White Paper. Transforming Contact Centres using Simulation-based Scenario Modelling

Transcription

1 White Paper Transforming Contact Centres using Simulation-based Scenario Modelling Meet Your KPI s, Deliver Consistently High Service and Reduce Customer Churn to Increase Your Bottom Line Results Europe: 141 St James Road, Glasgow, UK, G4 0LT Phone: Fax: All Rights Reserved.

2 Abstract Contact centres hold a position of high strategic importance in many organisations. They are a critical first point of contact with the customer and provide interaction with the customer like no other part of the organisation can. Continually evolving, they play a critical role within the organisation as a whole, controlling costs, developing customer relationships, growing customer value and driving revenue. As a result, complex multi-channelled and multi-site contact centres, face two major challenges; to minimise operating costs while simultaneously improving customer service. Contact centres play a critical role in controlling costs, developing customer relationships, growing customer value and driving revenue. In order to meet these challenges head on, contact centres need tools to allow them to test change options and give them the confidence to implement potential strategic and operational changes in practice. As a solution, Simulation-based Scenario Modelling has the potential to transform your contact centre by enabling contact centre improvement teams to create a virtual copy of your contact centre on their PC, test the benefit of proposed changes in a risk-free environment and generate robust, accurate and interpretable results, using these to then confidently implement positive change in practice. Simulation has numerous benefits and can support contact centre improvement teams to: Increase customer retention levels through a better understanding of your business processes Improve your customer interactions, resulting in improved customer service and lower customer churn Optimise your call handling process to reduce call hand-offs and resource requirements Increase staff retention by managing multi-skilling to create a more satisfied workforce Reduce recruitment and training costs through improved agent satisfaction Maximise agent utilisation by optimising call blending strategies Reduce FTE requirements and associated costs by managing multi-skilling and optimising call blending strategies Improve agent and customer satisfaction by ensuring the right person handles the right call at the right time This White Paper describes the growing practice of Simulation-based Scenario Modelling in contact centres, highlights its potential to transform your contact centre and provides insight into how scenario modelling works, the real benefits that can be derived and how to succeed in its implementation and use. 2

3 The Problem Your contact centre is of vital importance to your organisation. Get it right and your customers respect, value and trust your organisation. Get it wrong, and your customers negative perceptions spread to the whole of your business. For customers, being held in lengthy queues and receiving poor customer service are the main bugbears, so contact centres are where you make or break your customer relationship. It s where the customer experience happens and where the customer s opinion of your business is formed. Contact centre improvement teams face two major challenges; to minimise operating costs while simultaneously improving customer service. As such, contact centres have a position of great strategic importance in many organisations. They are a critical first point of contact with the customer and interact with the customer like no other part of the organisation does. Continually evolving into multi-channelled and multi-site contact centres, they play a critical role within the organisation as a whole, controlling costs, developing customer relationships, growing customer value and driving revenue. As a result, complex contact centres face two major challenges; to minimise operating costs while simultaneously improving customer service. In the present competitive climate, your organisation must operate your contact centre at optimum efficiency and differentiate yourself from the competition through a continued commitment to meeting and exceeding efficiency and service targets. So how can these efficiencies be met? It is most obvious to look to the main contributory factor of operating costs. In contact centres this is staffing costs - accounting for up to 70% of total contact centre operating costs. Considering the significance of this cost, it is no surprise that contact centre improvement teams seek to minimise the number of agents and maximise their productivity and retention. But how can this be done in practice? It s not easy to make changes within complex contact centres - quite the opposite; making changes to FTE numbers, skill groups or call handling processes can be high risk and have direct and costly implications for resourcing, efficiency and customer service. It has been well documented that managers face a complex task in running cost efficient and high value contact centres. To address and overcome these challenges, contact centre improvement teams require technology to support them in measuring performance and making recommendations for operational and strategic improvement. While some organisations already make use of alternative performance analysis and workforce optimisation tools, managers across departments are increasingly recognising the power of Simulation-based Scenario Modelling to support them in their decision-making. 3

