EPGCOM 10 Simulation & Systems Dynamic Assignment#1 Submission

Submitted by : Nilay Thakur EPGCOM-10-029

BPO, Incorporated
Case Summary
BPO, Incorporated a fortune 500 professional services organization, offered its clients a range
of services from risk management brokerage to management consulting. It has three divisions:

1. Risk Management / Insurance Brokerage

2. Human Resource Consulting

3. Compensation Consulting

The HRO group consisted of Employee Benefits Outsourcing (EBO) and Employee

Processing outsourcing practices, the EBO group was one of the BPO's fastest growing business.
And with high service level expectations, it is difficult for outsourcing companies to earn a
profit. Allen J Lauren is the vice president of BPO, received an email from Sam Regan, the CEO
of one of BPO's major clients. He mentioned that he tried to update his benefits and the service
provided did not meet his expectations. Now the company is considering improving the health
and welfare service delivery process.

Defining the problem faced by BPO

The very first problem is to find an effective way to reply to HA's CEO about the operational
problem and to improve the health and welfare service delivery process.

What are the appropriate measures that should be taken to assess and improve the solution
to the problem faced?

In the first week of march, steps like define phase and the measure phase of the project
addressing to the problem faced. In the following weeks developing a project charter with clear
objective, problem statement, scope and project milestones may help AJ if needed to provide a
robust reply to Sam's mail on process improvement.

Ethan's idea about to create a new case manager position between the CSR & BA is great. The
case manager would handle issues that the CSR were handing off to the BA's. Also provide the
CRS's with additional training in order to position them to handle more issues to reduce the
number of escalated calls. The new manager position shall act as a bridge between CSR & BA, to
solve problems and to help the two dept. work better.
EPGCOM 10 Simulation & Systems Dynamic Assignment#1 Submission
Submitted by : Nilay Thakur EPGCOM-10-029

Analyzing the situation

The company now faced lots of difficult and too much uncertainty for the solve plan. The vice
president of BPO has an objective and +ve attitude to solve the problem along with Ethan &
Jerry. Satisfied customers are the goal for every company, key point for them is to train the
staff, have professional qualities to help improve customer experience and increasing
operational efficiencies.

The typical contractual service level between BPO & its client, that 80% of the calls in 20 secs or
less. BPO internal metric of handling time of 6 minutes / call. A more appropriate metric would
have been the percentage of CSR available to take call at any given point in time. Although it
wasn't clear from Sam's mail the exact reason for his dissatisfaction.

Utilization of CSR team is very low at 37% , based on the availability of CSR's from 8 AM to 8 PM
and the avg. number of calls, each CSR takes about 27.4 minute/call on an average which is
higher than the maximum time CSR spent on one call at 19.1 mins. This clearly shows the
number of dedicated CSR's can be reduced. Using process model, reducing CSR's from 31 to 20,
the efficiency can be increased while keeping rest of the resources & times constant.

CSR
S.N CSR Availability Average number Number of Minutes /
Hour Availability
o (Nos) of Calls/Hr Call
(Mins)
1 8-9 13 780 30.4 25.66
2 9 - 10 26.5 1590 49.8 31.93
3 10 - 11 24.25 1455 59 24.66
4 11 - 12 28.25 1695 60 28.25
5 12 - 1 28 1680 49.4 34.01
6 1-2 29 1740 57.1 30.47
7 2-3 28.5 1710 57.5 29.74
8 3-4 26.5 1590 53.9 29.50
9 4-5 28.5 1710 51.6 33.14
10 5-6 17.25 1035 37.5 27.60
11 6-7 3 180 11 16.36
12 7-8 3 180 10.2 17.65

21 Average 27.41
Minimum 16.36
Maximum 34.01
Another observation is average time available for each call between 6 PM to 8 PM is ~ 17 to 20
minutes which indicates the need to change the work shifts of CSR so that it is more balanced.
Additionally, as identified in the performance metrics, CSR seems to be putting the customer on
EPGCOM 10 Simulation & Systems Dynamic Assignment#1 Submission
Submitted by : Nilay Thakur EPGCOM-10-029

hold for about 1.77 mins on an average although they are not supposed to do that. This
indicates not only they need more training on handling customer calls but also business process
training.

Another key observation which directly links with the problem faced by BPO's client HA is that,
84.5% calls are attended by BA's after 6 P.M. and at the same only 3 Nos CSR members are
deployed between shift 6P.M. to 8P.M. This seems to be very critical as far as HA's client service
experience is concerned because lower man power at CSR resulting in system inefficiencies due
to imbalance integration of calls & system data updating from customers queries.