Agile Service Qorus Banking Innovation Awards 2021

Agile management has become an answer to the multitude of challenges facing software development companies operating in today’s rapidly changing and unpredictable market environment. In the context of software development Agile means a collection of methods characterised by flexibility, transparency and common sense. Contrary to the waterfall model, Agile is based on the assumption that it is not possible to plan the entire project in detail when it starts. This is why work is divided into short cycles during which the team plans work on its own, designs solutions, does programming work, runs tests and gets feedback from customers. The iterative work model makes it possible to regularly deliver small parts of the final solution and offers a lot of flexibility in changing the project scope. The increased speed at which IT departments deliver changes to customers requires adjustments on the part of Customer Care. Our employees must adapt to changes in the product range faster and be able to share feedback from customers with the rest of the organisation on an ongoing basis. This is why we decided to analyse this method thoroughly and check if we could apply its assumptions and some of its elements to customer service. We implemented Agile service in mBank’s Contact Centre iteratively. Work on the change started with a proof of concept lasting six months, as a result of which we decided to implement this work method in mBank’s Contact Centre. Next, we gradually introduced this method in individual teams quarter by quarter. We started with familiarising the employees with the basics of the methodology to help them get to know and understand the framework of actions we planned next. We focused on cooperation and autonomy. From the very beginning of the project we tried to base it on cooperation instead of imposing specific things. This is why we encouraged contact center consultants to share their opinions based on their knowledge and experience right from the start. Employees know best how to improve their work, remove obstacles and boost results. In our role as project leaders we enjoyed full support from mBank’s Agile Centre, which is responsible for implementing agile work methods. - We set up an agile project team consisting of managers, coordinators and consultants. We were supported by an certified Agile Coach. - The teams where the new method was introduced selected two people to take the roles of scrum masters. - We left the teams room to adjust the framework to suit their needs. - We monitored costs on an ongoing basis by analysing the number of handled interactions. We eliminated additional costs by fully using resources which were already available in the organisation. - We regularly checked the business results of the teams where the new method was introduced. The activities of the project team were planned taking into account the teams’ objectives. - We divided the implementation into stages – by introducing the new method to another 20% of employees every quarter, we stayed in touch with the teams where it had already been introduced, which allowed us to continuously improve the work method. How our teams work To adjust Contact Centre’s work to the Agile framework, we assigned scrum roles to people. Team leaders became product owners responsible for accomplishing objectives – they inform their teams about goals, priorities and results. In addition, we assigned the roles of scrum masters to two consultants in every team. We chose two people because the teams work shifts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and thus it would be difficult for one person to regularly meet with the entire team. A scrum master takes care of sprints and the scrum board showing results, tasks and work progress. The entire team of consultants forms an Agile team. The consultants work out solutions and ways to accomplish goals and share knowledge and experience. During sprints the consultants analyse goal accomplishment methods and look for solutions if indicators do not meet the expectations. The most serious doubts arose at the beginning when someone asked what a product in Contact Centre was. This question may seem trivial, but it’s not. It is easy to define a product in an IT project – it is functional software offering tangible benefits to a customer. But what is a product in the Contact Centre? For the purpose of the project, we decided that our product is an excellent service that builds customer engagement by increasing customer activity and the number of products used. In line with the Scrum framework, product development is divided into sprints which do not exceed one month. In our case it turned out that sprints should last one week because it was possible to test and implement new ideas within this period. The teams started every business week with planning what they wanted to accomplish within a given sprint. They often split their sales targets into activities and additional tasks. A sprint in the Contact Centre lasts one week. - Planning and summary: 30 minutes once a week • Summary of tasks carried out in the previous sprint • Setting a goal for the current sprint • Splitting the sales target • Allocation of tasks facilitating the accomplishment of business goals - Daily: 15 minutes every day • What has been achieved since the last meeting? • How has it been achieved? • Update on changes to procedures to avoid errors - Retrospective: 60 minutes once a month • What made the work harder and how to deal with it? • What can we do to work more efficiently? • What lessons did we learn from our successes and failures? We scheduled fifteen-minute daily meetings to discuss the progress, problems and new challenges. During the meetings consultants share the latest information, for example about changes to external and internal regulations. In addition, the teams organised retrospective meetings which are the most appreciated by our consultants. People taking part in these meetings analyse what has been accomplished, learn from mistakes and share their observations. If something did not go well, the consultants not only ask questions, but also try to find the answers. Positive events are analysed too – what went well and why? The split into weekly sprints makes it possible to quickly identify and fix errors whereas positive experience helps to develop good practice. The possibility of sharing experience almost in real time was one of the benefits which we noticed first. Contact Centre employees are quite diverse, in particular in terms of age. Many of them are young people who have just entered the workplace, but we also have employees on board who used to work in other financial institutions and industries. Until the method was introduced the teams had little room for sharing experience. Today it is diversity that makes our Contact Centre strong. Young employees contribute their excellent knowledge of technology, while the more experienced ones teach them how to deal with their own and clients’ emotions. The possibility of sharing experience every day has led to many improvements which are tested and implemented by the teams on an ongoing basis. In addition, to streamline the exchange of knowledge even more, we made JIRA boards (which are used among others by IT teams) available to our employees. We added a dashboard where every employee can check solutions tested by other teams and read test results.