NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – August 30, 2013 – The Quality Assurance & Training Connection (QATC) has announced the five finalists for the 2013 Quality Assurance Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a quality assurance professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry.  The finalists are Craig Brasington of Deloitte LP, Joanne Gallant-Roberts of FRHI Global Reservation Centre, Gregory Harris of The Home Depot, Brenna Simms of Las Vegas Valley Water District, and Heather Vega of Outerwall, Inc.

“I am very proud to present these five quality assurance professionals as finalists for this important award,” said Vicki Herrell, QATC Executive Director. “They are truly representative of the ‘best of the best’ in our industry, and have demonstrated great leadership and ability in the field, as well as shown measurable results for their companies.”

Craig Brasington is Senior Quality Analyst for Deloitte LP.  Craig began his customer service career in 1998 as a Life Insurance Specialist with CNA Insurance Companies followed by a stint at Dell Computer Corporation as a sales associate. In 2003, Craig began his career at Deloitte in Hermitage, TN as a front-line analyst taking inbound technical support calls. Due to his customer service skills, he was selected as the first member of the newly created call Quality team. He served on the team as the Deloitte call center expanded its operations to India and added new business lines and support channels. In 2007, Craig became the senior analyst on the Quality Assurance team, a team dedicated to ensuring the delivery of distinctive service to Deloitte’s internal and external customers.

Craig is a true ambassador of the Quality program within Deloitte and outside of Deloitte. Whenever there are visitors to the call center, from within Deloitte or clients of Deloitte, Craig is the featured speaker from the Quality team to provide insight about the program. He has presented at numerous call center gatherings and at industry conferences, including the QATC Annual Conference. As a result of these presentations, Craig has been invited to visit other call centers to present Deloitte’s Quality methodology and Continuous Improvement philosophy to their teams.

Craig has been the driving force in building and implementing the Quality program since its inception. Craig was chosen to lead the Quality team which transitioned from a vendor-provided Quality program to an in-house Quality program in 2004. He designed the first Quality forms along with a new monitoring process. This program included first-time measurements for quality of resolution and incident documentation. In its infancy, the Quality team provided the audits as well as the coaching for the agents.  In July of that same year, Craig traveled to India as part of a team tasked with training the new Deloitte Call center employees in India. Craig trained on supported products and processes, but most importantly, he worked closely with the India Quality supervisor to ensure that the Quality philosophy and vision of continuous process improvement were clearly communicated and executed. In order to ensure a successful launch of the new call center, Craig extended his stay in India. Since then, Craig has traveled to India on follow up visits to reiterate the Quality vision and maintain relationships with call center leaders there.

In 2006, the Quality team was moved solely to the US and the company implemented a new coaching philosophy with team leads as coaches. Craig worked with the learning teams in the US and India as a subject matter expert to develop the “Coach Approach” learning modules for the team leads. Once this training was delivered throughout the call center, Craig led the Quality team in mentoring the coaches to ensure their conversations with agents resulted in a continuous improvement in service delivery to customers.

In 2009, the call center identified a need to evaluate written communications skills and Craig led the initiative to assess each analyst’s skill level. He evaluated the assessments and quickly discovered areas of opportunity that had to be addressed. It was at that point that Craig called on those relationships he had built over the years with the India leadership and the learning teams. He consulted with the learning development team in India to design a written communications learning curriculum that would enhance the service delivery of written communication support channels. Deloitte also recently introduced Chat as a support channel for the customers, and Craig led the initiative to build the Chat Quality and operational policies and procedures.

According to Melissa Stump, Manager, Service Quality, “Craig has worked to build a solid foundation to ensure that the Quality and coaching processes result in distinctive service delivery for each of our customers on every interaction.”  Gerry Barber, the Deloitte call center Director added, “Craig has not only contributed to building a world class Quality program here at Deloitte, he’s also very passionate about sharing our best practices with others. He is a true ambassador for our call center.”

Joanne Gallant-Roberts has been with Fairmont Raffles Hotels International (FRHI) since 1997, transitioning from Team Leader in Reservation Sales in 2005 to become the very first Quality Assurance Specialist. As Joanne herself describes it, she had “found her niche,” and she immediately embraced the role and set about creating the Quality Assurance department.  Joanne currently assesses over 400 calls monthly, providing individual feedback with both numerical scoring and detailed, thoughtful coaching notes. She has developed a robust suite of reports for three diverse teams and takes responsibility for the month-end reporting, including both trends analysis, and statistical data. She implemented and leads bi-monthly calibration and benchmarking sessions and has succeeded in achieving a consistent standard deviation of 2.5% or lower. She also provides expertise to Leadership in developing new call standards and assessments, has trained several new team members in the past two years, and she has hosted numerous job shadows.

