1. sector focus
services
Changing the
paradigm
I
t has been decades since France satisfaction does not improve; that the
and other European countries cost of calls is in fact lower for a while,
started off-shoring their service maybe a few years, but then after that
activities to countries with lower labor a country with an even lower cost of
costs. It happened again recently, in 2012, labor comes into the picture (what to
when the extension contract for the call do then? Re-off-shore?); that extra
centre of a French transport public costs arise as sales and service quality
service, STIF, created a big fuss when it decrease and after-sales costs go up;
was announced that the winner was a and that off-shoring has a significant
Moroccan company. social impact.
In a centralised country like France, under There is an alternative to off-shoring,
the authority of a freshly elected socialist however: deploying lean in call centres, by
President, Francois Hollande, the event means of enabling local teams to think and
was a source of great concern and fear. act with continuous improvement in mind.
What happened illustrates the long This approach gives a call centre an
lasting and slow decline of the French and opportunity to improve customer
Off-shoring has been an European service industry. But is there an satisfaction, increase sales, and reduce the
alternative to this decline? volume of non-value added calls, which
important part of business leads to cost reduction.
strategies for a long time, Offshoring is mainly about cost
reduction, but usually new issues arise Solving these problems one at a time leads
but has often created once the service is moved to another to an increase in revenue, a decrease in
more problems than country. We often find that customer costs and a higher level of motivation.
it has solved. Sofiane
Boucheikh, Lean Trainer
costs in a sales support service
Figure 1: Reducing non–value
Customer
at the Institut Lean happy
France and Lean Coach Team Real cost
engaged
at Operae Partners,
explains how lean -25%
can help us repatriate
the service industry. Franck
Call centre exec sponsoring lean deployment
24

2. sector
F ocus
Here is the example of a company specialised in retail finance, with a complete portfolio THE PROJECT
of financial services (credit cards, loans, insurance, and so on). Inside this company, we We started with one very demotivated
focused on an organisation of 65 people working across France, divided in five teams of team, who had to manage an ever
10 to 12 people and a central team. increasing volume of cal team work
ls and struggled with a bad quality of
Their mission is to deal with all sales-related calls from anyone who is experiencing service, in terms of response time.
any problem. Here are two types of incoming calls: after submitting a loan request, a
customer calls to check whether their request is accepted or not; or, a customer calls to In order to reverse the trend, the team
provide further information to complete their application. analysed the non-value calls, which
represented 75% of all calls.
To implement lean across the organisation, we chose the following strategy: to carry
an improvement project, with a specific duration and scope, one team at a time. This We then focused the problem solving on
allowed us to gather knowledge on each project, and then to extend the lessons learned the reduction of these calls, with Pareto
to each new team. typology and root-cause analysis.
We initiated continuous improvement with the project and then we sustained it by Before we could make it happen, there
means of a set of actions: continuous challenge, go and see inside the team. were three obstacles we had to overcome:
However, this type of strategy is only relevant when you know what you want to learn.
In our case, the goal of the discussion with the leaders of the organisation was to decide 1. Let the sponsor, Franck (who
what the key questions and topics were. is the executive manager
that is “sponsoring” the lean
To answer this question, we took the insight of the very efficient and simple to use programme), see the problem
method presented by Stephen Parry, Susan Barlow and Mike Falkner in their book Sense and take on the challenge, which
and Respond. The book presents the demand classification model as follows: he didn’t want to do because
he thought the number of calls
could never go down;
Is defined by Customer
Figure 2: Classification of demand as in “Sense and Respond”
Purpose. Deliver value 2. Make the problem visible to all
Creation (Optimise) effectively to customers and management and get agreement
efficiently to the organisation on it, which was even more
difficult than with Franck;
P ositive 3. Let the team see the problem
and take the lead, which was very
simple because Marc, the team
Creates the possibility for leader, was absolutely convinced
developing new value-added that something had to be done:
Opportunity (Innovate) services that will satisfy
customers, increase production, a. He was exhausted of dealing
or increase revenue. with angry customers every day.
b. He knew things could be
different as he had known a
Occurs when the organisation time when such problems did
delivers unit products and not happen.
Restorative (Remove) services. Production is lost and
the customer is unhappy. This c. His team couldn’t bear the
results in the loss of money, situation anymore.
time, reputation and loyalty
d. His end of the year bonus was
not yet obtained.
N egative
Originates externally. It is The first step was to ensure everybody
usually waste or demand saw the problem in the same way and
Opportunity (Innovate) created by other organisations, recognised it. Quite simply, there was a
agencies or institutions massive number of calls that add no value
to the customer.
www.leanmj.com | March 2013 25

