A benchmarking study by the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) shows call centers to be valuable tools for improving and maintaining customer satisfaction. The 57 percent of best-practice companies that use call centers do so as tools for comprehensive data mining. Long gone are the days of using call centers to herd incoming inquiries; they have since become real-time customer feedback systems.

In the past, when call centers were considered little more than automated operators, calls were monitored to ensure the quality of the information given the customer and the quality of its delivery. The new focus in call center monitoring is focused on the calling customer instead of the employee handling the inquiry. Questions and concerns are often logged and forwarded to appropriate departments within the company.

The APQC's benchmarking study highlights several companies, including BellSouth, Chase Manhattan, Lucent Technologies, Xerox and the U.S. Postal Service. Those with very successful programs shared several characteristics.

"They were excellent at not only giving information to other departments, but also actually asking for a commitment from other departments to change things or make things better," explains Peggy Newton, the study's project manager. "We really saw the people at Eddie Bauer, for example, acting like customer advocates. They would monitor if a customer's needs or desires weren't going to be fulfilled and would then step in and take action to keep the customer from being let down." Such monitoring marks a change in call center protocol.

"With this new emphasis in data mining," says Newton, "people in the call center must work very closely with their entire organization to fit that one part of the picture into a comprehensive effort to keep customers loyal.

"We have found that the innovative companies use customer listening posts where the call center has become more than just a place where orders are taken or customers are handled. It's really becoming a repository of what the customers believe, think and how they're feeling. Many companies are starting to take their reps and use them as conduits for bringing all this information into the corporation."

For this study, the APQC used their four-phase methodology that focuses on planning, collecting data, analyzing, and adapting and improving. More information related to call centers is available at www.isc.com/html/resources.html , which also links to Call Center magazine.

Satisfaction with Service Takes a Dip

Increased consumer discontent with industries in the transportation, communication and service sectors has caused the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to drop. The four-year-old ACSI, a joint project between the University of Michigan and the American Society for Quality that ranks satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 100, decreased half a percentage point with the most current index ratings. The latest report, released May 17, 1999, reflected a decline that began five years ago. The current score of 72.1 slipped from a rating of 72.6, where it had been just three months ago. The key factor in this drop was the plummeting satisfaction ratings of a few key industries.

Among the hardest hit was the motion picture industry, which dropped from a rating of 76 to 71 in the past year. "That reflects on what the movie industry put out there in the last six months," explains Jack West, volunteer program manager of ACSI. "And what the customers are saying is, they're not very pleased with that."

 The telecommunication industry's rating fell a full point from the previous year, to 73. "One  of the things we're looking at is a value-to-cost ratio," clarifies West. "What we're seeing is that the consolidations within the industry have enabled them to raise prices without increasing perceived value to the customer. And you would get what you'd expect in that regard: a decline in customer satisfaction.

"What we are seeing is a continued deterioration. There's been a relatively steady decline in the five years since the index has been in existence." Indeed, the overall ACSI rating has dropped from 74.5 in October 1994 to 72.1 this quarter.

Companies should seek to learn from the latest troubling figures, warns West. "We're seeing a continued demonstration that the service industries haven't learned the bitter lessons that the production industries did in the late '80s and early '90s," he notes. "And if they don't, competition is sure to overwhelm them."

NIST Program Helps Small Businesses with Y2K

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program of the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, provides Y2K action planning, assessment and help with remediation for small businesses.  In cooperation with the U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, MEP has developed a Y2K "Jumpstart Kit."

The Y2K "Jumpstart Kit" can be downloaded for free at y2khelp.nist.gov, or get one by calling (800) 637-4634. In addition, NIST's Y2K small business help center is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time, and can be reached at (800) 925-7557 or by e-mail at y2khelp@nist.gov .

The new kit from MEP aids small businesses in the diagnosis of Year 2000 embedded processes, their conversion and remedy, as well as contingency planning. NIST's MEP is a nationwide network of manufacturing extension centers that provide a wide array of business and technical assistance to smaller manufacturers in all 50 states. Through MEP, manufacturers have access to more than 2,000 advisers, who help firms make changes that lead to greater productivity, increased profits and enhanced global competitiveness.

New Software Strengthens Semiconductor Industry

Money alone can't buy perfection in a semiconductor factory, but innovative software is helping the industry get a lot closer to it.

