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Quick Glance Case Study: Non-Phone Contact

“Prior to the Lean review it would have been easy to assume throwing additional resources at our Call Centre would resolve our issues with overcapacity and failure demand. However, through applying Lean principals, we have found a way to meet our SLA’s and improve employee and customer satisfaction – all without additional headcount”

After completing a ChangeWise Lean Practitioner training course, one candidate submitted the following work-place project to gain their qualification to LCS Level 1c.

The Business Challenge

Whilst our operational contact centre was predominantly customer contact via phone, there were also a number of non-phone activities generated by customer contact:

  • Ops Written Queries: Email and written contact direct from customers.
  • Ops Queries Mailbox: Internal email responses where customer queries have been passed to other departments for response (this work is grouped together with the written queries).
  • Issue Reports: Customers reporting issues via the website.
  • Live Chat Demand: Real-time customer contact) via the website. This took priority over the above tasks.

The increasing volume of non-call contact impacted the Resource & Planning Team’s ability to manage call-contact. It was also evident that non-call contact did not have an effective resourcing process.

A Lean review was required to support the Resource & Planning Team in effectively resourcing offline-call demand in order to reduce the impact on answering customer calls.

Photo by Ave Calvar on Unsplash

Key people involved from client site

A strategy group including members of the Senior Leadership Team, Resource & Planning Team and Issue Handling Agents, were involved in the various elements of solution delivery.

Lean Methodology Employed

DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analise, Improve, Control)

Various Lean methodologies were used including, SIPOC, Data Collection Plan, Waste Analysis, Value Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, Cause & Effect, Value and Non-Value Add Analysis, Gemba Walk, Demand Matrix, Pay Off Matrix

Current State Finding and Issues:

We completed a SIPOC exercise to better understand the stages of the non-phone process, along with a Data Collection Plan to gain a clear picture of how work comes in and how it is distributed across the team.

Key Findings:

  • All non-contact tasks are planned and worked by agents that would otherwise answer customer calls.
  • The demand was planned on a 50/50 basis split between the 2 work areas during core business hours.
  • Live chat also sits with the agents who action Ops Written Queries and the Mailbox.
  • Agents were often at risk of exceeding the 5-day SLA due to volumes increasing as a result of planning or Live Chat priorities.

In order to identity and understand the non-value add activity, we completed a Gemba Walk detailing how agents worked and recorded tasks. This was followed by an analysis of the root cause of issues using the Cause and Effect diagram.

It became clear that several key areas influenced the way non-contact demand has been planned and actioned:

  • Mailbox work was not captured on the receipts data held by Resource & Planning. This is because they were unaware of it as a workstream.
  • There is a system available (PMS) that captures work completed, however timings were not accurate due to the various ways that agents recorded items they had worked on.
  • Combining Ops Written Queries and Live Chat resulted in duplication/repetition of work.
  • Large areas of duplication where work was continually interrupted by Live Chat.

Benefits & Outcomes

We held a brainstorming session with all stakeholders in order to produce solutions to the issues. These were then categorised into a Pay-Off Matrix.

Future State Solutions:

  • Remove duplication through substituting the current way PMS is used by agents so that a piece of work is only updated once completed, and not each time it is worked upon.
  • Combine Live Chat with a less demanding work stream to alleviate repetition time when having to stop what is being worked.
  • Modify PMS with a ‘Spring Clean’ of data; removing obsolete categories and updating work-stream names to match tasks. This means tasks are easier to select and there is less chance of input error.
  • Reduce failure demand and ensure consistency by creating a group of ‘Super Users’ who have excellent knowledge of the new process and data. These Super Users will also train and support Resource & Planning agents.
  • Eliminate the duplication and repetition created by taking Live Chat during offline work.
  • Rearrange where Live Chat sits and taking it away from offline task and moving to call availability. This will allow offline work to be actioned uninterrupted, provide prompt response to incoming Live Chat for the customer; and reduce errors caused by restarting tasks.
  • Standardise processes through the creation of user guides for PMS
  • Enhanced ways of working through using visual data for Live Chat customer surveys and comparison to other departments shared weekly

Photo by Mahbod Akhzami on Unsplash

In Summary

The Lean review has helped us to achieve our primary goal of increasing customer contact and reducing issue resolution times regardless of the customer’s preferred contact method. The new process has also generated higher volumes of customer feedback, which in turn, demonstrate our improved service scores.

The Lean review has also increased employee motivation, removed excessive duplication, enabled more accurate receipting and forecasting, made way for improved resource planning in how hours are distributed across offline tasks based on forecast and timings – this keeps demand comfortably within SLA’s.

Interested in looking at how Lean can help to save your business money whilst improving customer and employee satisfaction? Contact us at info@changewise.co.uk and let’s talk about how we can help.

ChangeWise believes employee engagement is the foundation for successful Change. Training and coaching your people to use simple continuous improvement techniques will enable your organisation to continuously adapt and stay ahead in a constantly changing and challenging environment.

For updates and interesting Lean Change insights, connect with us on LinkedIn. 

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