A Two-Stage Assessment Center that Brought ALL Employees to a Higher Level of Performance
To
succeed in the “Brave New World” of retail competition in the 1990s,
senior management of one of the largest electric and natural gas
utilities in the Northeast decided they wanted to change the jobs of
their customer service reps from mechanically processing calls to giving
“wow” customer service and selling products and services.
None of the reps passed the first assessment center based on the
new job performance standards, but after three months of
behavior-modeling training individualized to their skill deficits and
supervisor coaching, nearly all passed the second one.
The few who didn’t were reassigned to non-customer-service
positions.
Speaker
Roy G. Perham, Ph.D.
John Jay College
Roy
G. Perham, Ph.D. has developed and run assessment centers to develop or
select managers and supervisors at several large public utilities and
customer service representatives at pharmaceutical companies.
He has a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from
Stevens Institute of Technology, and received postgraduate training at
the Center for Creative Leadership in