First Call Resolution How to Do it...

FIRST CALL RESOLUTION
How to do it…

By J. M. Rivera

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WHITE
PAPER
FIRST CALL RESOLUTION: How to do it…
By J. M. Rivera
February 2011
Part I

First Call Resolution (FCR) is properly addressing the customer's needs the first time
they call, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second
call. The first time I heard about FCR was in 1997. The concept was very innovative
and known as First Contact (FC). At that time, FC proposed a new approach, which
emphasized the importance of providing the customer with the solution on the first
call.

First Call Resolution has evolved over time; now you can find many corporations
that have successfully established FCR. Examples include GE Financial, ATT,
Alltel, T- Mobile, Verizon, Purdue University, Scotiabank, Jackson National Life
Insurance, Blue Cross, Stream Global Services Inc, The Primas Group, Office Max,
and many more.

Today, one of the most common call center performance metrics measured is
average handle time, or simply AHT. In general, low average handle times are
desirable. However, fast talk time accompanied by poor first call resolution rates are
a sign that customer calls are not being answered satisfactorily causing repeated and
escalated calls to managers. When a company focuses on lowering AHT but ignores
the quality of the calls handled, this will result in higher operational costs, negative
impact to the corporate image, and lower customer satisfaction.

Today, FCR is one of the most important metrics for a call center, as there is a high
correlation between FCR and customer satisfaction. Convergys1 study results have
shown that, on average, improving FCR by just 2.5% increased customer satisfaction
by more than 4 points. In addition, operational costs were reduced by more than
15%.

FCR is a new paradigm to transform your call center. Here are a few benefits of
using FCR:
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Increase employee satisfaction
• Reduce repeated calls
• Improve corporate image
• Reduce operation costs
• Increase customer retention (loyalty)
• Increase opportunities to sell

1
http://www.convergys.com/pdf/PV5-047N.pdf?TRID=1

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Creating and implementing FCR takes time, because it involves the transformation
of people, processes, and technology (Figure 1). FCR can be difficult to measure;
call centers use several methods to evaluate it, from very simple to highly complex.
These methods can include call statistics, performance reports, quality assurance, and
the customer expectations regarding FCR.

I will provide you with a systematic process to implement and sustain successful
FCR in your company. The following aspects and areas should be considered in FCR
analysis with the Six Sigma Methodology.

Figure 1: FCR is about people, processes, and technology

FCR focuses on internal and external customers. Your call center must build and
promote a culture in which the agent is an essential part of the FCR philosophy.
Agents build the relationship between the customer and the company and are the
most important employees in the company. Along with providing individualized
feedback to the agent, there are other agent-specific factors that affect FCR which
will be discussed in further detail below.

CREATING A FIRST CALL RESOLUTION CULTURE

In order to create a FCR culture, you need to understand what kind of culture already
exists within your organization. For FCR to be effective, it is very important to
develop a culture that supports the goal of providing superior customer service.

What is organizational culture? Organizational culture is the personality of the
organization. It is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms, and tangible signs of
organization members and their behaviors. Paul Levy PhD says about organizational
and cultural transformation:

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“Organization transformation2 is a term that refers to any intervention
primarily directed toward creating a new vision for an organization and
changing its beliefs, purpose, and mission”.

“Culture change2 is the alteration of a pattern of beliefs, values, norms, and
expectations shared by organization members”.

One of your key leadership tasks should be to create an environment where your
employees become passionate about your philosophy, vision, and mission. The best
way to modify organizational culture is to incorporate a new philosophy. To achieve
FCR you need to believe and strive to fulfill customers' needs, and solve their
problems in the first call. Your mission is to drive and incorporate this philosophy in
your workplace. How could you incorporate the following rules to transform your
company environment?

FOUR RULES IN FCR PHILOSOPHY

1. Our mission is to solve the customer's problem on the first call
2. Believe that Rule #1 is possible and can be true for your company
3. Do your part to make this change
4. Make it happen

The Six Sigma Methodology leads us to ask the very important question “Does your
company culture have the appropriate values and motivation to reach FCR?” If your
answer is yes, then you are off to a good start.

CUSTOMERS

Who are your customers? All corporations have two types of customers: external and
internal. The external customers are those that purchase goods or services from your
company. The internal customers are your employees (agents, supervisors, and
managers), who offer their time, service, knowledge, and experience to the company.
The first step in FCR is focusing your attention on both types of customers.

