US Corp Case Study - Quality Assurance Essentials is the subject

Service Company Deploys Contact Center along with Continuous Improvement Initiative

During the implementation of a national command center (centralized contact center operations servicing agents across 15 states), US Corp (USCO) realized the importance of maximizing this investment beyond the initial contact center solution. The key to getting the most from this contact center systems is in quality performance and continuous improvement. To achieve this objective, Quality Assurance (QA) Business Unit launched a three-year plan to increase visibility, awareness, and focus on continuous improvement efforts to better meet client needs.

About US Corp

As an insurance services corporation, USCO serves insurance customers in 15 states across the U.S.A. With approximately 5,500 employees, the company delivers insurance services to end consumers, brokers, and other insurance service company customers.

Within USCO, the QA Business Unit, composed of 70 employees, supports organizational effectiveness by ensuring that work is executed in a consistent, repeatable, and efficient manner, while ensuring regulatory compliance. The QA Business Units Contact Centeris responsible for the companysservice efforts as well as USCOs Continuous Improvement Initiative (CCI). The QA team supports USCO in increasing efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility to meet business demands.

Focusing on Continuous Improvement

In the spring, USCO completed the final release of its contact center implementation, which now covers five components: US Corp Retail Agents, brokers, underwriters, finance, asset management, and analytics and reporting.

Even before its completion, the Contact Center project also sparked a comprehensive continuous improvement initiative. This quality effort was shaped by a three-year plan as outlined in QAs business process management strategy and vision statement below:

Evolve QAs processes to meet USCO strategies and client needs Mature QA process management capability.

Institute quota systems to ensure productivity.

Foster emphasis on continuous improvement through collaborative innovation and business integration

Ensure process compliance with internal and external requirements/controls Incorporate industry best practices and champion lean thinking

QAs three-year plan to accomplish this vision is summarized below:

Year 1: Stabilization and optimization strategy;Road to efficiency and optimal performance Year 2: Capability development and education; Building practitioner capability

Year 3: Standardization and integration; Collaborative innovation and enterprise alignment

Managing Processes to Achieve Continuous Improvement

One of the guiding principles steering QAs continuous improvement journey is to put the business process management vision into action through these key elements:

• Innovation: Better use of what is already in place; work smarter
• Reliability: Cost, quality, cycle time
• Client: Incorporate feedback

Other guiding principles include:

• Leverage existing knowledge experts and networks
• Always align with enterprise objectives and goals
• Incorporate industry best practices.
• Ask why first, then how. This helps solidify the scope and leads to better results
• Start small and gain positive momentum
• Work toward managing by integrated end-to-end processes
• Quantify and measure results
• Ensure that continuous improvement efforts are visible at all levels, prioritized, integrated, and approved by process owners (QA leadership)
• Exploit the Contact Center investment to realize value, where possible to:
  • Leverage existing people, process, and technology platforms to inspire a new spirit of innovative collaboration to realize the value of the contact center investment and move beyond QA performance management efforts
  • Support a phased approach toward QA performance and integrated process management
  • Start small and grow

One of the first steps in the quality journey was defining performance management in easy-to- understand terms: performance management is the delta between actual results (current state) and the desired outcome (future state). The measured difference from the baseline to the optimal state is what we focused on to reduce the gap between where we were and where we wanted to be in our first year of launching our quality journey, explains Paul Mason, director of quality for USCOs QA Business Unit.

Communication between leaders and teams was found to be semi-effective with new teams and new leaders. To temporarily resolve communication issues the teams made written memos the primary method of communication. Despite slowing the pace of project tasks, the memos are allowing progress to be made.

To ensure commitment and continuous focus, a mandatory achievement goal was created year 1 and added to employees performance appraisals. At the same time, QA developed its performance management approach and focused on targeted areas based on top pain points such as agent software support, finance and underwriting work flows. For each pain point, baseline measures were recorded on cycle time, quality, and cost.

Achieving Milestones and Meeting Performance Goals

During the first year, the multi-phase, multi-unit Contact Center Project was found not to be well scoped. A team was recruited to revisit planning and address issues. The team discovered that processes related to contact center operations were not clear.

To date, QAs improvement efforts have included the following milestones:

• Developed a structured approach to sustain the focus on continuous improvement, and widely communicated across QA areas.
• Created 19 metrics tracked through a dashboard on the company portal.
• Transitioned metrics into operational items assigned to units in QA.
• Developed a QA process management framework to sustain performance improvement.

While QA is in the middleof its three-year strategic approach, some positive results have been achieved, as evidenced by measuring the 19 key performance metrics in year 1.

