SERVICES OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

ASSIGNMENT

ON

CALL CENTER DESIGN

Submitted to,
Prof. B.K. Srivastava
Operations Department

Submitted by,
R.Mukundan
Harish Kumar
MBA Entrepreneurship
2009-2011
 Executive Summary

A call centre is a place used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume
of requests by telephone. Nowadays many centers have implemented CTI (Computer
Telephone Integration) technology to handle calls. Large companies generally operate
call centers to provide customer service for their clients. For instance, US-based PC
manufacturer Dell has housed its call centre in India. If any client of this company calls
for customer support, their call will be automatically routed to India for the relevant
solution. Besides, some companies also use call centers for their internal purposes such as
help desk service and sales support.

Call centers are being considered as a booming industry. Call centers can be divided into
various categories based on their strategy of function and nature of service. But there are
mainly two types of call centres such as inbound call centre and outbound call centre.
In an inbound call centre, customers generally place their queries about product
information and report any technical glitches. In an outbound call centre, agents initiate a
call to a customer mostly to sell a product or a service.

The Indian government gives tax exemption on the export of ITES (Information
technology Enabled Services) and provides other assistances for Indians in building
software technology parks. Time factor also drives global companies to choose India as
an outsourcing destination. By taking advantage of India's time difference, companies in
the US have been able to ensure that their customers receive round-the-clock customer
support.

The report provides an insight into the following

1. Idea about the Call center
2. Knowledge about the technologies of Call Center
3. Idea about the setup of Call Center
4. Call Center Operations
 Introduction
A call centre or call center is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and
transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone.

A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or

information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and
debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters,
faxes, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.

A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre
agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set /
headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be
independently operated or networked with additional centers, often linked to a corporate
computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the
voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies
called computer telephony integration (CTI).

Most major businesses use call centers to interact with their customers. Examples include
utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer
hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call
centers. Examples of this include help desks and sales support.
 Varieties of Call Centers:

Some variations of call centre models are listed below:

• Remote Agents – An alternative to housing all agents in a central facility is to use
remote agents. These agents work from home and use internet technologies to
connect.
• Temporary Agents – Temporary agents who are called upon if demand increases
more rapidly than planned.
• Virtual Call centers – Virtual Call centers are created using many smaller centers
in different locations and connecting them to one another. There are two methods
used to route traffic around call centers: pre-delivery and post-delivery. Pre-
delivery involves using an external switch to route the calls to the appropriate
centre and post-delivery enables call centers to route a call they've received to
another call centre.
• Contact centers – Deal with more media than telephony alone including Email,
Web Callback and internet Chat.
Mathematical theory of call centers:

A call centre can be seen from an operational point of view as a queueing network. The
simplest call centre, consisting of a single type of customers and statistically-identical
servers, can be viewed as a single-queue. Queueing theory is a branch of mathematics in
which models of such queueing systems have been developed. These models, in turn, are
used to support work force planning and management, for example by helping answer the
following common staffing-question: given a service-level, as determined by
management, what is the least number of telephone agents that is required to achieve it.
(Prevalent examples of service levels are: at least 80% of the callers are answered within
20 seconds; or, no more than 3% of the customer’s hang-up due to impatience, before
being served.)

Queueing models also provide qualitative insight, for example identifying the
circumstances under which economies of scale prevail, namely that a single large call
centre is more effective at answering calls than several (distributed) smaller ones; or that
cross-selling is beneficial; or that a call centre should be quality-driven or efficiency-
driven or, most likely, both Quality and Efficiency Driven (abbreviated to QED).
Recently, queueing models have also been used for planning and operating skills-based-
routing of calls within a call centre, which entails the analysis of systems with multi-type
customers and multi-skilled agents.

Call centre operations have been supported by mathematical models beyond queuing,
with operations research, which considers a wide range of optimization problems, being
very relevant. For example, for forecasting of calls, for determining shift-structures, and
even for analyzing customers' impatience while waiting to be served by an agent.

Administration of call centers:

The centralization of call management aims to improve a company's operations and
reduce costs, while providing a standardized, streamlined, uniform service for consumers.
To accommodate large customer bases, large warehouses are often converted to office
space to host all call centre operations under one roof.

Call centre staff can be monitored for quality control, level of proficiency, and customer
service by computer technology that manages, measures and monitors the performance
and activities of the workers.

