I have to faciliate a panel discussion on quality assurance. Any ideas on questions that I should ask?

Question

The panel is comprised of my entire QA department as well as Managers and Directors of our telephone customer service department. We monitor their representatives for quality assurance. Our goal is to have a frank but fun discussion about QA, our relationship together, best practices and any challenges we face. I already have quite a few questions but could use some suggestions. Thank you all!

Answer 1

Do you have any plans for statisical process control (SPC)?

Have you made a Pareto chart of the failure modes/common questions?

Do you have management support for changing processes, in order to improve performance?

Unfortunately, I don't know what your problems are.

Answer 2

Hi Mark,

Some of this may be redundant to what you have already thought about. I'd suggest to begin with a open forum to discuss what good service looks like to all of the participants. Have several flip charts and an extra person or two to assist with writing ideas down and posting the sheets on the wall. Then do a 180 and continuing with the open format, ask folks to provide examples of bad customer service. This could be either internal or external examples, but the internal ones should be kept anonymous - don't allow it to turn into a finger pointing session. With the two sets of examples to work from, ask the audience to identify what your company is doing well and where there may be areas for improvement. Using the flipcharts track both of these lists. Move to the areas of strengths listed and ask the participants what enables us to be doing this well? Is it a process, the people, an individual champion? Why are these things working for us? Then bring the focus on to the areas for development. Compared to what you're doing well, where & what are the gaps? Solicit ideas and suggestions while keeping the tone positive. Work towards creating a list of recommendations that your organization can actually take actionable steps towards. Be sure to conclude the meeting with some definitive To Do items and don't be bashful in soliciting volunteers from the group to own some of them. Wrap up by reaching agreement as to when to meet to discuss what each action item owner has accomplished.