Calibration

This module explores Quality Calibrations, focusing on methods to ensure consistency and clarity in quality assessments:
- Purpose of Calibration: Emphasises the importance of calibration for maintaining consistent standards and ensuring fairness in quality assessments.
- Key Steps to Calibration: Details essential steps such as identifying variances, focusing on critical issues, understanding discrepancies, defining standards, and implementing actions.
- Calibration Strategies: Advocates for customising the calibration process and involving relevant personnel like quality assessors and frontline advisers to align with organisational goals.

Objectivity and subjectivity & The challenge of accuracy

This module explores the balance between objectivity, subjectivity, and accuracy in quality assessments:
- Consistency Challenges: Highlights the difficulties of achieving perfect accuracy in quality checks, noting limitations in both human and automated evaluations.
- Objective vs. Subjective Criteria: Explores how subjective assessments can sometimes offer more reliable insights due to their flexibility in interpreting context, compared to the rigid nature of objective metrics.
- Quality Check Optimisation: Advocates for regular calibration of quality systems to improve accuracy, while warning against overemphasising precision at the expense of broader quality improvements.

Safeguards vs Checks

This module covers the importance of implementing safeguards and checks to enhance quality processes:
- Risk Identification: Focuses on finding and correcting mistakes, but highlights the limitations of manual monitoring and the negative impact on team morale.
- Safeguards Over Checks: Advocates for implementing safeguards to prevent errors, reducing the need for constant checks and improving efficiency.
- Proactive Measures: Encourages exploring safeguarding options before adding more checks to the quality framework, ensuring a more sustainable approach to risk management.

Aligning Quality Measures

This module explores aligning quality assurance measures with organisational goals to enhance quality and demonstrate the value of the quality function:
- Quality Focus: Emphasises improving actual quality rather than just scores, integrating customer experience, company alignment, colleague support, and compliance.
- Customer-Centric Measures: Uses feedback like CSAT and NPS, along with operational metrics such as First Contact Resolution (FCR) to reflect real customer satisfaction.
- Business Perspectives: Considers financial impacts, evaluating handle times, sales effectiveness, and churn to align quality actions with business objectives.

Types of Framework

This module delves into three types of quality frameworks suitable for diverse organisational needs:
- Performance Frameworks: Measures and targets performance with scoring mechanisms, aiding in performance management and meeting organisational goals.
- Coaching Frameworks: Supports individual improvement without direct measurement, focusing on future actions and collaborative development across the organisation.
- Customer Journey Frameworks: Generates insights for continuous improvement by analysing the entire customer experience, identifying both pain points and best practices.

What does good quality look like?

This module examines quality frameworks and the essential components to include within diverse organisational contexts:
- Customer Understanding and Interaction: Stresses the importance of genuinely listening and understanding customer needs, emphasising human interaction over scripted responses.
- Outcome-Oriented Service: Advocates delivering appropriate outcomes by balancing customer expectations with business needs, avoiding overly rigid process adherence.
- Efficient and Effective Communication: Focuses on efficient use of time, clear communication, and setting precise expectations to prevent unnecessary follow-ups and enhance customer satisfaction.

Customer Outcomes

This module discusses enhancing customer outcomes through quality and improvement processes under regulatory frameworks:
- Customer-Centric Outcomes: Emphasises achieving the right customer outcomes to enhance satisfaction and loyalty while reducing costs and boosting revenue.
- Cultural and Measurement Shift: Moves from tick-box evaluations to outcome-based assessments, necessitating significant changes in performance culture.
- Quality and Process Improvement: Advocates for a holistic approach to quality, assessing the entire customer journey to drive improvements across the organisation.

The Improvement Cycle

This module covers key aspects of The Forum’s Improvement cycle within an organisation:
- Focussing on what matters most: Differentiates between measurement and improvement, focusing on activities that add value.
- Operational Rythmn: Establishes measurement and monitoring systems to identify and analyse opportunities for improvement.
- Diving Actions & Improvement: Encourages individual empowerment and actionable changes to foster ongoing growth and learning.

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