Transfer Reduction for One of the UK Telecom About the Client The client is one of the fastest growing telecommunications providers in the United Kingdom. Its network infrastructure covers a customer base of over 8 million making it one of the leading brands in the telecommunications and mobile internet business with a 40% share of the UK’s total data traffic. About the Project The Contact Centre Structure project was one of the most innovative projects that I have worked on. It was about designing and delivering a structure that supports the increasing customer base while providing the most enjoyable experience to customers and employees. The project was focused on reducing transfers to improve customer experience.

1. BY: PRATEEK SINHA
MAY 2018
Transfer Reduction for One of the UK Telecom

2. Transfer Reduction for one of the UK Telecom by Prateek Sinha
Transfer Reduction for One of the UK Telecom
About the Client
The client is one of the fastest growing telecommunications providers in the United Kingdom.
Its network infrastructure covers a customer base of over 8 million making it one of the leading
brands in the telecommunications and mobile internet business with a 40% share of the UK’s
total data traffic.
About the Project
The Contact Centre Structure project was one of the most innovative projects that I have
worked on. It was about designing and delivering a structure that supports the increasing
customer base while providing the most enjoyable experience to customers and employees.
The project was focused on reducing transfers to improve customer experience.
The project was initiated during a discourse on one of Tech Mahindra’s internal discussion
forums where an Operations Manager from a different business unit highlighted the low
customer satisfaction scores and persistent customer comments from NPS surveys for being
passed on from one department to other.
In the subsequent discussion with two key executives — Operations Manager and Quality
Manger — of the Business Unit for which we were analysing the historical data, it was observed
that about 18.5k customers (approximately 9% of the calls) were being transferred from Billing
to Customer Service and First Call Resolution was substantially lower on the transferred calls.
During an informal conversation, the Operations Manager and I discussed the feasibility of cross
training since it was a big success in the business unit that I was leading. Following a download
of the case study of my unit to the Operations Manager with the kind of success we were able
to achieve in our unit, it was mutually decided that I would create a team and lead a process-
improvement project for his business unit.
We decided on a team of six, led by me. We absorbed two team resources from the existing
business unit, one was brought in from quality, one from business transformation, and one was
on-boarded from training division.
The project was put initiated in January 2013 with an objective of implementation in the first
month itself and running it for 3 months. Though we had set success criteria’s, one major trigger
was First Call Resolution. We had agreed that if at any point the FCR falls by 1%, we would roll
back the improvement process and stop the cross training immediately.
The objective of the project was to improve customer experience by reducing transfers, through
cross training billing team with general Customer Service.
We decided to cross train the team of 229 advisors in Billing Team on general customer services
in phases — each batch to be trained for a week. This was done to avoid negative impact on
business operations of the billing team.
A two-hour down-time was awarded for this training per day. The down-time included one extra
hour by advisors and one hour of utilisation of Avail time. The training module was designed in
collaboration with Customer Service team and was acknowledged by the Training teams of
Customer Service and Billing.

3. Transfer Reduction for one of the UK Telecom by Prateek Sinha
Why – Background to the change
Source: Which - Customer Service report
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9% of customers are transferred from Billing to CS

4. Transfer Reduction for one of the UK Telecom by Prateek Sinha
What – Change Overview
✓ Problem Statement:
9% customers (18,500) per month were transferred from Billing team to General
Customer Service
The FCR & NPS on transferred calls was 10-12 points lower than a non-transferred
call
✓ Objective of the Project:
Improve customer experience & efficiencies by reducing transfers
This will be achieved by merging the Billing team with General Customer Service
✓ Project Scale & Duration:
Cross Training: Cross Train Billing Team on general customer services
Duration: Train 229 billing advisors on general customer services process for a
week
✓ Success Criteria’s:
Reduction of 220,000 transfers annually
Cost optimization worth 13 FTEs ~ £152,100 (USD254,000) annually
No negative impact on FCR while teams are cross trained and 1% improvement
post implementation

5. Transfer Reduction for one of the UK Telecom by Prateek Sinha
How – Solution Implemented
Before Solution
After

6. Transfer Reduction for one of the UK Telecom by Prateek Sinha
Results
Positive Customer Experience
Transfers down to Zero
Financial Benefits
The higher FTE benefits were due to higher occupancy & better economies of scale
Balanced Approach