P&Q Challenge awards first accreditations

Participants in the P&Q Challenge have been awarded the first official accreditations from the programme.

Following a series of workshops and an assessment, 14 organisations have received the first official accreditations from the P&Q Challenge programme. A further four companies – Harrow Borough Council, Soha Housing, CPM and Serco – gained special recognition for the great strides they have made in the area of quality.

A programme of sustained collaboration for the customer service industry

The P&Q Challenge, sponsored by Nexidia, is a programme of sustained collaboration for the customer service industry as it wrestles with the definition of quality and how to use it as a strategic tool for transformational change.

“The need for such a tool is based on the extremely dynamic world that customer services now operates in,” said Martin Hill-Wilson, P&Q Challenge leader. “Clearly many of the internal and external drivers of just a decade ago have given way to new ones. Yet there is little best practice on how to keep responding to these in an integrated way. This framework is one example of attempting to reach this new level of capability.”

Core changes inspired by the P&Q Challenge

• A complete strategy rethink – Taking part in the programme produced a fundamental shift in how organisations look not just at quality, but also at the role of the contact centre within the business as a whole. One such shift in thought was that customer service is not an isolated department but a concept that is central to the entire organisation. Another was that front-line workers are a direct link with customers and as such have a startling amount of insight to share.
• Real employee engagement – A real lightbulb moment for many of the participants was when they went to their front-line staff and asked them to help the business define quality. Many of the participants realigned their agent scorecards to be more customer-focused and supported this with timely coaching and regular feedback from agents.
• Rewarding the right behaviours – A key element of changing people processes was changing the way workers are rewarded. The transparent quality framework has allowed a consistency of message to all workers – everyone knows what they are working towards and that they will be rewarded for a job well done.

“The fact that many of the companies taking part have seen such a tangible positive impact on business results just goes to show what a difference a focus on quality can make,” said Jonathan Wax, VP EMEA at Nexidia. “It can be difficult to articulate the benefits of targeting quality, but when the outcome is increased customer satisfaction and increased sales, it suddenly becomes an easier conversation to have with the rest of the business.”