You are managing a call center for the city water company. You have twelve full-

Question

You are managing a call center for the city water company.   You have twelve full-time customer service representatives who answer incoming phone calls from current, future and previous customers. These calls are in regards to their bill, to request changes to their accounts (the customer is moving, has a new post office box, etc) or has a general complaint (rates are too high, they saw a water company truck driving too fast, etc).   The “phones are open” from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.   The CSR’s take 30 or 60 minute lunch periods with two fifteen minute breaks.   With vacations, doctor’s appointments, mandatory meetings, etc, it is not unusual to only have 5 or 6 CSR’s “on the phone” at any given time.   Your department is a “cost center”. The number of calls received by your staff varies widely by day or the week (Mondays > Tuesdays-Fridays), time of the day (8 a.m. surge, lunchtime surge), and time of the year (more people move out in late spring than in the dead of winter).

Your new manager has approached you with the following “contract”:   85% of the phone calls must be answered within 30 seconds every month. Additionally, no overtime will be permitted.

Historically, you have been able to accomplish this goal in January, February, March, October, November, and December.   In the other months, you have dipped as low as 70%.   Your overtime costs have historically been about 5% of your total labor budget.

You believe your new manager’s proposal is unrealistic. Prepare a counter-proposal to meet her goal of “85% in 30”.   Consider more of a “balanced scorecard approach” to evaluation, recognizing that a goal of “85% in 30” cannot be dismissed.

Explanation / Answer

The proposal suggested by the Manager for having "85% in 30" and no overtime sounds economical and attractive for the company so that we can save great amount of cost,increase the efficiency of the process and better customer satisfaction in quicker way. This proposal is not some one which can be discarded primafacie.When we analyse the industry in which we are operating and similar methods adopted by our competitors we can say that this proposal is not meant for our company at present. Achieving 85% in 30 is looking attractive but when we try to implement it will be impossible for our organization to achieve it.We have seen through our past data that how the demand flow and process fluctuates according to different calender months in a year.We have achieved this 85% target in 50% period but in other 50% period our level is not dissapointing and we have clocked 70%. Our overtime cost is well under control and it is 5% of our total cost. If we implement this proposal then there will be more layoff, employee dissatisfaction and our system will also be impacted largely.

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