Typical contact centre operations focus on the discipline areas of workforce management,
queue management, quality monitoring, and reporting. Reporting in a call centre can be
further broken down into real time reporting and historical reporting.

The types of information collected for a group of call centre agents can include: agents
logged in, agents ready to take calls, agents available to take calls, agents in wrap up
mode, average call duration, average call duration including wrap-up time, longest
duration agent available, longest duration call in queue, number of calls in queue, number
of calls offered, number of calls abandoned, average speed to answer, average speed to
abandoned and service level, calculated by the percentage of calls answered in under a
certain time period.

Many Call centers use workforce management software, which is software that uses
historical information coupled with projected need to generate automated schedules to
meet anticipated staffing level needs.

Technology of call centers:

Call centers use a wide variety of different technologies to allow them to manage large
volumes of work. These technologies facilitate queueing and processing of calls,
maintaining consistent work flow for agents and creating other business cost savings.
These include:
• ACW (After call work - Sometimes called "wrap" or "wrap-up")
• ACD (automatic call distribution)
• Agent performance analytics
• AHT (Average Handle Time)
• ANI (automatic number identification)
• Automated surveys
• BTTC (best time to call)/ Outbound call optimization
• Call Recording (call recording software)
• CIM (customer interaction management) solutions
• Chat and Web Collaboration
• CTI (computer telephony integration)
• CRM (customer relationship management)
• Desktop Scripting Solutions
• Electronic performance support systems
• Email Management
• Enterprise Campaign Management
• Issue tracking system
• IVR (interactive voice response)
• Knowledge Management System
• Outbound predictive dialer
• PDS (Predictive Dialing System)
• Outsourcing
• Quality Monitoring (call recording software)
• Speech Analytics
• Third party verification
• TTS (text to speech)
• Virtual queuing
• Voice analysis
• Voicemail
• VoIP
 • Voice recognition
• WFM (workforce management).

Call centre setup:

 Criticism of call centre’s:

Criticisms of call centre’s generally follow a number of common themes:

From Callers:
• Operators working from a script.
• Non-expert operators (call screening).
• Incompetent or untrained operators incapable of processing customers' requests
effectively.
• Overseas location, with language and accent problems.
• Automated queuing systems. This sometimes results in excessively long hold times
• Complaints that departments of companies do not engage in communication with one
another.
• deceit over location of call centre (such as allocating overseas workers false English
names)
From Staff:
• Close scrutiny by management (e.g. frequent random call monitoring).
• Low compensation (pay and bonuses).
• Restrictive working practices (some operators are required to follow a pre-written
script).
• High stress: a common problem associated with front-end jobs where employees deal
directly with customers.
• Repetitive job task.
• Poor working conditions (e.g. poor facilities, poor maintenance and cleaning,
management interference, lack of privacy and noisy).
• impaired vision and hearing problems
The net-net of these concerns is that call centers as a business process exhibit stratospheric
levels of variability. The experience a customer gets and the results a company achieves on a
given call are almost totally dependent on the quality of the agent answering that call. [3] Call
Centers are beginning to address this by using technology to standardize the process all
agents use.

Call Center Organogram:

Call Center Operations:

It all begins with the operations manager, sometimes also known as a call center
manager. They are responsible for all departments within the call center, as well as
relations with all outside contacts such as maintenance, vending, payroll, human
resources, or any other company the call center works with.
There is usually someone else responsible for a particular department, however it is the
operations manager’s responsibility to work with them and ensure the department is run
efficiently and effectively.
The operations manager will usually decide how much time is spent to train customer
service agents and management teams which will set the tone for the quality of customer
service offered to customers.

The shift supervisor is the person that communicates between the operations manager
and the team managers, ensuring everyone is on the same page. They will produce reports
that are needed and make sure all team managers report directly to them in regards to
problems with things such as attendance, call times, and customer satisfaction rates.
A shift supervisor will also oversee the adherence to policies and procedures set in place.
They may also deal with clients and take the role of the operations manager when needed.
Of course, a shift supervisor should never be to busy to take customer calls when
escalated for both positive and negative reasons.