3. C hanging the paradigm S ofiane B oucheikh
What we discovered by investigating all around the
Results in sales support call center in company (in the IT division, with the telecom provider,
three months: with the central team) was that there were two fax
machines, one of which wasn’t working properly
Reducing non-value calls by 27%; when a fax was sent from an ISDN line (which uses a
different technology).
Answer Seizure Ratio (ratio of
successful calls to total number of We supported the team and helped them to take action
calls attempted) from 82% to 95%; outside their area: first, we provided everyone with the
fax number for the working fax machine and then we
Productivity rising by 15%; fixed the faulty one.
Reducing waiting time from 3 15% of calls were from customers who wanted to
minutes to 20 seconds finalise their contract and have the lent money
transferred to their account. In this case, our standard
procedure was to take note of the request and
The second step was to support the transfer it to another team. What happened was that
operational team. before the other team had the time to deal with the
request, the customer usually called again to enquire
Franck, Marc and the lean coach had to further. For this simple kind of situation, we invited
deliver the same message, and support team members to finalise contracts themselves,
the team while it built its own action plan This which reduced the backlog of contracts waiting to be
structured following the PDCA approach: approach gives completed and the number of extra calls.
a call centre
1. Pareto analysis of the different Finally we achieved a 27% reduction in the number of
typologies of non-value calls
an opportunity calls in four months, which in turn led to an improvement
to improve of the overall performance: customer satisfaction went
2. Choice of one typology and make a customer up, response time was back to high standard level, and
root cause analysis satisfaction, the number of lost calls went down to almost zero.
increase sales,
3. Implementation of the action plan for INCREASING SALES
this one typology and reduce the
Let’s take a look at another area within the company.
volume of non-
4. Results check: value added We worked with 100 people in charge of after-sales
calls, which incoming calls coming directly from the end customer.
a. If they are not in line with the Their mission was to provide the right answer to the
objectives, understand why, and leads to cost
customers over the phone or via email. They also had
act again reduction sales objectives, known as “rebound sales”: any call from
a client is an opportunity to sell another product.
b. If they are in line with the objectives,
move to next typology Here is the starting situation:
A few examples :
Figure 3: Before lean programme
17% of calls were from salespeople 20% 1
checking whether their fax had arrived.
In this case, the answer was simply
“yes” or “no.” The team was authorised 15
to analyse the root cause, which helped
Rebound sales
us answer a number of other questions:
10
If the fax has effectively arrived, why
is the salesperson calling? 5
If the fax has not arrived, is the fax
machine actually working? If not, why? 0
1st team Best team Average
in the lean before lean of all
What is the actual situation about programme programme teams
the fax machine?
26

4. sector
F ocus
Franck did not appreciate the fact that some teams did not reach their
objective, up-selling on 10% of incoming calls. Here is what we did to
help this team achieve similar results as the rest of the organisation.
We empowered team
members and promoted
Results in four months: team work. This helped
Increasing overall sales by four points;
us to regain motivation,
improve results and, in the
Customer satisfaction from 89% to 95%; end, generate substantial
economic gains
Productivity rose by 10%;
Reduction average talking time from 136s to 110s;
Economic gain: €1.5 million
We empowered team members and promoted team work. This helped
us to regain motivation, improve results and, in the end, generate
substantial economic gains.
The tools that we used in this case are visual management and quick
response problem solving. Every day the team chooses one issue to
address, from picking one product to try and sell more to increasing
the sales of another product, improving the performance of a slowest
moment of the day, learning how to sell a brand new product or training
a new member of the team.
Every day, they also performe a quick problem solving exercise in order
to determine if they are in line with daily objectives. If they are, they
move on. If they are not, they try to understand why and then try a new
standard (or one that has worked for someone else).
Within four weeks, the group had caught up with the best-in-class
teams. In two months, they had reached the first rank: TO CONCLUDE
These two problem solving exercises were very successful.
Figure 4: After lean programme
First of all, we achieved amazing results, at a level
1 we had never reached before. We never could have
20% imagined we would do so in a quarter, saving millions
to the division.
15 Secondly, we started a positive cultural change, created
Rebound sales
a new job description, introduced new quality standards
10
and engaged in continuous improvement, which has
become tail wind for day-to-day work.
5 As team engagement grew, costs went down and sales
went up. Insourcing became a more obvious choice, not
only for today but for tomorrow as well.
0
1st team Best team Average
in the lean before lean of all The following year, the outsourcer contract was not
programme programme teams extended, which led to savings of €500,000.
Our decision to insource was not only a tactical choice to
Two months after the project, in the continuous improvement phase, the respond to a specific situation, but it became part of the
team continued to gradually improve its results. So did the others, until overall after-sales strategy. But this can only be successful
new records were reached. with a continuous improvement culture in place.
www.leanmj.com | March 2013 27