Analysis Of Call Center

Overview

My firm was recently contracted to analyze the current effectiveness of a national insurance agency, particularly its call center. Within the original proposed contract, I will address several key issues. It is my intent that this practice will address and limit unpredictable behaviors, as well as unproductive commissions, especially with new clients.

Some changes are conducted to enhance organizational effectiveness, all within the context of the values and strategic framework in place. Incremental changes are a constant. These incremental changes include, but are not limited to, some organizational restructuring, new technology, or new personnel practices.

Working on personnel issues allows positive and lasting low cost change. For change to occur, management needs to ensure that it projects to its employees that they are valued and not just to be discarded. Successful organizational development results in (1) effective strategic and operational plans; (2) team development and effectiveness; (3) leadership development; and (4) added value, quality, competitive products, or services.

Health Care Industry Woes

Due to rising costs, increased competition, government regulations, and the emergence of consumer-directed care, the health insurance industry is experiencing vast amounts of pressure to reduce costs and improve service quality. Even though the current trend is to solve these issues with significant investments in technology and people, as well as outsourcing, health insurance companies still have difficulty answering basic performance questions such as:

* Which claim agents have the highest adjustment rate?

* Which providers/members call most frequently?

* Which members are most satisfied/dissatisfied with their health insurance customer service experience?

These questions are critical, and health insurance companies need to answer in order to gain and maintain a competitive edge. To remain competitive in a difficult economy, many call centers are in cost-cutting mode. Some are successfully trimming fat, but many others are seeing efforts backfire in the form of new and/or hidden costs, frustrated employees and dissatisfied customers. Because of the nature of random call arrivals, an unfocused cutting of all services does not work well for call centers. Insufficient staff, or squandering of other resources can quickly lead to long customer queues, additional contacts (e.g., when customers use multiple numbers or contact channels to reach the organization) and intolerable agent occupancy rates.

Achieving efficiencies while maintaining optimal service requires harnessing principles that ensure you are cutting in the right places.

Getting it Right

It is possible to cut costs successfully while maintaining optimal service levels if you adhere to the following principles.

* Revisit your customer access strategy

* Work to prevent contacts at the source

* Optimize staffing and schedules by increment

* Calculate staff and telecommunications costs together

* Improve processes and systems -- now and forever

* Pool agent groups - as feasible

* Identify organization-wide opportunities

Revisit your customer access strategy.

A prerequisite to any major effort to reduce costs should be to review and, as necessary, refine the priorities identified in your organization's customer access strategy. A customer access strategy is a framework of standards, guidelines and processes that defines how the call center will serve customers. And yes, you have one; whether it's documented, effective and used by managers -- or not -- every organization has one.

The customer access strategy must define:

* Customers you will serve (e.g., customer segments);

* Access channels (telephone, email, Web, etc.);

* Telephone numbers, email addresses, and URLs;

* Hours of operation;

* Service level and response time objectives;

* Services provided; and

* Tracking and analysis (the methods/systems required to capture information during customer interactions to strengthen customer profiles, identify trends and improve products and services).

Before implementing new systems or changing processes, your internal management team must agree on the services the call center will continue to provide. Otherwise, cost-cutting efforts may be at odds with customer service objectives.

Also, such efforts may backfire. Witness the numerous organizations that have reduced e-mail staffing and response times, only to discover that some customers communicate through both phone and e-mail -- multiplying the workload and driving up costs.

Work to prevent contacts at the source.

Chances are, your call center holds true to Vilfredo Pareto's principle, which says that 20 percent of calls account for 80 percent of the call load. Tracking contacts for each channel (phone, e-mail, fax, etc.) by type (sales, billing, technical support, etc.) using a Pareto chartcan lead to pivotal questions, such as:

* Should the call center be getting so many calls of that type?

* Where can IVR or Web-based services handle more of