The 80/20 of Process Fixes: Start With the Workaround
When Rogers took on Shaw’s customer care operation, I was given a role that didn’t exist: Attendance Manager. There was no playbook and no process — just leave cases that took too long and Team Leads who were tied up in the paperwork.
I held that role for about 15 months, November 2022 to February 2024. What I took from it: the biggest gains came from a few small fixes, not from a big overhaul.
80/20 is a rule of thumb
Most of the drag in a process tends to sit in a few steps. I use the 80/20 rule as a reminder to find those steps first. It’s a lens, not a statistic — I’m not claiming a measured 80% anywhere below.
Rogers: eight steps down to two
Real-world example
Leave-case ticketing at Rogers
The problem: Setting up and tracking a leave case took eight ticketing steps, and the work touched HR, Payroll, Scheduling and Team Leads. I had no authority over any of those groups, so the fix had to work for all of them.
The fix: I built the process and its documentation around the steps that mattered, and tracked case status and disability trends in SharePoint databases and Excel, PowerBI and Tableau reporting. Ticketing went from eight steps to two.
The result: Return-to-full-duties timelines dropped by an average of 4 business days, and Team Leads saved an average of 2 business days per leave case. Same people, same work — fewer steps in the way.
LinkNow: smaller fixes
The Retention form is filled in on every retention call and email, so a small flaw in it repeats constantly. I streamlined it — fewer redundancies, fewer errors, less time to submit. I also reorganized the Excel reporting, the Microsoft Teams channels and the call rotation so the work was spread more evenly.
How I look for the 20%
Watch the work before changing it. Ask why people do each step the way they do.
Look for workarounds. If someone keeps a private tracker beside the official system, the official process is failing them. That’s usually where the drag is.
Fix the smallest piece with the biggest drag first. Try it with a few people, then roll it out.
Measure before and after. If you can’t say what changed, you can’t say it worked. That’s why I can give you the Rogers numbers.
When the process is the problem
Before you coach someone on a result, check whether the process makes that result likely. If three people hit the same wall, it isn’t three performance problems. Fix the wall.
You don’t need to fix everything. Find the one or two steps causing most of the drag, fix those, and measure what changed.
Hiring for a contact centre leader?
I’m looking for Team Lead and Manager roles — Calgary or remote.