Happy customers are the key to long-term growth and profitability. If you can keep
your external and internal customers happy, you will be successful at achieving
customer satisfaction in your line of business. Remember, FCR is focused on
meeting the needs of both types of customers.

In the Six Sigma Methodology, we use VOC (voice of customer) to obtain the
customer’s expectations. VOC is the main reason to participate in continuous
improvement efforts. Listening to the customer is very important in implementing
FCR. If you listen to your customer, you will discover exactly what the customer
wants or needs.

2
Industrial / Organization Psychology by Paul Levy, p. 406

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AGENTS

Now, it is time to talk about agents. I want to provide the big picture of what happens
in the call center environment.

Agents are on the front line between your company and the customer. Agents work
eight hours a day dealing with customers' problems or situations. This means that
agents handle the stress and frustration of customers in addition to the stress of their
work environment. This high level of stress will have an effect on their performance
and impact customer satisfaction, especially when trying to solve customers'
problems on the first call.

In my 12 years of experience in the call center environment, I did many studies that
examined the relationship between agent morale, motivation, and attrition rates.
Why? If agents have low motivation and morale, this leads to emotional exhaustion
and high attrition (turnover). You will also have dissatisfied agents and customers.
When these situations exist, it is difficult to reach a high FCR score.

Let me explain this in a different way. Suppose you have a beautiful high
performance sports car with a lot of horse power that can accelerate to 60 mph in 3.7
seconds. Driving this car is an exciting experience. But then you remove or drain the
engine oil and drive the car again. What will happen? Obviously, you are not going
to get very far. In this analogy, the car is the call center structure, and the agent is the
engine oil. FCR it is a holistic approach that will strive to serve your agent engine so
that your call center can move smoothly full speed ahead to success.

Now I will illustrate in more detail the relationship between agents' stress and their
performance in FCR with the following case studies:

The Mental Health and Stress among Call Center Employees3 study aimed to
find out both the level of stress and the overall mental health among call center
employees. The following situations were found to engender stress in the call
center work environment:

1. The work culture is more strict and systematic.
2. Poor support from their immediate supervisor, promoting low control and
limited opportunities to influence their work.

Due to the high levels of stress, this study also found that a higher proportion of
the agents reported muscular-skeletal symptoms as a physical manifestation of
their stressful work environment, which in turn caused an increase in absences.

3
Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, Mental Health and Stress among Call Center Employees, July 2008,
Vol. 34, No.2, 215-220.

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Another interesting study is “Roll stress in call center: Its effects on employee
performance and satisfaction4”. This study found a direct relationship between
agents' stress and the demands of their company, supervisor, and customers. High
stress levels were shown to have an effect on agents' performance and satisfaction,
as well as their ability to provide resolution on the customer's first call. The study
stated:
“Frequently, call center employees experience role stress as a result of the
conflicting demands of the company, supervisors, and customers. In this
study, investigated antecedents and consequences of role stress in a call
center setting are examined. Specifically, we investigate which forms of
empowerment and leadership styles decrease role stress and how this
subsequently effects job satisfaction, organizational commitment,
performance, and turnover intentions. It was found that particularly the
autonomy dimension of empowerment has a role-stress-reducing effect.
Interesting substantive direct positive effects of empowerment competence
and leadership consideration on job satisfaction were found”

The SQM Group case study, “Correlation between employee satisfaction, customer
satisfaction, and first call resolution 5“deals with the link between employee
satisfaction and customer satisfaction for private and public call centers. The study
was focused on the following five areas:

o Customer and employee satisfaction link
o Employee attribution important ranking
o Employee attribution satisfaction ranking
o Employee satisfaction improvement areas
o Business case why to improve employee satisfaction

The study demonstrated that when employees are satisfied, customers will be
satisfied to an even greater extent, i.e. a 1% increase in employee satisfaction
represents an approximately 2% increase in customer satisfaction. This study also
found that a 2.5% improvement in call center employee satisfaction reduces the
average calls needed to resolve a call, and a 1% improvement in FCR corresponds to
1% improvement in customer satisfaction.

Keep these three studies in mind; they are tools you can use to assess the level of
stress within your company's call center environment. As Richard Branson put it, "If
you look after your internal customers you don't have to worry about the external
customers."