Early improvement projects exhibited an erratic pattern of results. Some projects failedto standardize changes or start a new cycle of change. Teams informed leadership that they were unable to properly choose a finished state. Informal efforts and timing for measuring results seemed to be the cause. Leadership is considering implementation of a more formal methodology.

Despite working together throughout the first year, Improvement team members are still unclear of their roles. Leadership suspects that confrontations and divided loyalties among team members are common. Individual thinking among team members has stalled performance.

Among the factors credited for the gains achieved thus far are maintaining a simplified process framework, leadership buy-in and engagement, partnering with internal clients, communications, clear and quantifiable metrics.

Gaining Employee Participation

Leadership has seen some process improvements but not at the pace originally anticipated. Employee adherence to QA policies plays a key role in moving QA forward. Employee attendance in continuous improvement training has been an issue for the organization. This effort, mandated by leadership, will only be successful if employees rise to the occasion, notes Mason. Professional development activities like continuous improvement training may have to be required with penalties throughout the organization.

Employees work in teams focusing on the workflow of key processes. Using one- and two-day kaizen workshops, employees have improved a few processes such as personnel change requests and provisioning of equipment. Team members map out the flow and question what steps do or do not add value to the process.

Capstone Assignment Instructions and Solution Tasks

Below you will find the scenario, instructions, and helpful notes as you complete this assignment.

Scenario

Your skills as a quality pro have gained you fame and notoriety. US Corp, an insurance services corporation, has hired you to improve the results they are getting from following their present quality plan and system. They have budgeted a fortune to complete a three-year project to establish a national command center and implement formal continuous improvement throughout the organization. The leadership has reviewed results from the first year (see provided case study) of the project and are not satisfied with the results. Employees and project team members are demoralized and have lost confidence in the current quality plan.

The leadership submitted the first-year case study to you and have asked you to perform the following tasks in the hopes of getting back on track and having a successful finish to the project.

Solution Tasks

After reviewing the provided case study, use the Quality Plan template to define a new quality plan for US Corp which addresses the following concerns and accomplishes the desires of the leadership mentioned in the scenario above. For each item below, add a clause or clauses to your new quality plan document describing the new approach which will solve the problems in the provided case study.

a. How can the organization use quality principles to gain more employee participation?

b. What tool can the team, who was recruited to revisit the Contact Center Project scope problem, use to clarify the processes involved?

c. The pace of project tasks is slow. One of the factors slowing the pace is communication. What solution could be implemented to improve the effectiveness of communication between people involved in project tasks?

d. Due to erratic results of early improvement projects and issues with standardizing changes, the leadership is seeking to adopt a more effective formal change methodology. What do you recommend?

e. Review QAs business process management strategy and vision statement. If you apply Deming's 14 Fourteen Points of Management, consider how well the statements align to them. Add clauses as needed to your new quality plan to make appropriate adjustments that align the organization with these principles.

Helpful Notes

You may edit the existing text in the quality plan template, add to the text in the quality plan template, use the provided blanks, or remove text from the quality plan template. You may address the above solution tasks within the content of your new quality plan document (using the template), or you may

add the questions and answers at the end to show how your new plan addresses or answers these questions. The following additional tips are intended to provide additional clarifications and help you accomplish this capstone.

For best results with this exercise:

Add Definitions for terms that you wish to ensure are understood by the organization.

Use the Appendices and Reference section to list documents you refer to in your quality plan. For this exercise, you do not need to create a reference document. Some of the reference documents are listed as an aid for you but are not actual documents you can find or review for this exercise. For example, the referenced Company Portal Dashboard can be used as a prop for you to indicate that staff will see something on the dashboard. There is no actual dashboard for you to look at.

Quality Objectives are referenced as the 19 key performance metrics listed on the Company Portal Dashboard. It is appropriate for you to add your own metrics as well, as desired.

Quality Management section may be a bulleted list, a narrative, or combination to explain the organizations approach to quality. This section is best for introducing concepts or principles for the organization to follow.

Quality Control Plan and Quality Assurance Plan may include items in narrative form or listed in the provided tables as needed to show how processes are controlled and how outcomes are assured.

Roles and Responsibilities may be completed as needed to clarify who is involved in implementing your plan.

Tools and Reporting sections may be completed as needed to clarify what tools and data reports your plan calls for.

Blanks are acceptable if appropriate. Provided blanks are available for your use to complete the exercise. If you dont need a blank, it is acceptable to leave the blank.

Formatting is provided for clarity. How you choose to format this document is up to you and will not typically be considered as part of the grade. However, formatting will count against your grade if it causes part of your submission to be unclear.