Chris McCann mentions that he wants to increase productivity in the plant from ten million pounds to 16 – 20 million pounds. Goals are set by management and the machines speed up. Contact centers are managed in much the same way by management coming up with targets for the number of calls taken in a day.

The whole idea of a prescription of how many calls a contact center should take, the allotted AHT per call, and the service level given are rooted in how contact centers can reduce costs. This prescription seems logical enough and most contact centers subscribe to this approach. The problem is that focusing on costs always increases costs.

This isn’t a matter of making workers part of setting the productivity goal as Chris McCann concludes. This is a matter of understanding targets drive dysfunctional behavior.

Incentives Will Make Things Worse

Chris McCann concludes not only that the problem is that of workers being involved in setting goals, but decides incentives will make employees happier and more productive. None of these things are true.

Working together on understanding customer purpose and demand and getting rid of systemic failure demand should be the appropriate response. New measures emerge that are associated with what customers want from service as these drive the lagging financial and productivity measures up.

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