Six Sigma -Tutorial for IT-Call Center - Essay Example

A Six Sigma Case Study- Tutorial for IT Call Center Executive Summary The IT industry is of the fast growing industries in the world today. The industry is populous with IT service companies, one of the services offer is customer cure support services either online or via telephone calls. The high competition leads to lowered prices that often the equally range across all the companies in a given market. For a company to remain in the market and profitably run its activities as usual they have to offer the best services than the competitors. This case study applies the Six Sigma techniques like DMAIC and only benchmarking and just setting a project team to work on the basis on a simple six sigma. DMAIC defines the issues affecting the company to a large span making it easier to distill more clues and real figures from the top performers in the industry thus acquiring facts and reliable data to promote the project. If data from an unbiased source is used, say the company being studied has customer care satisfaction ratings of seventy three out of a hundred; the ‘average’ company in the industry has a rating of seventy six out of a hundred and the best performer in the industry at eighty seven percent. This data alone shows that efforts have to be made in order for the company to survive the competition. In the IT service industry customer satisfaction is a major contributor to a company’s growth[Dav101]. Support costs per call are not related to satisfaction, best companies’ support call cost $26, ‘average’ companies at $30 per call while the case study company’ call cost about $36 which is the highest of all[Dav101].On focusing the DMAIC project the ‘Y’ being new account growth and the ‘Xs’ being number of transfers, wait time and service. Wait time is associated with customer satisfaction thus improvement on the time is essential. After discovery of the points of weakness: the company managers then set project goals, scope and the study case using DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) teams. Define Phase D1. Project Charter: it expands on the business case clarifying the focus and measures of the project’s performance and is completed by a six sigma Black Belts who are the team leaders. They respond by implementing the improvement projects using skills of six sigma tools and lead increase of customer satisfaction. The key stakeholders are the customers, staff members and the business. The problem statement is one of the project charter elements; it gives the progress of the competitors as compared to the stagnated case study company. Goal statement element is that the customer satisfaction rating is at 90th percentile=75% targeting 85% in the same percentile by end of fourth-quarter without changing support costs. The last element is process output such as milestones, roles, communication procedure[Dav101]. D2. Customer Requirements: using SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, processes, outputs and customers) identify the important customers for instance, customers, staff and business. Voice –of –customer inter views can be used to know what influences their level of satisfaction with the services offered. A summery outcome of the customer requirements is as follows; Requirements Measures To quickly get connected to a helpful staff Wait time Acquire the information needed Transfers; service time Apply or use the information if needed Customer satisfaction, support cost Understand how to avoid problems recurring Days to close D3.High level process map: helps during measure phase when deciding where and how to gather information. Measure phase Define how data is to be gathered. For example; satisfaction-by standard survey per month in the industry, one by one customer satisfaction data. Performance standards; satisfaction- 90th percentile (70-80%) satisfied, performance -90th percentile (85% satisfied) Factors for data acquisition plan; collection efforts, cause-and-effect tools in use, nature of segmentation of Y-call center and product, factors driving Ys- the important X (call type or customer type). Measurement system: its accuracy, stability over time, repeatability of the same value, reproducibility when used by different people. Collection of data can be automated, manual and by use of any other metrics. Display data in a simple format to enable the team to look for clues in charts and graphs[Dav101]. Analyze Phase Analysis is performed to check the capability of the process as compared to the present standards. Adjustment can be done if the goal is not meeting the expectations. Data is partitioned in order to find the causes of the variations. Identify the possible X and verify to narrow down to see the important causes of variation. Update the prediction on how improvement can be achieves in the process. It can be found that satisfaction and support costs are affected by wait time and interruptions during call service. Improve Phase Here are some of the solutions that can be made within the processes to improve growth of the case study company; Staffing; More staff on weekdays and reduce their number in the weekends especially on Sundays. Use of web service; services that can be done best online should be done on the web, it reaches many people over a limited time and give incentives to gain web traffic. Transfers and callbacks; reduce them by improving the processes through the use of newer technologies. Improvement can be achieved by verifying relationships between Xs and Ys by use of solution selection matrix and regression analysis. Control phase Control plans should be done by use of dashboards-Ys and operational control indicators. Improved capabilities of the process should be determined. For example business growth, satisfaction, reduced wait time, transfers and service time and less support cost per call. Continuous data collection should be implemented. Closing the project is done and training starts for project post mortem. Tools; ANOVA, Cause and Effect Diagram, Control chart, Kano Analysis, X-Bar and R Charts Works Cited Dav101: , (Hallowell), Read More