Ensuring high quality is a critical priority for a company when it is making business process outsourcing decisions. Calibration is a helpful way for outsourcing providers and clients to ensure that quality standards are clearly understood and achieved. Calibration – comparing with defined standards, is a step taken in BPO relationships to reduce perception gaps and measure and address any performance gaps. In this article, we will provide a basic overview of calibration and some things to look for in a robust calibration process.
What is calibration?
Calibration is an approach whereby a sample of provider outputs (e.g., call recordings, emails, processed forms) are assessed against defined standards. In calibration, the provider and client will perform independent assessments, thereby creating a mechanism that ensures a common understanding of performance expectations for what can often be ambiguous standards. This can also be a useful starting point for problem-solving around how to address any performance issues.
The acceptable margin of error for calibration is 5%. This means that there should be no more than a 5% difference between the assessment of the provider and the assessment of the client. If the gap is greater than 5%, then this indicates that there is a significant disconnect between client and provider expectations. Of course, this is likely only a concern if the provider consistently rates itself higher than the client does.
Signs of an effective calibration process
Some signs of a robust calibration process include:
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Detailed criteria are used: It is not enough to just rate a provider output on a scale of 1-5 as it does not provide insight into the reason for the rating. An evaluation form with detailed criteria that cover the more specific aspects of performance should be created. Some useful criteria might include: tone of communication, grammar, concision, technical expertise, identification and addressal of all issues and willingness to help
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Calibration occurs weekly: This helps to instill a continuous improvement mindset in the provider
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Open, honest conversations are held about the results: The client and provider should be comfortable sharing concerns and challenges. These conversations can often result in creative solutions to challenges and can build trust between the two parties
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Calibration results in clearly defined plans for addressing performance gaps: Providers should be expected to develop, with the client’s input, specific plans for addressing performance gaps
Over the last 8 years, Motif has sustained an almost zero variance in its calibrations with clients. This demonstrates Motif’s customer focus – it develops a strong understanding of its clients expectations and strives to achieve those expectations.
Navneet Singh Suryavanshi
The author is the Manager, Quality & a Six Sigma Black Belt at Motif. Motif, Inc. is a knowledge based services provider in the space of customer support services, back office transaction processing and research and analytics.
(www.motifinc.com)
