3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Feature

It’s often been said that when we lose one of our five senses, the others become sharper to compensate for that loss. BPA, a global leader in independent-quality evaluation, customer insight and people development solutions, decided to test that theory in real life while also providing better service to its customers.

According to a recent blog post by Giovanni Aguirre, VP of Operations at BPA Quality, the company wanted to hire some visually handicapped individuals in its quest for individuals with better listening skills.

“BPA first started recruiting visually impaired staff members in 2006, after an internal brainstorming session on how to recruit candidates with greater listening skills,” Aguirre wrote. “The initial conjecture was that a person who had lost one of their senses would heighten their remaining ones in order to help them during their daily lives. With this perspective in mind, it was our hope that someone with a visual impairment may have stronger listening skills, thus giving us candidates that could evaluate calls more accurately.”

Makes sense, right? BPA also believed that recruiting someone with limited to no sight would serve to help those members of the community that may have been overlooked due to their disability. “For BPA, these people could perform equally if not better than full-sighted individuals,” Aguirre said.

After agreeing to recruit people with visual impairments, BPA engaged groups that could help guide the company through the necessary steps. Organizations such as the Helen Keller Services for the Blind, Lighthouse International, and the Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired were instrumental in helping BPA with recruitment, placement, technology acquisitions and office culture at large.

“At the start, we leveraged the Commission for the Blind to educate existing staff in better understanding the visually impaired and the potential challenges they may face in and out of the workplace,” Aguirre wrote. “Some of these included clearing obstacles in the office, contacting local government to install audible cross walks in front of the building, how to walk safely and use proper techniques navigating the office, and building staircases and the surrounding areas.

The program has been a big success for the company. As Aguirre noted, “As BPA’s technology evolved, we took some of the lessons learned from our experiences with our visually impaired group and incorporated them into our software releases, benefiting both internal staff as well as our clients at large.”

Sometimes, the solution you need is staring you right in the face. You just have to make sure you’re looking for it.