(REDACTED) STRATEGIC

PLAN

Erick White

A Strategic Plan for One Year Improvement

Str

Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................ 2
Mission Statement, Objectives, and Goals..................................................................3
Mission Statement................................................................................................... 3
Goals....................................................................................................................... 3
Objectives............................................................................................................... 4
Organizational Chart................................................................................................... 5
Economic Structure.................................................................................................... 6
Strategic Plan............................................................................................................. 6
References.................................................................................................................. 9

Introduction
REDACTED, Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based software and
services for technology support. Our premium technology support
programs help leading brands create new revenue streams and
deepen customer relationships. Our REDACTED cloud - based
software enables companies to resolve connected technology issues
quickly, boost their support productivity, and dramatically improve
their customer experience. REDACTED is the choice of leading
communications providers including 3 of the top 5 cable companies
in North America, top retailers, and other leading brands in software
and connected technology.
We enable our partners to create new revenue streams and deepen
customer relationships by offering comprehensive technology service
programs for consumers and small businesses. Our programs are
offered via channel partners, which include leading communication
providers, retailers, technology companies and others. (REDACTED,
2014)

Mission Statement, Objectives, and Goals

Mission Statement
For mid and large size technology products or services companies who are looking
to solve complex technical problems, REDACTED provides the technology and
people for effortless problem resolution, resulting in increased issue resolution rate,
greater agent productivity, and a fantastic customer experience. We are able to
make this claim because of the 20,000+ live technical support interactions that we
do each day.

Goals
In order to provide a fantastic customer experience, we must be able to maintain
efficient work processes and retain the most qualified agents. If customers
experience long wait times or ineffective agents, (they) will be unhappyand
may start to look for other solutions (McCormick, 2015). In fact, in a recent survey,
89 percent of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor
customer experience (Oracle Corporation, 2012). In the same survey, 86% of
respondents said they would actually pay more for better customer service.
Because of this, a case can be made that a superior customer experience can lead
to increased revenue.
Increasing overall morale is also of utmost importance to the contact center. Over
the past 9 months there has been a noticeable decrease in morale among not only
front line agents but also among supervisors as well. This is important because as a
company that strives to be a market leader in customer service, it is essential that
we support our agents by supplying them with all the tools necessary to be able to
deliver a world class service.

Another goal of this strategic plan is improved productivity and efficiency. One of
the key goals of the company for the year of 2015 is to improve service delivery
efficiency (REDACTED, 2015). After six consecutive quarters of profits, REDACTED
experienced losses for the year of 2014. Increased productivity and efficiency will
lead to factors that will improve agent morale and ultimately customer satisfaction
which will be covered later in the plan.

Objectives
Our specific objectives for these goals are:

Improve efficiency by increasing first call resolution

Improve Productivity by reducing lost hours
Improve morale by improving internal communication
Increase pay to improve morale and retain the best workers
Improve Productivity by maintaining efficient work processes

Organizational Chart

(REDACTED, 2014)

Economic Structure
REDACTED is a medium sized company with approximately 1,900 employees. It is a
publically traded company on the NASDAQ stock market with the ticker name
REDACTED. From April of 2013 through April of 2015 REDACTED has more than
doubled in size because of the growth brought on by new service offerings from its
largest partner. REDACTED consists two main branches: turnkey technology support
programs for partners who in turn resell those services to their customers and cloud
based software manufacturer that markets to firms for use in their own contact
centers and help desks.
2014 saw REDACTED post a loss of $3,483,000 (REDACTED, 2015). This loss
occurred primarily because of our largest partner ending the Signature Support
program which was responsible for a large part of the previous years revenue. 2014
also saw a significant increase in investment in REDACTEDs proprietary software
which is headed by the REDACTED Software as a Solution (SaaS) platform.
REDACTED has committed to the continual investment in this platform as it is key to
our growth strategy for the future. Because of the level of investment REDACTED
has committed to the REDACTED platform over the coming months and years, we
expect losses in the future (REDACTED, 2015).

Strategic Plan
Before we begin to discuss the strategic plan we must acknowledge that the
objectives of the plan are closely linked. An example of this is shown in the
relationship between increasing pay and reducing lost hours. In order to increase