Joanne works closely with the Systems team to maintain the quality monitoring software. When an upgrade went awry, we unexpectedly lost the total system temporarily. She rose to the challenge, quickly putting together an efficient process that involved using a manual recorder and an entirely different course of action that she developed specifically for the situation. The work carried on without missing a beat – no small feat considering there are nearly 200 agents and the system outage lasted several months!

In 2012, Joanne implemented a quality best practice of assessing one call a week and sending it immediately to the agent, versus the format at the time of a five call assessment sent monthly. This proved to be very effective; agents immediately expressed their appreciation for weekly feedback rather than a monthly “report card.”  Team Leaders were better positioned to offer targeted coaching and the Agents were able to implement immediate changes. The average Quality scores have increased 3% year over year, due in part to this very successful model.

In 2012, the Fairmont Quality Assurance team earned the inaugural Contact NB Quality Assurance Practices Award. Joanne earned the FRHI Global Reservation Centre Star Colleague of the Month in 2011 and 2012 and she regularly receives positive feedback, recognition, and thank you e-mails from both the leadership and her colleagues.  Joanne ensures professional development is a priority, annually attending an international conference (i.e., the QATC Annual Conference or Verint’s user conference), a regional conference (Contact Atlantic), participating in local on-site Quality Networking/Best Practice sessions through ContactNB, and as well as participating in three to four webinars through QATC, The Call Center School, and others. After each learning opportunity Joanne prepares a report to share her experience with the Training & Development team, and after each conference she meets with the General Manager to discuss the experience and her takeaways.  In 2013 to date, she has completed an e-learning course on Managing Meetings Effectively, arranged a job shadow with the HR team to explore the alignment between Quality and Recruiting, participated in a vendor selection committee for a new QM system, and is preparing to attend the annual QATC conference in September.  Joanne has completed Train the Trainer, Interaction Management, Insights Discovery, Gallup Strengths Finder Coach, Situational Selling, and Managing the Situational Salesperson classes. She regularly contributes to the FRHI Global Reservation Centre experience through volunteering for special events and serving on committees.

Joanne takes great pride in positioning Quality Assurance as a strategic partner in supporting the frontline colleagues as they deliver exceptional guest experiences. She is passionately committed to positively impacting business results, and she is keenly aware of the importance of teamwork. She builds strong relationships with all colleagues, taking the time to meet new hires during training and to send congratulatory emails for exceptional calls. Joanne fosters a spirit of collaboration between the Quality Assurance team and the leaders who are actively involved in the coaching. According to Pat Maxwell, Manager of Training and Development, “We all appreciate Joanne’s positive, can-do attitude. She is continually seeking to further her knowledge and gather best practices through attending webinars, local and international conferences, and maintaining a network of contacts in the industry.”

Gregory Harris has served as the Quality Assurance Manager for The Home Depot over the past year and a half.  The Home Depot has four contact center sites supporting its ecommerce activity with over 900 agents handling up to 6.5 million ecommerce-related voice interactions annually.  The Ecommerce Quality Assurance Department sought to gain important insight into its customer interactions in order to improve sales effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency during the customer’s online purchasing experience. To do so, the company wanted to help agents increase sales conversion rates, average order value (AOV), and revenue per contact (RPC) while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction. They also wanted to reduce average handle time (AHT), eliminate wasted time such as wait time and multiple hand-offs, and better utilize resources without decreasing customer satisfaction or sales effectiveness.

During the implementation of new technology from NICE Systems that Greg oversaw, it was critical for The Home Depot to utilize the NICE solutions in a way that could convert their contact centers from “service recovery centers” to “revenue generating centers.” To measure sales effectiveness, the company used conversion rate, AOV, and RPC metrics to identify ways to enhance agent performance, and they revised the interaction evaluation forms to include a section that determines sales effectiveness. When sales opportunities for improvement were identified, the quality analyst provided the agent with immediate feedback via coaching packages. Supervisors and managers were also copied on the coaching packages to provide the agent with additional input.  Quality analysts also conducted targeted coaching sessions for agents by using tools such as role play sales scenarios, providing insight into how to effectively determine the scope of the customer’s project, determining applicable product recommendations, and creating an effective sales offer.

