt projects" thus ensuring that they got all the "leg work" done while they had ample time to sit and study for the black belt certification exams - and after the work was done, and backs were slapped - presented the projects and got promoted themselves. Some of them consequently quit when they realised that their ambitions were not to be fulfilled in the company. Leaving teams completely in the lurch.
It is imperative that the right "Quality Culture" be driven so as to impress upon employees that quality is continous, should be done right the first time and any potential large scale improvements be rightly staffed, planned for and realistic goals set so as NOT to upset a daily productive routine while at the same time dedicate a Quality resource who actually provides the business with their money's worth. Quality support/Audits are an necessary cost but one that any organisation strives to justify and rationalise each and and every day.
It is vital to have a Quality function and initiative. But the basics of good Quality has always been "To do it right the first time, every time"!
The post mortem that may follow as an audit or the random sampling that is taken from a live system provides leadership to understand potential areas of improvement and the costs benefit analysis associated with it so as to justify a 'quality initiated project'.
At this stage one would definitely be able to qualify the project as something that can be done on an ongoing continous basis, in that case you have no "project" as such.
Others could be the tweaking of a process/procedure in order to fine tune it to deliver higher efficiencies and accuracy.
And yet another way would require a complete new approach, which could warrant a major six sigma project that may require a green belt and/or a black belt certified mentor and supervisor or leader to see the project successfully through.
Can you link promotions to being certified as a green belt/black belt?
Personally I have observed that leadership takes the easy way out by demarcating a clear certification as the way to go....the harder/softer stuff like daily effort, initiatives, chipping in above and beyond are often never even recorded let alone that systems are designed to reflect these initiatives.
Call centers may be the exception and so does the manufacturing sector. They typically are set up with a nice set of feedback mechanisms that ensure that leadership spot potential areas of improvement unlike the service sector.
Bottom line if leadership has a set of feedback metrics to measure to the extent possible (and special efforts have to be insisted on by leadership) every single activity and effort that an associate churns out in the course of their work day/week/month/business cycle and have a thorough definition of what those efforts would lead to - associates are always going to be compromised in being recognised for their efforts. Quality teams would do well to ensure that metrics are set up in place and monitored by them, in order to generate data in the first place - without placing any need on the part of the operations team to participate, to the extent possible.
Work with existing management tools to tap into and do a proper first hand analysis of the data on hand so as to weed out low hanging fruit, segregate potential project plans and determine what kind of an effort would rationalise the necessary quality effort. This will ensure a fair system of measurement and the right focus on areas of concern, which may be focused upon to deliver maximum satisfaction to their internal customers.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Call Center - Atypical Issues and their handling
Having a problem with your call center staff....that is if they are not yet bored to death of listening to that bell ring twice indicating yet another customer on the phone?
Well I've managed almost 15 Teams on a rotation basis with each team comprising of around 15 Associates. The maximum size of my team has comprised of almost 180 members of a team of young boys/girls with almost no experience "at all" of even working a day in their lives, it was a challenge for me. I was a Bridge/Operations Manager at one of the worlds top multinationals. The center itself had all the technology available for a Manager to generate whatever stats was required to monitor the numbers being turned out.
We managed various private label credit card portfolios of Fortune 500 companies. Having taken calls myself and emerging wiser from the experience I've always stressed the need for Manager's to be able to take calls of Customers themselves which I realised kept your Customer Interaction Skills razor sharp. I've also been admired for taking escalated calls of nasty Customers who demanded to speak to "your Supervisor"!!! There is nothing that inspired my Associates more than watching their Manager take an escalated call. They respected me more for taking that call than for anything else I did for them.
But how do you manage stress, how do you manage boredom, how do you manage absenteeism? All questions dying to be answered. And after a year of taking calls, how do you prevent someone from quitting on the job?
As managers we were measured not only on average handle time but also on quality scores, compliance issues and attrition apart from diversity, keeping customers happy, saving the money of the company by trying not to waive off too many late fees etc.
