Six Sigma Case Studies : Improving Average Handle Time (AHT)

Industry: Service provider

Background

The client is one of the top five wireless service providers in the United States that offers services to residential and business customers through low-cost roaming agreements with the major national Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) carriers. Starting in 2007, the client partnered with TELUS International to provide customer care support for its postpaid and prepaid services. The program’s initial Average Handle Time (AHT) was 364 seconds versus the client’s target of 340 seconds. To improve this important metric, TELUS International’s Business Process Improvement (BPI) team was engaged to conduct a Six Sigma Green Belt project.

The challenge

In the Define Phase, Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC) and Regression analyses were conducted to determine the correlation of AHT with other client metrics. During the Measure and Analyze Phases, the team used Multi-vari charts, Time-Stamp audits and Fishbone and Cause-and-Effect analyses, to identify the top contributors to longer AHT. It was determined that in some cases poor communications skills, distractions such as background noise, lack of sufficient agent knowledge, and incomplete resolution, probing and active listening skills could be attributed to the longer call handling times.

Solution

As part of the Improve Phase, the team focused on improving the issues systematically. This included:

• Creation of a Notes and Probing Tool to help agents document faster through the use of canned notes and suggested probing questions
• Scheduling of regular probing drills, including acting out calling scenarios, into team meetings to enhance probing skills and effective resolution
• Establishing recurrent training schedules to address agent knowledge issues related to handling specific billing topics
• Adoption of an “English only Policy” to resolve distracting background noises and improve the communications skills of agents

Results

Significant improvement on AHT was observed dropping down to 324 seconds and exceeding the client’s goal of 340 seconds. Since completion of the Six Sigma Green Belt project, weekly AHT has stayed within control limits and TELUS International remains one of the client’s top performing sites.