What are you measuring? Is it a distraction?

I was in a really neat Continuous Improvement (CI) event nearly a decade ago. The goal of the event was initially to reduce handle time by 10% in a call center.

Well, to most of us, this initially seemed like a great goal. But, for one of the guys in the event, he seemed kind of non-plussed by the whole thing. Finally, he said: "Do you just want to reduce the handle time?"

"Yeah," we said.

"Cool, here's how you do it. 'Mrs. Smith, I see we've been on the phone for 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I need to let you go right now, but encourage you to call back in."

Then, this smart chap proceeded to suggest that if we are measuring folks to faster calls, we are opening the door to rushing and moving folks off the phone to hit their metrics, even if it wasn't as blatant as his example.

After chewing on this, we realized that what we really wanted was greater customer satisfaction and while handle time played a role, it was superseded by first call resolution, callback numbers, overall time in queue, etc. If we could focus call center agents on first call resolution, we could then train them to ask the right questions and drive the conversation more quickly. Sometimes this affected handle time positively, sometimes it created great first call resolution and over time it would lead to increases in both together. None of this would have been possible if we had stuck resolutely to a reasonable metric. But, once we were willing to change the purpose of the game (the CI event), we were able to truly deliver an experience that was mutually beneficial for the customer, the agent and the org.

Because of that man's guts, we tossed out a lot of good, well intentioned, but flawed work and pushed on towards an even better outcome. I'm curious if I'm, and maybe you, are still willing to do that when we come to grips with incorrect ideas?

#adailygoad #4