Keeping It Stupid Simple

"How can we improve our quality and cut down on our interaction time?" One of my colleagues said in a meeting. We currently had an unprecedented number of complaints coming in from both our clients about the cost that was racking up due to interaction time, and their customers were frustrated at the level of service they received. At the meeting, we brought up everything we could think of. We suggested additional hiring, more training, and splitting up employees to limited clients. All of these would take time and resources our team didn't have. Despite our resources, something had to be done, so we took an inventory of the process from onboarding, to what agents did on calls, to the coaching and QA we did. After about a week of observations, we had a breakthrough. 

When it came to training, our trainers reported that because each client had a different scope of service and its own rules it took a long time to certify employees on each of the clients. As a result, some employees could take as much as three months to be fully equipped to handle all of the clients we serviced. As we interviewed agents and found out that during the interactions, they struggled to search for information as there was no easy way to filter information. When it came to QA, supervisors ran into the same issue, and since they couldn't easily find the information themselves, they struggled to coach their employees and identify when they missed something in regard to accuracy. All of this eventually led to us identifying that it was an issue with how important information was stored.

So what was the solution I gave to my team? We made the layout of data for all clients exactly the same. It may seem simple, but the moment we implemented this change, all the other pieces naturally fell into place. Our trainers instead of having to train to the manual for every client, trained on the layout, cutting down the average new hire onboard to a single month. Interaction times dropped as employees knew exactly which sections to go to, and supervisors could once again coach as they knew exactly where agents were supposed to go during every interaction. All because we simply organized information and resource we already had in our possession. 

When it comes to software development, simple things often yield the biggest results in the long run. Keeping your code DRY not only saves space but allows you (and more importantly any guy in the future trying to troubleshoot your program) to identify issues and functionality more clearly. Keeping your User Interface uncluttered and simple leads to higher user satisfaction (I recommend giving Steve Krugs book "Don't Make Me Think!" a read in regards to this and UI). Even choosing a simple and widespread data format (like CSV or JSON) can save headaches when trying to improve later on down the road. 

The true fact of life is that simple systems scale. Simplicity and stability go hand in hand when it comes to writing code. Before your next project goes off the rails in regard to complexity, stop and ask yourself... "How can I Keep It Stupid Simple?"  I can promise you that you will never regret the few minutes you spend doing so.