VIDA Management Consultants

Specializing in Customer Interaction

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Past Project

A Business Transformation / Change Management Project

Situation

Vicki approached an operational budget cutback as a contact center reengineering project.

The center was structured around three specialized functions, with each group having different skills, work schedules, pay schedules, and staffing level requirements. Each group was highly productive and effective on its own.

Maintaining a high level of customer service was critical, as this company was the only one in their industry with an in-house contact center, and used the center as a competitive advantage.

Analysis

Analysis of historical call data showed that 98% of the incoming calls were placed during the current hours of operation, and 90% of calls would be covered with the proposed reduction in hours.

However, pooling people could actually increase the total number of answered calls during the proposed shorter hours of operation.

By combining all three-job functions and changing the workflow priorities, there would be a larger pool of agents available to take incoming calls, process new accounts, and make outbound calls.

Costs could be cut by pooling people and equipment resources, retooling processes, and creating blended agents. However, this major process change would have a massive impact on the agents.

This transformational change required a change management program to get the buy-in of the agents.

Change Management

The whole program was presented to agents in a “what’s in it for me” format emphasizing, better schedules, greater job variety, and more pay. Purposely, not all details were worked out so that agents and supervisors could participate in the planning and implementation of the changes that would impact them. Job function changes were not mandatory because there was still a need for a base group of specific-skilled agents.

Training took place over a two-month period, while new processes were developed, and reporting / success measurement tools were created. During this period, an ongoing company wide communication was used to spotlight progress and goals met. The project got a lot of attention and support from executive management and every department head.

Results

Six months after the launch date, when cross-function job skill capabilities were back to specialized pre-launch levels, headcount was down 30% and overall operational costs were down 25%. Customer service response times were better than pre-launch levels, the total number of answered call increased, and employee morale was at an all time high.