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Training Leadership Consulting

Leveraging Lean Six Sigma in call centres

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:37

Many companies are finding that Lean Six Sigma (a process improvement methodology) is the right vehicle to begin making sense of call centre data.

It was Edwards Deming, who said, “We should work on our process rather than the outcome of our process and there should be more emphasis on why we do a job.”

To those who say we need to improve the Customer Service Call Centre first, we say, we should not improve that which should not be done in the first place.

Yes, many functions in the Call Centre are essential, Lean Six Sigma takes a fresh approach of looking for the root cause of the problems lying up stream of our essential call centre processes.

Lean Six Sigma uses the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) method designed to locate and solve the problem at the root cause. The method’s Define phase is focused on properly identifying and scoping the project and selecting a team.

It enables Project Sponsors and Managers to identify the real issues from amidst the call centre noise. Once properly defined in the form of a project charter, the Project Manager is ready to engage the right people, define the process where the problem originates and collect data upstream where the root causes will likely be found.

A Communication and Change Management Strategy is a critical success factor for all Lean Six Sigma projects. To enable project success, senior call centre personnel and other key stakeholders must be firmly behind the project team from the outset.

A good Lean Six Sigma rollout advocates organization-wide communication and change management as a clear focus in order to set-up the project team for success.

Once established, the project manager and team leverage the DMAIC roadmap and tools to identify the root causes found further upstream in core business processes and guides the team to a controllable solution.

Lean Six Sigma uses process management and statistical analysis tools often found in the manufacturing and other highly measured environments. Although Call Centres are familiar with measurements, Call Centre personnel are generally not familiar with the technical tools used in Lean Six Sigma and could be easily frightened off by them.

For those of you just starting out with Lean Six Sigma, this should not be cause for concern. In the initial stages of rolling out Lean Six Sigma in a Call Centre, many early projects benefit more from the discipline introduced by the method and the process mapping as well as qualitative tools.

Project teams will be introduced to the graphical and statistical analysis tools in a very comfortable manner. Although it may seem daunting at first, teams quickly settle down and become comfortable with the new language and new tools.

Here are some helpful case studies to demonstrate the methods effectiveness in the Call Centre environment:

Healthcare Administration Call Centre: One of our recent projects was in a transactional Healthcare organization where large volumes of call centre queries were the result of a failed set of ‘core business’ processes.

By following DMAIC methodology the project team discovered that the department responsible for the service failure in the call centre had a median turnaround time of 12 days! This department’s processes became the focus of the project, which ultimately delivered a new turnaround time of 2 hours as the new solution.

The process team was so energized by their newfound success that they managed to further improve the cycle time down to 20 minutes!

Insurance Administrator Call Centre: In an Insurance Administration Call Centre, 20% of the incoming calls were related to product coverage queries.

The project uncovered that the root cause of the high volume of queries was related to confusing and poorly-structured product documentation. Further investigation showed that, as a result, clients were not making the effort to read the policy booklet or the website.

This resulted in using the Design for Six Sigma Methodology to redesign the website to include well-structured product-coverage information. This Design project’s main requirement was usability and resulted in a state of the art website which included graphics, diagrams and easy–to-understand product-coverage information.

In addition, the IVR prompted clients to access the information on the website instead of waiting to speak to a CSA. As a result the product coverage calls into the call centre reduced by 40%.

The lesson we have learned is to not blame the messenger. The Call centre is only voicing the symptoms of the problem that are rooted in upstream activities. It is important to take the time to listen to those symptoms and look for the real problems.

Even if you have outsourced your call centre, don’t lose contact with this data rich environment. Stay connected and leverage its immense capability to improve your core business.

Rick McCarthy is the Managing Director of Training Leadership Consulting (TLC) based in South Africa www.tlcglobal.co.za. Rick is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and has worked in numerous Client Call Centre environments in South Africa and the USA.

Alan is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with TLC and has more than a decade of Call Centre Management and Lean Six Sigma experience. Alan was an operations Director for a Major Medical Health Scheme Administrator. He was in charge of Call Centres and then became the Six Sigma Deployment Leader.