April 1999
International Call Center Consolidation: A Real-Life
Example
BY DAVE HANSON, NORTEL NETWORKS
Nortel Networks is a global company that markets products in approximately 150
countries and territories. To remain competitive and continue to increase our business, we
must continually improve customer service. As service is being conducted more and more
through the call center, our call center operations must be continually reevaluated and
adapted.
I know we are not alone in facing this challenge, so Nortel has decided to share some
of our success strategies that might benefit you, as well. The following is a description
of how we analyzed one of our call center operations, planned and made significant changes
to enable one call center to handle inquiries from 45 countries -- all within a tight
timeframe and without disrupting existing activity.
Approximately two years ago, there were two Nortel Networks sales and marketing call
centers in North America, each handling inquiries from end-user customers: Nortel
Networks' distributors, wired and wireless telephone and data carriers, Internet service
providers and utilities that frequently build their own private networks. The Saint John,
New Brunswick center served Canada and the Dallas, Texas center supported the United
States. At that time, we had no sales and marketing call center serving the Caribbean and
Latin America (CALA) region. In other words, we had duplicate services within North
America and no comparable service for the Caribbean and Latin American markets.
Realizing this, we initiated a business case analysis to consolidate the two existing
call centers serving North America, with an eye on increasing efficiency and customer
service while decreasing costs. Soon after, the president of our CALA organization
petitioned us to implement measures that that would improve customer satisfaction in his
region.
Separate Initiatives
Since these were two separate initiatives, I will discuss them individually, beginning
with the North American consolidation.
Prior to the consolidation study, we had initiated a project to combine the two
separate customer-contact databases from Saint John and Dallas. We also wanted to link the
new database to a common online vendor fulfillment center for sales and marketing
collateral.
The primary objectives of the business case analysis were to:
- Determine if major cost savings could be realized through consolidation and,
- Determine if the consolidation could be executed rapidly enough to impact fiscal-year
costs, while maintaining or improving customer service levels.
We used one of the standard business case approaches of identifying the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The main conclusions we drew were:
- Saint John offered the greatest opportunity to cut costs,
- Staff displacement in Dallas could be addressed by redeployment and,
- We could deal with other weaknesses and threats associated with customer and employee
impacts, such as training and issues associated with consolidating the distributor
information and fulfillment databases.
Among the many actions formulated from the business case, two partnering relationships
stand out as key success factors.
The first was with one of our corporate suppliers for contract staffing. Many of the
positions created in Saint John were filled with internal candidates who had experience in
either our help desk or outbound services departments within the call center. The new
positions were more permanent and offered career advancements for some existing staff. But
the movement of staff would have been devastating to the other call center departments if
not for the availability of qualified candidates and our supplier's capability to recruit,
screen, hire and train for the positions to be backfilled. The increase in the number of
contract employees at Saint John, resulting from the consolidation, led the supplier to
establish an onsite representative to assist contractors.
The second partner was a U.S. software development company that had previously
developed a similar database for Nortel Networks and was highly recommended. We continue
to have a relationship with the company for enhancements to the combined database and
other projects.
Smooth Implementation In North America
In short, the North American consolidation has gone extremely well. The cutover to Saint
John occurred less than five months from the start of our business case analysis.
Despite the quick project turnaround, operating cost savings were better than
projected, and service levels have improved from preconsolidation because there is greater
efficiency in having one queue instead of two. We operate from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and
average 800 calls per day into the center, compared to approximately 600 before the
consolidation. We could have achieved the same results by networking the two centers, but
that would have cost more to implement, and managing two centers instead of one would have
required additional effort and expense. As it is, annual costs have decreased by
approximately 20 percent, or about $500,000. Because of the cost savings, we were able to
add agents. We have 17 in the inbound operation. Prior to consolidation, we were well
below our goal of answering 80 percent of calls within 20 seconds. We are now achieving
that target.
We are also more effective, largely because of the consolidated databases and because
having all calls entering only one queue makes them easier to manage. When we had two
centers, we struggled to stay on top of the sales follow-up process. We must continually
monitor this, but now we are reaching our goal of following up with each potential
customer within three days of the initial call. This means we get the customer in touch
with the right distributor and make sure the two have made contact.
Our effectiveness also shows in the abandoned call rate decrease from the double digits
to below five percent. In addition, we are now answering calls in about 14 seconds,
compared to at least 30 seconds before. This goes back to the efficiency of having one
queue instead of two -- the more agents you have in one queue, the more evenly calls can
be dispersed across the group and the more calls you can answer.
We have successfully implemented skills-based routing and a relational database. These
changes assist our agents in providing better quality service to Nortel Networks'
customers and prospects, thus making them more valuable to Nortel Networks. These tools
enable agents to be more efficient and helpful to callers because they do not need to take
as much time searching for information as before. For example, if a customer wants a piece
of collateral material, the agent can place the order online right then and send it to the
fulfillment house. Whenever the same customer calls back, the answering agent can pull up
the customer records quickly. Prior to the integration, agents had to toggle back and
forth between two systems.
CALA Implementation
Just as we were approaching the cutover date for the consolidation project, our CALA
marketing team approached the call center with a request to provide toll-free service to
that region. The request included establishing call center service for 45 countries --
offering both recorded message information and/or live agent assistance in three languages
-- and a timeline calling for implementation in three months.