4 Introduction to Simulation The management of contact centres involves balancing the requirements of cost effectiveness and service against risk. Simulation provides your organisation with the benefit of a virtual copy of your contact centre on your PC and test potential changes to the system in a risk-free environment. The time-based model takes into account all of the resources and constraints involved in your system and how these interact with each other over time. Contact centres using simulation can quickly test limitless proposed changes at a fraction of the cost, and at significantly reduced risk of testing these in reality. Simulation also builds in the randomness typically experienced in reality, so that the model is a true representation of your process; a change tested in the model behaves the same way as it would in your live contact centre environment. When run, the model is animated, enabling visualisation of the process, so it s easy to quickly identify excessive call hand-offs, key bottlenecks, over-utilised resources and under resourced areas in the contact centre. With simulation, contact centres can quickly test limitless proposed changes at a fraction of the cost, and at significantly reduced risk of testing these in the real contact centre. The changes can be tested, results gathered, analysed and re-tested until the preferred solution is reached. This opportunity to test many changes gives crucial insight into how to run your contact centre more efficiently and effectively and ensure continued high standards of customer service. The simulation model also collects critical performance data as the model runs. Managers cannot only see what will happen, they also have accurate numerical and graphical results to export directly into other applications for distributing and presenting their justification for change and improvement to colleagues, managers and stakeholders. Diagram 1 - Simulation provides contact centres with the ability to trade-off cost, risk and customer service. RISK SIMULATION SOLUTION COST CUSTOMER SERVICE 4

5 Simulation for Strategic and Operational Effectiveness Simulation can help contact centre improvement teams test both strategic and operational change in the contact centre. At an operational level, simulation can be used to test and implement day-to-day changes to call segmentation, IVR structure and agent availability, quickly identify bottlenecks, be reactive to change, reduce call queues, leading to increased customer service, and optimise your overall contact centre s efficiency. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to effectively model complex contact centres using alternative methods. Simulation supports both the testing of day-today changes as well as supporting long-term strategic planning in pursuit of optimising the contact centre s efficiency and service levels. But simulation is more than just an operational tool. At a strategic level, simulation supports long term planning; developing policies, plans, testing change and using these results to allocate resources to implement the policies and plans to achieve the organisation s strategic objectives. Simulation has been used by many contact centres to support the development of the long-term recruitment and training plan, forecasting of customer growth and in evaluating future contact centre expansion plans. Contact centres are truly inter-dependent with the rest of your business. As example, the launch of a new product or the roll-out of a new marketing campaign will undoubtedly influence the operation of your contact centre, and you need to be responsive to these changes. Marketing creates the campaigns and the contact centre executes them, so there is a high probability that a greater number of calls will be made to the contact centre as a result of these campaigns. Contact centre planning teams, aware of the expected increase in call volumes, can use simulation to pre-test changes to the system before the actual campaign has been launched and are therefore able to effectively plan and quantify any additional resources required to manage the demand. Subsequently, the ability of the contact centre to be able to pre-test and then handle these enquiries effectively and efficiently will ultimately impact the success of the marketing campaign, the degree of customer loyalty and the overall corporate performance of the business. With far reaching implications on the whole organisation, it s clear that the efficient operation, cost effectiveness and customer service of the contact centre is of paramount importance. Many contact centres have already made significant investment in performance analysis and optimisation tools to work towards these goals, so how can they use simulation to gain additional benefits? Simulation is flexible and can be used either as a stand-alone solution or be integrated with current CRM and Workforce Optimisation systems, giving contact centre managers the confidence that they are maximising existing investment in I.T. Using simulation as a complementary solution to existing alternative planning tools means that improvement teams can more accurately model and test the real-life behaviour and complexity of the contact centre. 5

