Running head: A BALANCED SCORECARD 1

A Balanced Scorecard
MGT/521
May 26, 2014
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A Balanced Scorecard
The goal of any manager is monitoring and controlling work performance. During the
planning stages, a companys targeted performance objectives and goals are established. A
manager uses those objectives as targets for measuring organizational effectiveness. One of the
approaches used to measure organizational effectiveness is a balanced scorecard. A balanced
score card primarily focuses on four facets of performance including the financial part of the
business, the customer experience, the internal processes, and the growth assets (Robbins &
Coulter, 2012).
Although a balanced score card uses four measures, often times one or more areas
observes greater focus than other areas. For a call center, customer experience is an especially
important measure but the organizations primary goals must also drive the internal culture. The
companys strategy toward achieving customer satisfaction will include a combination of
customer feedback surveys, measures of repeat customer interactions, customer retention levels,
and individual agent performance measured under the internal processes metrics.
The internal processes measures correlate with the customer experience while also
establishing individual accountability. The internal metrics will include individual handle times
based upon the outcome of the call, the number of times a caller is required to call back into the
call center, the number of times a call is placed on hold, individual agent call independence, and
accuracy of information.
To assist in the monitoring of quality as well of valuable training assistance, auditing
phone conversations between the call center representatives and the consumer would be another
form of control to use. Due to the nature of the call center, it poses a great challenge to
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physically monitor the day-to-day performance of the representatives. Because not everyone
adheres to the policies and procedures of the company, it would serve as a benefit to document
the conversations, both exceptional and poor, use the information for training and disciplinary
purposes. Many large corporations, like Verizon Wireless and Bank of America, provide
disclaimers that some of the calls made by customers to the call center will be recorded for
quality and training purposes. Although the vast amount of phones that are actually recorded
may be overwhelming to review, at the very least the managers will have them retained for later
retrieval.
The financial measures includes monitoring sales goals previously established, the
variance in actual financial performance compared to the proposed budget, and the companys
overall financial performance. The management team must control employee satisfaction in
addition to customer satisfaction. Employee satisfaction reduces turnover and missed labor hours
otherwise resulting in higher staffing levels and additional training needs. Similar to the financial
measures, the measures of asset growth is also closely monitored. These measures of
organization growth include sales as well as the companys percentage of market share. A large
part of financial success is operating within the budget.
The Balanced Scorecard and quality control gives managers the opportunity to
understand various aspects of the performances being controlled. When it is used correctly the
Balanced Scorecard can indicate the success of a company. For a call center the scorecard will
evaluate the center and count the number of leads, depending on the business and follow up calls.
An increase in these numbers can show a positive effect on the scorecard indicating growth. A
negative impact of the scorecard would be the need to continually obtain data and information
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from managers. This can be very time consuming and could lead to a downward spiral in
productivity and ultimately impacting the scorecard with skewed numbers.
With so many ways to evaluate how performances are controlled for a call center the
Balance Scorecard and quality control is the most ideal. It will give the organization a sense of
where it stands in regards to the standards that are set forth. Growth in profits and revenue is
important to an organization to make sure it is continually thriving; if these numbers are anything
less than what is budgeted for then the company call center and procedures need to be re-
evaluated as a whole. The Balanced Scorecard can help show the error of the organizations ways
and redirect the focus of controlled measures
















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Reference
Robbins, S. P., & Coulter, M. (2012). Management (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall.