Service Level Threshhold

[yooo]

Hi,
Our company's Service Level used to be 80% calls taken in 90 seconds but recently it changed to 80% calls taken in 180 seconds.
I wish to learn why was it done and why purpose will it serve?
It may look a very basic question but after a lot of brainstroming, I could not reach any conclusion.

Any help would be highly appreciated.
Thanks.

[thetuan]

Yooo,

It appears that your service level was changed so that the cost of operating your call center can be reduced substantially. As you know, the biggest expense line item on your monthly budget is labor and it's mostly CSR labor (it could be somewhere between 55% - 70% of overall cost). Any reduction in the CSR headcount will undoubtedly make a big difference in the operating margin of your call center.

Having said that, I hope that the folks that made this decision to change service level have done a thorough analysis of the impact of this change to your customer base and any possible negative impact(s) that it might have on customer service.

Thanks

[davelaramee]

Hi,

Just as the previous person reply, it seems you are cutting on your expenses, perhaps it will obviously decrease the value of your work to your customers since they will have to wait longer. In my company we use te 80/20 service level policy. I explain myself, 80% of our calls must be answered within 20 second and we allow only 20% of the time to have our service level un 80%.

To calculate our service level, we start our day a 100%, and then if some calls are waiting more than 20 second, our service level will decrease accordingly.

I recommend you to have this service level to be changed ASAP 80/180 is way too much. I've noticed that the average waiting time before abandon is 137 seconds for all my 4 campaings.

Got any questions? Just ask me!

Dave

[thetuan]

Yooo,

One of the options available to your operation is to outsource to near shore in Canada or to offshore in the Philippines. I know that there are pros and cons to this topic but what you will get (if you select the vendor carefully) is that you will have a customer service provider who job is to provide proper customer resolution to your customer base while reducing your operating cost substantially.

Also, you will not have to sacrifice service levels and what you might also get is a very high first call resolution percentage. What this said is that every call will be answered under 20 seconds and your customers will be very satisfied every time they call your company for service.

Having said that, you need to also consider the stigma of going near shore or going off shore and how you will need to address it to the public or to your customer base if it becomes an issue for your company. If that is not an issue for you, then I would suggest that you look at this option as one real way to reduce operating cost of your call center and get great customer service.

Thanks

[NBosch]

Hi Yooo,

What happened (or is happening) at your organisation, is that the management wants to cut costs significantly.
By doubling the time factor in the SL, they can reduce headcount.

The problem with this approach is that it is very based on short term results and that in the long run, this could be a very expensive decision. This is because it leads to:
- decrease of customer satisfaction (longer waiting times -> unhappy customers)
- decrease of staff motivation (unhappy customers complain -> unhappy CSR's)
- increase of ATT (average talk time) (unhappy customers complain -> cost time too -> increase of ATT)
- decrease of Workduration (unhappy CSR's -> less motivated -> lower WD% )
- decrease of sales (unhappy consumers -> unhappy customers -> lower sales OR )
- decrease of sales revenues ( SL is part of the SLA, when the SL is lower, the value of the offered service is lower, which leads to a lower calculated price of the product)

As you see, I am no supporter of this decision and I personally would consider this only to be the very last option if one must decrease costs.

Feel free 2 mail me if you need more info: niek.bosch@medion.com

[yooo]

Thank you so much for your invaluable inputs.

I confirmed with my Ops Mng that now we do not care about the Service Level at all but manage the Abdonment rate instead(keeping it <17%)....I could not go into the details with her...but thats what she said that what the Service level is doesn't matter as long as the ABN is within limits...but then SL and ABN are interdependent on each other, isn't it?

What might be the reason for this drastic change in managing our call center from SL to ABN?

Would greatly appreciate any inputs in this regard.