NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – September 26, 2012 – The Quality Assurance & Training Connection (QATC) has announced Toni Smith of Workplace Options as the 2012 Quality Assurance Professional of the Year, an award which recognizes a quality assurance professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry.
“We are very excited to announce Toni Smith as the winner of the inaugural Quality Assurance Professional of the Year award,” said Vicki Herrell, QATC Executive Director. “Toni possesses all of those qualities unique to the quality assurance professional, and is a valuable asset to both her company and the industry as a whole. She has achieved great results for Workplace Options, and shown how important quality assurance is in the call center.”
Toni Smith has been instrumental in providing structure and guidance to all levels of service delivery management related to training and quality assurance for her entire tenure at Workplace Options (WPO). Toni joined Workplace Options in 2004 as a Child Care Consultant and has been in several leadership roles throughout the company as her career has progressed, serving as Quality Manager before being recently being appointed to Director of Service Quality. Toni is responsible for a cross-functional team of Quality Specialists and Web Developers, and serves as a valuable consultant for Quality Managers throughout the company.
Using a quality management system that meets ISO 9001:2008 standards, her team continuously improves communication and service delivery of the company’s products, technologies and internal policies and procedures.
Prior to her promotion to her current role, Toni helped create and maintains the Workplace Options’ Consultant Proficiency Program. This program recognizes staff who want to grow within their agent role and provides structured "paths" for increasing knowledge and specialty skill sets via customized training and testing. It encourages personal and professional development around content leadership, encouraging and emphasizing the importance of growing and grooming knowledge experts across key areas of service. The Proficiency Program has been a key quality & service differentiator for winning and retaining clients. Since implementing the Proficiency Program, Workplace Options has grown from a company of $4 million in revenue (2003) to $100 million in revenue with call centers in 4 countries outside of the US. The company’s agent turnover rate is less than 8% on average.
In 2011, Toni created, piloted, developed, implemented, and currently monitors and analyzes Workplace Option’s "Secret Shopper" program, the goal of which is to identify areas within the inbound call process that can be improved upon to increase the customer satisfaction of their agent interaction. The Secret Shopper program is used to monitor, audit, and validate service quality from the customer’s perspective. Employee volunteers (from departments outside of the call center) will access the call centers and use a scenario and scorecard to assess their interaction. This program has led to significant improvements in service delivery while identifying key needs in training, coaching, and technology that need to be addressed. The program has seen a jump from an overall score in 2011 of 73% to a current average score of 94% on the interaction scorecards.
Workplace Options is the only work-life industry provider with ISO 9001/2008 Certification for the quality of their service. Toni took over the duties and responsibilities as the Quality Management Representative for this recertification process last year. The company successfully retained their certification with her assistance. Overseeing the Issues (complaint) process, Toni provides a monthly detailed analysis to the company’s Senior Executives. While Workplace Options maintains an average error-free rate of 99%, Toni is able to quickly and accurately identify trends within the issues and provide creative recommendations for corrective and proactive actions to department leaders. She actively collaborates to create new policies, procedures, training content, and coaching for managers to implement all of the above. Her eye is always on the end-user experience and customer satisfaction.
According to Stephanie Hastings, Vice President, Training & Service Quality at Workplace Options, “Toni is wise beyond her years. Consistently via co-worker feedback, she is identified as a go-to person for her insightfulness to problem-solve both process/quality and personnel concerns. She is analytic and thorough when assisting call center leadership but in a way that creates awareness and buy-in from those staff members so that they become advocates for quality within their teams. Toni has incredible patience and a calming presence.”
Toni graduated from Hope College with a bachelor’s degree in social work. Following completion of her degree, she worked as a Lead Independent Living Instructor for working with adults with traumatic brain injury, and as a Child Life Specialist for DeVos Children’s Hospital. She also served as a preschool teacher for United Cerebral Palsy, working with special needs children before joining Workplace Options in 2004
The other finalists for the award included Tammy DaSilva of Alaska Airlines, Lyn McMullen of Carewise Health, Maria Dimaculangan of LoyaltyOne, and Michelle Steinmeyer of UpSource. The QATC Board of Advisors selected the five finalists from nominations submitted on the QATC website. The Quality Assurance Professional of the Year award was chosen from the five finalists by the Board of Advisors and announced at the 2012 QATC Annual Conference.
About QATC
The Quality Assurance & Training Connection (QATC) is an organization devoted to facilitating education and networking opportunities among quality assurance and training professionals in the call center across all industries. Membership in QATC is available to all quality assurance and training professionals. Both individual memberships and corporate membership options are available, with full benefits and costs outlined on the organization’s website at www.qatc.org.