CASE STUDY
Communications Department Ltd helps Northern Ireland’s Driver & Vehicle Agency improve call centre performance by 50% and reduce costs, by James L. Tanner
Every customer contact centre will encounter periods of heavy demand. Northern Ireland’s Driver & Vehicle Agency (DVA) is no stranger to coping with excessive demand for information and services. Thousands of people in Northern Ireland call the Agency to seek advice on the licensing and registration of vehicles and the issue of driving licences, among other services. In 2005, the Agency had to cope with substantially more incoming calls than it could answer, resulting in frustrated customers unable to get a fast response from either an agent or information line and over-stretched staff and telephone lines. The Agency’s Strategic Management Board recognised that a thorough review was needed and that taking on more customer service agents or increasing the number of phone lines was not necessarily the solution. The Agency turned to customer contact centre consultant James Tanner from Communications Department Ltd ( Comms Dept) for expert analysis of the situation and guidance on how to improve its systems and processes. The resulting change of strategy has helped to drive customer satisfaction levels with service delivery up to an impressive 97.3% and contributed to the Agency’s success in securing both a European Foundation for Quality Management Mark of Excellence Award and Customer Service Excellence accreditation. Additionally, call handling performance has improved by 50%.
Getting under the hood of the problem
Commsdept started with a review of the complete customer contact procedure including the telephone system, the call handling process and the integration of the Web site for self-service answers to customers’ queries.
It was clear that the telephone system was unable to manage the high level of demand. 41 phone lines meant that staff could only deal with 41 simultaneous calls. CommsDept recommended installing a fully hosted Interactive Voice Response service that could handle an unlimited number of incoming calls, before the caller reached the onsite phone system, rather than relying on costly lines and system enhancements. The new system stops the onsite phone system being a bottleneck for incoming calls that had left callers receiving the engaged tone on their first call. The new non-geographic number also provides pre-recorded messages and provides alternative ways to answer caller’s queries through a series of options for additional information.
CommsDept worked with the DVA to review the message process and provide customers with quicker access to self-service channels. Because this happens away from DVA’s phone lines, an unlimited number of callers can hear messages and the number of callers that find an engaged tone on the line has been eliminated. Additional simple information was provided within the messaging on this hosted system, to free up agents to take other more complex calls rather than provide information on office opening hours for example. Further improvements to the messaging with shorter and simpler messages are being undertaken to improve the customer experience and shorten the time callers are on the phone.
Smarter self-service
Self-service options only work when callers have their questions answered effectively. DVA now includes its website address in the welcome message and invested in improving its online information to make it easier for callers to download forms. This further helps reduce call volumes and means that it is now faster for customers to get what they need as well. Several thousand callers select the carrier hosted pre-recorded messages every month. This is particularly useful for out of hours calls where callers can hear recorded messages of the top 10 frequently asked questions (FAQs). And since some of these callers are listening to more than one message it is likely that they find the information useful.
Streamlining staff resourcing
Even though callers now have three options – speak to an agent, send an email or self-service via the Web, CommsDept recommended reviewing agent performance more closely to ensure that resource was optimised at all times. The average number of calls answered per agent and the average call duration varied between the team members. The aim was to increase the number of calls answered per agent and reduce the average call duration.
Heather Douglas, who heads up the Team, commented, “We needed to make better use of the available statistics to fully understand and manage our workload. CommsDept suggested some parameters that we needed to concentrate on to drive up performance and make the best use of the technology available, allowing us to schedule work around busy periods. For example, while answering the phone is the top priority, customer service staff can deal with emails and other duties during the quieter call periods.”
Establishing benchmarks to measure progress
DVA had no idea how many of their incoming calls were people ringing back with the old telephone system. The new hosted system provides detailed call statistics so that DVA can measure performance and put in place strategies for improvement where necessary.
It is now clear that the substantial reduction in call volumes from 200,000 to around 60,000 calls per month, over the last five years is largely due to the fact that with the new hosted service no one hears an engaged tone. Callers have several options. As a result, three quarters of callers are only phoning once, receiving the information they require from the service on the first call.
“We are constantly measuring our performance and analysing the customer experience so that our service to the public is the best that it can be,” comments Heather Douglas. “Instead of fire-fighting an unmanageable volume of calls we now have an efficient system that is based on robust technology and clearer processes. Continuous measuring of our performance helps us to easily spot areas for improvement. Additional training or a change in resourcing can be implemented and then monitored. Taking a step back to conduct the initial review with CommsDept was clearly the right way forward.”
DVA went through a challenging change management programme after its consultation with CommsDept. Heather Douglas says, “James Tanner from CommsDept helped us step back from our over-stretched situation and made us think about utilising our resources far more efficiently and the ways that we could do that. For the first time we were clearer about what information we needed to provide and how to get it to customers more quickly. Our operation has moved from being the subject of public fury to one with high levels of customer satisfaction.”
Case study summary:
Customer problem:
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CommsDept Recommendations:
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DVA Benefits:
 75% of callers only ring once, significantly reducing call volume |
| Customer Satisfaction levels are now higher than ever at 97.3% |
| DVA awarded Mark of Excellence Award |
| DVA now Customer Service Excellence accredited |
| Callers can always get through to the DVA |
| Reduction in abandoned calls |
| Reduced queue times – 80% of calls are answered in 30 seconds, a significant improvement on previous years |
| To make the Improvements DVA did not incur additional costs |
| 50% improvement in overall call handling performance |
For more information on this DVA case study please contact James Tanner, Communications Department Ltd on tel 020 8127 8302, jtanner@communications-department.co.uk, www.communications-department.co.uk.
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