Problem solving help

[chrisvz]

Greetings,

I am a project manager for a business company. We have got a department on applied systems as well as a call center. The first department solves usually from business partnes specialised questions about technological products and the call center often gets questions from all kinds of consumers or small business engeneers.

I am analysing problem solving and efficiency of incoming problems. However often our call centers send through people or problems that they themselves do not with to answer. Often they could have just send the customer a folder with specific information or they could have looked it up in a product catalogue but they forward a lot to our departmets. Perhaps laziness, perhaps not educated enough workers. They have a central computer which reports service level which persons are free to be able to receive calls etc.

If I try to improve handling problems and not forwarding them nothing seems to work. Does anyone has any ideas how I could improve the task handling of the call center? Perhaps giving them motivation training, perhaps joining the two departments together so that everyone can answer all problems on the phone but I am not sure.

Any advice is much appreciated :). Am I on the right board when asking this? I wouldn't know.

Yours,

[Rakesh Bhambani]

Greetings Chris,

You are at the perfect place for discussing problems of the kind you have. All of us here learn a lot from each other. Did you get to read some of the other postings here?

First, do not expect a quick fix to your problems on forums since generally you can only provide limited information and the responses will also therefore be very broad in nature and may not be in perfect sync with your situation.

I feel you should gear up your call center to handle all problems of Level 1. You can define the parameters of Level 1 yourself but will have to define them very clearly. You have to also structure your knowledge assets very effectively so that all answers are available and also available easily and speedily. The easier you make this, the more prone your agents will be to use this. Do your agents also have an incentive scheme that encourages them to work in tandem with your business rules?

When you say, “perhaps not educated enough”, that worries me. Are you hiring the right people for the job? Or even worse, after hiring them, are you providing the right tools and training to them?

So my tips to you are-
· Hire the right people
· Give them the right information resources and training
· Provide them with incentives to work the way the company wants to work
· Keep raising the bar so that they handle most of the Level 1 contacts (Level 1 should constantly grow to encompass more and more) and your specialists can focus on more difficult tasks and premium customers.

If you have sufficient volumes, also consider outsourcing this activity.

[mikael]

Chris,

It appears that your issue is one of escalation, that the call centre is forwarding too many inquiries and cases to the 2nd group in your company.

There are three basic reasons that a call might be escalated.

1) The 1st level agent does not have access to the knowledge needed to resolve the question.

2) The 1st level agent does not have the authority to do what is needed to resolve the issue.

3) The 1st level agent cannot resolve the issue within the amount of time permitted.


If the agent has access to the knowledge needed, has the authority and the time that will be needed, and yet still escalates the call, then there is a training or motivation problem.

Are your agents measured on their escalation rate? If they are escalating calls that they could properly have solved themselves, then your supervisor needs to take action.

In handling *any* call, the last question that the agent should ask themselves is: "Was this call necessary? Could it have been prevented? If so, how?" You need to have a method for recording the answer to this question and getting that information to the appropriate people in your company who can take action on it.

[etuwah]

Hi Chris,

If you want to further analyze the situation youÂ’re facing, take a look at the uniqueness between the applied systems and the call center. My understanding of your mail indicates that both these departments handle to customer calls. The applied systems handle the more specialize customers whereas the call center attends the general consumers.

Why is it happening to the Call center and NOT the applied system group? What is unique between the two?

Competency, Service level demand, workload, more complex question from consumer, particular products questions, are some of the possibilities that you can spot by comparing the 2 group.

The next question would be since when have you observed this problem?
Why is happening now not before?
Has there been any change to the Call Center? Reduce head-counts, increase service level or increase in the number of calls. These are some the possible reasons for the service behavior change.

I hope this will help and happy problem analysing.

[chrisvz]

Hi everyone,
Thanks for all of your replies. I will do my best to read all answers posted in this whole forum. They give me good support and ideas.

I am already doing a project for problem reducing which originally started at my appartment, Applied Systems. I am still busy with measuring incoming problems and also analysing them. First I am well busy measuring the current situation in the company before I can really tackle each problem and deal with it or find some global solutions. I have a few things in mind like communication training or merging 2 departments (applied systems, infoline). These are already recorded in my project but not yet executed as I am still registring problems.

The way that Applied Systems differs from the Information line is in speciality and complexity.

The information line (call center) is focused on receiving incoming problems directly from household customers or small business engeneers. It is not more than a call center. If a problem becomes too complex, they will send it on to applied systems.

The persons that work on the infoline could be trained better, so training is an option. There are a few people (first line) that are just picked up from the street so to say (that's blunt I know) and if they cannot solve the problem it is forwarded to technical services (another department which is on the same room as the large call center but is more technical) and if they dont know it it is forwarded to applied systems (usually). Sometimes directly to applied systems even.

The department applied systems is focused on handling more complex projects *plus maintaining business like keeping good relationships with their trade partners (or large engeneers) and negotiating with them. This is something what a call center doesnt to. Yet this department gets forwarded a lot of problems from the call center. The call center doesnt ask the customer well enough about a problem perhaps or misinterprets them so they just send them on to this department while sometimes giving the customer a folder would be enough. There are complaints about the infoline sending through an order to applied systems from an organisation which should not be dealt anymore with.

So I am busy writing but another thing is happening in the meanwhile and it seems to go right past me. The two departments are getting placed closer by each other through internet business reorganisations. The two departments might work together (as I even come up with the idea only it was worked past). Currently there are some workers arguing or dissatisfied with it so I have to well, guard my project and examine what exactly is going to happen. The office locations are going to change and they may become one department. I immedeately requested a conversation with the head manager of the whole floor, well he is short in time and has yet to read my project, he just lets me work on reorganising with establishing a project team so it is all a matter of communication and examination it seems.

I am planning a structured method by in *global: 1) defining the problems first, then 2) measuring the situation, then 3) analysing it (brainstorm and select solutions) and after that try to 4) implement changes and then 5) control it.

I am at the moment in phase 2 and well 3 actually but I am afraid that the reogranisations will kinda mess up this project. I doubt the reorganisations will solve the problem of the infoline to our department.