Managing for perforMance

our pursuit of continuous iMproveMent

Achieving customer management excellence demands continuous effort and rigorous endeavour.

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Managing for Performance

• Our pursuit of continuos improvement

Performance Compass

•Our performance insight team

•Agent performance

• Team leader performance

Steer

Academy

Momentum programme

Operational performance

Leadership

content

Managing for perforMance

Our pursuit of continuous improvementAchieving customer management excellence demands continuous effort and rigorous endeavour. For that reason we structure our business – the way we manage our people and deploy our resources – in a way that keeps us focused on improving performance in the four areas that matter most to our clients:

In order to achieve this we’ve devised our own proprietary performance management system, which allows us to actively manage our teams, our campaigns and our business with a single purpose in mind… to deliver ever increasing value to our clients.

achieving lean performance through effective workforce

planning.

PRODUCTIVITY

accelerating NPS, Satisfaction and Effort

scores in parallel.

PERFORMANCE

both with regulatory requirements and exacting quality

standards agreed with each client.

COMPLIANCE using quintile

management and focused coaching

to enable excellent people to deliver their

best.

PEOPLE

Managing Performance

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At the heart of that performance management

system is the Performance Compass. Aflexibledashboardthat’s used across our business – from frontline agents to our leadership team – to constantly monitor performance, drive improvement and to direct the deployment of effort and resource.

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I use Performance Compass to…

FRONTLINE AGENTSmanage my performance and see how it compares

to others in my team.

TEAM LEADERSmanage my team to target and provide focused coaching

and training.

OPERATIONS MANAGERS

manage performance across my client’s

business for consistency and continuous improvement.

LEADERSHIP TEAM ensure every client campaign is running

effectively and to allocate resource appropriately.

It’s also closely monitored by members of our performance insight team; professional analysts who use it – along with the underlying data that drives it – to provide operational and account managers with proactive change recommendations designed to deliver step-change improvements in productivity, performance, compliance and people metrics resulting in a better all-round customer experience.

View a short demonstration of the dashboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnBb2zu5fjs

perforMance coMpassThere’saversionofthedashboardforeveryoneinourflatorganisation structure:

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Our performance insight teamEvery client campaign has an appointed insight manager – a member of our performance insight team that works alongside the operation to provide data driven recommendations for performance improvement.

Each insight manager is a professional analyst with deep customer management experience – expert at taking raw data and transforming it into powerful change recommendations. Our insight managers are based in our client delivery locations, working hand-in-hand with operation and account managers. They are supported by an 80 strong team of data analysts based in India, who work through our night-time to constantly capture data from Performance Compass and underlying datasystems.Theycompletefirstlevelanalysis and provide a fresh pool of structured data for our insight managers to get their teeth into at the start of every working day.

Maintaining this team is part of our commitment to customer experience engineering–constantlyfinetuningouroperation and the experience it delivers based on irrefutable fact and data-driven insight.

It allows our operation and account managers to be highly effective, because they are constantly provided with guidance and recommendations from their insight manager.

Agent performanceEvery agent starts their working day by looking at their performance on their own Performance Compass dashboard. They can see how they’re performing against target and how their performance compares with others in their team. This is important because we practice active quintile management. The top performing 20% of any agent team can be accorded certain privileges; the best choice of shiftpatternsorafinancialincentive.Agentsare encouraged to strive for improvement in their quintile ranking and, because their team leader can see their ranking too, they’re assured of receiving appropriate coaching and support.

Each agent’s quintile position is based on a balanced evaluation of their performance across targets, unique to each client, set in each of the four Compass quarters; productivity, customer experience, compliance and people performance – including their attendance rate. Performance Compass gives them total visibility of their performance against target in each, so they know exactly where they need to focus their efforts.

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Cont.Active performance management and a quintile

approach encourage agent engagement and have been shown to deliver a marked improvement in absenteeism and attrition levels – typically 8%. That’s important to us because it helps maintain a stable operation, avoid performance disruption and minimise the

cost of recruitment and training. After all, one of our most fundamental client commitments is to ensure that they have the right number of highly competent, precisely trained and highly engaged people working on their business all of the time.

