We have looked at the development of objective measures to help deliver improved operational results. The measures eg recommend cover a balance including; service, quality, risk, compliance, people skills, throughput and productivity. The first step is to make sure you have these results available each day and at your finger tips. Read more information on how eg operational intelligence® can you help you meet this need.
The challenge in using these measures as a basis for day to day operational management is sometimes, “which one is the most important?”. It can feel like a question of WHERE to start?
Some Clients have told me that the first thing to do is to make sure you understand what each measure really means. “It helps to think of the Customer waiting for a reply when I think of the focus I need to provide my Team Leaders and their Team Members on delivering the right result everyday” said one Department Manager.
Putting in place a structured “process” to help Team Leaders manage consistently yields fantastic results in a surprisingly short time. We have found it takes just a few weeks to show Team Leaders and their Team Members how to use the balanced range of measures to set realistic goals and make a tangible difference for the better. This “process” includes making sure all Team Members understand the goal for each day, the priorities – as well as their part of the plan. Using the balanced range of measures to provide realistic goals and then to track performance against those goals sets a virtuous circle encouraging people to think proactively on:
- how can we make the “best” use of today?
- during the day, how well are we making the most of the day?
- at the end of the day, what have we achieved and how can we make tomorrow even better?
Another Customer Service Manager said of this process; “It felt like a voyage of discovery, but it was the Teams, with their Team Leaders, who discovered the potential that existed. They were the ones that saw how to make small changes that delivered big improvements to our Customers and the bottom line”.
If you have any views on effective ways to engage Customer Service teams in the delivery of improved operational results, please let me know:
m: +47 91 83 30 30
im (Skype): andrew.baker.eg
I look forward to sharing more of your views and “top tips”.”
Catch up on recent blogs on this topic
http://www.eguk.co.uk/category/blog/client/
http://www.eguk.co.uk/category/blog/operations-management/
Catch up on related news
March 22nd, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Your blog comment is very to the point, and the focus on managing to do the right tasks @ the right time a good way of giving the message from eg a real content. I liked the reference to the comment about using the mental image of picturing the client waiting for a response to assist sorting tasks.
March 30th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Just been reading through your eg blogs, some really good points/ideas in there.
I am currently working to help eg work manager users move the focus on to “process”, rather than “task driven”. To achieve this we have set up the end to end process, and process header etc and are now looking at what the SLA should be based on feedback from product owners and customers. The aim is to identify where the processes are failing the customer.
I am interested in your views regarding how to gain the buy in from advisors in this change. The article relating to “People making a difference” points to involving everyone in the team not just the TM. Would you therefore recommend getting the team involved in the discussion around the SLA’s that are being set? and how would you deal with the possibility of them having different views to the customer, or does the discussion deal with this situation.
Also, what have you seen as best practice regarding controlling the eg system. We have seen a considerable increase in tasks to measure every possible occurrence, and we are now looking to control this. How important is a very strict version control process, and what you have seen to work best across eg users.”
April 6th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Some great points & ideas in here and, as others have mentioned, making the measures real and meaningful for our team members in terms of their impact on our customers, is really important to spend time & effort on.
I think something else that’s important is getting the balance right between focus on measures that demonstrate performance today, and those which we can use to highlight issues and allow us to work on improving the performance of tomorrow.
If our staff can get really involved in understanding the measures that help us change things for the better for our customers, I think getting engagement in achieving the measures of performance today becomes easier.