Chess Boards and Call Centers

For anyone who has not watched The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, I highly recommend this drama series with chess as its centerpiece. As I recently binge watched the full season, I began to think about how the game of chess relates to call center agent performance and BCI's approach to training and performance management.

Because understanding our pioneering program requires a rethinking of common training methods and expectations, it can be challenging to grasp. The game of chess provides an excellent reference point for an explanation.

It is important to consider that like chess, the patient experience is a game of rules. And like chess, a game of many moves. And like chess, there is an opponent. In the patient experience game, the opponent is failure to provide a superior experience. Agents either win or lose in each call they handle based on the verbal moves they choose throughout.

Once an agent answers a call, or when a patient answers an outbound call, the game begins and a series of moves follows. The patient says something- the agent responds. The agent says something- the patient responds. The experience is a constant back and forth until the final moment when each side concludes the call.

BCI has identified each of the rules and moves that govern the quality of this experience, a groundbreaking training innovation with far-reaching consequences, including rendering the decades-old methods of scripts and checklists and their comparatively unambitious training goals and aspirations obsolete.

As in chess, agents perform on the same board with the same rules and possible moves in every call they handle. Those pivotal to the patient experience never vary, whether a Scheduling, Home Care and Hospice, After Hours Nurse, or any type of customer service oriented call.

BCI teaches agents to master these variables, we monitor to ensure they execute them, and the result is our trainees consistently provide a superior-quality experience. We thoroughly prepare and expect our clients' agents to win every call.