6 Benefits of Simulation in Contact Centres Simulation solutions have the capability to transform the way in which today s complex contact centres operate. The implementation of simulation solutions have already been proven to support operational and strategic decision-making and ensure centre cost efficiency and service targets are met. Simulation Facilitates What-if Analysis Simulation provides a risk-free environment to test and select the optimum resource, skills mix and routing process within the contact centre, before committing valuable money, time and resources. Using simulation, you have the benefit of a virtual copy of your contact centre on your PC. In pursuit of optimising efficiency, improvement teams need to test out different scenarios; What if we had a dedicated business customer team? What if we handled support calls offshore? What if we promoted a change in contact channel? What if we changed the IVR structure? What if we prioritised one customer group over another? What if we implemented call blending? What if we launched a new marketing campaign? What if we invested in an additional contact centre site? In reality these decisions cannot otherwise be made without risk and uncertainty. Simulation takes the risk out of decision-making by giving contact centre planning teams the ability to test what-if scenarios and highlight and measure the resulting impact of change on the entire contact centre system. Simulation provides a risk-free environment to test and select the optimum resource, skills and routing mix within your contact centre, before committing valuable money, time and resources. Simulation Uses Real, Accurate Data Where some alternative performance optimisation tools use Erlang-based calculations and deviations of Erlang to calculate resourcing requirements, simulation uses real contact centre data. Tools which use Erlang often make assumptions; no call abandonment, all agents have only one skill and there are no call priorities. This method often leads to overstaffing and subsequent increased costs. Simulation doesn t make assumptions. It duplicates the current environment and as such eliminates the requirement for guess-work, using real accurate data to deliver a true reflection of your contact centre environment. Simulation doesn t use approximations. While many other tools force contact centre improvement teams to use approximations for their inputs in the model (for example, it takes an average of 5 minutes to handle each call), simulation does not. We all know that calls never take the same length of time and vary by call type or time of day. Approximating inputs means inaccurate results for agent utilisation and customer waiting time. Without accurate results it is impossible to have confidence in decision-making at any level in the organisation. 6

7 Simulation is Flexible Some alternative performance optimisation tools can effectively model a steady state scenario, but only simulation allows you to build in random occurrences, for example a sudden influx of inbound calls, and enable you to see the effects of this on your entire process. The more complex your contact centre, the greater the requirement for simulation solutions. Simulation provides the flexibility to describe events and timings as a true reflection of reality. Simulation can be implemented as a stand-alone application or be integrated with your current infrastructure, giving you the confidence that you are maximising existing investment in I.T. Simulation Supports Short-term Forecasting Simulation empowers contact centre planning teams to recognise and remedy any potential issues before they happen. Simulation constantly re-evaluates the model and your contact centre process to support planning. Not only does simulation report on the current live state of your contact centre, it can predict expected results over the next few hours. Reporting this in detailed and summary form, visually and numerically, improvement teams can model the impact of change in the current position and the predicted state at any time in the next few hours ahead. They are empowered to recognise and remedy any potential issues before they happen. Simulation Delivers a Visual Representation of the Contact Centre Where alternative techniques provide a static picture of contact centre performance, simulation is animated and so provides a visual representation of your contact centre. Simulation allows management to clearly present proposals and see the effect of change. As a result, simulation is a far more powerful means of communication and justification for change and improvement. Simulation Delivers Powerful, Accurate Results Simulation has the ability to display powerful results generated from the model. In your dynamic contact centre environment, being able to quickly and clearly identify potential bottlenecks, overutilised resources and under resourced elements of the system is vital. Simulation delivers graphical charts and output results to support and advise contact centre planning teams where changes should be implemented to make the best use of your contact centre skills and resources. These could be increasing or decreasing the number of call handlers, introducing call blending during off-peak periods and co-coordinating agent availability throughout the working day. Improvement teams using the power of simulation to support both the short-term and long-term planning of the contact centre are able to minimise operating costs, while simultaneously improving customer service. 7

8 Implementation of Simulation in Contact Centres How can your contact centre implement a simulation solution successfully in practice? There are five key steps outlined below and the process is shown in Diagram 2: Step 1. Identify the Key Objectives It s likely there will be a number of key inter-related objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPI s), which can include maximising agent productivity and customer service and minimising call queues. At this stage, it s also necessary to identify the process paths; the routes that calls can take through the process and the rules that affect this routing process. Step 2. Collect and Process Real System Data Gathering and using real system data is essential to ensure accuracy within the model, the results and the success of implementation. Inputs such as, but not limited to, the number of calls, length of calls, call segmentation, agent availability and IVR structure are all gathered. Step 3. Formulate, Develop and Validate the Simulation The simulation model is developed and the solution is delivered using specified rules, which are applied and refined to allow the model to determine the effect of rule changes on output. Step 4. Identify and Test Changes to the Process Contact centre planning teams can now test what-if scenarios What if we had a dedicated business customer team? What if we handled support calls offshore? What if we promoted a change in contact channel e.g. ? What if we changed the IVR structure? What if we prioritised one customer group over another? Numerous changes can be quickly tested within the simulation model and the benefit of these changes easily identified. Diagram 2 - Simulation as a Cyclical Process Define Process Create Simulation Test Changes Results Results Analysis Preferred Solution 8