4
Journal of Interactive Marketing. Roll stress in call center: Its effects on employee performance and satisfaction. By Ko De
Ruyter, Martin Wetzels, and Richard Feinber. Volume 15 / Number 2 / Spring 2001. Direct Marketing Educational Foundation,
Inc.
5
Call Center Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction Link, by Mike Desmarais, SQM Group

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It is important that you ask the appropriate questions to obtain the agent VOC and
then translate this VOC to CTQ. In addition, I recommend doing a study to
determine what the level of employee engagement6 is. This is another step toward
reaching FCR.

SUPERVISORS

Your supervisor is your quarterback:

The greatest desire of any football team is to have the best quarterback. Why? The
quarterback is responsible for organizing the entire team so they can achieve the goal
of winning the game. This analogy helps show how important a supervisor’s role is
in FCR. The supervisor is responsible for transferring the FCR philosophy to agents.
He or she needs to be coherent by targeting the four emotional vectors7 “What they
think, feel, say, and do will go toward the same direction in order to reach the goal”
of helping customers solve their problems.

Nevertheless, we do not always have the most competent supervisors in charge. In
my experience in training and coaching communication, management, and behavior-
shaping skills to supervisors, I found that ineffective supervisors often share many
characteristics. They are frequently highly stressed and highly task-oriented (and not
people-oriented), they usually have low-resolve conflict skills (a win-win approach),
a high level of frustration with the team and the general administration, and tend to
micromanage their agents. These behaviors and management styles in turn have an
impact on the agents.

This can be illustrated with the case study “The Sacrificial HR Strategy in Call
Centers8”. The study finds that:

“There was a divergence between managers and subordinates in their
perceptions of management style. With heavily task-focused control systems,
this type of organization would appear to need supportive supervision to
manage employee burnout (Frenkel et al, 1998). Consistent with this
observation, the case studies revealed that eleven out of fourteen of the team
leaders and center managers identified themselves as being relations or
6
Employee engagement, also called worker engagement, is a business management concept. An "engaged employee" is one
who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about their work, and thus will act in a way that furthers their organization's interests.
According to Scarlett Surveys, "Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional
attachment to their job, colleagues and organization which profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at
work". Thus engagement is distinctively different from employee satisfaction, motivation and organizational culture.
7
The Four Emotional Vectors to be Successful By J.M. Rivera 2004
8
The Sacrificial HR Strategy in Call Centers By Catriona M.Wallace, Geoff Eagleson and Robert Waldersee. Published in:
International Journal of Service Industry Management, (2000) Vol 11 Number 2 p. 174-185

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relations/task-focused. However, twenty out of the twenty-seven team leaders
and agents regarded their direct supervisor as being task focused”

“Some agents noted that an individual's style would change when they were
promoted into a management role. When someone who was regarded as
relations-focused is appointed a team leader, they become task-focused
within a short period of time. One agent said of her team manager: “She
scares me”. Stats are her priority and we are dragged over the coals if we
don’t make them. We now doubt her sincerity as a people person in the first
place”. The productivity focused control systems were seen as being
reinforced by managers. The complementary support function appeared to
be absent in the perception of most employees”

The top priorities for the supervisor in FCR are the agents and the customers. The
supervisor needs to maintain a healthy balance between the task-oriented and people-
oriented approaches. Supervisors need to make good, consistent, and solid decisions
to give any team a decided advantage toward reaching their goals.

What skills or qualities do good supervisors exemplify? He or she needs to be a
team leader, a teacher, a mentor, and a coach. The supervisor is a communicator,
motivator, and role model who also has a sense of humor and the ability to positively
influence agents' behavior. With the many demands placed upon the supervisor, he
or she must be very flexible and able to adapt to an ever-changing environment.

In the define phase of your FCR Six Sigma project, make sure to observe your
supervisors carefully. If you find that your supervisor is not successfully carrying out
work responsibilities or he or she uses a management style that runs counter to the
FCR, it is time for a change. Remember, FCR is about people, processes, and
technology.

HUMAN RESOURCE

Human resources play an important role in assisting agents to reach their FCR goal
by ensuring that specific skill-sets are considered during the recruiting and hiring
process.

