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A comment on Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor mortality ratings. Parent comment

Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by finaliteration on Saturday April 21, 2018 @05:06PM (#16893447)
I worked in a call center, as well, but they didn’t prioritize call length as a metric/KPI. Their number one KPI was “first call resolution”, meaning even if it took an hour as long as the problem was resolved the call was considered a success. I feel like it was a much healthier way to measure call center performance.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by jpatokal on Saturday April 21, 2018 @05:36PM (#16893573)
One support team I used to work with prioritized "first touch resolution" for email cases as well, so the agents would answer every case with a 16-page DYI flowchart listing every single possible problem and its resolution. KPIs are hard...
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by swiley on Saturday April 21, 2018 @10:14PM (#16894379)
Maybe I’m weird but that’s exactly the kind of response I would want.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by fphhotchips on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:43AM (#16894747)
No, that's documentation, and it should come with the product or, in the modern era, be available online.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by tonyedgecombe on Sunday April 22, 2018 @02:15AM (#16894943)
My experience is most customers can't read past the first line of a response. The idea that they can get through a 16-page flowchart seems unlikely to me. And I do sell to a mostly technical audience.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by daurnimator on Saturday April 21, 2018 @11:40PM (#16894594)
That sounds great!

I'm reminded of https://xkcd.com/810/

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:51PM (#16897020)
Getting sent the manual doesn't sound that great to me.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by scottlamb on Monday April 23, 2018 @08:19PM (#16908725)
It sounds pretty good to me if it inspires them to write a manual that answers the questions support gets. Most products come with a "manual" that's useless for troubleshooting.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by auxbuss on Sunday April 22, 2018 @03:59AM (#16895194)
This is systems thinking in action. It reduces failure demand[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_demand

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by emodendroket on Saturday April 21, 2018 @06:58PM (#16893821)
We rotated through all of them and our pay was tied substantially to them, which I guess also created an incentive to make it hard to get good metrics all the time on the part of someone else in the organization.
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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by kup0 on Monday April 23, 2018 @01:42PM (#16905626)
I moved from a call center where length was a KPI to one where it is not a KPI, and it makes a world of difference in the pressure/health of the office environment (and thus better outcomes for customers)

It is far better when call length is not a KPI. I would never go back.

IMO, if call length is a KPI, it's a key indicator that the company isn't willing to hire enough agents and is trying to apply pressure to shorten calls for purposes of coverage.

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Re:Heart surgeons refuse difficult operations to avoid poor ... by russjr08 on Sunday April 22, 2018 @12:40AM (#16894736)
This is how my call center measured performance until upper management came in and shut it down. Now it’s 800s, or you’re out.
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