Problem:A BPO organization was having difficulty in identifying the root causes of their poor performance from a profitability perspective. The key concerns were not with customer satisfaction or quality of service. Every quarter they were losing millions despite the high customer satisfaction and with a distributed network of centers across different states the problem got even compounded.

Solution:The company hired a consulting firm to provide a solution to this problem as they could go out of business in another 6 months. The consulting firm identified some key KPIs at a high level which are most significant to any BPO organization: Quality Average Handle Time Customer SatisfactionTo monitor these they needed a tool which could provide them with real-time data which would then help them identify the problem areas. In this case they suggested an Operational BI tool as they wanted a Platform by which they could define the required KPIs (coarse grained as well as fine grained), to evaluate KPIs- they required real-time data and to trigger them based on thresholds, a workflow based tool to orchestrate processes and analyze them and above all have a consolidated dashboard which could give them the right information at the right time.The selection of a proper tool was critical as on an ongoing basis it would provide key insight to the organization even after they (consultants) left.

Gourangi – Operational BIAfter evaluating products in the operational BI space the consultants selected Gourangi as it offered the right set of features to track and resolve operational problems including a BPM suiteIdentifying the problem and resolutionVarious data points were tapped to define the three critical KPIs – Quality, AHT and Customer satisfaction using aggregated values across different centers. To monitor them they provided appropriate thresholds to each of the KPIs along with a Dashboard. They also defined a Workflow to handle anomalies in case the value exceeded the threshold.For a few weeks they monitored the KPIs and found out that the supervisors as well as the managers from most of the centers gave a lot of importance to customer satisfaction. These were more pronounced from the workflow analytics as for each AHT alert (high value) no corrective measures were taken to lower AHT and also the wait time for each task was considerably high.On the other hand customer satisfaction was high as the operators were spending more time with the customers but again quality of Service was low as rather than answering to the point and signing off quickly they entertained questions that were unrelated to the actual reason for the call. This also highlighted the fact that either the operators were not properly trained or they were not equipped to handle customers.The major cause though was still due to a High AHT value as the teams across the states were unable to handle higher volumes of calls on a per day basis. This led to an overall efficiency of 50% - attributing to overall losses.

Key Takeaways:The BPO organization re-aligned their operational and execution policies to keep a balance between the three key KPIs across their centers. Gourangi was implemented across various departments to keep a track of the ongoing activities and also to create a collaborative environment where key individuals from various hierarchies could take decisions by using information - at the right time and maintain the much needed balance between Customer Satisfaction, AHT and Quality.

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