The objectives were to provide existing customers and potential new customers with easy
access to a host of information concerning available services in their countries, such as:
- The telephone number for the local Nortel Networks office in that country,
- The names and numbers for distributors of Nortel Networks' products,
- Information pertaining to Nortel Networks' products and application solutions and,
- Telephone numbers to call for technical product support.
We began by asking ourselves some basic questions, such as:
- Where should the center be located?
- Is toll-free service available for all the countries we wanted to serve?
- What should the hours of operation be?
- What unique skills might our agents require?
The first question was probably the most difficult. We were on the verge of
consolidating our call center service for North America into Saint John, but Saint John is
a long way from Miami (CALA headquarters) and even further from the countries we were to
serve. However, the necessary infrastructure was in place at Saint John. So, for many of
the reasons we chose Saint John for consolidation, it made sense to have it also serve
CALA.
Obviously, there were some challenges. For one thing, toll-free service was not
available in all the countries we wanted to serve. Another was providing Spanish- and
Portuguese-language services. This was not a trivial issue for Saint John, a city of fewer
than 150,000 people. Spanish was not as big a challenge, since we already had
Spanish-speaking agents in our center who occasionally handled calls from the United
States in Spanish, but Portuguese presented a problem. However, since Portuguese was
required only for Brazil and the expected volume of calls that required agent intervention
was relatively small, we selected an outside translation service with experience in this
area.
Portuguese-speaking customers dial our toll-free number and hear menu selections in
Portuguese. If the menus do not have the information the caller wants, he or she can
choose to speak to an agent. Agents answering these calls are trained to greet the
customers and request that they hold for Portuguese-speaking agents. The agents then
establish three-way calls with agents at the translation service. The Nortel Networks
agents remain on the calls in case the translation service agents cannot fully address the
requests. Although this is not as efficient as having our own Portuguese-speaking agents,
it is a flexible, cost-effective solution that so far seems to be acceptable to customers.
As the requirement for more Portuguese calls changes and other language requirements
develop, we will review our process.
Also, we concluded that we could not have the complete region operational within the
requested three-month timeframe, so we worked with the CALA marketing team to establish a
two-phase implementation.
Twenty-three of the 25 countries identified for Phase One required English-language
service; the other two required Spanish. Only five countries did not have toll-free
service. In these countries, we decided to offer collect-call service. Because a collect
call requires routing to a long-distance operator, it is not as convenient to the callers,
but it accomplishes the desired goal of eliminating the need for the caller to pay for the
call. Phase Two addressed implementation for the remaining 20 countries, which were
predominantly Spanish-speaking. Few had toll-free service to North America, so we again
implemented collect-call service.
Routing
There are three routes for calls. The choice of carrier for each country depends on
availability, setup time and cost (not necessarily in that order). The majority of calls
are routed over the public network via international carrier and then through our local
telephone service provider, NBTel. NBTel assisted greatly in setting up the toll-free
service numbers by working closely with Stentor, which in turn worked with the Caribbean
and Latin America countries that assigned the toll-free numbers for their respective
countries.
We discovered late in the process that MCI could not terminate our toll-free numbers
directly into Canada. Therefore, the calls were routed to our CALA office at Sunrise,
Florida and connected to Saint John over our corporate private network. AT&T serves
the other countries, calls from which go directly to Saint John. This process is not
apparent to the callers.
Each country is assigned a default language and each has its own line and script. A
caller from any of the toll-free countries will automatically be placed into a menu script
in the default language for his or her country. However, the first option in each script
is to switch to one of the other languages. Selecting one of these alternatives will roll
the call over to the appropriate script. Non-toll-free callers dial into a fourth line
that is routed directly to one of our agents. The customer can either access various
prerecorded information or speak to an agent.
We completed both implementation phases in CALA just four months after planning
commenced. Since then, we have fully integrated the CALA product collateral with our North
American fulfillment process. Before, we had three distinct territories, two call centers
and no service to the Caribbean/Latin America region. Today, we offer common service for
all customers in these regions -- all from the Saint John call center.
Learning Process
This is not the end of the story, however. Planning and implementation are just two of the
pillars of any successful project. It is also very important to review what you learned
during the project and continually review the operation.
Right now, for example, we are not receiving as many calls from CALA as we would like,
and we should do a better job of advertising our service in that region. CALA's rate of
usage could be greatly expanded.
Another area of focus is the e-mail inquiries we are receiving via the Nortel Networks'
Web page. They have more than doubled recently to an average of 180 per day, and we need
to implement greater efficiency in getting them into the database. Currently, we re-key
the e-mail messages into the database. We are now considering consolidating our voice and
e-mail operations, but we know this will involve training to ensure that the agents
possess the skills to effectively handle both types of inquiries.
Also, as our corporate Web site evolves, there is an opportunity to move toward a
virtual call center on a global basis. This could involve capabilities such as text
translation: for example, a customer could send a message in German and the system would
translate the note into English for the agent. The agent's reply then would automatically
be translated from English to German.
Right now, these may seem like pie-in-the-sky scenarios, but they will eventually
become reality. Constant planning, review and willingness to change are necessary to
prepare for the future of our business.
Dave Hanson is responsible for the planning and operation of Nortel Networks'
customer-contact center serving North America and the Caribbean and Latin American
countries. |