When I talk with the Human Resources Managers, my first question is, “How do you
know whether or not the person you are recruiting has the emotional skills to be a
customer care agent?” The typical reaction is 15 seconds of silence. The recruiter
does not have any idea. It is difficult to measure one’s emotional ability to solve
problems. For this reason, when I am recruiting I like to use an Emotional
Intelligence test. Why?

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“Emotional Intelligence9 or E. I. refers to the ability to perceive, control, and
evaluate emotions. E.I. is the area of cognitive ability involving traits and
social skills that facilitate interpersonal behavior. Intelligence can be
broadly defined as the capacity for goal-oriented adaptive behavior;
emotional intelligence focuses on the aspects of intelligence that govern self-
knowledge and social adaptation”

I recommend an E.I. test to provide you with a better idea of how well the candidate
can handle their emotions and solve problems.

Another function for human resources is to handle attrition. A 15% or lower rate of
attrition is reasonable, but more than 15% means that you probably have an internal
problem. High attrition is an operational problem and an operational cost, and it can
be due to a high level of stress in the work environment.

This chart10 explains why agents leave and how to prevent turnover. You can also
see the relationship between management style, supervision, and company culture.

Figure 2: Turnover cycle

An additional function of Human Resources is to be a thermometer that measures the
stress level among call center employees. Human Resources should use surveys to
gauge employee satisfaction and organize focus groups with agents every 6 months
9
Emotional Intelligence By Daniel Goleman 1995
10
http://www.call-center.net/tutorial-mot-lifecycle-mod1.htm

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to obtain an internal VOC. In your FCR analysis, you are going to need this valuable
information.

TRAINING AND TRAINER

Another area you need to evaluate is your training process and your trainers. The
agents need to have a good understanding of products and services, operational
procedures, organizational structure, CRM application, culture organization, state
and federal regulations that apply to your LOB, problem solving, and the psychology
of communication. I recommend analyzing how effective the agent is learning by
monitoring learning curves and the training curriculum. Additionally, how efficiently
does the trainer transfer information to the agents? You will probably find some gaps
in these areas of the training process.

When I analyzed the training process, I studied the training curriculum and the
training time the company has. My results are described by the distribution in
(figure 3):

Figure 3: Times distribution training

You can see that 80% of the training time is spent learning about the product or
services, CRM application, and operational procedure. Only 20% of the time is
allotted for structural organization, regulation, psychological communication,
problem solving, and cultural organization. This means that most of the training
focuses on the product or services and operational procedure with little emphasis on
understanding the cultural organization of the company or how to apply this
knowledge to the customer. In this case, I recommend that the above-mentioned
equation be adjusted to 60%/ 40% to achieve the best results.

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Having a well-balanced training curriculum is important in order to reach FCR. Dr.
Kaoru Ishikawa describes how important educating your employees is: “Quality
begins with education and ends in education.”

Below are a few questions you should consider:

o How are you measuring training sessions? Is it an effective measurement?
o If the training curriculum only develops product and service
knowledge/skills, how will the agents know how to reach FCR?
o How will you transmit FCR culture through your training curriculum? Is
it effective?
o How effectively is knowledge being transferred by the trainer in the
training session?

A communications study from the University of California Los Angeles11
demonstrates how difficult effective phone communication can be:

“UCLA study indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness
is determined by nonverbal cues.”

“The 38% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is paralinguistic
(the way that the words are said), and 55% of message pertaining to feelings
and attitudes is in facial expression (body language)”

“Another study indicated the 7% of message pertaining to feelings and
attitudes is in the words that are spoken.”

You can see that agents only use up to 45% of their communication resources in a
call center environment. I can verify from my own career in call centers that it is
very important to develop one's communication skills on the phone. This is the
reason I have dedicated two chapters to the psychology of communication in my
book “The Powerful Phone Call”12.

You wish for the agent to be an excellent communicator according to FCR. The
agent may have knowledge about the company's product or services, but if he or she
cannot transfer the information effectively to the customer, the customer will not
understand the information and call back again.

