A Real-world Look at Two Trends in Performance Management

The employment landscape for contact center agents is tightening: With unemployment hitting record lows at just 3.7%, contact center leaders must engage employees in personalized ways to drive performance improvements, reduce attrition and unlock greater ROI from their workforce. 

At the same time, the quantity of data that contact centers must incorporate into their performance management programs to achieve those goals is multiplying exponentially, making it harder than ever to unite data and drill down to accurate performance insights.

In this environment, contact center leaders need a solution that brings clarity to data and drives agent behavioral changes with individualized, structured programs. That’s why many leaders are turning to NICE Performance Management 7.0 (NPM). Its next-generation innovations empower leaders and individual employees alike with knowledge of how to improve performance.

Recently, NICE led a roundtable discussion focused on the next wave of performance management advances. A handful of trends emerged from the discussion, which included contact center leaders from these companies:

• MAPFRE
• Marriott
• Ameritas
• Walmart
• BayCare
• Healthfirst
• Exelon
• First Data
• First Tennessee

Take a look below at the two major trends that emerged from the discussion for insight into new performance management technologies and how companies are utilizing them.

Radical Changes in Coaching through Positivity and Real-world Data

After receiving feedback supervisors and representatives that coaching had become repetitive and ineffective, Jeremy McKechnie at MAPFRE knew that a different course of action was needed. So he developed a new approach utilizing NICE NPM that is automated, transparent and completely constructive. And it quickly delivered performance results.

First, McKechnie set out to change the culture surrounding performance management culture inside of MAPFRE. He designed a program, called “Compass,” to drive transformation through three key goals: 1) enabling a growth mindset, where everyone in the organization is driven to improve and regularly considers how they could perform better; 2) fostering a culture of employee support, importance and appreciation, where employees feel valued after every coaching session; and 3) creating  a culture of 100% positive coaching, where agents identify the specific areas they need to improve using real-world data from NPM.

To achieve this vision, MAPFRE utilized NICE NPM to develop and implement four procedures that enabled ongoing behavioral improvements at the individual level:

1. The company surveyed for a baseline to understand the current perception of coaching in the contact center.
2. The company turned its user acceptance testing team, made up of front-line agents and supervisors, into a team of ambassadors that ensured that numerous roles and perspectives were represented when crafting the roll-out plan.
3. McKechnie and the user acceptance testing team created gamified elements of the Compass program and NPM roll out, such as KPI scavenger hunts and contests.
4. McKechnie and other team leads were all put on the training team to ensure consistent and comprehensive messaging to staff.

McKechnie shared that once implemented, the change was nearly immediate. MAPFRE experienced a two-point increase in CSAT, higher satisfaction levels among staff, a 7% increase in schedule adherence and 25% increase in coaching with associated cost savings. The company also gained insight into previously unknown performance gaps in schedule adherence, AHT, CSAT.

“We see employees more engaged and happier, which is really spilling over into interactions with the customers,” McKechnie said. “We’ve seen across the board and the organization that we’re meeting our KPIs, our performance is better, and our customer experience has improved significantly.”

A Focus on Sustainable Performance Improvement

Improving performance is no longer a focus just for new employees or those who are underperforming – all employees can constantly seek opportunities to improve when empowered with the right data. Three elements of performance management were identified at the round table as drivers of ongoing individual improvement.

• Behavior: Specific behavioral improvements should be provided and tied to KPIs.
• Personalization: Coaching strategies must be personalized to the employee, particularly millennial employees who expect individualized feedback in the workplace.
• Measurable Results: Coaching’s success should be benchmarked and measured through an effectiveness KPI. Coaches should be provided with tools that provide insight into the best coaching strategy for each agent.

Together, these elements create a culture of constant personal career development that puts organizations on the pathway to their strategic goals.

To solve contact centers’ challenges with talent acquisition and retention and the explosion of data, leaders are turning to these new solutions. Organizations like MAPFRE, Marriott, Walmart and more are transforming their performance management programs with personalized and measurable data that’s tied to business KPIs. To learn more about sustainable performance improvement, personalized coaching or the roundtable discussion, read our whitepaper or visit the NICE Performance Management webpage.​