But there comes those moments when a team member decides that enough is enough. I had one such team member I'll call him J.
J started off like a rocket. Great calls, good enthusiasm. etc I encouraged him to share his experiences as I did with all team members, in order that the whole team benefit from his experience. Which he did enthusiastically. A year later though it seemed that he had tapered off and his enthusiasm (which I believe is key in driving the right attitude on a call) waned.
I checked his file for the feedback I had given him. There seemed nothing in there that raised a red flag. Formal feedback sessions seemed just that "formal". So I asked if I could have lunch at the cafeteria one day, he agreed. During the course of our conversation I discovered that he had a personal problem, that he did not wish to discuss. At least not with his boss. I agreed too. However I was not going to give up trying to resolve the issue I had with him.
So I asked him - what did he think lead to his poor scores and he replied - "My low energy levels, I just dont feel I am fit for this job"! I reminded him that though this his personal life was his business, the fact that he was doing poorly at this job was definitely my business and that I had a stake in his positive well being at least within the four walls of the office.
He agreed. I also reminded him that personally if I had issues outside of the office then either I left it at the door before entering, or even if I had friends/colleagues that I had taken into confidence, then I developed some sort of support system to be able to fall back on. In a way that this did not "rob" me of any potential issue that this could create at work.
So I told him that even though he did not wish to share it with me, that I fully respected him for it. But also suggested that he needs to resolve his personal issues as it was potentially threatening his attitude and results at work.
How could he do that? If he had friends he should either seek advice or be able to resolve his issues with the people or issue that he had or be able to share it in confidence with me his boss, so that I would be able to actually determine if that had any consequence to his work.
I also suggested that if he did not trust me for this then I would be unable to help him in his work - either that or he resolve his problems before they turned serious and negated any positive results he had acheived so far in his performance.
The key word was trust! He needed to be able to trust me. And I needed to instill that trust in him. I did share that he could seek others opinions and then take a call on what I had suggested to him.
It was key that since there was an outside influence in his life that had a direct impact on his work that he was going to have to deal with this issue if not today, then pretty much very soon!
We ended it at that. I did not seek a solution at the end of that conversation I just left it to him to make the right choice. I trusted him to make that choice. I did not force him to reveal anything that he did not want to. I also made sure that he realised that there was a reason to be concerned as his issue was getting worse and negatively impacting his work.
He did come back to me a couple of days later and requested a meeting. I ended up with him confiding in me and sharing what was worrying him at home.
Turns out his Dad is an alcoholic and started his drinking in the evening after work. He then kept the whole house awake till around 1 in the morning. And there fore he just was not getting enough sleep to do his job well the next day. He came in at 8 in the morning.
I asked if changing his shift timing helped. He was comfortable with coming in at 11 o'clock. Turns out that his dad typically started his drinking after he came back after work. And kept awake till around 1 in the morning at which point he went to sleep.
So I worked it out for him, that way he could be there for the last shift which ended at 7 pm. It was not the perfect solution. It did resolve his problem at work and his scores did shoot up again. It also gave him confidence in my leadership and gave him the strength to deal with his issue at home.
His Dad is now in rehab and recovering and he was promoted within a couple of years to an Assistant Manager!!
Chris Francis
Annalytika Inc
May 8th 2008
Well I've managed almost 15 Teams on a rotation basis with each team comprising of around 15 Associates. The maximum size of my team has comprised of almost 180 members of a team of young boys/girls with almost no experience "at all" of even working a day in their lives, it was a challenge for me. I was a Bridge/Operations Manager at one of the worlds top multinationals. The center itself had all the technology available for a Manager to generate whatever stats was required to monitor the numbers being turned out.