INTERNAL PROCESSES

Rethinking and redesigning your internal processes is a fundamental step for FCR.
The purpose is to acheive dramatic improvements in critical and contemporary
measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

11
UCLA Communication Study- Communication Rule 7%-38%-55% By Professor Albert Mehrabian PhD
12
The Powerful Phone Call By Jose M. Rivera 1994

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Remember that in FCR, the customer wants their problem resolved on the first call.
They do not want to be transferred to other departments. In other words, do not play
Ping Pong with the customer. This is very important in your FCR analysis. The goal
is to identify bottlenecks, gaps, re-working, duplication, and delay in the process. I
call this process an "X Ray diagnostic". All the processes you identify that do not
provide a quick and efficient solution for the customer need to be redesigned
according to CTQ.

One of the most powerful tools we have in Six Sigma is SIPOC. SIPOC is a flow
map process to identify the process's outputs and the customers of those outputs so
that the VOC (voice of the customer) can be captured. The purpose of the flow map
is to create a map of the current process to help the organization define, document,
analyze, prioritize, and recommend solutions and follow-up plans to move the
company toward its financial and customer-focused goals. A key activity for this
assessment is capturing those critical-to-quality (CTQ) factors of internal clients'
processes and services to their customers.

Here are some questions to consider:

o What is the cost of rework?
o What is the cost of excessive cycle times and delay?
o What is the cost of business lost because customers are dissatisfied with your
service?
o What is the cost of opportunities lost because you did not have the time or
resources to take advantage of them?
o What is the total cost of poor customer service in your company?

TECHNOLOGY

In the past decade, technology has advanced at a rapid rate. Business processes have
changed and organizations are becoming more efficient.

Technology has facilitated improved communication, allowing businesses to
communicate and collaborate beyond borders with ease. Nevertheless, sometimes
this is not taken advantage of. This is why this area needs to be evaluated. When you
work in the flow map process, you can see where an application could not
communicate with another application and identify where this led to congestion and
obstruction, rework, and delay in the overall process. If your company does not have
an integrated approach to IT, you will probably have some difficulty in collecting
data for your FCR project.

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SIX SIGMA APPROACH

Part II

Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by Motorola. Six
Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process output by identifying and removing
causes of defect and minimizing variability in business processes. Six Sigma is the
best way to start the FCR project.

Six Sigma is about solving a problem with an unknown solution. The methodology
we are going to use is DMAIC (figure 4). What does this mean? It is five phases:
Define, Measurement, Analyze, Improve, and Control Six Sigma methodology.
Below I am going to give you a brief summary of the five phases.

In part I we touched on different aspects and areas you need to examine in detail in
the FCR Six Sigma Project. Keep in mind FCR has three perspectives: Customer,
Agents, and Operations. I am going to provide you with a brief description for each
phase, and tips to help you perform the analysis.

Figure 4: DMAIC Six Sigma

I. Define Phase:

In this phase, you are going to define the scope and boundary of the project,
create a team charter, define defects, charter document with estimate project
impact, and get leadership approval.

Objectives:

Identify and validate improvements, develop business processes, define critical to
quality (CTQ) requirements, and prepare to be an effective project team. You are
going to explore the goal and outcomes. Brainstorm and understand the impact of
the problem. Define the process to investigate. Ensure common understanding
across the FCR project.

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Main Activities:

Identify the internal and external Voice of the Customer (VOC) and translate in
CTQ to identify opportunity areas (see figure 3). It is very important to verify the
core needs of the customers and the business. Other tools you are going to use in
this step are flow processes map (SIPOC), check sheet, 5 whys, Pareto analysis,
Cause-and-Effect analysis, Kano, YX matrix, house of quality, interrelation
graphs, etc.

Figure 5: Process VOC to CTQ diagram

Tip 1: Collect customer data (VOC). Remember, you have two kinds of customers:
external and internal. The purpose of VOC is to determine the customers’ needs and
expectations. You can collect data by customer complaints, surveys, focus groups,
and one-on-one interviews.

Tip 2: Create a general flow process map (SIPOC), and a categorized list of reasons
why the customer calls. This will provide you with valuable information to help you
create the proper questions for the questionnaire.

Figure 6: SIPOC- * FCR perspective is other departments or services vendor

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Tip 3: Ones of the aspects that needs to be examined is the customer tolerant-time-
process (lower and upper limit). This is very important for CTQ. (See figure 7 CTQ
Tree). In addition, you will compare the upper limit with your SLA13

Figure 7: CTQ Tree

If you discover a large disparity between your process and the customer
time/tolerance expectation, it is time to fix the process. If you can perfect/streamline
company processes, and promptly meet customer demands, repeat calls and
escalations will diminish.

