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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Enabling success: performance excellence

Orrin Call Centres rewards team leaders on the number of calls handled per hour. Over a year, calls per hour rose 20%, but customer complaints doubled and repeat calls increased. Which conclusion best explains what has happened?

The narrow reward on calls per hour has caused dysfunctional behaviour. Staff rush calls to raise volume, which damages quality and raises complaints and repeat calls. A balanced set of indicators, including quality measures such as first-call resolution, would counter this distortion.

  1. AThe measure is not controllable by team leaders, so it should be removed
  2. BThe indicator has encouraged dysfunctional behaviour because it is narrow and not balanced by a quality measureCorrect
  3. CNon-financial indicators should never be used for rewards
  4. DThe measure is too difficult to quantify

Explanation

Rewarding a single volume measure leads staff to rush calls, harming quality, which is classic measure fixation or dysfunctional behaviour. The measure is quantifiable and controllable, so those options are wrong. The remedy is a balanced set including quality indicators such as first-call resolution, not abandoning non-financial measures.

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