Coforge optimizes Contact Center Operations for a Premium US Transport Service Provider.

Challenges.

The ProcessGym™ consulting team identified several day-to-day challenges which were divided into People, Process, and Technology:

People

• Minimum skills were not defined for any customer-related jobs.
• The call logs were not being analyzed and no key performance attributes for measuring hiring effectiveness had been identified.
• There was a dependency on the dispatchers, who acted as the intermediaries between the company and the customers to facilitate the services. This caused further delays and long calls.
• Agent utilization was low.

Process

• The processes were not standardized and documented. There was no homogeneity in following the processes by the call center agents.
• The sales approach was more ‘suggestive’ than ‘assertive’ resulting in low sales.
• There were long wait times in queues for customers. Many of the calls were of a nature that could have been processed automatically through IVR.

Technology

• Telecom infrastructure lacked modern functionality and was due for a refresh.
• The call recording system was ad hoc and manual.
• There was no Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to capture customer information.
• Complaints were escalated using paper forms and the Workforce Management (WFM) tool was missing.
• There were issues with IVR, knowledge management, and integrated CRM.
• There was no distinction between agents by call type or skills.

Solution.

The consulting assignment involved studying client’s Contact Center Operations including general reservations, international process, process management, and the existing IT support for the operations. Based on the 6-week study that the ProcessGym™ team conducted, recommendations were made for further improving operational efficiencies. Existing processes were reviewed and gaps were identified through data analysis of calls, performance, and forecasting, staffing, and scheduling. Coforge conducted interviews and held discussions with process owners and SMEs to understand functional and transactional flows. Furthermore, a functional study of the contact center that included hiring, training, operations, quality, WFM, and technology was conducted. The Coforge team also studied the dispatch process to reduce interactions between the contact center agent and the dispatcher.

The Coforge ProcessGym™ team made the following recommendations for process improvement and operations optimization.

• Reduce the number of calls through channel shift.
• Implement IVR processing in case of service cancellations.
• Streamline and standardize existing processes to help optimize the contact center costs.
• Reduce the dependency between call center agents and the dispatch team resulting in a head-count reduction.
• Improve the user interface.
• Automate the process of sending receipts to customers.

The impact.

The recommendations by Coforge resulted in improved operational efficiencies and streamlined processes. The following was achieved:

• Reduction in the number of calls by 9% through IVR processing and channel shift.
• Reduction in the call time by 16% through automation and removing non-value adds.
• Reduction in the dependency between call center agents and dispatch team by 80%.
• Agent utilization improved from 65% to 80%.