Tip 4: Do brainstorms section use Cause-and-Effect or Fishbone analysis. This is a
very powerful tool (see figure 8)

Figure 8: Fishbone diagram

Tip 5: Your team needs to interview with departments who have a direct impact on
operations in the call center e.g., Human Resource, IT, financial, vendors, call center
manager, supervisors, and agents. They will help determine the objective and scope
of your project.

13
Definition: A service level agreement is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. In
practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service) or performance.

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Tip 6: How to use the Five Whys method:
o First, identify the problem and try to find out the root cause.
o Second, Ask, “Why has the problem occurred?” and you will get an answer
(or rather another problem).
o Third, Take the first answer (or problem) and again ask “Why?” You will get
a second level answer.
o Fourth, Do such Five Whys repeatedly and you will discover the root cause
of the problem.

After the Define phase, the team has a project charter, an overview of process to be
improved, information the customer consider critical to quality, and statement of the
problem. Now the team member must decide what additional measurements they
need to quantify the problem.

Tip 7: Something you need to understand is the Equation Y= ƒ x’s. The X represents
the input of the process and Y the output of the process. For example; if you call
your customer care to ask a question, the ability to have your question answered Y is
a function (ƒ) of the wait time, the number of people answering the phones, the time
it takes to talk with the representative, the representative's knowledge. All of these
X's can be defined, measured and improved.

II. Measure Phase:

In this phase, you will quantify, qualify, and validate data for FCR Six Sigma
needs.

Objectives:

Now your team must focus the improvement effort by gathering information.
Benchmark current process performances in order for the team to begin with the
proper metrics. Critical measures are necessary to evaluate the success of the
FCR project, and are used to determine measurement baseline. Input, process,
and output are reliable metrics used to monitor the progress of the project.

Main Activities:

Collect data, start-tacking calls for a period of 30 days. Identify critical to
quality measures (CTQ) and the upper and lower threshold. In this step use
sample random, histogram, Y= ƒ x’s chart, Pareto analysis, Root Cause, Cause-
and-Effect, Histogram, MSA, SIPOC to identify key bottlenecks, overlaping, and
gaps. In addition, use FMEA, then prioritize improvement initiative, you can
also determinate cost of poor quality (COPQ) impact on the bottom line.

Tip 7: You and your team are going to use statistical tools. You can use Excel to do
of the all analysis but it will be easier if you have Minitab or SPSS.

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Tip 8: Road map to improve process.

Figure 9: Flow improve process

This is something the team needs to observe in the analysis to identify their process.

o Waste of processing relates to over processing that might not be adding value
in the eye of the customer.
o Waste of correction includes the waste of handling and fixing mistakes.
o Waste of motion examines how people move to ensure that value is added.
o Waste of waiting is the cost of idle resources.

Tip 9: in your analysis, you will most likely find defects in operation procedure, back
office process delay, poor interdepartmental communication, micromanagement, task
duplication, re-work, lack of motivation, lack of morale, lack of supervision, and
more.

Tip 10: Collect data from IVR, PBX and CRM systems. If you have any other self-
service tools, they should be included here. The objective is to track the call from
the moment it enters the IVR until it is transferred to a live agent. In other words,
you need to carry the ANI code until it reaches the agent.

For a successful analysis, it is necessary for the reason of the call to be categorized
and documented in the system. Identify whether or not the customer’s issue was
resolved on the first call, and if not, determine if it is a repeat call or possible
escalation.

Tip 11: To understand FCR we need to differentiate between:

o First Calls: The customer will always have first call. We have three different
types:

1. The customer gets issue(s) resolved on the first call and does not call
again.
2. The customer issue(s) is not resolved on the first call and they call again
for the same issue(s).
3. The customer gets issue(s) resolved on the first call, but calls again for
different issue(s).

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o Repeat Calls: Customer who calls the first time and calls again. Also,
escalation calls are a repeat call.

o Escalate Calls: It is after the first call. Something your team needs to identify
is how many calls the customer made before the call was escalated and why.

o Transfer Calls: Call comes from another department. Here, you need to
identify it is the first call or a repeat call.

Tip 12: Your team needs to interview with departments who have a direct impact in
operations in the call center e.g., Human Resource, IT, financial, vendors, call center
manager, supervisors, agents, and other. They will help determine the objective and
scope of your project.

