After my posting on call centers, I received an email from a reader submitting his own recent experience with a call center. The story is so funny – and such a classic example of lack of alignment – that, with the reader’s permission, I decided to share it with you. I edited the email for…
Archive | satisfaction
Measuring Customer Satisfaction
As I talk to organizations about their performance management journey, one of the most common questions I hear is “What’s the best way to measure customer satisfaction?” I often reply with a question of my own “Why do you want satisfied customers?” My question is usually unexpected and even jarring but I am encouraging them to think…
Call Center Metrics
If you’ve heard me give a performance management presentation, you know one of my favorite topics is the pursuit of improved performance in call centers. When I first started using them as my prototypical example several years ago, organizations were in the midst of moving call centers offshore. Less expensive human agents and AI-based electronic agents…
Revisiting Dirty KPIs
Based on my blog statistics, one of the most popular performance management articles I’ve ever written is Dirty KPIs: an article is about the challenges of using a metric based on activity rather than outcome. During one of my workshops, I recommended that an attendee use the outcome measure ‘% reduction in complaints about street…
Dirty KPIs
At a recent performance management workshop, I asked an attendee for an example metric he was using to track performance. The attendee, who worked for a city’s public works department, immediately replied “# of miles of streets cleaned.” Before I could ask any questions, he proudly added “and we cleaned more than 1000 miles last…
Reinventing Local Government
Every once in a while an idea comes along that’s so simple but so compelling that it sticks in my head for days. It also makes me wonder, “Why the heck didn’t I think of that?” An exchangeable tank for your gas grill fits the bill. So does the iPod. But not the Internet –…
I lost a day
I lost a day. Actually, I didn’t lose it so much as it didn’t exist. At least for me. Here’s how it happened. On Friday, Sept 1 2006 I boarded a 14-hour overnight flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong. I had been shortchanging my sleep all week so I was exhausted and fell asleep…
Performance Management’s Value
Yesterday a colleague asked me “Is there any tangible value in deploying a performance management system?” The question took me by surprise because she wasn’t asking if there was any value in automating using a software package but rather whether there was any documented value in performance management itself. I assured her that performance management…
The HP Way
Ask someone to describe the culture of companies in Silicon Valley and you’re likely to get responses like “unstructured”, “entrepreneurial”, and “decentralized.” Ask for examples of how they differ from their East Coast counterparts and you might hear about Friday afternoon beer bashes, T-shirts and jeans every day of the week, or the proliferation of…