Back to the 21st century

Call centres need to step into the 21st century to deliver true customer-led service, says Steven Parry, of Fujitsu Services. Here's how the company worked backwards to add value

HIGH operational costs, large staff turnovers and excessive repeat call rates are common in this industry and help feed the bad press it gets. In 1999 Fujitsu Services suffered from these problems in 22 call centres across Europe, where we provide a helpdesk service for both ourselves and our customers.
It was time to end the drain on our resources.
Call centres and helpdesks needed to step into the 21st century, leaving behind traditional principles and aiming to shed the adverse press coverage.

With this in mind, Fujitsu Services has spent the last two years planning and implementing a unique working culture within its call centres that turn the old principles on their head. Our aim was to provide helpdesk advisors with the knowledge and tools to improve the service delivered to customers.
Our research found that most calls are generated by a failure within the system or product, which we call failure demand. To eliminate this we work backwards to correct the root causes of problems and develop methods to overcome them. This leaves more time for "value demand", where value is created for customers by providing them with additional services, to help increase their productivity
Companies today must be driven by a deep understanding of changing customer needs. Our analysis showed that as much as 50-70 per cent of the incoming demand was entirely preventable.
Traditionally, call centres tended to focus on measuring productivity -- answering and wrapping up calls with speed -- in the belief that this satisfies customers.
We challenged this by creating a unique working culture called Sense and Respond, brought about through the introduction of new working methods called Interactive Management Methodology (IMM).
IMM was designed to be customer led, its focus locked onto understanding what was most important to customers.
The model centres on customer value and satisfaction by working from the outside in. The role of the advisors at our helpdesks that have Sense and Respond implemented is to analyse problems that arise and then seek ways to solve them. This enables calls to be dealt with more thoroughly, often eliminating the need for a customer to call back.
Queries at these helpdesks are no longer passed to other departments. At Sense and Respond helpdesks advisors now manage a call from start to finish. Some call centre managers may not welcome an increase in the average call handling time, but we view this as positive, and more than offset by fewer repeat calls.
Sense and Respond is about systematically seeking out, capturing and interpreting clues about the emerging and as yet unarticulated customer needs. Having been trained in IMM principles, helpdesk advisors continually search for new ways to achieve this, add value and instigate changes so customers' needs can be met.
The success of the model in the UK means that it is being progressively implemented into all of our call centres around the world.
However, the model fails unless the knowledge is captured, shared and fed back. Knowledge must be pooled and shared in real-time.
This requires advanced IT structures and databases. At Fujitsu Services, employees had input into the design of the knowledge management systems, thus increasing their involvement. The real-time nature of the system enables recurring problems to be identified quickly and passed back to the relevant departments so the cause can be corrected and eliminated.
Since helpdesk advisors are the points of contact between organisation and consumer they are vital in relaying information to both. They are also an expert source of knowledge that can be pooled and used to add value to consumers by satisfying their needs. Sense and Respond recognises this and puts them confidently in the front line.
The change in the role of helpdesk advisors led to other changes within the employee hierarchy. The supervisory role became redundant and therefore that level was removed completely.
Managers' roles were turned upside down. Rather than the employees working for their managers, the managers were now working for their employees. Their core responsibility became to ensure that advisors had the knowledge and tools to carry out the Sense and Respond model.
With knowledge being pooled and call statistics analysed it became easier for us to predict when the call rate was likely to increase, generally tied to an event such as a new product release. This use of knowledge ensures that sufficient advisors are available and could also pre-empt some potential problems.
Analysis following the implementation of this new management approach revealed a 20 per cent increase in customer satisfaction where Sense and Respond was operational. We now provide customers with an improved service, which generates measurable business results for them.
In addition to our original objectives, other quantifiable results have been achieved. Removing failures has reduced the number of calls we receive. This in turn reduces the overall cost of running the call centres that have Sense and Respond implemented by 35 per cent.
The empowerment of employees, and recognition that they are experts in their field, has also boosted employee motivation. The roles of employees have expanded beyond the traditional call operator, leading to a 24 per cent reduction in staff turnover. It now stand at just six per cent.
The development and implementation of this new approach has not been without its problems.
Despite helpdesk advisors embracing the new culture, several members of the management team felt unable to adopt the new philosophy. But now the systems are in place, everyone is a lot surer of the benefits of the Sense and Respond Model and has adapted to the new ways of working.
The success of introducing this new culture is an investment that allows us to answer an average of 40,000 calls a day, providing world-class helpdesk support to our 400 corporate customers, via 2,000 helpdesk advisors in seven major call centres across Europe.
We are proud of the role that Sense and Respond has played in Fujitsu Services securing a place in the finals of this year's prestigious National Business Awards as the only IT company in the Customer Focus Category. This is true recognition of our dedication to customer satisfaction.
Call centres and their employees have a significant amount to contribute to their organisations.
We feel that if we all took this principle on board this industry could improve, and become something of which we can all be proud. However, organisations will require a mind shift and a skill shift. Fujitsu Services' strategy is simply: "Become a Sense and Respond company".

PROFILE Steven Parry, strategy and operational development manager, joined Fujitsu Services in 1999. His career in call centre operations spans 15 years, during which time he has been responsible for building and operating large scale international call centres in the IT and retail industries. In his current position, he is responsible for designing, directing and deploying programmes to develop Fujitsu Services' multi-lingual European technical helpdesk services. From the home page, click on "READER ENQUIRY" and enter READER ENQUIRY No.46/121