Keeping Your Contact Center One Step Ahead

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Keeping Your Contact Center One Step Ahead

Combining Lean Six Sigma and Franklin Covey’s 4DX can establish a powerful framework for eliminating waste and continuously optimizing operations in customer care and collection contact centers.

Lean Six Sigma offers the means for process and quality improvement, and 4DX ensures teams stay in control, accountable, and aligned throughout their projects. Collectively, these approaches can improve efficiency, customer satisfaction, and business performance.

Both Lean Six Sigma and Franklin Covey’s 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) are highly effective approaches customized to meet the environment’s specific needs. They can deliver incredible operational efficiencies and eliminate inefficiencies that are unparalleled.

Below is how each solution helps achieve these customer care and collections objectives:

Lean Six Sigma

1. Waste Reduction:

·            Eliminate Waste: Lean Six Sigma eliminates non-value-added processes using methods such as Value Stream Mapping. This process might involve automating data entry, customer support, or reporting for contact centers.

·            Continuous improvement: The DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) process framework enables BPO companies to continuously streamline processes by discovering inefficiencies at their source and finding long-term solutions.

2. Quality Improvement:

·         Defect Reduction: Using statistical tools and procedures, contact centers can minimize process errors (e.g., inaccurate data entry) to increase service quality and minimize rework and expenses.

 ·         Satisfaction of Customers: Higher Quality ensures better customer satisfaction and retention in the increasingly competitive marketplace.

3. Enhanced Efficiency:

·         Standardization: Lean Six Sigma encourages the adoption of standardized processes, which can reduce process variability and increase predictability and productivity.

 ·         Empowerment and Training: Our employees are taught the Lean Six Sigma methods and empowered to see where we can improve, driving operational excellence.

4. Practical-use case examples for Lean Six Sigma:

·         Customer Service: Virtuoso leverages Lean Six Sigma to optimize call times, analyze the root cause, and introduce a new, easier-to-use knowledge base, cutting the average call-handling time by 25% and raising first-contact resolutions.

  • Collections: When ineffective scheduling is a bottleneck for follow-up calls on unpaid accounts, we leverage Lean Six Sigma principles and standardize the follow-up process by adopting a uniform schedule for high-risk accounts. This resulted in a 30% increase in collections in the first month.

Franklin Covey’s 4DX

1. Focus on the Wildly Important Goals (WIGs):

  • Clear Objectives: 4DX emphasizes setting and focusing on a few critical objectives that can drive significant improvements. For BPOs, this could mean prioritizing goals such as reducing response times or increasing first-contact resolution rates.
  • Alignment Across Teams: By aligning team efforts towards common WIGs, BPO organizations can ensure that all employees work towards the same outcomes, enhancing collaboration and accountability.

2. Leverage Lead Measures:

  • Proactive Management: 4DX advocates for identifying lead measures (predictive indicators of success) rather than solely relying on lag measures (results). In the BPO sector, lead measures could include metrics like training completion rates or call handling times, allowing teams to manage performance proactively.
  • Real-time Adjustments: Regularly tracking lead measures enables teams to make timely adjustments to processes and strategies, thus continuously improving operational performance.

3. Create a Cadence of Accountability:

  • Regular Check-ins: 4DX promotes accountability sessions where teams review progress toward their WIGs, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and ensuring that efforts remain aligned with strategic goals.

·         Recognition and Motivation: 4DX promotes a culture of recognition and celebrating success during accountability sessions, boosting morale and motivating employees to maintain high-performance levels.

4. Practical-use case examples for 4DX:

·         Customer Service: Virtuoso set a WIG to improve customer satisfaction scores from 80% to 90% over six months. They define lead measures such as the number of training sessions agents complete on soft skills and product knowledge. We hold weekly accountability meetings to track progress and adjust, ultimately achieving the goal ahead of schedule.

 ·         Collections: 4DX helped us focus on increasing Right Party Contact (RPC) and liquidation rates for overdue accounts. Our WIG was to improve RPC rates by 15% and increase liquidation rates by 12% over the next quarter.

 5.      A Combined Approach Lean Six Sigma and 4DX: We implement an integrated strategy since Virtuoso manages customer and collections services.

·         Lean Six Sigma (Customer Service): They identify that frequent transfers between departments for customer inquiries lead to frustration and longer call times. They streamline these processes to allow agents to handle more inquiries independently, reducing transfer rates by 40%.

·         4DX (Collections): By setting a WIG to increase the percentage of accounts collected within 30 days by 15% and tracking lead measures such as RPCs, Liquidation rates, the number of follow-up calls, and dispute resolution time, our collections team ensures that all efforts are aligned and focused on achieving the goal. As a result, we attained the target and significantly improved overall cash flow for each client.

Conclusion

These targeted examples demonstrate the immediate benefits of Lean Six Sigma and 4DX and their role in fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Organizations can boost efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and drive better collection outcomes by focusing on waste elimination and continuous improvement.