Improving Customer Case Resolution Time in Telecom Vendor Technical Support Centers
Singh, Jeevan (2014)
Singh, Jeevan
Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu
2014
All rights reserved
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201405208726
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201405208726
Tiivistelmä
This Thesis investigates how to improve the customer case resolution time in technical support centres (TACs) of a telecom vendor. The case company is a major telecom vendor which manufactures data, optical, access and metro Ethernet products. The case company has TACs across the globe and one of its global TACs is based in Finland. Presently, the case company has placed a special focus on customer support and resolving customer cases faster and with higher quality in TACs.
This study concentrates on the customer support function of the case company. From this point of view, it examines the case company’s current state and service practices, reflecting on the elements of process improvement such as business process management (BPM), ITIL and Lean six-sigma. These three perspectives create the basis for the conceptual framework of this study.
This study is an in-depth single case study which utilizes action research to identify the business problem, provide solution, test it and measure the success of the suggested solution in the companywide pilot. The primary data for this study comprises the case company performance reports, key employee’s interviews and value stream mapping done according with the Lean Six-Sigma principles applied in the case company. A detail literature re-views of relevant best practice in the area of process management and service improvement was done before the conceptual framework and then the solution were developed.
To produce the solution, the study identifies key bottlenecks for a faster case resolution time, and points especially to one critical point which is the rate of rejection. Rate of rejection can be described as the number of customer cases rejected internally due to the information received in in-accurate or in-complete manner, or in a form that cannot be used.
The solution that the study proposes is a technical escalation template to be used for case escalation in across all the case company TACs. The technical communication with the new case escalation template was tested with a pilot for four weeks in several TACs, and positive qualitative feedback was gathered to further improve the template. Finally, the study proposed a set of recommendation on how to implement it in the case organisation.
This study concentrates on the customer support function of the case company. From this point of view, it examines the case company’s current state and service practices, reflecting on the elements of process improvement such as business process management (BPM), ITIL and Lean six-sigma. These three perspectives create the basis for the conceptual framework of this study.
This study is an in-depth single case study which utilizes action research to identify the business problem, provide solution, test it and measure the success of the suggested solution in the companywide pilot. The primary data for this study comprises the case company performance reports, key employee’s interviews and value stream mapping done according with the Lean Six-Sigma principles applied in the case company. A detail literature re-views of relevant best practice in the area of process management and service improvement was done before the conceptual framework and then the solution were developed.
To produce the solution, the study identifies key bottlenecks for a faster case resolution time, and points especially to one critical point which is the rate of rejection. Rate of rejection can be described as the number of customer cases rejected internally due to the information received in in-accurate or in-complete manner, or in a form that cannot be used.
The solution that the study proposes is a technical escalation template to be used for case escalation in across all the case company TACs. The technical communication with the new case escalation template was tested with a pilot for four weeks in several TACs, and positive qualitative feedback was gathered to further improve the template. Finally, the study proposed a set of recommendation on how to implement it in the case organisation.