A systemic approach to a problem identified in the operation of the call centre of a company that provides public services concerning water and sewage treatment.

1. Reengineering of the Process of a Call Center
Using Systemic Methodologies
Panagiotis Papaioannou
EYDAP
p.papaioannou@gmail.com
HSSS 7th National & International Conference, 4-7 May 2011, Athens, Greece
The objective of this study is to provide a systemic approach to a problem identified
in the operation of the call center of a company which provides public services
concerning water and sewage treatment.
The company runs a traditional “call room” in order to receive and respond to the
incoming calls. Clients or citizens in general call to ask about their accounts, to
complain, or, most importantly, to declare damages or leakages. The staff of the
call room is also responsible for recording the calls related to damages or leakages
and forwarding them to the appropriate technical department in order to be
appropriately treated. Due to the increasing volume of the incoming calls and the
lack of available staff, the company organized cooperation with a subcontractor
which is a service bureau specialized in call center operations. The working model is
simple: calls that are not answered after a defined period of time are redirected to
the subcontractor which employs staff dedicated to that kind of calls.
The current situation accentuates the problem which is the subject of this study.
The staff of the company is not trained to serve people but due to years of working
experience they are accustomed to forwarding technical issues to the proper
department and even to communicate with their colleagues on a personal basis. On
the contrary, the staff of the subcontractor is very good at serving people but they
often fail to collect the proper technical information from the caller and forward the
issue to the proper technical department. As a result, the clients calling the
company do not experience an adequate and consistent level of service while the
technical departments complain about the wrong or incomplete information they
receive.
In this study a set of systemic tools is used to identify the current situation and to
propose a new working model by means of process reengineering. The boundaries
of the whole system coincide with the boundaries of the problem spreading from
the calling customer to the staff of the technical departments. The subsystems
identified include the customers, the two types of staff and the technical
departments. The relations between them and the information path are also
identified and the whole situation is designed using the DCSYM methodology.
The Total Systems Intervention (TSI) methodology is employed in order to define
the characteristics of the whole system, to examine possible solutions and to
propose the final reengineered working model. The proposed model takes into
account the strengths and weaknesses of each type of staff. The tasks and the
route of the information are reorganized in order to achieve a better result
regarding both the customers and the technical departments.
According to the proposed model, the subcontractor’s staff who are more properly
trained to deal with clients are in charge of handling the caller while the company’s
staff are responsible for the processing of the technical issues. The proposed
improvement is also designed using the DCSYM methodology and a simulation
model is presented using the VENSIM simulation software.
KEYWORDS: SYSTEMICS, PROCESS REENGINEERING, DCSYM, TSI

2. INTERNAL STAFF
(Companie’s Representatives)
1
Customers
2
TECH. DEPT.
TECH. DEPT.
TECH. DEPT.
TECH. DEPT.
EXTERNAL STAFF
Subcontractor’s Respresentatives
2
1
1 2
C
C C
C
C
D
D
D
D
D
Customer Service System
Existing Situation: 2 kinds of representatives: Communication + Operation

3. Customers
2
INTERNAL STAFF
(Companie’s Representatives)
1
TECH. DEPT.
TECH. DEPT.
TECH. DEPT.
TECH. DEPT.
EXTERNAL STAFF
Subcontractor’s Respresentatives
2
1 1
C
C C C
C
D
Customer Service System
C
Proposed Improvement: Task Separation (Communication – Operation)
1 2