Real-time Feedback method, questions, and results © 2001 The Allison Group, LLC.

The company: A new, small, and rapidly growing financial services company.

The participants:  Telephone center sales and collection agents.

The performance challenge:  Grow rapidly (lots of hiring and training), while maintaining employee and customer satisfaction.  Simultaneously, improve training so that time-to-profit for new employees is significantly reduced.

This mini-case demonstrates the capacity of Real-time Feedback Programs to obtain useful feedback on a regular basis from front-line employees.  Phone reps are, for example, quite capable not only of evaluating the work that is presented to them but also of providing specific, useful recommendations on an on-going basis.

2. After new training for the Department that prepares the cases, case quality increases to just above the previous level—but with the much more rigorous standard in place.

1. The decline in cases rated "Excellent" and "Very Good" is the result of employees' increased ability to appraise case quality following training.

Employee comments on cases and action taken (part of the Feedback process):

  •  "To improve this situation, I suggest that we redo customer contracts with the type in bold…. that fees will be charged."
  •  "[Our process] is not working … [followed by 3 concrete examples]."
  •  "Find more tools that we can use for Locate [process]… I have found several Internet sites that look like they might be helpful …"
  •  "I feel like all my frustrations are being addressed.  Expert Review [process] will definitely be a HUGE help."

Other results during the same 2 month period include:

  •  The time to profitability for new employees was cut by 50%.
  •  Noting a reported problem, supervisors of several departments met informally and—because they were close to the situation—developed a powerful solution that surprised and delighted senior managers who were struggling to find a resolution.
  •  During the introduction of a new compensation plan, feedback enabled management to correct interpretations and address concerns.  Because management learned how to explain it clearly, this plan—which was a good one all along—went from being disliked to being a powerful recruiting tool.