Greg possesses outstanding project management skills. He delegates effectively and works with others to accomplish a common goal, and the results from the NICE technology project were outstanding, The Home Depot increased its close rate by 31.8%, AOV by 12.1%, and RPC by 40.4%. This success translated into an impressive revenue gain of $10.8 million in just four months.  In order to measure customer satisfaction, the company used net promoter score (NPS), one call resolution (OCR), and resolution satisfaction. They were able to identify improvement initiatives for business processes, policies, and systems by creating quality plans for targeted call monitoring instead of the random selection method they previously used.  As a result of these changes, The Home Depot was able to increase its NPS by 14.9%, OCR by .4%, average resolution satisfaction by 3.9%, and agent soft skills by 26%.

To measure operational efficiency, The Home Depot used AHT as their primary metric and looked specifically into ways to reduce it, eliminate waste (wait time, multiple hand-offs, etc.), and better utilize resources without impacting customer service. The combination of the AHT command center initiative, weekly trending meetings, and continued AHT reporting resulted in an impressive AHT reduction of 27%.

Greg has a deep understanding of fundamental call center quality management principles, which has allowed him to work with operations leadership to create a quality program that makes sense and drives the right customer behaviors. He understands that the foundation for customer satisfaction is not overly complicated — be available for the customers, resolve their issue in one interaction, and strive to create a personal connection with the customer. Greg works hard to understand what the data says in order to drive quantifiable results. He is a very analytical person who can mine data effectively to determine root-cause problems, then create improvement recommendations and action plans.

Greg has the communication skills required to not only perform analysis, but to deliver the information in a way that is non-threatening and inspires leadership to drive change throughout the organization. He is calm, collected, and builds up his peers and coworkers in a positive way. This has allowed him to partner with operations, training, and other business partners to lead improvement initiatives.

According to Filipe Da Costa, Training/Quality Assurance Senior Manager, “Greg worked with NICE to completely overhaul our program in eight short months. He has become an invaluable resource within the organization, and his team continues to deliver value-added feedback and drive quantifiable positive change throughout the organization.”

Brenna Simms serves a combination role as Quality Monitoring Associate at the Las Vegas Valley Water District.  Brenna has stepped up to the plate to answer a unique challenge within the department to be a part of the new hire training support staff, as well as to continue to grow and thrive in her role as a quality monitoring associate. She is able to see the training needs based on her QA role, and takes that full circle to the training class environment. The operation currently uses multiple subject matter experts to train the new hire associates. Brenna is the training expert on billing processes and cancel/rebills. She considers both "hats" when recommending process improvements. One such recent process improvement involves taking the existing quality form to a new level, incorporating a more defined yes/no on following processes while continuing to focus on soft skills and customer experience.

Brenna is a highly successful and motivated individual. She has a high level of energy in meeting challenges and helping others to attain their goals. She knows the business from a variety of perspectives, ranging from billing and field processes to customer service, and consistently uses this broad range of overall business knowledge in her creative contributions and ideas in meetings and continued quality development.  Brenna has taken this one step further by learning one more critical function of the business as a backup to the call center specialists. Using IEX and CMS, Brenna understands staff management of a call center. She truly is able to come full circle in the operation, function, training, and quality of the call center.

Brenna recently spent a significant amount of time studying and compiling ideology and theories of quality, such as TQM and Pareto. She created this presentation as a springboard to address with management in a meeting. Her intent was to work with management to solidify and reinforce tested quality theories that they’ve already incorporated, and also to consider new and interesting ideas. This is, quite simply, the type of thinker and planner that Brenna is. She spends her time thinking about ways to improve the existing quality program, with both the business needs and the end user in mind. Her contribution at leadership meetings has been tremendous. She makes her point with confidence, and her ideas considered carefully before she presents them.  Brenna has consistently provided support for the team when assessments are challenged. She is a patient coach and provides concise follow-up for the Supervisors at the close of the sessions. She has been a strong proponent of providing insightful feedback with encouragement and empathy.  She is an integral part of the ongoing feedback process, as well as call coaching, and is always open to trying new processes or changing existing ones.

True to her commitment to her fellow workers within the department, Brenna participates in the Culture Team, working tirelessly on events that motivate and encourage the other members of her team. She is challenged regularly with understanding and analyzing issues. Her work requires that she quickly assess the customer need as well as the agent’s response to the same, and her assessment details are clear, with easy to follow explanations. In addition, the sheer volume of work that she is able to complete distinguishes her capabilities in this area.  As yet another example of her high productivity and overall business contribution, Brenna was instrumental in helping to create a user instruction for the billing department that specifically related to Las Vegas golf courses because of her previous knowledge of billing processes.

