Soft Skills

Of people and processes

Most people hate following processes. If lack of discipline is the root cause of non-compliance, then enforcing discipline is the most obvious remedial action to take, says Utpala Joshi

Quality is built around the simple maxim of ‘you can manage what you can measure’. Measure, manage and optimise are the three steps of process maturity that deliver consistent quality. With the advent of quality standards and focus on measurement, it is common knowledge that the quality of a service is directly a function of process compliance. When you adhere to processes completely, then your service is of the highest quality. When you deliver quality services, customer satisfaction is also the highest and so are business gains. This is a simple conclusion that has been taught by quality gurus and demonstrated time and again in practice. Yet complete process compliance is still an ‘accident’ and not a way of life.

With the booming BPO industry in India, process compliance is gaining more focus. Non-compliance (NC) is fast becoming an obstacle in the journey towards success of the BPO express.

The human factor

Why do we not follow a process? The simple answer is: We are human. Being human, we have an independent mind that reacts to the process differently. Given the same guidelines and steps, we still follow different paths. Sometimes it is the lack of discipline. At others, it is boredom. On one hand, laziness is a contributor and on the other, over-confident behaviour has the same effect. Short-sighted thinking that lacks impact analysis is another contributor. As we have an independent mind, we seem to be looking for a lot many reasons why we don’t like to follow a process. It is only artists who are allowed to leave their mark on their creation. However, in the business world, we cannot afford this luxury. Our success lies in not leaving our mark on our work. When we follow the process completely, our success is guaranteed.

If lack of discipline is the root cause of NCs non-compliance then enforcing discipline is the most obvious remedial action to take. And how we hate discipline! I believe that unless one is explained why one needs to do a certain action and the reasoning behind it, one is not going to follow the process diligently. Sitting down to discuss the right process steps and the effect of non-compliance is far more effective than producing NC statistics and then issuing orders for compliance.

Doing the same activity day in and day out can be boring—indeed very, very boring. To counter it, companies need to add more variety. Variety in terms of process options, variety in dealing with different set of customers or geographies, different workplace setting every month and different job roles every few months help a lot.

People will take shortcuts when they get an opportunity. At the same time, they will learn quickly when they know the consequences of taking a shortcut. A shortcut is a trade off—it will help you save time but a lost step is only going to cause more work later. Auditing process compliance regularly and sharing the root cause analysis with all concerned will bring down NCs over two to three cycles.

Keep it simple

If the process is simple, it will be followed easily. If it is cumbersome, with each step consisting of various sub steps and the process description running into multiple pages, be sure there will be more NCs. Drawing a process diagram, identifying decision points and outcome at each level will help in understanding processes. Simple and easy to implement ideas are—a pocket process ready-reckoner; colourful, wall mounted process maps; easily available checklists and process reference guides, strategically displayed NC statistics and prominently displayed rewards for process compliance.

The KISS principle (for those who haven’t heard it stands for ‘keep it simple, stupid!’) has always worked and the successful processes are those that are ‘idiot proof’!

Encourage your clients to provide feedback on the service, a good word from the client for the effort and hard work put in by the team is a reward that is treasured for a long time by the team.

Process training

Process training can be broken up into two parts—for novices and for practitioners. Both are equally important yet refresher training takes a back seat in many organisations. Novice training needs to include shadow and reverse shadow type of training so that a person who is getting initiated in the process is confident of handling the process independently. Targeted refresher training helps in increasing not only process compliance but also personal productivity.

Besides process training, behavioural training to inculcate ‘zero tolerance to NC’ attitude, is required. The Indian attitude of ‘chalta hai’ is a bane to process compliance and needs to be avoided at all costs.

Exception handling

So common are exceptions that it is observed that 80 percent of programming logic is written to handle exceptions! Similar observations can be made for a process too. Exceptions to the rule need to be captured and treated separately for the process to work smoothly.

When a new process is implemented, it is the process itself that is the cause of support calls. In a well-settled process, it is the data that is a cause of support calls. For any business process, setting up clear and well-defined exception handling is essential. It is a good practice to classify priority 1, 2 and 3 exceptions; priority 1 being the show-stoppers.

To handle show-stopper exceptions, it is crucial to reduce down time by either making an alternate solution path available or having a crack support team to zero in on the fault, rectify and deploy it within an hour or two. Once handled, all priority 1 support calls need to be analysed for the root cause. Once it is found, the solution needs to be built into the process and recorded in the knowledge repository. Following this path leads to better compliance and fewer ‘unhandled exceptions’ in future.

The learning from all priority 1 support calls needs to reach the senior management too. The senior management can take corrective actions for a process and its support by judging the trend. They can either expand the support team or take a re-look at the service levels agreed with the client. 100 percent defect-free delivery is an impossibility. The manufacturing industry has tried to set new standard of almost-defect-free delivery. The service industry needs to follow the same route for process compliance.