Telephone Travel

Scenario: Telephone Travel

Telephone Travel is a travel service run through a call centre. It has been in operation for five years and currently has one contact centre in Brisbane. Their primary business function is selling domestic travel packages.

The organisation is structured as follows:

The organisation currently experiences employee turnover of 53% for the Telephone Representative positions. This is having a negative impact on the organisation's ability to deliver quality customer service. Constantly having a large number of new employees makes it difficult for Telephone Travel to provide the standard of customer service that they are aiming to deliver.

As a result Of this business problem, the organisation has set a goal as part or their strategic plan to reduce employee turnover to industry best practice levels In the next five years,

Strategic Goal;

TO reduce turnover to 21% within five years.

Operational Goal:

TO reduwturnover by by end Of financial year.

Telephone Trave management believe that if they can reduce theirturnover this men allow them to better train and develop their staff to deliver quality service to their customers. However. they know that this means !hat they must change way in which they do things now.

Sarah, the Contact Centre Operations Manager has been tasked with identifying what changes are required to implement this strategic goal.

Sarah, the Contact Centre Operations Manager, knows that the first Step she must take to determine the change requirements for reducing turnover to industry best practice levels is to analyse the current state of the business. She completes a review of the organisation's structure, processes, people and culture. Her review found the following:

Analysis

Sarah compared the actual practices and outcomes against existing policies and determined the results achieved did not reflect the policies of the organisation which included policies for:

review and upgrade oftechnology on an annual basis

all supervisors to meet with their teams on a monthly basis

performance review and evaluation conducted and individual development plans completed for each team member annually.

As a result of this analysis, Sarah felt that these existing policies and procedures would Support the organisation's strategic and operational goals and would not require change.

Sarah found that there were no current policies or procedures relating to reward or recognition programs, training and development planning or guidelines for supervisors and felt that these would need to be developed to support the organisation's goals.

Sarah knew that her analysis should not only be inwardly focused as that could result in the organisation falling behind their competitors.

Sarah wanted to examine employee turnover of Telephone Travel and she knew she should complete an analysis of external trends. To understand turnover trends, she obtained the contact centre industry turnover rates to determine how Telephone Travel rated within the industry. Her analysis found:

Turnover- Telephone Travel vs Industry Average

60%

201V 20 IW 201X 201Y 201Z

Year

These results highlighted to Sarah that turnover was a serious issue at Telephone Travel as the organisation was experiencing a steady increase in turnover while the industry average had remained quite static. As a result Telephone Travel turnover was now at over double the industry average Of 23%.

Sarah reviewed the organisational chart to determine which Other managers in the organisation:

• are affected by the change
• will be participating in the change project
• hold a leadership position in the organisation.

She then used the followingtable to capture information about the impact of change on various managers:

Relevant managers:

The effects Of chanW:

Now that she is clear on how the change will affect each manager, Sarah arranged the following meetings to review and prioritise the identified change requirements:

Sarah has decided that while each of the meetings will focus on the same agenda, each meeting needs to be conducted separately. The needs and impacts Of the identified change requirements are quite different for each of the groups, and to be sure these reviews are effective. she feels completing them as separate meetings will be most beneficial.

After completing the meetings, Sarah will consolidate all of the feedback she has received to determine the final position.

Sarah prepared the following report to present the identified change requirements to each manager. She sent this to each manager prior to the meeting to allow them time to consider the information prior to the review.

Anatysis has been completed of the organisations process. technolog and structure to identify change requirements. The results, for each category. of this analysis are set out below:

between managers and staff little opportunity for training and develoørnent no team meetings turnover rate current 53%.30% higherthan industry average (23%) turnover trending upwards against a static industry trend absenteeism

Telephone Travel average pet month fast 12 months: 25% o industw average per month last 12 monüts. 17%

no documented processes no process review conducted since company started five years ago convoluted Technoloo:

• old technology
• slow
• no manual or user guides available
• outages experienced weekly.
• high supervisor to employee ratios in contact Centre
• flat structure.

Sarah also included other supponing data:

• productivity

Telephone Representative productivity has steadily decreased over the last five' years in linewith the increase in turnover:

0 201V: 40 sales per rep per day 201W. 37 sales per rep per day 201X: 35 sales per rep per day 201Y. 33 sales per rep per day

• 201Z: 30 sales per rep per day.

Change requirements

The following change requirements have been identified as needed for the organisation to achieve its strategic plan goal to reduce turnover.

People:

• team meetings to be conducted weekly across the organisation
• all employees to have a documented Individual Development Plan.

Process:

• process review to be completed to ensure efficiency processes to be documented in procedure manuals.

Technology:

• review technology solution to reduce outages and identify required improvements
• technology user guides to be developed.

Structure:

• reduce manager to employee ratios in the contact centre to allow supervisors more time to spend with individual team members.

Along with her report, Sarah also provided each of the managers with a copy of a completed priority management matrix which will be reviewed and discussed at the scheduled meeting:

As a result Of conducting the planned meetings Sarah has Obtained agreement from all managers and supervisors across the business that the change requirements in priority order are:

1. implement weekly team meetings
2. reduce manager/employee ratios in the contact centre teams 3, conduct a technoloß' review
3. conduct a process review and develop procedure manuals
4. develop technology user guides.

Sarah is pleased that she invested the time in these meetings as she believes that this has resulted in obtaining commitment to the program for change that she is about to implement.

Sarah decides that it would be beneficial to the organisation to consult with an expen regarding best practice manager employee ratios and contact centre structures. Sarah wants to be sure that any changes made to the contact centre structure are aligned with industry best practice and therefore Offer a long term solution. She does not want to be in a situation in another 12 months time after having implemented a new structure to find that the structure is 'behind the times' and impacting on the organisation's ability to be competitive.

She decides to engage an external consultant using the 'doctor-patient' consulting model, She wants the consultant to come in and assess the contact centre structure and ratiosand make a recommendation. Sarah will ultimately be responsible for deciding what change action will be taken and implementing that action, but she wants assistance to best determine the best action to take.

Sarah completes some research and identifies Veridian Solutions as a contact centre specialist consultancy firm, She arranges to meet with them to understand their Services and how they may be able to assist Telephone Travel with re-structuring the contact centre team to achieve better manager employee ratios.

After meeting with a consultant from Veridian Solutions, Sarah engages their services. She is relieved to have an expert on her team!