Accelerate Resolve Rate and improve customer loyalty by addressing Cascading Repeatss

Speaking to Customer Service Executives in the UK, we see Resolve Rates (i.e. First Call Resolution and First Time Resolution) between 60% and 80%. This implies repeat call rates between 20% and 40% - until you consider cascading repeat calls.

Customers who have to call back once are actually more likely to call again but lets assume a consistent repeat call rate for the moment. If your Resolve Rate is 60%, 16% of your customers will call back twice, and 6% three times. In call centres with high volumes of calls, some customers will call back eight or more times.

Call centres have different approaches for measuring repeat calls. Our analysis excludes dropped calls and only considers repeat calls within a 7 to 9 day window. The customer’s perception of repeat calls is not limited to 9 days but this is a subject for another blog.

Adding up these repeats on repeats shows 16% of all calls are actually customers calling for a third time or more. Intercepting customers who ring back for a second time and stopping them calling back again removes one in seven calls, reduces agent effort and costs by 10% and significantly improves customer satisfaction. When you consider that a customer who has called 3 to 4 times is liable to churn, intensive intervention at 1st or 2nd repeat call adds considerable value.

Have you analysed your cascading repeats and instigated early intervention programmes? Do you have procedures in place to identify and intervene on same day repeats? We are interested in your thoughts on Cascading Repeats.

Article published by: Geoff Tennant and Keith Stagner of T-Impact Ltd. Website www.futurecallcentre.com

BPMS for SME organisations

Someone recently asked me: "Are BPMS limited to provide solutions only to large corporations given the needs and costs of the projects involved?"

We have found that both SME and Enterprise customers can achieve benefits from BPM solutions. A good BPM integrator will quantify the benefits and help clients prepare a business case before investment.

We find 35% - 70% of our client's business processes are either non-value or business value-add activities. Eliminating the non-value add and automating business value-add activities can generate significant opex savings. SME organisations usually have more manual and fragmented processes, especially prevalent in firms who have grown quickly.

A tier 1 BPM product such as IBM BPM (Lombardi) or Pega systems is going to require license investment of £75K - £100K for an initial project and another £60K - £100K for staff development and integrator support.

You can make your business case by optimising your process to reduce 3 FTE of work per annum (assuming £15,000 salary per annum and a 3 yr ROI). If the company is willing to work with you to identify new revenue opportunities and quantify the benefits of process transparency, improved customer service & reduction in rework costs your business case will be even stronger.

Of course, we deal with service industries (finance, telecoms, retail, healthcare & government), I am not sure if you would achieve the same results in manufacturing.

IBM Partnership

Our premier partner status in the Websphere IBM BPM (Lombardi) brand has accelerated T-Impact growth but also ensures we have the best support for our customers.

T-impact are working closely with a number of IBM Client executives to differentiate IBM's capability - offering clients insight into their complex business processes and identifying areas where they can benefit from Business Process Management. We are often asked to help businesses identify how they can improve customer intimacy, operational efficiency or innovation in a sustainable manner.

Our IBM partnership ensures we have early insight into tool futures and the very best support when delivering client engagements. With the strngth of the IBM organisation behind us, T-Impact punches well above our weight!

T-Impact Growth

Repeat business is at a record high and we have taken on several new delivery and sales staff. We also established the advisory council to guide our growth.

Juergen Appel chairs the advisory council, focusing on how we manage our rapid growth - ensuring we don't lose our focus on customer intimacy and innovation. Juergen was formerly CEO of Mach, the leading clearing house for mobile operators.

Boye Hartmann joins as Head of BPM Sales, covering European operations. Boye is currently recruiting sales people to cover individual territories.

Importance of Process Design

Automating your process without improvement removes the human intervention layer protecting your customers and risks making mistakes faster. Humans may be slow, but they are very good at compensating for errors and exceptions, so when the inevitable problem arises in a process, people deal with it. This does tend to be very inefficient, but employees generally see their job as looking out for problems and then being creative in working around the issue. Only this morning on check out at my hotel, the invoice was printed on non-letter head paper. Receptionist spotted this, loaded the printer with the right paper, reprinted, removed the credit card receipt from the wrong paper and re-stapled to the right paper. And apologised for the wait. Doubled the amount of work required and wasted paper, but she was happy she had done a good job. Automation would have been quicker, but would have left me with an invoice with no VAT number, and a much more difficult job of getting the problem fixed. Without a VAT invoice I can't claim expenses, so I don't go back. Clearly every hotel needs to improve the check out process. Then, and only then, can the process be automated. Get it right before you make it fast!