According to her supervisor, Karen Basilotta, Brenna has enhanced the department with “her positive attitude, her creative ideas, her commitment to excellence, and her desire to proudly represent our organization in all of our core values (respect, integrity, service and excellence). Samuel Johnson stated, ‘Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.’  Luckily for our organization, Brenna has both integrity AND knowledge, and uses it wisely,” says Basilotta.

Heather Vega, Quality Assurance Analyst with Outerwall, Inc, began her call center experience as a part-time phone agent in 2008. Coinstar had just opened its doors at a new call center in Tri-Cities, WA, where Heather and about 30 other employees began their careers taking phone calls for Coinstar and Epay services. Creating an excellent customer experience for her customers drove her to seek out other ways to improve the customer experience process and she began to work with the company's leadership on specialty projects that provided opportunities to work towards that goal.

In late 2009, Coinstar established its first Quality Analyst role. With her background in Supplier Quality and the experience she gained with the customer base, Heather was a great fit for the position. Entering the role provided some instant challenges as there had been no consistent process established for evaluating and coaching quality. She streamlined a process to enhance their current database to ensure the tracking of quality evaluations, and then wrote and implemented the standards guidelines. As the company continued to grow, she also utilized this methodology for email and chat for Redbox, another line of business. Even as all of these efforts were successful, operations management knew the company would need a more of a sophisticated tool to track progress in Quality. At this juncture, the company decided to procure CallCopy's workforce optimization software solution.  Heather then began using the new system to track calibration sessions, evaluation goals, and ensure that agents were receiving any and all feedback.

As the quality department began to grow and gain traction within the company, Heather was relocated to Oak Brook Terrace, IL, where she joined the other Quality Analyst. She had visions of a centralized quality program where all internal and outsourced agents would be evaluated and held accountable to the same set of expectations. She enthusiastically took this project on with open arms as the Project Manager. She was able to enrich the customer experience by ensuring there was consistency, competency, and compliancy and this brought her right back to where she began, with the desire to provide excellent customer service on every customer interaction. After collaborating with many different departments, she successfully launched a Centralized Quality program. It features one set of guidelines for all lines of business, sites, quality databases, and channels. The quality team is now two strong and ensuring successful customer experiences for eight different companies, four channels, and six sites that fall under the Outerwall, Inc. umbrella.

Once the launch proved successful, Heather was able to move back to her home town of Tri-Cities, WA, where she could represent quality within the internal sites. As the project finalized, she found herself more passionate to continue her vision. She continued focusing on creating a link between Quality and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). Her role expanded to incorporate CSAT reporting and analyzing, and she currently reports on the company's two core lines of business, Redbox and Coinstar, on a weekly and monthly level. She is now Project Manager for the CSAT project that she initiated within that company, which will enhance the Customer Survey sent out to customers in order to gain greater data to support process and customer experience improvement.

According to Barry Knack, Director of Education at CallCopy, Inc., there are three personality traits that Heather has that contribute to her success. “First is Heather’s passion. She continues to strive for what she knows is right for the business and its customers. She has passion for what’s right in the Quality arena, which helps her to ensure quality stays in the forefront when staff are making decisions that may affect work processes and the customer's experience. The second is her outgoing personality. With the struggles of always focusing on ‘Quality,’ it sometimes is hard to maintain a really good connection with frontline agents. But without this connection she finds that agents can become detached from the benefits that quality can bring to their performance. The third trait is Heather's humility. She is always looking for ways to improve herself or her department. She is dedicated to continuous improvement that enables her to provide the level of service Outerwall needs from its Quality Analyst.”

The QATC Board of Advisors selected the five finalists from nominations submitted on the QATC website.  The Quality Assurance Professional of the Year award is chosen from the five finalists by the Board of Advisors and will be announced at the 2013 QATC Annual Conference, which is set for September 10-12 at the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University.

About QATC

The Quality Assurance & Training Connection (QATC) is an organization devoted to facilitating education and networking opportunities among quality assurance and training professionals in the call center across all industries.  Membership in QATC is available to all quality assurance and training professionals.  Both individual memberships and corporate membership options are available, with full benefits and costs outlined on the organization’s website at www.qatc.org.