Team managers spend their time on the call floor, coaching the customer service agents
in a positive manner when it comes to attendance, quality, policy adherence, and
following procedure. Customer service agents would report directly to the team manager
in all aspects of their work including calling them when they will miss a day, or coming
to them when they have an issue they cannot correct or handle on their own.
Team managers will also ensure that agents are comfortable and in a positive frame of
mind while at work. Essentially, a big part of a team manager’s job is to be a cheerleader
of sorts. As a shift supervisor completes reports for a shift, a team manager will complete
reports for their team on a daily basis to be sent to the shift supervisor.
This position is one that you will have to stand out as a positive role model, knowing that
what is said and done by a team manager is what sets the tone for everyone else.

Training is an important aspect of running a quality call center, as customer service

agents will not appropriately represent a company without it. Within a training
department, there is usually a training manager that oversees trainers on a daily basis and
reports daily achievements and problems to the operations manager.
Trainers will participate in training new hires on how the job is done, the policies and
procedures, expectations of the company, and how to successfully provide excellent
customer service. A trainer has a very important role to play because they are the first
interaction a newly hired customer service agent will have with the company.
Their style of training and the way they interact with people will determine how agents
feel about the job in itself. Trainers will also be responsible for ongoing training when
procedures or products change, and also ensure that everyone is up to date on things they
may have forgotten.

Quality assurance is monitored within a call center, to ensure customers are receiving
the best possible experience when calling in. Quality teams will consist of a manager
within the department who reports to the shift supervisor, and a team of agents who listen
to customer calls and score them on a number of things.
The quality department is there to make sure customers are receiving the correct information,
and treated with respect. Quality reports are used to help coach a customer service agent on
issues they may be having when taking phone calls, and will help determine the overall
proficiency of the entire call center.
One of the most important things a quality department does to keep themselves on the same
page is to calibrate calls with each other. Meeting once a week or so, they will listen to the
same call together and score it to ensure they are all scoring at the same rate and for the same
reasons.

Without an IT team, the call center simply cannot run. They are the ones to keep the
equipment including phones and computers running smoothly so calls can be answered in a
timely fashion. The IT department will usually report to the operations manager, but all
departments will report to the IT team with problems that need to be addressed.
IT teams are housed within the call center so things can be fixed pretty quickly, so this team
has a lot on their shoulders. The size of an IT department is subject to the equipment used by
a call center, but will usually consist of at least 2 people.
Last but certainly not least is the bread and butter of the call center. A customer service
agent is what makes a company. Without them, there is nothing to operate, as they are the
ones whom are relied on to represent the company and take care of any customer contacting
the company.
There is a lot of responsibility for an agent to deal with on a daily basis as far as keeping
within policy and procedure guidelines while sometimes dealing with irate customers and still
keeping a smile on their face.
In all honesty, of all different aspects of a call center, customer service agents are known to
have the highest turnover for many different reasons. To lessen the turnover in a company all
departments must operate effectively with each other to provide the agent with essential
needs such as support and ongoing training.
Without it, the agent simply cannot deliver great service to the customer!

Call centers offer a wide range of services which are given below:

• Customer acquisition: It is one of the effective services offered by call centers.

The aim of this scheme is not only to generate customers but also to allow
consumers to contact a representative to make a purchase. Basically, a business
nominates a call centre to conduct marketing services on behalf of them.

• Customer care: Customer care is one of the common services offered by the call
centre. When a customer buys any product or service from a particular company,
they are advised to contact the customer care division of the call centre. Many
companies in the western world outsource their customer support facility. This in
effect reduces the operations cost of hiring new workforce.

• Direct response: It is one of the important services offered by the call centre to
the business. During product advertisement, companies mention a phone number
for the customers. When any call is initiated to this number, the call centre
provides adequate information to make an informed purchase decision.
 • Business to business: It is a potential call centre solution for any company to
generate business-to-business sales. The role of the call centres in this regard is to
reduce cost and provide resources for a business to beef up its revenue.

Conclusion:

Call centers are being considered as a booming industry. Call centers can create huge
employment opportunity. It enables global organisations to provide their customers with
24x7x365 days services. China's continuing economic growth holds a bright future for the
call centre industry. Remarkable IT-enabled services in India are helpdesk services,
accounting services, transaction processing services, remote network management and
end-to-end processing etc. Call centers in India can offer expert product specific
solutions, such as risk modelling, data mining, actuarial services and underwriting
variation analysis.

But most importantly, expert human resources are vital in order to ensure the
development of the call centre industry. In this regard, private companies should come
forward to train people and the government must ensure the quality issues so that the
entire system works smoothly and perfectly.