Team leader performanceAsthefirstlineofmanagementourteamleaders are the backbone of every operation. Their primary task is to manage the performance of agents in order to achieve the targets in each Compass quarter. Their Performance Compass dashboard lets them see the aggregated performance of their whole team and the individual performance of every member. And, because they can see both ‘on the day’ performance and a three month history, they can identify trends and monitor the impact of their management interventions.

Being able to drill down to understand each agent’s areas of strengths and weaknesses means they can dedicate appropriate training and coaching and then monitor its impact. Actively encouraging individual agents to move up the quintile ladder is one of their responsibilities; so too is working to reduce the performance differential between quintiles 1 and 5 through targeted training and coaching.

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Asthefirstlineofmanagement our team leaders are the backbone of every operation.

Managing shift patternsRewarding top quintile performers with the best shift patterns, and financially incentivising agents in quintiles two and three to be flexible in their shift allocation allows us to maintain flexible teams, minimise operational disruption in ‘steady state’ and to flex quickly when unexpected events demand extra resource.

Agents are encouraged and rewarded to improve their quintile performance and supported by active coaching from their team leaders.

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If a team leader observes that an agent is performing consistently below expectations, they can enter them into a Steer Programme...

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Team leaders have to get the best performance out of every agent and, as well as being abletoprovideflexiblecoaching,canalsosetagentspecifictargetstolendsupportto

poor performers or those failing in a particular area. If a team leader observes that an agent is performing consistently below expectations, they can enter them into a Steer Programme, which offers a combination of concentrated coaching and a clear glide path to improvement with realistic goals and targets.

SteerAgents in Steer are generally quintile 5 performers who are struggling to step up. They enter the programme in agreement with their team leader and with their support. They commit to an agreed programme of training and coaching and sign up to a set of target improvements that, over an agreed period of time, will get them to where they need to be to meet the demands of the campaign. These individual targets – and their milestones – can be recorded in Performance Compass, so that both team leader and agent can monitor progress towards them. We believe giving people a staged route to improvement – rather than a seemingly impossible step change to make – gives them the highest chance of success and prevents the disillusionment that leads to attrition.

Team leaders working in the Webhelp Academy ...can also use Compass to set progressive targets and evaluate when they feel an agent is ready to make the move.

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Steer is just one example where team leaders are empowered to adjust their coaching effort to accommodate particular individuals or situations.

They can also set appropriate performance glide paths for new agents coming into their teams, for those who have changed roles or taken on new responsi-bilities.

Team leaders working in the Webhelp Academy – a highly supported area that helps new agents transition from training to the mainstream operation – can also use Compass to set progressive targets and evaluate when they feel an agent is ready to make the move.

AcademyNew agents that have completed training enter the Webhelp Academy, where they typically spend 60 – 90 days before transitioning to the mainstream operation. During this time they are carefully coached, with expert guidance and a low agent to team leader ratio.

Their performance is carefully monitored, via Performance Compass, by Academy team leaders who determine when they are ready to make the move.

Academy ensures agents are highly proficient when they enter their mainstream teams and that they are highly supported during the 0 – 60 day period after training when, experience tells us, they are most likely to leave. Academy has allowed us to reduce early-day agent attrition dramatically.

Team leaders, too, are actively managed via the Performance Compass; intensivelysowhentheyarefirstappointedtotheroleandenterourMomentum programme. Like Academy for agents, Momentum is designed tohelpthemadapttotheirnewroleandrapidlyacquiretheskillsoffirstline management. This is important to us. It is our observation that team leaders,whenpromotedfromtheagentranksandinsufficientlytrainedforthenew responsibilities they assume, can be a weak link that compromises the performance of the entire team.

By teaching team leaders the principles of people management, supporting transition to their new role and providing them with the streamlined Performance Compass to manage their agents’ performance we help them to be highly effective.

