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Case Study: Optimizing the Call Center

Operational Improvement at a $700 million manufacturer required an intense focus on customer service.

"This initiative taught us to keep the customer in mind when we take action. Now the voice of the customer is important, and you hear it throughout the company. Adroit's deliverables far surpassed our expectations."

Business Issue
After a series of acquisitions in the 1990s, our client operated 11 small, overlapping call centers dependent on a high level of manual processes. Each call center operated autonomously with few defined processes or procedures. The installed technologies lagged the market, and there was little integration of applications and data. Overall, the customer care function was product-centric with little insight into the total customer relationship.

At a business level, the company continued to dominate several of its markets and to compete effectively in others, selling directly to nearly 60,000 customers. Many of these customers represented small, low-value transactions, but without data to identify customer value, Customer Service and Telemarketing gave the same level of service to all. As the economic downturn eroded revenues, the company could no longer afford such an undifferentiated, manual and product-centric approach.

Adroit's Role
Adroit Consulting was asked to create a customer care strategy for the call centers which could yield immediate improvements and be self-funding. Adroit Consulting followed a two-track approach:

• Outside-in examination of all customer interactions
• Analysis of processes and technology supporting-or impeding-customer interactions

Track 1 - Customer Insight
This track required extensive interviewing of two types of customers: 1) field sales reps, who rely on the call centers to place orders and trouble-shoot accounts and 2) customers sorted by market, value, and frequency of transaction.

Track 2 - Customer Care Assessment
This assessment, across almost 20 functional areas in six locations, included observations, one-on-one interviews and facilitated focus groups with inbound and outbound management and staff as well as with support and administrative functions-such as Information Systems and Credit-that interact daily with Customer Care.

Outcome
Adroit Consulting delivered a rationalization strategy for all customer care investments, including the call centers. The customer-centric vision for reorganization included process redesign; job descriptions, with objectives, metrics and compensation; training; quality management; location strategy; and tools. We also laid out a transition strategy allowing for incremental improvements.

We identified annual savings of $1.2 million; additional technology upgrade savings of at least $700,000, with annual savings of $120,000 in support costs; and immediate telemarketing revenue improvements. One outbound group improved sales productivity by 50 percent in four months. Customer Care has already increased workload with the same resources, and is becoming better integrated with .eld sales in account management. The initiative to become more customer-centric and improve service has resulted in valuable insight into the effectiveness of the company's go-to-market strategy.