Call centers and claims-processing departments at insurance companies become more efficient and better serve their customers when work is taken out of the network and embedded instead in systems, processes, and procedures. For example, to make responding to customer queries more efficient, an organization can prescribe patterns of interaction, minimize unnecessary relationships within and outside an organization, and employ a formal structure that focuses collaboration on inputs and outputs.
Call centers are prominent in four main industries: financial services, telecom, high-tech, and airline. Most of us have dealt with a call center at some point, and many of us have been frustrated. We get put on hold or transferred to one person or another—none of whom can answer our questions. But companies with call centers have a very strong incentive to improve customers' experiences, since unhappy callers are likely to vote with their wallets the next time they buy a computer, choose a bank, or the like.
Deborah Bragg is the vice president of Texas servicing and call center operations at Sallie Mae, the largest private provider of educational loans in the United States. The company owns or manages approximately $100 billion in student loans for more than 7 million borrowers, and Bragg oversees customer service. "Our goal is to resolve a customer's question on the first contact while minimizing service expense to the company," she explains. That's no small task: The center receives nearly 20,000 calls per day.
A specific set of network characteristics helps Bragg and her team make sense of a jumble of customers' questions. Internal connections are focused on the process flow of different categories of requests, such as customer questions about a new product. What's more, these connections are intentionally designed and circumscribed—they're not ad hoc, as in a customized network—to make the processes more effective and efficient. And unlike a modular network, which centers on distinct roles, the routine response network at Sallie Mae follows defined process flows. For example, interactions typically occur among supervisors reviewing calls and then between call center agents and their supervisors, who give feedback and coaching. A horizontal communication network that directly connected call center agents would be inefficient and would reduce the consistency of customers' experiences.
| Companies with call centers have a very strong incentive to improve customers' experiences. |
The call center management and staff have very limited external connections. Those that exist serve highly specific purposes, such as bringing in an expert to redesign a Web site. For the most part, the nature of the inquiries at the call center are such that developing, nurturing, and maintaining external relationships are unnecessary costs.
The way a routine response network is structured allows collaboration to be focused on specific inputs and outputs. For example, Sallie Mae analyzes repeat call trends at least once per month to identify reasons for higher volume. When another part of the company is the cause, the center provides internal feedback to that department. So if customers don't understand a new loan product, the call center manager quickly contacts the group responsible for the new product to let the team know what consumers are saying. "Focused collaboration allows us to deliver clearer information to our customers and, in turn, reduces repeat and additional calls, improves our customer service, and contains cost," Bragg says. [...]
One way Sallie Mae uncovers new trends is through a process called "hot topics." When agents notice a trend, they write a summary of it with examples and send an e-mail to management so that issue can be reviewed. Once a resolution is determined, a Knowledge Tool is created—a user-friendly online resource that agents can access for real-time information. The online system is a repository for the expertise of the entire call center. So by typing in a keyword from a caller's question, an inexperienced agent can retrieve all the information he or she will need to answer it. [...]
| The way a routine response network is structured allows collaboration to be focused on specific inputs and outputs. |
Sallie Mae's management relies on several technologies to embed information and knowledge into work processes. The online Knowledge Tool system is one example. Another is a quality-monitoring system that randomly captures calls (voice and screen), which supervisors can then score and review with agents. A third example is the center's use of self-service Web sites. In 2002, the hot topics forum revealed that the service on the Web-payment site was not sufficiently user-friendly. Call center managers worked with a cross-functional group responsible for the site to deploy a more robust product by the end of the year. Within three months, call volume for issues related to bill payment fell by more than 75 percent—from more than 20,000 calls to fewer than 5,000 calls per month. This reduction in volume translated into cost savings of more than $56,000 in that short time.
Embedding information in processes when work can be standardized has significant advantages. In the first half of 2003, 88 percent of Sallie Mae customers were satisfied with their most recent call to the center, according to an independent research firm. The same firm benchmarks the financial-services industry's average score at just 74 percent. [...]
Sallie Mae uses additional work management processes to emphasize the reliable delivery of quality service. Calibration exercises, for instance, are performed weekly. Supervisors, trainers, and quality assurance staff review and score agents' calls. They discuss variances, identify gray areas, and develop best practices, which are then entered into the online knowledge system. Management also evaluates each agent's call escalation process to see which agents might need more training and whether the specialists are able to respond. All these actions help to keep the informal network functioning as efficiently as possible. 