4 min
Deputy General Director for Operational Development BDO Unicon Outsourcing
According to the International Labor Organization, employers had a harder time monitoring teleworkers’ performance in 2020. However, a wise quality assurance system and reduction of micromanagement will make it possible to ensure consistently strong performance on the part of the staff and fail-free business processes.
1. Minimize Manual Labor
Manual processing of customer requests and entry of data in the accounting systems invariably take a lot of time and are not immune to employees’ errors. In the present-day context of digital transformation, it is expedient to automate the processes as much as possible by reorienting the employees to the most important areas that will help your business grow. Analyze the manual processes in your company that may be robotized. Assess your company’s resources: are you able to launch the development of the solution using your own resources or does it make more economic sense to engage a provider? If your business processes have been standardized, you may opt for ready-to-use RPA systems. Otherwise, you will have to earmark time and money for the development and implementation of your own products. Estimate the budget and payback period after you free up the relevant resources.
2. Automate Quality Assurance Processes
Every day, our accounting department employees handle large quantities of customers’ data, and despite automation of certain processes, the risk of human error persists. It is not always possible to identify the root cause of the flaws due to a high work load.
To solve this problem in the payroll department, we have developed our own quality assurance system based on 1C that made it possible for us to reduce the quantity of errors and eliminate their causes. Following the calculations, the accountant launches an automatic verification process to identify diverging data. In case of a malfunction, the employee records it and specifies the error type, number of persons affected thereby, and financial consequences for the customer and company. Thereafter, department managers analyze these data in order to identify the root cause of the error: whether the employee was negligent, or the client delayed the documents, and therefore, the employee had no time to verify, or there is a new calculation type not provided for by the program. After doing so, we look for ways to optimize our work and address these problems.
In the past, miscalculations led to financial losses for our customer. Now, by contrast, we are able to compensate the customer for these losses in most cases. This proved to be faster and less risky for us than trying to find the persons at fault. In the meantime, it is important to build a relationship of trust within the department and use sanctions carefully. Any authoritarian methods may force employees to conceal their errors, and it will be impossible to develop an efficient quality assurance system.
3. Monitor Your Customers’ Situation
Remember that the pandemic has placed everyone in a difficult position, and therefore, additional care for each other won’t hurt. As you make business calls, have a Zoom meeting, or simply correspond, take initiative and ask whether your clients need any extra help or expertise. During a crisis, information is the critical tool, and our company tried to deliver it to our customers within the shortest possible time. After the beginning of the pandemic, we launched a more frequent notification of our clients on any changes that took place and analyzed their effects on business. Besides, we used our personal experience to assist certain customers with the switchover to electronic document management and expedited the processing of incoming requests. This support is highly appreciated during the period of uncertainty.
Multiple processes evolved during the confinement period. You have to keep an ear to the ground and be certain that your proposals and solutions for customers do not become outdated. Thus, we conducted a customer satisfaction survey. It is noteworthy that certain clients highly appreciated our support during the pandemic. Following the survey, we held interviews to get a better idea of the problems encountered by our customers and of the methods to enhance our services and other ways to help.
4. Monitor the Transparency of Business Processes
During the forced teleworking period, all processes and communications invariably went online. It is important to maintain strong confidence and understanding both at the work team level and with the customers. This is the reason why it is advisable to evaluate how comfortable the clients feel working with you and whether they receive sufficient information about the scope and completion dates of the projects managed by the provider. To do so, rely on ready-to-use task managers, access to which you will grant to your customers, or your own solutions, whether cloud-based or desktop-based.
In our company, we have developed a cloud-based solution — MyBPO portal — to ensure efficient communication between our employees and customers. Work teams use it to exchange documents, track changes in these documents, and set and monitor tasks. In the past, we used email and messengers to communicate with our customers. Switching between different communication channels took a lot of time, as it was necessary to recall where you sent a certain document every single time. Our development has solved this problem. Besides, the portal makes it possible to protect customers’ data from unauthorized access: the employee sees only the tasks and documents that are necessary within the scope of his/her job duties. If a client has any questions, the changes made by the employee may be tracked right on the portal.
5. Hold Business Meetings for Your Team
Oftentimes, it is easier for a customer to talk to a single representative of a work team than to multiple members: the client may have a higher confidence in a certain member and may be more open speaking about his/her problems, requests, and changes inside the company. Therefore, I advise to hold status meetings for customers in order to exchange important information and get a better idea of the client’s needs. This will make it possible for the team to adjust its work practices and meet the customers’ expectations.
Obviously, it is impossible to restructure the company’s operations and build an automated quality assurance system within a week. But potential investments of the company’s money and resources will help improve the performance of the business processes and stay competitive in the market in the future.
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