The Gift that keeps on Gifting: Standard Operating Procedures, a style guide

The unique thing about Reficient Solutions is that we are designed to be fully remote—there will never be an RTO because there is no O. When my business partner and I tasked ourselves with creating the processes around the organization, the conversation always circled back to our SOP, or Standard Operating Procedures. We decided to go beyond what most contact centers do: they create a boilerplate script that says nothing about company culture, baseline expectations, or even how to work from home. It's surprising that in a world where employees are clamoring to WFH, no one is creating a map for what that should look like. You can't create a script and then give no direction.  

Our SOPs are designed around educating employees about what it means to truly create a work-from-home environment that is enriching instead of pretending that our best work only comes from the least restrictive environment. That is a way to create a full-time job herding cats. Why would an operating procedure describe how to greet someone on the phone nicely and then not define what "nice" means within your organization? What Reficient Solutions sets out to do is to encourage our team to think back on the SOP at every step of the workday. Setting office hours, creating a personal office space, and reducing distractions at home are all outlined, along with best practices to ensure our team is protecting that block of time and space as a professional boundary.  Employers often forget that soft skills won in an office environment don't immediately translate home and failing to communicate this to your team will mean confusion and losing employees to better-outlined organizations. 

Having risen through the ranks as former contact center employees, team leads, managers, and analysts, the team at Reficient Solutions is unique in planning for both the "known-knowns" (at some point in time, everyone's power goes out at least temporarily) and "unknown-knowns" (tornados in the Southeast can take out power for days to a week). If you require agility, specialized problem-solving, or an experienced contact center, please reach out to Reficient Solutions for consultation. Our expertise is a valuable asset that continues to deliver results.