Workforce Management Featured Article
How to Enable Group Judgment
Groupthink is a dirty word. It suggests that decision by committee tends to encourage conformity, and discourage creativity and individual accountability.
But, a global survey of 7,500 customer service representatives by the Harvard Business Review suggests that quite the opposite may be true. Group judgment – in which individuals work as teams to make decisions – resulted in the best customer service outcomes.
Meanwhile, adherence-focused cultures – in which everything is by the book, with no exceptions – lack flexibility and thus can impede workable solutions. (A third call center culture, identified by the study is called personal judgment. In this case, individual employees make decisions based on their experiences and opinion. But there is great variation in customer service in this case, according to the study.)
So, how can call centers help enable group judgment without wasting a lot of time on meetings and creating a culture of groupthink?
One obvious way is to encourage feedback via an online community or suggestion box. And then having a core group review and respond to the feedback, and act on it when appropriate.
Offering platforms and staging events on which and at which agents, coaches, managers, and trainers are talk to one another can also help organizations define best practices, discuss what they can do better, and make plans for how to implement improvements.
The right performance management solution also can make it easier to set performance goals, and solicit the best ideas for achieving them.
Allowing people to walk in another person’s shoes for a day can also create greater understanding of what it takes to get the job done. For example, having managers act as agents can help them empathize with employees and understand what is and is not working. Peer training is another opportunity to welcome and ready new hires, and to leverage the skills of your best agents.
Edited by Mandi Nowitz