Call Center breaks through the Efficiency Myth
A year ago this Insurance Company call center made a radical change. They moved away from the approach that focused on “efficiency”, well at least what conventional wisdom thinks is efficiency (see post “The Efficiency Myth”), to one based on “effectiveness”. Previously they were organised around the company’s product lines, a.k.a. “skills based routing”. There were approximately 7 to 9 teams a customer could be directed to depending upon the product area of their inquiry. The averaging call handling time, a key performance measure for call centers, was 360 seconds and their customer satisfaction survey results were coming in between “needs improvement” to “just meets needs”. They had an intense training program for new agents that went for six weeks and covered everything they needed to know across the call center. However these agents were then placed into a particular skill area and had no experience to handle the first call that came in with an in-depth question.
The change that was made was aligned to looking at the effectiveness of handling the customer calls and not the misconception of focusing on the efficiency of processing them. With help from an outside consultancy firm the Insurance Company realised that customer enquiries could be grouped into two types of call, simple and complex. They organised their call center around these two groups. All inbound calls first go to a group of agents that are there to handle the simple enquiries. If the customer has a more complex question these are passed on to a second group who are more experienced. The groups are not organised by products and handle all calls coming in.
Now according to “the efficient myth” efficiency is an outcome not an input. It is the measure of effectiveness (efficiency = actual effectiveness, divided by, ideal effectiveness). Therefore if these changes increased the actual effectiveness of handling customer enquiries we should see the efficiency measure improve.
This is exactly what happened. Remembering that the average call handling time of all calls was previously 360 seconds what the Insurance Company found was that the average call handling time of the simple calls dropped to 180 seconds while the average handling time of the complex calls remained at 360 seconds. This freed up agents to do outbound calls for customer retention activities. In addition the customer satisfaction survey has now improved from “just meets needs” to “excellent”.
The training program has been changed as well. Agents now undertake a more iterative training program. They learn the basic information required to handle simple calls and experience those types of calls immediately, before learning how handle more complicated calls. Therefore instead of being thrown into the deep end of handling “skills based” calls of any level of complexity there is a skills progression path for the agents. This had led to an overall career path for the agents. They can start in the simple calls group, move through to the complex calls group and many are now moving into other parts of the business where they can leverage their coalface knowledge to benefit the company in its product development, marketing, sales and operational areas. Another benefit has been the simplification of the technology supporting the call center. Routing rules, voice announcement options and even work force management has been simplified which all leads to lower cost.
The Efficiency Myth can be defeated!
