I share a story of what a great Quality Assurance professional can do
When Cindy, the Quality Assurance professional in our U.S. based Contact Centre, walked into my office she looked concerned.
“Dan, we just heard the weirdest call. You know that new wooden sandbox set we’re selling? The one that ships in directly from the UK?”
“Sure Cindy – I know the one – it’s quite fancy but it looks great for kids to play in. Why?”
“Well the Customer just received her shipment from the UK and she says it’s defective. That the sandbox has no bottom in it.”
“No bottom in the sandbox? What do you mean?”
“You know. A base in it. A floor for lack of a better word. The Customer says that it looks like the sandbox is just a frame with a wind-down roof. And that to fill the sandbox you just pour the sand directly onto the ground.”
We looked at each other for a moment. But don’t all sandboxes have bottoms?
“Cindy thanks for telling me. Let me call Marketing and see what the story is.”
At that time I was VP, Contact Centre & Distribution
In the 90s I was VP, Contact Centre & Distribution Operations for a Los Angeles based direct marketing company that served the entire country.
Our Centre took orders from TV ads and catalogues for products including CDs, children’s toys, gardening tools and more. And our warehouses would ship most Customer orders – unless the product was to be shipped directly from the manufacturer – as was the case with this large sandbox set.
We also handled all the Customer Service questions and issues.
It was a big business that kept growing year on year.
And Quality Assurance really mattered to us.
Because it was an important measure of success that we earn repeat orders from Customers over time.
And our Quality Assurance professionals helped us to do that. That’s how their work linked to business outcomes.
The sandbox in question was an item in the Spring Gardening catalogue that had gone out to Customers across the US.
It was handmade in the UK and crafted from high quality wood.
But the best part was that it had a roll up roll down roof that not only protected the sand – it made the sandbox feel like a small castle for the kids.
It cost over US$1,000 (plus shipping) and due to its size, orders were shipped directly from the UK to the Customer address in the US.
We didn’t have any sandboxes in our own stock. Which meant that unlike a lot of our other products, we had not seen one in real life.
So the mystery remained – why didn’t the sandbox have a bottom?
What Marketing told us
Our Marketing Team was great. And they got back to us quickly.
It seems that having a bottom in the sandbox was an ‘American’ thing. A Customer expectation built around American standards of ‘hygiene’ and what American Customers were used to.
Whereas in the UK, sandboxes typically didn’t have bottoms in them.
You simply put the frame together and poured the sand on top of the ground or whatever the surface was below where you placed the sandbox.
A simple cultural difference that resulted in a different set of expectations.
What we did for Customers
Well thanks to Cindy – and the call she listened to – we were on it.
About 29 sandboxes had been ordered with a 3 – 4 week delivery timeframe. Remember it was the 1990s – there was no such thing as Amazon or even the internet.
That delivery timeframe gave us the chance to contact all the Customers who had ordered the sandbox.
We wrote a simple script to explain the design and if desired, allow the Customer to cancel the order.
And it worked. Most Customers decided to keep the sandbox (for which we included a special gift).
And they told us that they appreciated our proactivity.
https://www.omnitouchinternational.com/three-su
Don’t underestimate the power of the Quality Assurance job role
In my training & consulting work I find that the Quality Assurance job role tends to be underestimated. By that I mean it’s used and viewed as a policing function for Agents.
Low level, critical and unpopular.
And that’s so sad. Because the potential value inherent in the Quality Assurance job role is tremendous.
In this story, Cindy acted as a lighthouse for quality issues. Coming and telling me – and others – about weird calls was an important part of her job.
She inherently understood that her job was about a lot more than checking if an Agent said the Customer’s name 3 times.
She and her Team helped our Centre understand where we were with regard to Quality, where we wanted to go and how to get there.
That’s what experts do.
And I’ve told this story now for over 25 years because it had such a profound impact on me – both back then and as I write today.
Thank you Cindy.
Thank you for reading!
I help and inspire people worldwide through professional training in Contact Centers, Customer Service and Customer Experience.
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Daniel Ord
[email protected] / www.omnitouchinternational.com