We managed various private label credit card portfolios of Fortune 500 companies. Having taken calls myself and emerging wiser from the experience I've always stressed the need for Manager's to be able to take calls of Customers themselves which I realised kept your Customer Interaction Skills razor sharp. I've also been admired for taking escalated calls of nasty Customers who demanded to speak to "your Supervisor"!!! There is nothing that inspired my Associates more than watching their Manager take an escalated call. They respected me more for taking that call than for anything else I did for them.
But how do you manage stress, how do you manage boredom, how do you manage absenteeism? All questions dying to be answered. And after a year of taking calls, how do you prevent someone from quitting on the job?
As managers we were measured not only on average handle time but also on quality scores, compliance issues and attrition apart from diversity, keeping customers happy, saving the money of the company by trying not to waive off too many late fees etc.
But there comes those moments when a team member decides that enough is enough. I had one such team member I'll call him J.
J started off like a rocket. Great calls, good enthusiasm. etc I encouraged him to share his experiences as I did with all team members, in order that the whole team benefit from his experience. Which he did enthusiastically. A year later though it seemed that he had tapered off and his enthusiasm (which I believe is key in driving the right attitude on a call) waned.
I checked his file for the feedback I had given him. There seemed nothing in there that raised a red flag. Formal feedback sessions seemed just that "formal". So I asked if I could have lunch at the cafeteria one day, he agreed. During the course of our conversation I discovered that he had a personal problem, that he did not wish to discuss. At least not with his boss. I agreed too. However I was not going to give up trying to resolve the issue I had with him.
So I asked him - what did he think lead to his poor scores and he replied - "My low energy levels, I just dont feel I am fit for this job"! I reminded him that though this his personal life was his business, the fact that he was doing poorly at this job was definitely my business and that I had a stake in his positive well being at least within the four walls of the office.
He agreed. I also reminded him that personally if I had issues outside of the office then either I left it at the door before entering, or even if I had friends/colleagues that I had taken into confidence, then I developed some sort of support system to be able to fall back on. In a way that this did not "rob" me of any potential issue that this could create at work.
So I told him that even though he did not wish to share it with me, that I fully respected him for it. But also suggested that he needs to resolve his personal issues as it was potentially threatening his attitude and results at work.
How could he do that? If he had friends he should either seek advice or be able to resolve his issues with the people or issue that he had or be able to share it in confidence with me his boss, so that I would be able to actually determine if that had any consequence to his work.
I also suggested that if he did not trust me for this then I would be unable to help him in his work - either that or he resolve his problems before they turned serious and negated any positive results he had acheived so far in his performance.
The key word was trust! He needed to be able to trust me. And I needed to instill that trust in him. I did share that he could seek others opinions and then take a call on what I had suggested to him.
It was key that since there was an outside influence in his life that had a direct impact on his work that he was going to have to deal with this issue if not today, then pretty much very soon!
We ended it at that. I did not seek a solution at the end of that conversation I just left it to him to make the right choice. I trusted him to make that choice. I did not force him to reveal anything that he did not want to. I also made sure that he realised that there was a reason to be concerned as his issue was getting worse and negatively impacting his work.
He did come back to me a couple of days later and requested a meeting. I ended up with him confiding in me and sharing what was worrying him at home.
Turns out his Dad is an alcoholic and started his drinking in the evening after work. He then kept the whole house awake till around 1 in the morning. And there fore he just was not getting enough sleep to do his job well the next day. He came in at 8 in the morning.
I asked if changing his shift timing helped. He was comfortable with coming in at 11 o'clock. Turns out that his dad typically started his drinking after he came back after work. And kept awake till around 1 in the morning at which point he went to sleep.
So I worked it out for him, that way he could be there for the last shift which ended at 7 pm. It was not the perfect solution. It did resolve his problem at work and his scores did shoot up again. It also gave him confidence in my leadership and gave him the strength to deal with his issue at home.
His Dad is now in rehab and recovering and he was promoted within a couple of years to an Assistant Manager!!
Chris Francis
Annalytika Inc
May 8th 2008
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