{"id":386,"date":"2007-04-26T23:34:05","date_gmt":"2007-04-27T06:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/386\/quasi-lean-at-a-call-center"},"modified":"2013-07-10T01:02:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-10T06:02:54","slug":"quasi-lean-at-a-call-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/quasi-lean-at-a-call-center\/386\/","title":{"rendered":"Quasi-Lean at a Call Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"a296a24fa2fc69ef5487857f02f111e8\" data-index=\"9\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- Single Post readerboard -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:inline-block;width:728px;height:90px\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8207522353004717\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1144967431\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>I stumbledupon an interesting article on Lean implemented at a Call Center.\u00a0 Their implementation of Lean is pretty basic, but I think it&#8217;s a decent start.\u00a0 In addition to what they did, I would have taken the <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/lean-consumption-an-introduction\/2702\/\">Lean For Service<\/a> and Lean Provision approach.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, this is what they implemented:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use visual workplace to expose production problems<\/li>\n<li>Began to identify &#8220;waste&#8221; in the context of a call center environment.\u00a0 In their case, this was an outbound call center that collects data via surveys.\u00a0 When quota is met, then additional surveys after that is considered &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/what-is-waste\/223\/\">waste<\/a>.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, as you can see, they haven&#8217;t really done much in terms of their Lean implementation.\u00a0 But, apparently, they see big improvements despite their piece-meal approach to Lean Manufacturing.<\/p>\n<p>My biggest beef with this implementation was an over-emphasis on productvity.\u00a0 Productivity is a worthy measure, but it&#8217;s only one.\u00a0 A truly Lean approach would begin with questions around &#8220;Value&#8221; &#8212; what the customer is willing to pay for &#8212; which may or may not include issues of productivity:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Is the customer willing to pay for this activity?<\/li>\n<li>What is the customer expecting from this activity?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Answering the questions above will highlight waste from value and help the firm to understand customer expectations for consumption-based activities.\u00a0 For example, basic consumption activities can sometimes place an undue burden on the customer.\u00a0 Take, for example, the experience of getting a car fixed.\u00a0 A simple activity like that can easily place burden and can take many person-hours than it really should.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, my approach would be to walk the Gemba from the the customer contracting with the Call Center for a survey, through the completion of a call for that customer and the subsequent aggregate reporting back to the customer that contracted for the data: the provisioning piece would be the contracting and the reporting back to the customer, the consumption piece would be the activity of data collection.\u00a0\u00a0 A <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.opexlearning.com\/resources\/process-cycle-efficiency-pce\/330\/\">visual time-map like that, showing time, activities, and also value-add and non-value-added activities<\/a> would be very helpful and would immediately expose waste that can be reduced or eliminated.<\/p>\n<p>The article was originally published in the Oregonian, August 2006:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lean, said Martyn, can more easily spot waste in manufacturing firms, where piles of scrap metal beside a production line, for example, can indicate problems. In service industries, production is less tangible.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You are looking at setting standards for your system, looking at when you aren&#8217;t meeting those standards, and going after the root causes of the problems that keep you from meeting those standards,&#8221; Martyn said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Your goal is to permanently solve the problem.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In RDD&#8217;s case, the first step was making production problems visible. The company uses fairly low-paid workers &#8212; average pay is $9.50 an hour in salary and commissions &#8212; to gather data, mainly by telephone, for research studies. Martyn needed a way of measuring productivity so glitches would be obvious.<\/p>\n<p>Each call center is organized with about 15 callers, or &#8220;research associates,&#8221; overseen by a supervisor, or &#8220;coach.&#8221; Martyn devised a system of metrics, or measurements.<\/p>\n<p>Data is now compiled for each team: &#8220;RPH,&#8221; or revenue per hour, measures how much money each team makes per hour, based on time spent on each study. &#8220;Run&#8221; measures the research associate turnover rate, or how long people stay on the job. Another measurement is the cost of labor as a percentage of revenue. The lower, the better.<\/p>\n<p>Early numbers were dismal.<\/p>\n<p>Under Martyn&#8217;s guidance, visual systems were established to help research associates increase their productivity by reaching the right kind of respondents. Each research associate, for example, has within reach a dial that is turned to indicate a respondent&#8217;s political affiliation. The associate also has a two-sided sheet to indicate the sex of the person: blue for male, pink for female.<\/p>\n<p>Boards attached to the wall show, for each survey being done, how close to quota the company is for people in various categories. If they&#8217;ve met the quota for a particular category, the caller can end unneeded interviews.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It seems like it&#8217;s simplistic, but that&#8217;s what makes it work,&#8221; said Christian Byrd, a coach at the Missoula, Mont., call center who supervises 15 research associates.<\/p>\n<p>Gerianne Schmidgall, a site manager at the Montana center, said the visual system makes the job easier for research associates, and increases their commissions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was around before we started using some of these visuals, and we were constantly going over quota,&#8221; Schmidgall said. &#8220;We were doing work that&#8217;s not needed, and that&#8217;s a waste.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>John Fries, a senior project director for Alan Newman Research of Richmond, Va., is a customer of RDD. Fries&#8217; company designs surveys for customers, including advertising and government agencies. He uses RDD to collect data over the telephone.<\/p>\n<p>RDD&#8217;s use of Lean makes it much better at doing work quickly or changing a job in midstream than another data collection firm Fries uses, he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have a lot more flexibility using John&#8217;s shop than with our other call center,&#8221; Fries said. &#8220;We&#8217;re impressed by measurements they are doing, down to the efficiency of each interviewer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>RDD still wants to grow, Stepleton said, but in a controlled way. &#8220;Part of maturing is being more patient,&#8221; Stepleton said. &#8220;That&#8217;s a huge fundamental of Lean.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I stumbledupon an interesting article on Lean implemented at a Call Center.\u00a0 Their implementation of Lean is pretty basic, but I think it&#8217;s a decent start.\u00a0 In addition to what they did, I would have taken the Lean For Service and Lean Provision approach. Specifically, this is what they implemented: Use visual workplace to expose [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12327,"featured_media":9868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[613],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lean Six Sigma for Service Operations, Call Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lean Manufacturing for Call Centers, Lean Training for Service Operations\" \/>\n<meta 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