Tip 13: Keep in mind that resolutions have three perspectives: customer, agents, and
final operation results.

III. Analyze Phase:

The purpose in this phase is to evaluate and reduce the variable, using graphical
analysis and hypothesis testing, and to identify the number of factors in order to
identify the root cause(s) of defect.
Objectives:

The team can determine the cause of the problem and eliminate the gap between
existing performance and the desired level of performance (goal).

Main Activities:

The intention of this phase is to sort through all potential X’s that are causing the
defects.

The process map is the basic tool used in the analysis phase to identify the root
cause of the problem and other areas that need improvement. Failure Modes and
effects Analysis (FMEA) identifies and mitigates risks by order of priority.

In addition, you can use a control chart as a means to control and predict process
performance behavior. I also recommend using: Pareto chart, liner regression,
correlation diagram, ANOVA, Kepner or Ishikawa fishbone diagrams (cause and
effect analysis), and hypothesis tests.

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Tip 14: The central activity of this phase is hypothesis testing. Hypothesis testing is
one of the most important tools of application of statistics to real life problems.
There are two types of hypothesis: A null hypothesis (Ho), and alternate hypothesis
(Ha). The decision in a hypothesis test can be based on the probability value (p-test)
for the given test. If the p-test value is less than or equal to a predetermined level of
significance α-level, then you reject the null hypothesis and go with the alternative
hypothesis.

After identifying and study the viral few X’s that are causing the greatest variations
in the most significant Y’s the team identifies way to improve the process to close the
gap between the current performance and the potential. First, team members
prioritize opportunities to improve the process. Then, they generate alternatives,
evaluate those alternatives, and select the best solutions. Second, they identify any
potential problems and obstacles they might encounter in implementing those
solutions. After, they decide on the people and the resources that will be necessary to
improve the process. Finally, the team translates the improvement opportunity into
financial terms.

Tip 15: These are basics questions for which you need to find an answer.

o What is the cost of poor quality that they intend to save by implementing
their solution?
o What is the investment in people and resources that the improvement will
require?
o What will be the financial gain in terms of a cost-benefit analysis?

IV. Improve Phase:

The Improve phase of the Six Sigma project might be considered the reward for
the hard work carried out in the previous phases. We begin to see the return on
the invested time, planning, thought, and execution of the project. The team
implements solutions and begins to see the benefits from these improvements.

Objectives:
The objective of the improve phase is to find a solution to the problem at hand.
Brainstorming is commonly used to generate an abundance of potential solutions.
It is a great idea to include people who perform the process regularly. Their input
to solution creation can be invaluable, and they may provide the best potential
solution ideas because of their process knowledge.

P. 19

Main Activities:

The team begins the improve phase by selecting the performance characteristics
that must be improved to achieve the goal. Correlation and regression analysis
will reveal the main sources of variation.
Next, design a pilot (DOE) using the variables that have already been identified.
The objective comes from the Y= ƒ (x) relationship which establishes
performance specifications. The pilot enables the team to identify the most
influential factors associated with CTQ. The pilot defines the interactions shared
between multiple factors allowing the team to quickly adjust and improve the
process.

Tip 16: Make certain you provide a measurement system of record to measure FCR
from the first day forward. You need useful information to conduct further root cause
analyses and provide data for your control charts. What is one ideal outcome? Could
it be one where you continue to use the technology now in place - but making it work
better for you or leverage new technology?

Tip 17: Perform an MSA once that measurement system is in place trough IVR ,
PBX and CRM transactions and track where calls go once they are handled (handled
= call is answered). You can make FCR calculation by departments and agents.

Tip 18: Build control charts around the FCR and make results available on an
intranet site that the agents can access. Make sure you make it multi-dimensional to
allow agents to drill through center metrics to their individual agent FCR score

V. Control Phase:

In the Control phase, the team identified the vital few X’s that caused the defect,
and defined the relationship for the CTQ or Y of the project and vital few X’s.
Now it must control the X’s to ensure a sustained Y that is the sole purpose of the
control phase.

Objectives:

Make adjustment if is necessary. Create a training plan, documentation, and
monitoring plan.

Main Activities:

The team with the controller, calculates, verifies, and documents the financial
gain of the project. Finally, the phase-gate review, handing over the process to
the process owner.

P. 20

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