IBM UK Impact 2011

T-Impact exhibted at IBM's UK Impact 2011 on 19th May, 2011. the event exceeded all expectations with over 350 attendees and some very impressive speakers.

One of our clients presented a case study on a large programme of process design work we completed in their Quote to Order and Order to Bill areas. Key benefits included Euro 5.2 Million in savings and 21% acceleration of order completion.

We also launched T-Impact's BPM Business Value Assessment, a customised business case and ROI (Return on Investment) anslysis for BPM implementation. This has lead to several new sales opportunities which Boye Hartmann, Head of BPM Sales is managing.

The winners in our prize draw are:

First place: Philip Hallyer, Best Buy Europe - Red Letter Day
Second place: Remi Dobson, Carphone Warehouse - Magnum of Champagne
Third place: Joy Nichols, CMB2 Group - 10% Gift voucher for T-Impact services

Thanks to Kathryn from Thames Valley Police for her help with the prize draw.

Will BPM supplement or usurp Six Sigma & Lean Sigma?

Why Six Sigma or Lean aren't delivering sufficient value

Service or Transactional Six Sigma success in manufacturing has never been replicated in the services industry and corporate interest in pure Six Sigma passed its peak several years ago. Lean Sigma is currently the approach of choice for many organisations, but even that is now under real pressure as businesses look to improve processes radically to cut costs and survive the recession.

Transactional processes often contain well over 50% waste and perform at no better than 4.0 process sigma at best. Improvement solutions frequently conflict with various IT systems priorities which limit scope and impact for process change.

The Lean Sigma evolution

In the evolution of process improvement and design, Lean has focused on getting the flow and value right, and Six Sigma on customer and defects. The next evolution must build on these achievements while embracing a step change in both rapid optimization and automation of the full business process.

Business Process Management (BPM) approaches and tools have matured over the past five years and now allow a near seamless capture of any business process, optimization, and automation in a well-structured manner.

BPM tools such as IBM Lombardi Blueworks Live combine collaborative process modelling with Lean Sigma tools such as SIPOC, FMEA, cycle time analysis, and value stream analysis. Process participants, systems and problems can be captured against each process step, building up the current process model. The tool and process repository are shared in a collaborative ‘software as service' environment, reducing delays and encouraging agility.

Agile Lean Sigma

Anyone implementing a BPM project without incorporating Lean Sigma is missing out on potential business benefits. Likewise, Lean programmes which are not utilising BPM tools in an agile delivery approach are missing out. We have been monitoring this across several client sites and found that:

• Lean without BPM and Agile delivery usually delivers 10% - 15% improvement per project
  
  
• BPM without Lean usually delivers 20% - 25% improvement per project
  
  
• Lean with BPM and Agile delivery delivers 35% - 80% improvement per project (averaging just under 60%)

Using Lean Sigma techniques with foreknowledge of what can be automated with your BPM Suite, you will eliminate the non-value add and business value add activities in your process. The BPM tools will perform the work flow, audit, enforcement, monitoring and reporting. You can then focus on the value add process activities, Leaning them and determining which of can be automated.

Your improved process will contain fewer activities and will be designed for BPM. This reduces your automation effort substantially. You will deliver more value with your BPM projects and reduce the costs of delivery.

As the BPM market place matures, organisations are starting to realise the potential value of Agile, Lean and BPM. We believe BPM will supplement Lean Sigma, revolutionising the approach and enabling thought leaders to achieve the same competitive advantage as early adopters of Six Sigma in manufacturing.

About T-Impact

T-Impact's Agile Lean Sigma method integrates Lean Sigma, Agile delivery and Business Process Management tools to rapidly deliver the transformational results you are seeking and ensure savings are sustainable. We deliver an average of 60% improvement on process performance - across several industry sectors. Our projects are short, sharp and fun, usually delivering a working solution within 6 weeks.

To learn more about T-Impact, visit our website http://www.t-impact.com/offers/business-process-management-offers.html