What are Your Best Practices?

Best Practices Studies

These studies can be defined as inquiries into the skills and methods of your high performers to recognize their achievements, document their methods and skills and then share this information with team members to improve overall performance. The responses generated from your study may hold the solutions to a variety of team challenges in the Call Center. As a team leader, you can approach these studies by conducting short, one-on-one interviews, focus groups, or surveys.

By simply asking questions in any of these formats related to individual best practices, you can achieve the following:

? Identify employee's good behaviors

? Recognize and reward high performers

? Engage employees in business-related discussions

? Document what is being done well and what works

? Generate training and non-training solutions

The key to a successful Best Practices Study is to work from a position of appreciation ? valuing the employee, their performance and their input.

What's the point?

A Best Practices Study serves two purposes. First, it provides an excellent resource for identifying team needs or closing the performance gap. When evaluating team performance, you will find team members at every level. Best practices studies identify the high performers and the behaviors and habits that make them effective. Management, trainers and even the high-performing team members can then work together to recreate these actions or behaviors for lower performers. The high performer's contributions to the study generate ideas for methods of improvement for low performers. In short, the Best Practices Study becomes a solution to performance issues.

The second purpose of such studies relates to employee appreciation, recognition and reward. Because you are collaborating with your team's most valuable resource ? the high performers and the team members themselves ? you acknowledge and validate their performance. When documented properly and acted upon, employees' responses to best practices studies hold powerful resolutions to a variety of business problems. Implementing these solutions shows high performers their value to the team and to the organization and involves them in making improvements in an active way.

What are the steps?

Identify the Need

To conduct a Best Practices Study you must first identify the need. What is it that you want to learn? You may be interested in finding out more about a specific behavior, such as Average Handle Time, or you can approach the study in broader terms of overall excellent performance.

Identify the Top Performers

Once you have determined what you would like the focus of the study to be, identify your top performers in this area. Who are the individuals who consistently meet or exceed expectations in an area of performance? If you are working with a large group choose 33% of the top performers to interview. After interviewing 33% of your group you will probably start to hear similar answers.

Prepare Questions

Now that you know what you want to learn, and who you want to interview, how are you going to get the answers that you are looking for? Your questions are the tools that generate the solutions. Think of the questions as the keys that unlock the secrets to improving performance. Keep in mind the purpose of your questions as you write them and that is to value the employee's experience and generate positive responses.

Sample Questions (used to determine best practices for customer retention):

? What do you think makes you successful as a retention representative?

? What qualities do you possess that add to your success in this position?

? If you were to give one piece of advice to a new representative what would it be?

? What skills do you use on a regular basis that make you most effective?

Conduct the Interview

The safer your interviewees feel about the process the more honest their answers will be. For short, one-on-one interviews, secure a room, be prepared to take notes and make the meeting conversational and friendly. For focus groups, encourage participation, write answers on a flip chart for all participants to see and keep the conversation focused. When conducting surveys explain the purpose and what you hope to accomplish with the findings. Ensure that all the survey questions are clear or that you are available to answer questions about the survey.

Review Material and Take Action

Once you have conducted all of your interviews or surveys and compiled your notes, review your notes thoroughly and extract the best practices. You may find more success if you involve other managers or supervisors in the process.

Sample questions (to use when working with other team leaders):

? What behaviors are consistent with many of our high performers?

? What advice did they offer to improve performance for newer team members?

? How can we turn their suggestions into methods and implement those practices?

? Who resources are needed for the implementation?

Finally, incorporate high performers' practices into training strategies and apply your Best Practices Study results to coaching lower-performing team members.

Now that you have an overview, of how to conduct a Best Practice Study, give it a try in your Call Center and reap the many rewards. Your high performers will feel appreciated and valued, your low performers will improve skills and the overall team or department will function with more efficiency and success.

Jenny Kerwin is a writer and member of http://www.CallCenterCafe.com

Members of http://www.CallCenterCafe.com have access to articles like Best Practices Studies and materials related to Call Center Management, Training, Human Resources and Quality. The Café is full of resources for Call Center Professionals including a staff waiting to answer your questions. Take a 15 day test drive starting today.

---

3 Steps You Can Use Developing Leaders In Your Industry

With the economy bordering on a recession, every company is... Read More

Stop Waste, Fraud and Abuse

Each year, businesses write-off six percent of revenue to waste,... Read More

Can Your Business Run Without You?

If you are a business owner or a business owner... Read More

11 Strategies on How to Work in An Open Plan Environment

Many work environments now are open plan, with only a... Read More

Biometrics and ?Return On Investment?

At this time of tight budgets, the mantra of business... Read More

Employers - Protect Yourself from Custody Battles that Hold Your Company Hostage

Child custody? How'd that get to be an employer's concern?When... Read More

How To Use W Edwards Deming

Human beings and the way they interact are extraordinarily Complex.... Read More

Cultural Awareness - an HR Perspective

The use of cultural awareness training has increased rapidly in... Read More

Can What Someone Does Off-hours Affect Your Business?

Q: How much do I have to worry about what... Read More

Ringing Doorbells Without Howitzers

Many operations leaders have been there, done that with re-engineering.... Read More

What Makes a Good Appraisal Interview?

WHAT MAKES A GOOD APPRAISAL INTERVIEW?Here is a tip for... Read More

The Leaders Fallacy May Be Howard Deans Undoing

Howard Dean's tenure as chairman of the Democratic National Committee... Read More

Employee Discipline: How to Nip Problems in the Bud

Are you uncomfortable with delivering disciplinary action, even involving employees... Read More

Basic Management Skills

Recent studies have shown that industrial supervisors are working at... Read More

Dont Get Side-Tracked By The Nay-Sayers

You, the Entrepreneur, are 'normally' a type-A individual. One who... Read More

Seeking Help

Where does the time go? Billable time. As a consultant,... Read More

How to Find the Right Virtual Assistant for You

If you search on Google for "virtual assistant", you'll find... Read More

Avoid Outsourcing Pitfalls in the Injection Molds and Stamping Dies Markets

When looking to outsource overseas for Plastic Injection Molds or... Read More

Management Coaching to Improve Relationships with Work Associates

As a recent employee to your job, you are becoming... Read More

Group Discussion Guidelines

DISCUSSION METHODS: There are two basic types of discussion methods;... Read More

The Fairness of Office Politics... Integrity and Political Motivation!

I hear many complaints daily about the "unfairness" of politics... Read More

Got A Meeting Planned? Ask This Question

Meetings ? they are a fact of our business lives.... Read More

One Thing You Cant Hide

One of the most important of all motivators at work... Read More

Employee Orientation: Get New Hires Off To a Great Start

The good news is that a new hire orientation program... Read More

Warning! Meeting In Progress; May Be Hazardous To Your Career

There ought to be a sign posted on every closed... Read More

Team Motivation - Tough Enough to Care

Sir Alex Ferguson has just celebrated his 1000 game in... Read More

Understand What Flows Through Your Business to Find Improvement

I remember once seeing a cartoon which showed two people... Read More

Taking Care of Middle Manager Bounce Off

How many times have the management consultants been 'in' and... Read More

Tap Employee Passion For Business Success

Meriwether Lewis set the stage for the Corps of Discovery's... Read More

Firing Someone Without Resentment

Firing, sacking, letting go or terminating people is unpleasant. There... Read More

Use Noncompete Agreements To Protect Your Business

Q: One of my former employees has launched an online... Read More

Change or Die! To Change Your Organization, Hire a Business Coach

It is a common business axiom ? change or die.... Read More

Problem-Solving Success Tip: Define the Problem First

Define the Problem First. It seems obvious, but how many... Read More