9 Step 5. Make Recommendations based on the Interpretation and Analysis of Results A significant benefit of simulation is the ability to display powerful results generated from the model. In your dynamic contact centre environment, being able to quickly and clearly identify bottlenecks, over-utilised resources and under resourced elements of the system is vital. Outputs such as received calls, call abandonment, agent utilisation and queuing can be presented in graphical and tabular format for analysis. The outputs are measured against the pre-defined project objectives and performance measures and also compared to previous trial runs, to find the preferred solution. As example, Diagram 3 demonstrates the tradeoff and benefits of the previous five runs, where call flow changes have been tested for various values of demand. In this example, the results highlight how changes in total demand will impact total resource utilisation, maximum IVR content and call wait time. The results can be presented graphically, making it easy to identify where the proposed changes to the system sends the performance levels into the red and where proposed changes result in enhanced service. This valuable information supports and advises planning teams in making positive process changes and have the confidence to implement the best use of your contact centre skills and resources. Diagram 3 - Overview of Results 9

10 Conclusion The successful implementation of Simulation-based Scenario Modelling in contact centres, has seen a growing demand for its use. Whether implemented as a standalone solution or complementary to alternative performance analysis and optimisation tools, simulation is used to develop and improve contact centres through the provision of a risk-free environment to test strategic and operational change. Simulation has numerous benefits and can support contact centre improvement teams to: Simulation has given us the power and flexibility to drive ongoing change and improvement, increase the efficiency of our contact centres, and support us in the delivery of excellent customer service. Market leading mobile media company Increase customer retention levels through a better understanding of your business processes Improve your customer interactions, resulting in improved customer service and lower customer churn Optimise your call handling process to reduce call hand-offs and resource requirements Increase staff retention by managing multi-skilling to create a more satisfied workforce Reduce recruitment and training costs through improved agent satisfaction Maximise agent utilisation by optimising call blending strategies Reduce FTE requirements and associated costs by managing multi-skilling and optimising call blending strategies Improve agent and customer satisfaction by ensuring the right person handles the right call at the right time Where alternative performance optimisation tools make assumptions and use approximations, simulation-based solutions use real accurate data, ensuring the model and the results are a true reflection of reality. Typically, there are five stages involved in the delivery and implementation of a simulation solution in contact centres; identify the key objectives, collect and process real system data, formulate, develop and validate the simulation, identify and test changes to the process and make recommendations for improvement based on the interpretation and analysis of results. Contact centre improvement teams using the power of simulation to support both strategic and operational planning in the contact centre are able to minimise operating costs, while simultaneously raising the quality of services provided to customers through these contacts. 10

11 About Established in 1994, specialises in the development, implementation and support of powerful Contact Centre simulation solutions. We have offices in the UK and US and are the leading provider of contact centre simulation software, working with both private and public sector organisations. SIMUL8 Process Manager is our flagship contact centre solution, built upon the world s leading simulation engine. Consisting of a simulation interface which can be tailored to customers individual requirements, and an underlying simulation engine, Process Manager empowers contact centre planning teams to undertake extensive what-if analysis to quantify the optimum resource and skills mix in the contact centre and drive cost saving and customer service improvements. The potential benefits of proposed changes to FTE numbers, skill groups or call handling processes can be tested prior to implementation, helping to ensure these benefits are delivered in practice, while identifying and managing their associated risks. SIMUL8 solutions allow contact centres to develop and improve by providing a risk free environment to test strategic and operational change initiatives and deliver benefits to support cost saving and customer service improvement objectives. For further information, contact: PM@SIMUL8.com Europe: 141 St James Road Glasgow, UK G4 0LT Phone: Fax: