Here’s a practical training exercise you can adapt to help your team select meaningful Quality standards for Customer conversations.
This article is part of our Contact Center Management Series — a collection of articles that bring together practical guidance and insights to help Contact Centers run better and deliver stronger results.
The Context for Quality Standards
In our training courses, we help participants choose the right Quality standards — the behaviors Agents use in conversations with Customers.
To make the right choices, we look at three inputs:
1. Who we are – We can learn ‘who we are’ by looking at our Organization’s Vision, Mission, Values as a start.
And carry on with our Brand promises, Market positioning, Communications, Key strengths and most desired financial and/or business outcomes.
I always say that the clues to ‘who we are’ are literally everywhere.
2. What they want – For this input we look at our Customer expectations. And how Customer research methods provide insight into what our Customers need and want from us.
3. What we must do – Many of our Clients must meet regulator requirements – whether that’s utilities, government, finance and the like. There are rules and regulations which, if broken, cost money and even potential closure.
We Use the Contact Center
While Quality Standards apply for any job role in the Organization, we use the Customer Service / Contact Center function as our example for this exercise.
Because the Customer Service function – and it’s role in communicating with Customers – is easily understood by everyone no matter what they do at work.
Here’s The Introduction To The Exercise
We use a fictional example — Sun Valley Bank, a small neighborhood bank with six branches.
They want to grow nationally with online services, supported by a universal Contact Center team. Their brand promise is: ‘Convenient neighborhood banking, online.’
They provide 24-hour Contact Center service and are working to create a universal Agent group to handle all questions about products and services as well as conduct baseline technical support for Customers.
That’s all we share – it’s simple but enough.
Of course, if you decide to use this exercise for your own Organization, you will provide much more depth in your summary description.
Because you will (or should) know your own Organization much better than Sun Valley Bank!
I Present the Participants with a Long List of ‘Characteristics’
Next I share a list of 16 characteristics.
And I ask all the Participants to take a few minutes and select the Top 3 or Top 5 characteristics that they would select for the Sun Valley Bank Contact Center.
You can’t be all things to all people. Prioritization forces you to decide what matters most for your intended experience.
So there is no need to have Participants rank all of the characteristics listed. It’s good to see how they prioritize on their own.
Here are a few of the characteristics from the image:
- Accuracy
- Empathy
- A friendly and cheerful approach
- Strong call control and call management techniques
- Technical proficiency
- And a dozen more covering empathy, product knowledge, professionalism, and system navigation
Here’s What Happens in These Discussions
I first give the Participants time to work individually and make their choices. Then I give them time to talk to each other and compare and contrast their choices.
Finally I step in and faciliate a group discussion asking the group – so characteristics did you choose and why?
Every time I run this exercise I find that Participants – no matter where in the world or what industry they work in – tend to land on very similar characteristics
And I also find that there’s some rather sophisticated conversation that takes place. Even though I have given them a very brief background on Sun Valley Bank.
For example, nearly everyone selects “A friendly cheerful approach” to reflect the bank’s neighborhood vibe.
And no – not every Organization out there would select this standard. Don’t jump to that conclusion.
We have worked with regulatory authorities who tell us it is not their role to be friendly or cheerful for example.
It’s always better to work through the process to identify the right Quality Standards for your intended experience.
What’s the Goal of the Exercise?
The point of the exercise is to share how important it is to build a selection of Quality Standards or behaviors that are meaningful, relevant and aligned to the bigger picture.
As compared to what happens too often out there in the real world. Which is to put a bunch of people around a table and ask them to debate what should be measured.
Without any kind of structure or approach to guide their thinking.
Whether you work in Quality, Customer Service Leadership or Customer Experience consulting, you have probably learned that utilizing a proven structure, process or model yields better outcomes for everyone.
What One of Our Clients Did with This Exercise
One of our course participants worked for a government Roads & Transport Authority. A month after the program, she wrote to tell me how her team had adapted the Sun Valley Bank exercise.
“Dan, we loved the exercise, so we created our own version. We listed 20 characteristics we thought were relevant for our Customer Service team. Then we printed them on laminated cards — one characteristic per card, like a deck of playing cards.
We invited our entire senior leadership team, including the CEO, to join us. Each person ranked the cards in order of importance — most important on top, least important at the bottom.
It looked a bit like fortune telling! But the real value came from the discussion. On some characteristics the leaders were aligned; on others, they had very different opinions. Hearing those perspectives — and debating them openly — created insights we never would have surfaced otherwise.”
That Client’s story captures why this exercise works.
It creates meaningful conversations about what really matters in Customer interactions — and that’s the foundation of better Quality standards
https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/introducing-our-mystery-shopper-research-series/
Thank you for reading!
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this resonates, I’d love to stay connected.
You can drop me a line anytime, or subscribe via our website.
Daniel Ord
[email protected]
www.omnitouchinternational.com
