An effective customer experience team should be laser-focused on defining clear and measurable quality assurance standards, integrating them into training programs, and ensuring employees receive the feedback and coaching they need to improve the overall customer experience. But, because not all customer experience teams are honed in on these important actions (or principles), it can be difficult to design a quality assurance program that drives both quality outcomes and essential business goals.

The team of professionals at GDIT supporting Medicaid systems accomplishes this goal by using an approach called Behavior Based Quality Management, or BBQM. This approach is centered on evaluating and improving the behaviors and overall performance of individuals and teams to drive high-quality outcomes. Said another way: Our approach focuses on identifying the behaviors teams should model, rather than those they should not.

BBQM provides a structured framework of defined actions that support overarching quality assurance goals. Each action is carefully weighted and rated based on its impact on the overall mission. Teams are trained not only on these actions but also on their significance to achieving success. These elements form the foundation of the BBQM quality assurance approach. While our expertise lies in helping Medicaid teams implement BBQM, this versatile method is well-suited for any team or program aiming to enhance mission outcomes by improving the overall customer experience.

Here’s how our team’s experience implementing BBQM went:

Creating Clear and Defined Behaviors to Model

When moving to a BBQM model, our Medicaid team first looked at how they were assessing quality across the customer experience. The team observed that, when it came to quality assurance, they were relying on a checklist of more than fifty behaviors they advised team members not to do. Focusing on negative behaviors meant team members knew only what they should avoid doing and not the things they should do.

In collaboration with the client, the leadership team developed a new set of criteria to drive quality outcomes. Together, they white-boarded a series of desired quality objectives and identified key outcomes aligned with the organization’s mission. Through this process, they defined clear, actionable behaviors for team members that supported both business goals and organizational performance. Client feedback played a pivotal role in refining these criteria, ensuring the approach was both practical and tailored to the client’s unique needs and priorities.

Rating and Weighting Behaviors Based on Importance to the Mission

Next, the team reviewed the newly identified set of behaviors and prioritized them based on their significance. This approach recognizes that the behaviors exhibited by team members when interacting with customers are the true drivers of exceptional experiences. In our case, it underscored a critical insight: effective management isn’t about rigid adherence to forms or processes but about empowering people to manage people. Ultimately, it is the individuals who are directly responsible for delivering quality outcomes.

Once the behaviors were ranked and weighted in terms of importance, our team began the work of communicating the behaviors to the staff and ensuring staff members understood their role in affecting quality assurance program-wide.

Ensuring Teams Understood and Could Implement the Behaviors

The first order of business when communicating with the team involved aligning team members’ understanding of the behaviors. Next, it was important that team members understood why those behaviors were important and how to implement them on a day-to-day basis. To do that, we categorized the behaviors into groups – how they impact the mission, what task they were aligned with, etc. – to drive an understanding of their importance. This fueled buy-in to engagement from the team and helped to foster a culture that is focused on customer satisfaction.

In conclusion, a well-executed BBQM program will result in employees who are engaged and who collaborate to support company objectives. It can ensure consistency across quality assurance programs, enhanced performance, productivity and efficiency, and it is wholly adaptable and scalable within an organization. BBQM is about quality behaviors, aligned with business drivers, that deliver the expected customer experience and improve overall customer satisfaction.