the salaries of our contact center agents we must first dramatically increase our
efficiency and productivity. While conducting an audit of Contact Center operations,
7,800 lost hours over each of the previous two months were uncovered. These lost
hours are time not logged into the phone system while being paid. This projects to a
yearly loss of $1,123,200. The audit also identified a 4.5% loss in productivity. This
is important because the contract for our largest partner is based on Productive
Hours. A Productive Hour is defined as the total number of hours spent in talk
time plus hold time plus available time plus wrap up time, chat time and outbound
time. The partner pays REDACTED a certain amount for all logged productive time.
If an agent is in an unproductive phone status, the partner does not pay for that
time. This unproductive time projects to another $1,544,400 lost per year. Together
this translates to $.92 per hour per agent. This combined with the money already
allotted for performance bonuses would allow for a bonus program that would affect
950 of approximately 1400 agents and would average an increase of $1.48 per hour
per agent affected.
In order to do this, each supervisor must compare clock in and clock out times in
ADP, a cloud based payroll service, and time logged in the Avaya phone system.
Among its many offerings, Avaya provides a full package call center solution that
includes IVR that gives customers options on how they want their calls routed and
automatic call distribution (ACD) which distributes calls to agents with particular
skills (Adams, 2015). The Avaya phone system software also comes with Call
Management System (CMS) Supervisor. Among other things, CMS Supervisors
provides data that shows every status of every agent logged into the Avaya system
in a company. All agent log in and log out times as well as other pertinent
information will be imported from CMS Supervisor into a Microsoft Excel workbook

located on a company SharePoint page. This workbook will also contain ADP times
imported from ADP daily reports. This Productivity workbook will be updated daily
by system administrators, the Senior Operations Manager, or someone designated
by the Senior Operations Manager.
The bonus program would also have to be completely revamped. Currently, bonuses
are awarded to the top 25% of contact center technicians. This structure pits agents
against each other and does not foster the type of collaborative culture necessary
to propel REDACTED to the forefront of the call center industry. A better program
would be one based on reaching benchmarks in high priority metrics or key
performance indicators. This would allow agents to work together and share best
practices without the threat that helping to improve a team member will cause the
agent to lose bonus money.
In order to implement this, procedures must be put in place to identify lost and
unproductive time both daily and in real time. Increasing productivity in real time
will be accomplished by a combination of Command Center analysts and
supervisors utilizing the real time monitoring software supplied by the phone
system, Avaya Call Management System (CMS). With this software, supervisors are
able to see what phone state each of his/her agents are in at all times. The software
can be configured to bring attention to agents in non-productive statuses longer
than allowable limits. For instance, if an agent is in After Call Work (a status used to
complete ticketing activities that will not allow other calls to come in to the agent)
for longer than 60 seconds, the time displayed will change to red. This allows the
agents supervisor and/or Command Center Analysts to identify the offending agent
and get the agent moved back to a productive status.

According to the SQM Group, for the average call center, a 1% improvement in First
Call Resolution (a measure of the number of calls resolved the first time a customer
calls divided by the number of calls over a given period) produces an annual
savings of $256,000 (Desmarais, 2015). To achieve an improvement in our First Call
Resolution (FCR), work processes need to be improved. In order to improve work
processes for the call center agents, the Interactive Troubleshooting Guides must be
retooled. The current ITGs were developed by a team of process specialist but had
no input from actual contact center agents. This has resulted in many ITGs that are
mostly useless. There are many tools available to create guided workflows.
However, the most important factor is the inclusion of a team of highly proficient
agents in the workflow creation process. Because these revamped workflows will be
more effective and reduce confusion, morale will also increase. It has been stated
that Nothing brings down morale like confusion (Morgan, 2015).
Based on a time study conducted between October 26, 2014 through November 22,
2014 and January 25, 2015 through February 21, 2015 it was found that the time
spent by supervisors correcting and approving time cards increased by 55%. This is
largely due to the change in phone systems and the resulting change in the phone
system reporting tools. Because of this and large increases in other administrative
tasks, agent call monitoring has decreased by 75% over the previous three months.
This has led to a reduction in Quality Assessment scores. Reducing redundancies
and eliminating busy work will allow an increased number of calls to be monitored
which will lead to higher quality assessment scores and an overall better customer
experience.

References
Adams, E. (2015, March 5). Automatic Call Distributor. Retrieved from Voip-Info.org:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Automatic+Call+Distributor
Desmarais, M. (2015). Top 10 Call Center Best Practices for Improving FCR.
Retrieved from SQMGroup.com: http://www.sqmgroup.com/top-10-call-centerbest-practices
McCormick, M. (2015). How to Improve Customer Service in a Call Center. Retrieved
from Chron.com: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/improve-customer-servicecall-center-1130.html
Morgan, L. (2015). Causes of Low Employee Morale. Retrieved from Chron:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/causes-low-employee-morale-43267.html
Oracle Corporation. (2012). 2011 Customer Experience Impact Report: Getting to
the Heart of the Consumer and Brand Relationship. Retrieved from
Oracle.com: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/cust-exp-impactreport-epss-1560493.pdf
REDACTED. (2014). About Us. Retrieved from REDACTED:
http://corp.REDACTED.com/company/about-us/
REDACTED. (2014). Organizational Chart. Retrieved from Internal company
document.
REDACTED. (2015, March 6). Securities and Exchange Commission Edgar Fiing:
REDACTED, Form 10 - K. Retrieved from REDACTED:
http://filings.irdirect.net/data/1104855/000114036115010752/form10k.pdf