What is your operation managers approach to decision making? Is their decision making effective and does it have a clear thought process behind it to deliver positive change? Do they have the tools they need? There are many aspects to consider, but when we talk about decision-making, we mean an individual taking ownership of a task, applying the appropriate customer-centric perspective to a process or problem, then taking decisive action to ensure the task is completed and a positive outcome achieved.
This may sound pretty elementary but effective decision making is a fundamental requirement for any efficient and productive operation. Yet for many, it remains a significant challenge.
- How effective is the decision making in your Operation?
- Does the Operational MI solutions provide your managers with the transparency and control they need?
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
An effective Operation needs effective managers with effective MI
Your managers are responsible for ensuring timely completion of essential tasks and the provision of high-quality customer service. They marshal your resources, train for skills, manage workloads and own the performance of their teams. They are key to ensuring your customers’ expectations are met and the promises made by your front-line staff are kept.
To consistently deliver high levels of service, your managers must be able to make decisions on the ground in real time. They must have the confidence and the ability to take ownership and take action. Which means they must be able to trust the data in their management information which they base their decisions on.
We often see that it’s not poor decision making by the manager that is the issue but that the solutions provided does not afford the ability for joined up thinking and clarity.
For many operations information is fragmented across multiple spreadsheets and disparate systems, data has to collated and compiled into reports with potential for inaccuracy as data is pulled from multiple sources with a lack of understanding on definitions, which is often labour intensive to collate with more focus on creation rather than action planning.
We have seen significant investment in software solutions for the contact centre which has been the case for many years. We think this is because organisations have the belief that customer service is delivered through the contact centre and have invested in systems to deliver robust metrics. Whilst the Back Office is seen as important to delivering outputs they are for the most part unseen by the customer. This is a critical error as the back office is a major contributor to the success of an organisations customer experience as they deliver on the promised made in the contact centre. Yet the ability to capture all work from any source, ensure it is allocated and managed effectively in real time at the correct quality level within service standard is not the norm for the back office, and this causes ineffective decision making.
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
Good quality management information enables your managers to analyse activity, identify trends and effectively plan and forecast, which empowers them to make sound, data based decisions to improve operational effectiveness and enhance service delivery and your customers’ experience.
To be truly effective, managers need real time data from a centralised software system that gives them an accurate picture of their team from one place enabling them to make fast and effective decisions to improve team performance, productivity and quality.
When managers aren’t able to make effective decisions, the symptoms become visible quite quickly, so if you are serious about empowering managers to take responsibility and want a balance of cutting out waste and inefficiency whilst delivering quality, improved service and compliance they will need be invested in.