Background

This ORDERLYQ deployment took place in early 2006, for Readers' Union, a book-of-the-month club that has two call centres.

The client's first call centre is for Customer Services. It is staffed with a dedicated team from 9am to 6pm, with an out-of-hours team of half the size. The Customer Services line was suffering from the effects of peaks and troughs, with callers being lost during busy periods, and idle agent time when queues emptied.

The second call centre handles new enrolments and processes orders. Again it has its own dedicated team working from 9am to 6pm, with an out-of-hours team of half the size. This line was saturated throughout the study period, with very little agent idle time (i.e. almost always somebody waiting on hold)

Orderly Software used the OrderlyStats statistics package to gather call statistics for a sample of one week with the ORDERLYQ system in place, and compared the results with control statistics from the previous weeks.

Summary Outcome

The key conclusions are:

• Under 'normal' operating conditions, where there are peaks and troughs, ORDERLYQ was highly effective in smoothing out the peaks in demand – the proportion of callers answered went up from 66% to 81%, despite much higher call volumes during the ORDERLYQ week.

• Even on the saturated order line, ORDERLYQ increased the number of callers answered by 14% without increasing headcount.

• With ORDERLYQ in place, the average talk time dropped by 7% as far less time was spent complaining about the queue.

• Caller feedback was very positive, with the overwhelming majority of callers preferring to hang up and call back over waiting on hold.

Customer Services - Peaks and Troughs Results

Customer Services - Analysis

The ORDERLYQ week was significantly busier than the Control week, as the client had a particularly large book club 'closing' that week. This lead to a 20% increase in the number of callers coming into the call centre on this line.

With more attempted calls and the same number of staff, one would expect a decrease in the percentage of callers answered. But, remarkably, the use of ORDERLYQ meant that the opposite was the case, with an increase of 15%. In terms of absolute numbers, ORDERLYQ helped the call centre answer almost 50% more callers than in the control week.

Orders and Enrolments - Saturated

Orders and Enrolments – Analysis

This line was saturated during both weeks, with little or no agent idle time during any part of the day. This meant that the usual efficiency gains with ORDERLYQ were unavailable – it is impossible to smooth peaks into troughs when there are no troughs.

Again, during the ORDERLYQ week, demand for the line was much heavier than during the Control week, with incoming callers increasing by 16%.

Orders and Enrolments – Continued

As the line was saturated, and the staffing levels and patterns were the same, one would expect the number of answered callers to remain unchanged, and the percentage of answered callers to fall from 85% to 74%.

ORDERLYQ helped the call centre by providing a more pleasant experience to the callers, who did not have to spend time waiting on hold (despite long waits). This reduced time spent complaining, with a decrease in average call duration of 7%.This allowed the call centre to answer more callers. Also, because more people were hanging up and calling back, the call centre was able to make full use of the extra agent time this saved.Instead of a drop in the percentage of answered callers, ORDERLYQ allowed the call centre to maintain its existing service level despite the increase in demand. In absolute terms, ORDERLYQ allowed the call centre to answer an extra 14% more callers, without increasing headcount – even on a saturated line.

Caller Satisfaction

With ORDERLYQ in place, less than 1% of callers commented about the queue. Of those that did, 87% of comments were positive. The remaining 13% of comments focused on the existence of a wait at all.

We also analysed caller reaction to the system statistically. We found that when the announced wait time was greater than 5 minutes, 88% of callers answered preferred to call back over waiting on hold.

If you would like further information on this study, please contact Orderly Software.

We will be happy to arrange a telephone conversation with the client or a visit to the client's site on request.

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