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Rahul Bhosale 6-December 2013

In collaboration with: Jochen Kuhn

Case study 1: Call center data analysis
Executive Summary

Problem Definition:
The call center is having higher On Hold times because of which call center
performance is degrading, reducing customer satisfaction and increased call rates for
particular applications.

Introduction:
The quarter has recorded almost 26,000 calls with a total service time of 310,000
minutes. The database contains information about calls, application names, customer names,
issue and service time, the on hold time of customer and the level of Staff who attended the
call. Different Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been considered to analyse the data in
order to develop the status measures and evaluate the performance of the call center in all.
The documents summarize the results of analysis, conclusions and recommendations are
made based on it.
In summary, it can be said that if the performance on servicing the calls to provide
fast and easy problem solutions, is improved substantially, there would be no more calls spent
on hold.

Expected Outcomes:
Improving performance of the call center service to customer will reduce the time
required to solve an issue. There by increase the customer satisfaction. This also will reduce
the total running cost and reducing customer service charge consequently.

Overview:
The call center is having performance issues related to the customer service metric
On Hold Time which is very high. Following is the analysis about what and where the
anomalies lies based on the statistical information collected from the database.

Table 1 Service and On Hold time statistics

AppName
Average of
ServiceTimeMins
Max of
ServiceTimeMins
Average of
OnHoldMins
Max of
OnHoldMins
Access 14.1 201.1 1.0 59.3
Excel 11.6 163.1 1.3 57.0
PowerPoint 11.4 136.7 1.4 52.7
Word 10.7 241.0 2.1 59.8
Grand Total 11.8 241.0 1.5 59.8
[Color Red: Warning indicator]

The table 1 shows the average service time is 11.85 seconds whereas maximum
service time is 241.01 seconds. The average On Hold time is 1.55 seconds and 59.79 seconds
maximum which is quiet high.

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Executive Summary

Even though we get the information about range of the on Hold time, we still do not
get information about how often the on hold time is high.

By the following graph, it shows that the average On hold minutes are not evenly
distributed because some calls are having significantly long On Hold time than others. By the
same graph, it can be seen that the staff level 6 is having on hold time much high than any
other staff level regardless of customer, days of week or any other attribute. Though the On
Hold minutes vary by day of week, the problem mostly pertains to Staff level 6. The possible
reason behind this is the staff at level 6 is not able to handle or their might be related to
particular application which level 6 staff is handling.

Graph 1 Days of week and staff level effect on On Hold and Service time



Graph 2 shows that the average on hold time is relatively low for total number of call
for Access, it is little higher for Excel and PowerPoint but significantly comparable. For
Word, it is very high for Easy level complexities. As the number of calls for Word for Easy
level complexities are higher than any other applications and complexities as well, the Sum
of On Hold minutes is also greatest (~13,597 minutes). That means per call attended by
Service Agent, another call is on hold for average of 2.45 minutes. In conclusion, the
applications easy complex issues encouraging more number of calls and taking much human
resources to resolve, resulting higher on hold minutes per new call and degrading
performance. This can further help us determine where exactly problem lies in performance
degradation.



0
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 7 2 3 4 5 6 2 3 4 5 6
4 5 6 10
Average of ServiceTimeMins Average of OnHoldMins
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Executive Summary

Graph 2 Application and complexity effect on On Hold and number of calls



The information gives good picture of performance of call center. But it would be
good idea to measure the Service level. The Service level is X% of calls within Y seconds.
We can use this metric to measure our performance related to On Hold time.

Service Level = X% of call within less than Y seconds of OnHold time

So our overall service level, based on the OLAP database, is 98.05% calls falls within 20
seconds of On Hold time

The graph 3 is still good enough, but approximately 2% of calls have large hold times,
Which is significantly higher and should be reduced to improve the performance of the call
center, their by increase productivity.












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Access Excel PowerPoint Word
Count of CallID Sum of OnHoldMins
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Executive Summary

Graph 3 Service level for various Applications and overall



Conclusion:
The call center is having long call waiting or simply long On Hold seconds for
particular calls (4,066 calls) which are very few but the long hold times are critical to
performance measurement matrices. Also it is seen that this hold times are common due to
Staff level 6 where their service time is normal but Hold Times are higher than with other
staff level. Though the On Hold times are relevant to Days of week, Application (majority
with MS Word) and Complexities (Majority with Easy), the Staff Level can be a dominant
criteria for further investigation.

Recommendations:
To improve the call center performance, we need to more dig into the details of why
the On Hold timings are high for Staff level 6 and accordingly we can improve efficiency of
handling calls by them. Also looking at the weekly load of calls on the staff level 6,
recommendation can be made to add more human resources for same level by either hiring
new candidates or promoting lower staff to upper levels. Due to high cost of variable labor,
we do not recommend to appoint labor on job basis even though the call load is variable by
day of week.
The new metrics can be introduced to measure the performance of call center are
Service Level, which is mentioned and derived above, and total call abandonment rate
which tells the number of customers tried and failed to get help from the call center.






0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Access
Excel
PowerPoint
Word
Overall
Calls within 20 sec
Calls above 20 secs
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References

(Call Center KPI Examples, 2013)
Klipfolio (2013). KPI example. Call center example.
http://www.klipfolio.com/resources/kpi-examples-top-call-center-metrics

(ICMI, Call Center Metrics: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), 2013)
http://www.icmi.com/Resources/Tutorials/Call-Center-Metrics-Key-Performance-
Indicators-KPIs-

(BOCKLUND, LORI; HINTON, BRIAN ;, 2008)
http://www.strategiccontact.com/pdf/CC_Cost_WP.pdf

(The Report Abstract and Executive Summary, 2013)
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/726/07/