Better Coaching: Taking the "5-Why" Process and Morphing It Into An Easier Root Cause Exercise

The GOPHER Coaching System: Turning the “5-Why” Process into the “GOPHER Spine Process” for determining Root Cause and Specific Action

There will probably be some purists out there that are going to point out some issues with my root cause analysis and the liberties I take with the “5-Why”.  Probably the whole Kaizen improvement philosophy and practice too. 

Most of us don’t have the resources to train our managers on lean Six Sigma processes.  That’s too bad because this process is fantastic at increasing efficiencies and not in just an automotive factory setting.  We can do this with a person as well as a Prius.  Taking the “5-Why” approach as a tool to perform root cause analysis is adaptable to both situations.

To describe “5-Why” in a flowchart might be the easiest way for everybody to understand the path.  Let’s use an automotive example:

A Toyota Camry comes off the assembly line and it’s missing its lug nuts on all 4 of its wheels.  Let’s start the “5-Why” process.

At this point in the flowchart we would note all of the potential reasons down in a diagram or a table.  The most popular and effective diagram would be a “Fishbone” diagram which I encourage people to look up and study.  Because missing lug nuts on an automobile made up of thousands of parts relying on hundreds of processes and applications can be overwhelming a “Fishbone” diagram is a great way to track the reasons.  Our flowchart continues below.

We may have a few reasons that the Camry is missing lug nuts.  One of those may be due to INVENTORY.  The first question you would ask is “Why were we out of stock”.  Investigate to get your answer (Ask again).  Your findings may turn up an issue with JIT (Just In Time) Replenishment was simply not “JIT”.  Investigate why that did not occur (ask again).  After investigating you find that the delivery from your lug nut T1 Supplier was late with its load.  Investigate why this occurred (ask again).  Let’s say that the new delivery driver from your T1 supplier got lost was driving around the huge complex looking for the dock to offload the lug nuts.

Maybe the solution (specific actions) in this case is to do a few different things to assist drivers in making timely dock deliveries.  It could be clearer signage, a GPS unit with coordinates to the dock loaned to the driver once he stops at the gate, or maybe it’s an ISO procedure that needs to be updated with your suppliers.  In any case you’ve got a root cause identified and you’ve got solutions to monitor to see if that fixed the issue.

The GOPHER Coaching System draws its inspiration in the “spirit” of the “5-Why” process.  In the previous blog you’ll see that before the Supervisors can coach an agent they must discover the root cause of the agent’s issues and deliver specific actions:

This is an example of a “1-Why” process.  The instances where we find more than “1-Why” in our call center environment are rare as human emotions are involved.  That’s the core difference between hard, laid out processes and procedures in a manufacturing environment and a soft environment like a call center. 

Why is it so difficult for Supervisors sometimes?  Supervisors can be intimidated by their employees.  Bias also can be a culprit.  Supervisors may also not have the support or feedback mechanism from upper management.  And people lie but that’s all part of human emotions.

How you get around this is through a lot of consistent training and calibration by your upper management team.  The plan we have is derived from my GOPHER Coaching and Feedback system and is known as the SMAILS System.  The SMAILS System is a process where my upper managers audit the GOPHER Coaching sessions given by my Supervisors to our Agents.  The main focus of SMAILS is to make sure our Supervisors are finding valid root cause and giving valid and specific actions to correct any deficiencies for the Agent.

That is not enough.  Consistent training and calibrating root cause analysis is essential which is done every week.  The beauty of following this process below is that the root cause usually presents itself during this exercise.  “1-Why” or “5-Why”.  Plus it’s collaborative, helps other Supervisors with their own Agents and is fun.  More important is that it takes any bias off the table if that dynamic exists between that Supervisor and Agent.  All of your peers are listening to the same call and looking at it through their own eyes and are not shy about sharing their thoughts.

Root Cause GOPHER Style: Group Calibration Session

Before you do a group calibration upper management needs to examine their environment and come up with 4 or 5 core “causes” that pertain to the business.  Here are some possible causes:

Let’s say the call we are listening to is from an Agent who has a high average handle time.  After the call we chose a Supervisor to head to the white board (just like in school) where we already have our “core causes” listed.  We already have these 4 core issues below our Agent’s “issue” which is high AHT.

Looking at the picture of our white board it looks nothing like a “Fishbone”.  It looks more like a GOPHER spine.  Well maybe not but we’re sticking with the GOPHER theme.  After all, the “Fishbone” process was just an inspiration for this exercise.

We incorporate this calibration during our weekly Supervisor meeting.  It involves listening to a phone call that was scored by our Quality Assurance team as a group.  The Supervisor who’s Agent we’ll be listening to will have a “heads up” so they can review past GOPHER Coaching sessions.  We don’t want to ambush a Supervisor!

We have a large whiteboard where we can draw out our diagram to start the process:

Welcome to the GOPHER spine.  Note 3 of the 4 core causes.

In this case we listened to the call of an Agent with historic high average handle times.  It was apparent this Agent was spending a lot of time talking to the people around her.  We also recognized the lack of call control as she went outside demarcations and performed unnecessary tasks.   We then open it up for discussion.

We rarely have to do much digging to decipher a root cause.  We like to share specific actions based on the root causes we may find on the spot.  We have a strict policy to not make personal comments about the Agent we are monitoring but the truth is most of these Supervisors know the Agent.  They may have coached them at one time.  There’s the advantage of having maybe another Supervisor chiming in on past experiences with this Agent.

The chatting issue is listed under the “Personal” core cause.  The call control issue is listed under the “Training” core cause.  We’ll use this one as the example.

After discussion we then can go to the board and decide what the suspected root cause(s) may be.  We must note that if the Supervisor believes an Agent’s issue is extremely sensitive in nature we will not discuss this in our group setting.  That is deferred to a one on one with the appropriate parties.

Our candid after call discussion presents two issues we can categorize under our GOPHER spine.  The first conclusion was that the Agent chats a lot with other Agents around her with we categorize under our “Personal Causes” column.

The GOPHER Coaching System tracks and trends the coaching sessions, and feedback sign offs and is available for audit by upper management (We don’t pull these coaching sessions during the calibrations because we’ve already alerted the Supervisor that their Agent will be the one in this calibration).

The Supervisor will write any specific actions they gave to this Agent during previous GOPHER sessions if this root cause is historical.  The Supervisor group is encouraged to ask questions about the specific actions listed and to dig into why they may not be effective.  Again, some of the Supervisors may know this Agent and had to deal with the same or similar issue. 

In this instance there’s the last specific action recommendation made by another Supervisor.  This manager has recognized that the Agent does like to chat about personal things but also asks a lot of systems and process related questions to her neighbors.  If you do these calibrations enough you’ll get a few “Ah-ha!” moments like this because your Supervisors will start to learn how to think about these things.  Your managers are smarter than you think.  They just want to be challenged and appreciated. 

The Point of the GOPHER spine

We are a long way off from the “5-Why” Process.  People are not lug nuts off of a Toyota Camry.  Very rarely does it take a team of NCIS agents to crack a root cause for any of these Agents.  The reality is that there are a finite number of root causes especially in a call center environment.  After a short amount of time you will amass a “library” of root causes and a multitude of “specific actions” your team can utilize to improve an Agent’s static metrics, enhance quality, and improve morale.

Doing these GOPHER spine calibrations every week should be a fun and interesting event.  It should serve to help your Supervisors interact with each other about Agent’s issues and stir up some creativity as they prepare for their Agent’s weekly or monthly GOPHER Coaching session.

As upper management we have a duty to compile data and feedback from these GOPHER spine calibrations as well as the audits you do on your Supervisor’s GOPHER Coaching sessions.  We have a duty to look at these trends to recommend better training, hiring, improve recognition programs, highlight technical challenges, and other ways to make the business more profitable and efficient.