I remember when I worked as a Customer Service Representative at a Telecommunications company where I had to respond to over a hundred customers on each shift. Sometimes, I went as high as 140 calls, depending on the rate of incoming calls which is subject to certain conditions such as network outage or the usual case of airtime billing that was not accounted for. The number of calls I picked per shift would be added up and that summed up my productivity score. My productivity score was part of my Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and how well I did could determine if I would earn a quarterly bonus or how much bonus I would receive. My productivity, as well as that of my colleagues, formed part of the overall business efficiency. This would in turn help the business make decisions, diagnose issues, and generally optimize the call center process.
This week, one of the things we learned about was productivity and how it is calculated. My recount of the call center experience reminds me that everyone in each team or space is valuable, and their input most often influences a larger entity or just their immediate team. Should anyone treat their shifts with less seriousness, it reflects in their performance for the day. It also gets to the point whereby if there are several people who are underperforming in this area continuously do so for some time, it will eventually tell on the overall call center performance, hence the business itself. I cannot begin to list the number of things that will eventually happen, one of which is the loss of revenue for the business.
Our Corporate Financial Accounting faculty always emphasizes teamwork. He constantly reiterates the importance of looking out for the next person, helping to cover them in areas where they have gaps. All of this is to facilitate growth. I guess to him you cannot boast of true success if your colleague on the program is not doing well. I remember vividly in one of the classes we had, he was quite amused that we were not helping ourselves and admonished us on practical ways to go about improving in that area. Thereafter, in his usual way, he brought in his lovely sense of humor into the mix. I was impressed, and I constantly am by how fluid he is while teaching.
Consequently, there were instances whereby a few people in the class were helped by some classmates and that made our Professor of Accounting very happy. Happy to the extent that he gave us more classwork to do… ha-ha! He was impressed and he did not mince any words to express his satiety.
This just goes to say that when a business thrives, and every part and member of the team play their role efficiently and synchronously, the business smiles. There is a collaboration that yields a great return, which the individual team members benefit from.
I look forward to more collaboration among the #MMBA3 class, some of which will birth lifelong partnerships that are mutually beneficial.
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