This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained why he wears the same T-shirt every day.
For those who haven’t noticed, Zuckerberg wears the same gray T-shirt at most public events. “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community,” Zuckerberg said, after clarifying that he had “multiple same shirts.”It’s true – a person can only think one thought at a time, even though many consider themselves good multi-taskers, yet still suffer from decision-making fatigue. If we can eliminate many of the seemingly small decisions that we routinely make within a process, we’re actually freeing up mental energy that allows us to be more productive.
Within an HR Service center, agents at the Tier 1 level typically make lots of routine decisions, such as:
- Which case do I work on next?
- Which agent has the right knowledge to answer this question?
- Which agent has the most room on their plate to handle this case?
These tactical decisions don’t take much time, but they still consume mental energy and time; time and energy that could be used in other ways, to increase productivity and service quality. So, how do you apply the “same shirt principle” to the service center? By incorporating those routine decisions into the case management technology:
Embed decision-making into the agents’ dashboards.
When agents turn on their computers in the morning, one of the first questions they often ask themselves is, “What (cases) should I work on first?” A well-designed dashboard should draw the agents’ attention directly to the answer, by presenting information in a way that eliminates the need for the agent to ask that question, and make the decision. This is often referred to as “embedded analytics.”
Use skill-based routing.
According to Gartner, “Efficiently matching customer needs and preferences to the optimal support representative (or representatives) is the secret of support success. Nothing more, nothing less.” This in essence, is what skill-based routing is all about. Do you leave these routing decisions up to your agents, or do you delegate them to the technology, to give the agents more “mental bandwidth” for other productive uses? Speaking of bandwidth…
Use workload-based distribution.
Another common decision made in the service center is, “who has the most room on their plate to handle this case?” Assigning cases in a way that will balance the workload according to an each agents’ capacity – workload management – is another decision that can and should be delegated to technology, whenever possible. Computers are very good at calculating capacity; in fact, this is something they do best, so why burden a human with these decisions?
The Tier-one environment is fast-paced, with a lot of repetitive decision-making to get the work done well. And today’s technology has the capabilities to make effectively make these same decisions, so that agents don’t have to. Fewer decisions simplify processes, and that leads to greater efficiency, productivity and service quality. And less stress for the tier one agents, which is never a bad thing!
How many routine decisions are your agents making?
How many of those can be eliminated by technology?
And what’s your favorite T-shirt?