DDBA 8521 Week 7 Diagnosis Peer Critique Example

Week 7 Discussion: Peer Critique of a Diagnosis

Not Poor Communication but How Agents Are Scored: A Peer Critique Arguing From a Classmate's Own Evidence That a Call Center's Rejected Quality Program Failed Because of Its Scoring System

The Diagnosis Under Critique

Jordan, your diagnosis of the insurance call center's rejected quality program reads: "The program failed because leadership communicated it poorly; agents never understood why the new quality checklist mattered." You support it with three pieces of evidence: an agent survey in which 58 percent said the program's purpose was unclear, two town halls attended by fewer than a third of agents and quality scores that fell in the program's first two months. I want to argue, from that same evidence, that a different feature of the organization better explains the refusal: how agents are scored.

What Your Evidence Shows

Your post also mentions, in passing, that agents' monthly bonus depends on two numbers, average handle time and calls handled per hour, and that the new quality checklist required agents to confirm three pieces of policy information on every call. You estimate the checklist added about 50 seconds per call. At the center's volume, that would raise average handle time by roughly 12 percent and drop calls per hour accordingly. Agents following the checklist faithfully would have lost part of their bonus. Your falling quality scores fit this: agents skipped checklist steps to protect their numbers, which lowered quality scores.

Why Scoring Explains More Than Communication

A communication diagnosis predicts that agents who understood the program would follow it. Your survey can test that. If I read your table correctly, among the 42 percent of agents who said the purpose was clear, quality scores fell almost as much as among those who said it was unclear. Understanding did not change behavior. Piderit (2000) noted that people can agree with a change in principle while resisting it in practice, and these agents appear to have done exactly that. A scoring diagnosis predicts that agents would follow the checklist only where it did not cost them, and your data show quality scores holding up on the night shift, where call volume is low and handle time matters less to bonuses. Kerr (1975) showed that what an organization pays for beats what it asks for; the call center rewarded speed and asked for thoroughness.

What This Means for the Fix

If communication were the problem, more town halls would help. If scoring is the problem, more town halls would leave agents understanding perfectly why they should do something that costs them money. Ford et al. (2008) argued that labeling recipients' responses as resistance can hide the change agent's own contribution; calling this a communication failure risks hiding that the bonus design worked against the program. The fix would be to adjust handle-time targets for checklist calls or to add quality scores to the bonus.

Where I Might Be Wrong

Your survey is the only direct evidence about understanding, and I am reading subgroup results from your summary table, which may hide differences. If agents who understood the program actually did follow it more, your diagnosis would gain ground. Could you check quality scores for those two groups directly?

References

Ford, J. D., Ford, L. W., & D'Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193235

Kerr, S. (1975). On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B. Academy of Management Journal, 18(4), 769-783. https://doi.org/10.2307/255378

Piderit, S. K. (2000). Rethinking resistance and recognizing ambivalence: A multidimensional view of attitudes toward an organizational change. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 783-794. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.3707722