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Structured calling leverages leading indictor metrics, drives numerous process improvements and sustains improved results for full year

SITUATION: A Fortune 100 financial services company was utilizing an outsourced telesales channel to sell to companies with revenues less than $10 million per year.

Massini Group had previously made the following process improvements:

1. Implementation of an operations model that assured that the number of agents and number of targets were matched to assure maximum efficiency;
2. Development of a workflow management process, based upon representative sampling of the market universe, designed to allow agents to climb the learning curve quickly and operate effectively over time;
3. Utilization of a metrics system, made possible by the use of representative sampling of the marketing universe, that resulted in leading indicator metrics along 13 key dimensions of performance in the call center – these leading indicator metrics were used in two key ways:
   1. to predict the optimal performance of the team for each block of work as an aide in forecasting and in building business cases for the operation of the call center; 
   2. to identify specific aspects of the tactical operations of the call center that could be improved to further increase the productivity of the channel.

In the first quarter of the use of the Massini Group-developed operating model, sales had improved by 79% and cost per sale had decreased by 42% relative to the previous quarter. By the end of the first quarter, the program was at 123% of year-to-date goal. Considering that the program had not previously made its number, that result got the attention of the management team at the most senior levels.

As a result of initial success, the nature of the challenge changed, from getting it to be successful to keeping it operating successfully over time.

ASSIGNMENT: Now that a functioning operational model with leading indicator metrics had been established, Massini Group was tasked with using the framework it had built to continue to extract peak performance from the channel while reducing the cost of doing business.

The client’s stated objectives for this effort were:

1. Accurate reporting of work in progress, driving...
2. Greater consistency/predictability, at...
3. Lower cost, resulting in...
4. Increased sales.

Massini Group broke its new challenge into the following parts:

1. Utilize 13 key dimensions of performance to identify and quantify inefficiencies;
2. Rank inefficiencies in terms of impact on rate of sales and cost per sale;
3. Modify the process or coach channel participants to improve upon the tactics specifically associated with the offending key dimension.

Massini Group was able to assess inefficiencies by comparing program performance against 100’s of benchmarks Massini Group had compiled over its 12+ years of optimizing similar programs.

KEY STRATEGY: Massini Group broke the on-going program down into uniform blocks of work, using the following approach:

1. Each block of work was constructed with a specific start and end date, a specific set of agents and a specific number of targets, and was constrained to maintain a consistent message, offer and approach over the entire lifecycle of the block of work – Massini Group’s client settled on a block of work definition that consisted of 25% of the total call center working for one month because they believed that this would support ample opportunities to test and innovate while assuring enough stability to keep the agents content and working at their best – transitions between blocks of work were aligned at the first of each month to allow call center managers to make uniform reporting and build "training days" as needed;

2. Representative sampling was employed for targeting to assure that comparison of alternative approaches would be meaningful – in this way, each block of work target set was comprised of the same number of large companies and small companies, by industry category and with a certain number of new and recycled records;

3. The resulting environment allowed that each calendar year was comprised of 48 blocks of work, or opportunities to evaluate alternative process constructs or campaign – Massini Group organized a campaign calendar to drive meaningful tests with proper controls in all cases.

ENGINEERED PROCESSES: Massini Group had previously used a formalized process analysis, based on Massini Group’s Dialogue Strategy^SM , to identify a number of performance-robbing process deficiencies, including:

• 36% of agent time was spent deciding who to call as opposed to actually making calls;
• 42% of the targets received little or no attention from the program;
• 60% of agent calling time was spent on targets that never did buy;
• 29% of agent calling time was spent on targets for which the final outcome was never known.

Prior to the efforts described in this paper, Massini Group had made a number of process improvements that eliminated obvious structural challenges in the program, including assuring:

1. 100% of agent calling time was spent on calling instead of deciding who to call;
2. 100% of targets received a uniform treatment as opposed to overweighting some and leaving others with no attention;
3. Agent time spent on targets that would not buy was controlled and mitigated by a specific dispositioning protocol;
4. 100% of targets received a disposition at the end of each block of work allowing a very specific follow-up protocol to be applied when all of the previously untouched records were exhausted.

Massini Group began the second stage of process improvements by building initial benchmarks based upon corrected implementation of the original campaigns. From this initial benchmark, Massini Group was able to identify a number of key dimensions that were not up to expectations, including that agents were spending a disproportionate amount of calling time getting to the point where they could reach a decision-maker – in fact, this was a major remaining component of time spent on targets that would not buy.

This issue had two major effects on the program – higher than expected baseline cost per sale, and downward pressure on agent job satisfaction that contributed to higher than expected agent attrition.

Massini Group proposed reorganizing the process so that the first steps in the effort would be addressed by low-cost, high-volume telemarketing agents instead of the high-end, lower volume telesales agents tasked with closing the deal. Massini Group used its own benchmark data to predict the cost savings in the process based upon 100’s of previous programs.

Massini Group calculated that a low-cost, high-volume telemarketer would operate at 50% higher dials per hour and at 46% lower cost per hour, thereby yielding the same results at 2.8X lower cost.

At the direction of the client, Massini Group built a head-to-head test using representative samples as the foundation. The actual result was that the low-end, high-volume telemarketing agents produced the same intermediate result as the high-end telesales agents at 2.7X lower cost, within 5% of Massini Group’s predicted outcome.

Using the same basic approach, Massini Group also was able to support decision-making relative to four other program structure changes over the subsequent six months.

RESULTS: A structural modification to the telesales operations resulted in producing the same results as the incumbent process at 2.7X less cost. Additionally, the alignment of tasks with the skill sets of the highly skilled telesales agents produced a significantly higher job satisfaction for the program as a whole.

Massini Group utilized a structured calling method, based upon blocks of work, to aide in testing alternative approaches in a methodical fashion. Overall, this method supported five major process improvements over a six month span.

Over the same span of time, the program began to exhaust the target set to which it was assigned, necessitating that it begin recycling contacts that had previously not been reached or had expressed no interest. Massini Group’s initial benchmark had shown that recycled contacts were 44% as productive as contacts that had not yet been addressed.

Even though the program was faced with considerable downward productivity pressures based upon exhausting the target set, Massini Group was able to further improve productivity levels for the program over the full year. As of this writing, cost per sale for the program has been maintained at 14% lower than the best results in the early stages of the effort.

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