Performance Monitoring And Evaluation Performance Monitoring And Evaluation

11 Steps to Improving Performance Through Data Collection and Gap Analysis

It is believed that metrics teams can only get 80% of the way to an effective set of metrics. The last 20% comes from deploying the metrics, seeing how they affect performance, and then adjusting them accordingly. The same can be said about the performance which these metrics guide. One of the main reasons we measure performance is so that we can identify weaknesses and areas of improvements. What we do once we identify these weakness and areas of improvement is what determines how effective our performance initiative, and in turn, organization will be. The purpose of performance improvement is not to point fingers and place blame on a group or individuals that are not performing well, nor is it intended to solve problems. Performance improvement is simply a way of looking at how an organization can perform better. The difficulty with performance improvement, especially in an enterprise organization, is understanding which processes are working well and which aren’t and knowing what to tackle first when key processes are interconnected.

Other challenges of implementing a performance improvement plan enterprise-wide occur when performance management teams try to implement change on a large scale. Performance improvement is best accomplished by implementing small changes, mastering a particular process to achieve those changes and identifying the next change that will lead to further performance improvements.

The best way to ensure that your organization is constantly improving and identifying relevant areas for improvement is by involving all employees, from top management down. Most often, negative performance is a result of one or more of the following factors, and is best resolved when all levels of the organization participates:

Unclear team/job responsibilities Unclear or lack of performance feedback Inadequate physical environment, including improper tools, supplies, or workspace Lack of motivation and incentives to perform as expected Skills and knowledge required for the job Ineffective processes

Lifecycle Performance Improvement is an eleven step, systematic methodology for identifying weaknesses and the root causes of performance problems, and implementing a solution that applies to those specific performance deficits.

1. Review organizational goals and objectives

]]>

Identify/review performance measures (quantity, quality, cost or timeliness) that focus on these objectives

2. Define desired results for the processes

As guidance, focus on results needed by other domains (e.g., products or services needed by internal or external customers). Performance baselines are a good place to start to determine reasonable targets.

3. Measure performance and document results

Ensure that report parameters and formulas are well documented and consistent as these measures are revisited throughout the performance improvement process.

4. Compare the actual results to the desired results

This gives you an idea of how much work you have ahead of you. The further the actual results are from the desired performance the greater the performance gap.

5. Weigh/prioritize the measures that need improvement

Some criteria that may be useful to consider are value of metric, organizational impact, ease of implementing improvement measures, time restraints, etc.

6. Identify other areas of weakness

Often times, investigation of a performance gap will lead you to other weaknesses, which contribute to that gap in performance. In fact, major cross-functional processes are often low performing because of an underlying or sometime unrelated area of weakness.

7. Identify root causes of performance gap

This step involves identifying situations which consume resources, adversely affect the organization, and tend to be repetitive, causing action to eliminate the problem so the situation does not occur again. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a method that identifies causal factors, including interpersonal bottlenecks and dysfunctions that keep a business from achieving financial success. There are several ways to outline root causes. Answering the following questions can aid in identifying root causes:

Why did this event happen? What occurred to create it? What occurred prior? What occurred following? What is the significance of the event with respect to customer? Who allowed this condition to exist? Who was supervising this activity? When did it occur? Where (physical location, environmental condition)? How did this condition originate?

Once the root cause is determined then it has to be determined whether it costs more to remove the root cause or continue to treat the symptoms. In a performance improvement setting, removing the root cause is preferred, but again, organizational objectives are the main influence on this decision.

8. Identify solutions

This step involves developing a performance improvement plan based on the organization’s weaknesses and root causes. This is where an organization maps out its plan to achieve the desired results, measures and standards that were previous unattainable. The root cause analysis performed in the previous step should assist identifying the best solution for each performance gap.

9. Implement solutions

Well, the hard part is finished. You’ve identified your problems and determined their root causes. You’ve generated numerous alternative solutions, and you’ve chosen the best alternative. If the solution is complicated, or if it requires a lot of work to implement, it might be best to prepare an action plan outlining the necessary steps to be taken. This plan may indicate who is responsible for each action, the target date for completing them, and available resources.