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Momentum programmeMomentum helps new team leaders adapt to their new role and acquire the skills of first line management. Typically over 10 days they undergo a programme of management training supported by their operations manager, who will set a glide path of targets within Performance Compass to get them to the top of their game quickly.

Operational performanceOur operations managers, and their account manager colleagues, areresponsible for managing entire client programmes with multiple agent teams. They are charged with delivering to client expectations and ratcheting up performance in each of the four Compass quarters – customer experience, productivity, compliance and people performance.

To do so, they use Performance Compass to manage their team leaders, ensuring they are meeting their targets and that they are providing appropriate coaching to their agents. Because Performance Compass also incorporates agent feedback from coaching, and subsequent performance improvements, they can evaluate the effectiveness and ROI of every training programme and adjust tactics accordingly.

Operations managers are also responsible for working with their dedicated performance insight manager to introduce change and improvement initiatives, the impact of which they actively monitor through their own Compass dashboard.

Because operations managers typically manage teams across multiple sites and even geographies, their Compass dashboard lets them see aggregate performance data for their whole client campaign, for particular locations, activity streams, teams or – if necessary – agents. And, because they often work between locations, they can also view this information ‘on the move’, via the mobile devices on which they rely.

Having a clear view of their operation; its day-to-day performance, achievements and challenges, means our operational managers have the information they need to guide client campaigns to ever greater success and, when they need it, the evidence to support requests for additional assistance or resource from our leadership team.

LeadershipMembers of our leadership team are intimately involved and personally concerned with the performance of every client campaign and ultimately responsible for allocating the resources – people, technology and investment – to support the success of each. Their Performance Compass Dashboard gives them a clear and incisive view of our performance against target for every client campaign, with the option to drill down to particular locations, work streams and on to individual teams should they choose.

On every working day, they use it to actively manage the performance of our growing operational network, which now extends to 10,400 people in 16 locations across the UK, South Africa and India, and to make informed decisions about the allocation of resources and investment.

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Performance CompassOur proprietary performance management system has been created by us to support client-focused management of our business from top down and bottom up.

• Agent, team leader, operations manager and leadership dashboards give total visibility across the organisation.

• Measuring performance against client specific targets in four key performance areas – customer experience, productivity, compliance and people performance.

• Supporting progressive improvement of agent performance through active quintile management.

• Empowering team leaders to deliver prioritised coaching and targeted development.

• Allowing operations managers to implement change and manage its impact.

• Giving leaders the insight to allocate resources and investment.

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Managing for performance

The Performance Compass is at the heart of our Managing for Performance endeavour, supported by data-driven insight and reinforced by performance enhancing programmes

such as Steer, Academy and Step up to Management. It all supports our conviction that the operationswerunforourclients,shouldrunlikefinelytunedmachines,whoseperformanceisconstantly calibrated and enhanced to deliver better results.

And, because that machine is made up of people – individual, resourceful and often expert – we make sure Managing for Performance is focused on improving their personal contribution to our clients’ success – by giving them clear and infallible access to information about their own performance and that of the teams they manage. Managing for Performance means managing for our clients through our people, and delivering continuous improvement every step of the way.

About Webhelp UK

Webhelp UK is part of the Webhelp Group; a global BPO provider and customer experience innovators across a range of digital, social and traditional voice channels to an international client base.

From 12 locations across the UK, Webhelp provides multi and omni-channel services to some of the UK’s most progressive brands and businesses including Sky, EE, Vodafone, First Utility, Boots,OfficeDepot,MobilebySainsbury’sandPlusnet.WebhelpUK,whichhasitsoperationalheadquarters in Falkirk, Scotland, has grown its revenues by 112% in the last four years by focusing on value-based outsourcing, omni-channel engagement and experience analytics to create optimal customer journeys.

The Webhelp Group employs over 30,000 people in 81 locations worldwide and has its British headquarters in London, England and global headquarters in Paris, France.

Find out how we can help you deliver exceptional customer experiences.

webhelp.com/uk

linkedin.com/company/webhelp-uk

@WebhelpUK