At Encompass, we empower our team of top facility professionals with industry leading technology to help drive better outcomes for our customers.

We primarily do this through our proprietary platform called Insights, which acts as an All-In-One productivity tool for our operations team. Features within Insights include Worktickets, Projects, Assets, KPI's, as well as the star of today's show.....our Survey Module.

Survey's as you know have many applications but in the facility services business a standard survey tool just doesn't do the trick. There are many challenges and nuances that have to be accounted for, including:

• The building type and industry: the variation here is significant which creates a need for customization and flexibility.
• The management and distribution of surveys across many different groups, from customers to the field team.
• A user friendly, mobile first interface that makes it simple to capture data quickly and effectively.
• Ability to support different survey types, including Internal Surveys, Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT), and Quality Assurance Surveys (QA)

All of these challenges have made it imperative for us to build and continually improve on our own proprietary Survey Management tool. This tool supports a number of different functions at Encompass, none more important than our Quality Assurance Program.

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A quick refresher on our Quality Assurance program

We believe that you can only fulfill the standards you measure and actively manage. Our Quality Assurance program is an integral part of our operation and is geared toward optimal service delivery, providing continuous oversight of each facility we service. Our proprietary QA program was designed to manage our team performance and resource allocation and will provide the best possible service outcomes. The are a number of key elements to our QA program: 

• Multiple Sources: It's important to get honest feedback from numerous stakeholders. Our system routinely captures feedback from multiple stakeholders and combines it to provide a final quality score. By utilizing various sources of information, we ensure a more accurate assessment of each facility.
• Granularity: We gain granular information on specific things for every space rated. For example: If we are rating a "restroom", we want to know about the floors, sinks, partitions, mirrors, etc. That way we can drill down into specific areas of improvement and incorporate into training.
• Corrective Actions: If a question is rated below a certain threshold, Insights automatically create a ticket so that the issue can be remedied ASAP.
• Responsive Training: We utilize both site-specific and company-wide data to determine where our team may need additional training, and resources. Our process improvement and training modules are adapted to include potential deficiencies. Supervisory and management personnel can review performance goals and productivity together, in real time, on an ongoing basis.
• Transparency: We offer full transparency into our operations and customers have access to the QA platform through the Encompass app. They can conduct their own inspections, provide feedback, and review standards of quality.

All of these elements as well as a handful of others ensure that our quality standards are held up across the entire company.

Why is Quality Assurance important, and how should you think about it?

Like most things in life, "quality" is a direct reflection of the amount of time, money, and resources that are put into an action. It's why we value things like quality food, and are willing to spend more money to have a great 5 course meal, compared to the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant.

As the consumer, you make a decision on what you are valuing when making a purchasing decision. With higher quality expectations typically comes a higher price, and if you are looking to fit outcomes into a set budget you will be making tradeoffs one way or the other. In the world of facility services, it's no different.

Our job at Encompass is to work with customers to customize a program that works for them, and communicate the associated trade offs when it comes to quality. There is no right answer, it is OK to value a lower budget with a slightly lower expectation of quality (say 80%) compared to a higher price where you expect nothing less than a 90% score or better across the board. This can be driven by a number of factors including your industry, building use, occupants, and more.

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The Encompass QA program supports all of the above. The flexible and transparent nature of our tool allows us to aim for and measure the targets that make the most sense for you and your company.

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Overview of our New Quality Assurance Tool‍

We have built the most advanced and user-friendly set of Quality Assurance tools in the industry. Here are just a few of the highlights: 

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Advanced Survey Admin and Management

• Multiple different survey types
• Ratings, Short Answer, Multiple Choice question types
• Advanced editing and customization
• Multiple distribution options (Insights Platform, and via a Public link)

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User Friendly and Purpose Built Survey Intake

• User friendly menu, and question interface
• Supports multiple answers for the same categorical question (who needs 20 questions for 20 different bathrooms)
• Bilingual Support (English and Spanish)
• Comments and Pictures for advanced feedback

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‍Corrective Actions

• Wortktickets are automatically created and assigned to manager when survey, question, or area is rated below a certain score
• Email notification is sent to the locations manager indicating that there is a Corrective Action ticket
• Ability to view the survey source, and pictures to confirm actions that need to be taken
• Automatic task list creation depending on the areas within the associated survey

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‍Advanced Reporting and Analytics

• View average QA scores over time in order to see trends
• Breakdown survey data by Customer, Location, Industry, and build cumulative reports
• View a Location Leaderboard to quickly determine high and low performing locations
• See a Survey activity log to ensure quantity targets are being met

‍Triggers and Notifications

• Custom built workflows for different actions (completed survey, survey scores, etc), and recipients
• Support Email, Slack, Text, and in app notifications

‍Full Customer Access and Customer Satisfaction Survey

• Customers take and view all Quality Assurance surveys via surface
• View independent surveys and download data
• View KPI Dashboard for metrics and reporting
• Complete Customer Satisfaction Surveys (in the app)
• Notifications for Completed Surveys, including monthly summaries

This is just a high level of view of the functionality we support. Interested in learning more? Book a call with us here.

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How does the updated ratings scale work? 

One of the nuanced changes we made to the survey module is the logic behind our ratings scale, and how Quality Assurance survey scores are calculated. Previously, we used a weighted rating scale of 4 (score 1-4), with a 1 equaling a 70%, and a 4 equaling a 100%. Over time we have received great feedback from team members and many of our customers indicating that the limited scale was not providing enough of a honest of rating, limiting the ability to pick out low and high performing locations, and areas.

One of our core values is "Continuous Progress", and we felt that changing the rating scale was an opportunity to improve the transparency of our Quality Metrics, and create room for more honest survey responses and data sets. Under that premise we changed our scoring to incorporate a 1-10 rating scale. Instead of that scale being "weighted", 1= a 10% score, 5= a 50% score, up to 10 = a 100% score, etc etc. Transparency is one of the most important aspects of how we use technology to deliver our services to customers and this change is another reflection of that.

While we know the change will be well received, we also understand this may take some getting used to. Here is a scale of how the new ratings scores compare to the old one. With the new scale the scores may seem "lower" but the additional transparency will 100% lend to better and more transparent results.

Encompass takes a lot of pride in providing the right level of quality that matches each customer's goals, and the balance they aim to achieve between budget and quality. Don't worry, compared to our competitors we are still confident that our scores will set the curve :)‍

Summary: what does all of this mean for you?‍

In summary, we couldn't be more excited to release this update. While we wanted to provide an in depth overview of this program, here are a few bullet points that cover what this means for our customers.

• Lots of great new features and things to do in our Surface Platform.
• Updates to the email notifications you receive for completed surveys.
• More transparency and around quality scores due to the adjustment in the ratings scale.
• The ability to complete and fill out Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSAT)
  

Thank you for being a valued member of Encompass. As always we would love your feedback, as well as the opportunity to showcase our customer facing dashboard and the new features that are now available. Feel free to book a time with our product team to chat.