10. Exchange feedback

This is an ongoing process that is often undervalued. Continuous feedback can sometimes enable an organization to identify root causes long before they become problematic. But remember, feedback can only be effective if the organization acts on some of those suggestions.

11. Monitor and evaluate feedback

This is the most important step and extends throughout the entire performance improvement process. This is where you determine the effectiveness of the performance improvement plan. Monitoring and evaluation shows progress, problems and achievements against your goal and objectives. Monitor and evaluation stages help you:

make decisions and recommendations about future directions identify the strengths and weaknesses of performance enable judgments to be made about the worth of the measurement determine the rate and level of attainment of the objectives maintain accountability.

Find More Performance Monitoring And Evaluation Performance Monitoring And Evaluation Articles

Contact Center Quality Monitoring, Coaching And Performance Optimization Tips

In today’s challenging economic climate, analytics and contact center quality monitoring are changing the way companies do business and dramatically improving contact center operations, managers want quick and accurate insights into the effectiveness of their contact center operations in order to make prudent, timely decisions, but they don’t have the time or resources to listen to and review the vast amount of customer interactions handled by the agents every day.

In addition to this there is no shortage of performance metrics available from their PBX and ACD. These days there seems to be more sophisticated tools including multimedia recording, desktop analytics, instant chat, self service options in the IVR, cloud computing, etc. Managers and supervisors today are able to choose from a myriad of options to manage performance but where do they start to do their quality evaluations in a systematic manner using complex algorithmic mathematical formulas combined with scientific methodologies and their own intuition? Therein lies their dilemma. So little time, so much to accomplish in the course of a day…

Contact center quality monitoring systems offered today are not only to evaluate agents but also to evaluate a contact center reputation. Yes, reputation might sound obvious but too often contact centers seem to miss this critical view point. A customer’s perception of service captured in a call recording or video file says a lot about the culture of the organization. Call Center Reporting and Call Monitoring Systems are a means to an end in that one has to learn from the information and who else to translate these to actions and outcomes than the Supervisor. This has to be one of the most critical and unforgiving roles within the contact center next to the agent. Sort of being a start quarterback being called in to throw a touchdown on each attempt when the offensive team is on and the line backer when the defensive line is on.

]]>

The role of the supervisor and their agent has been so devalued over the years that it is not a surprise the attrition rates for these roles are in double digits. This is not a malaise or a disease or caused by the recent global financial crisis or globalization. We did this to ourselves. We have become part of a culture that communicates via a keyboard than by voice skills and the traditional skills that our parents taught us about being polite and respectful. We complicate the connection with our customers and prospects through voice prompts and boring scripts to keep the agents from really having a connection with the customers.

Enter VPI and it’s Empower suite of products. In my humble opinion, this product is a god-send for managers, supervisors and front-line agents. VPI has truly defined the new expectation of a customer through a fresh set of lenses. It shatters the level of “mediocrity” to “excellence” in quality and performance from the customer’s point of view. The power of the data can now be turned into knowledge which in turn can be turned into wisdom for coaching to excellence and that translates to actionable analytics and outcomes.

Quality Assurance is everyone’s responsibility and by giving power to the people who influence agent behaviors, then the Supervisor should be the quarterback that determines the outcome of the game. Like they said in the movie, if you build, the customers will come. VPI has started this movement by building on a framework that is supervisor-friendly for QA success. If we synthesize all these goals, the aim of QA and Call Monitoring becomes a matter of linking outcomes of calls to a customer’s behavior not only the agent’s behavior. As a result, contact centers can also learn what effects, if any their approach to training and coaching agents have on customers and ultimately the outcomes.

Being proactive and giving agents a larger stake in the pie by identifying areas of strength, best practices and also key training to be used for modeling success. In this way, a contact centre can leverage the VPI Empower suite of products and establish guidelines and standards for handling calls instead of dictating what agents should or should not do. In the larger picture, the role of the supervisor and the agent has to be supported through all levels of the organization. As a result, success and a best practice model will show up sooner than later!

For more information, visit VPI-corp.