In a Contact Center, there are no products that are readily available for inspection unlike in manufacturing that’s why to measure defects is a bit challenging. Yet the serious business of improving quality service in contact centers is fundamental to improving customer service and maintaining a competitive edge. Successful contact companies strive to reduce the average length of calls, maximize the productivity of agents (and perhaps reduce head count), encourage the use of self-service channels and otherwise reduce expenses. In other words, they also try to improve or change their processes.
In so doing, they can turn to Six Sigma for answers. One basic task of Six Sigma principle is to examine defects across the complete process chain and then to make changes until defects fall within an acceptable range. Two obstacles to achieving this exist in the contact center.
First, far from being process-oriented, contact centers often rely heavily on the individual initiative of agents to deal with customer contacts.
Second, it is difficult to examine the end-to-end processes involved, both within the center and across the enterprise. The magnitude of the challenge is revealed through a glance at the amount of repetitive questioning and information collection that occurs when a call is handed from one agent to another—a common situation that is one of the greatest sources of customer frustration.
With Six Sigma methodology this can be overcome. Ventana Research recommends an approach based on three steps: Understand, Optimize and Align.
Understand involves two elements: identify the organization’s strategic objectives for contact management and measure how the contact center is performing today, that is looking at people, business process and technology aspects, and what is working and not working. These are the defects.
Optimize reviews processes and technology and sets a program for change that will improve the way the processes and people are working and improve their use of technology.
Align carries out the program, transforming the processes, educating people and improving or changing the supporting technologies.
Six Sigma in the Contact Center