The new technology, developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) of Austin, Texas, and Honeywell Inc., of Minneapolis, in cooperation with the industry consortium SEMATECH, overcomes a long-standing control problem by detecting and classifying process faults immediately and adapting process "recipes" as necessary from one run to the next. In software lingo, the technology is called an advanced process control (APC) framework, which controls various types of manufacturing execution systems, process control tools and wafer fabrication equipment.

The benefits include increased process consistency and yield. The joint venture, which was co-funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology Program, enabled AMD to achieve an 83-percent reduction in photolithography rework and a 48-percent reduction in variability in microprocessor speed, among other advances. The company was able to bring faster microprocessors to market sooner than otherwise would have been possible, substantially increasing revenues.

Since the ATP project ended in mid-1998, the APC technology has been commercialized by ObjectSpace Fab Solutions of Austin, a project subcontractor. The new framework is also in the process of becoming an industry standard.

Car Dealership

Already a mainstay of quality assurance at automotive OEMs, ISO 9000 is beginning to trickle down to the dealership level. ISO 9002 registration has helped Northtown Ford raise customer satisfaction and loyalty by 20 percent. Service sales also increased by one-third after the Toronto, Ontario, dealership's certification. In March 1999, three-quarters of the customers who visited Northtown responded that they would "definitely recommend" Northtown to others, a 55-percent increase over the year prior to ISO 9000 registration. With more and more automobile dealerships considering ISO 9000 registration, these figures suggest that the process benefits both the customer and dealer.

"Northtown is definitely on the cutting edge," says Bill Dobranski, vice-president of Deloitte & Touche Quality Registrar Inc., Northtown's registrar. "Of the 3,500 dealerships in Canada, about 28 have been certified to date. Northtown is also one of the first Ford dealerships to go through the process."

The ISO 9000 revolution, though it is coming to all dealerships, has been more quickly adopted in Canada than in the United States. "The OEMs in the United States are still focused on the parts and manufacturing industries," explains Dobranski. "Eventually you'll see more focus on ISO 9000 in the U.S. dealerships, where customer contact occurs."

ISO 9000 registration at the dealership level standardized operation systems through the company. "The automotive industry has been a driving force in the popularity of ISO 9000 in North America," Dobranski clarifies. "Chrysler in Canada has mandated that the top 200 dealerships in Canada become certified. The focus in all these dealerships is on the customer and based on continuous improvement."

Scott Hadley, general manager of Northtown Ford, explains why his dealership was interested in ISO 9000 registration: "We wanted to improve our internal processes. We wanted to standardize the processes we have across the dealership so that all employees understood what they are and how they work. ISO [9000] helped us do that. We're doing this to improve our business, not just to hang a banner in the show room.

"The OEMs required suppliers to do it, but why weren't the dealerships being made to register ISO 9000? We saw that it was going to be coming down the pipes eventually, so we just wanted to be on the leading edge of it.

"ISO 9000 probably benefits our service more than new car sales. It was developed for manufacturing standards, and our service department is more closely tied to manufacturing processes. There's equipment calibration, technical  training,  service complaints that ISO 9000 helps us with. So, from the our perspective, it seems to be best geared to service improvements."

QuEST Forum Names TL 9000 Administrator

The QuEST Forum has selected the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) to administer the TL 9000 set of quality system requirements and metrics for the telecommunications industry. The TL 9000 metrics, based on industrywide benchmarked statistics, will become the basis for gauging compliance to TL 9000.

The QuEST Forum, comprising the nation's leading telecommunications services providers and their suppliers, developed the quality system requirements. The QuEST Forum seeks to develop a consistent set of quality system requirements for hardware, software and services, plus leading-edge performance measurement tools.

To receive TL 9000 registration, Forum member companies must provide data regarding the quality of their products in the field to the Forum metric administrator. The metrics data measure various attributes of quality, such as system failures, billing errors and delivery problems. In addition to providing a metrics repository system (MRS), the university will also perform statistical analysis.

"The university was a natural fit for  what the QuEST Forum needed," says Dr. Douglas Harris, associate dean of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer  Science at UTD. "We can provide independent ideas and critical research support that is needed to identify fundamental causes of poor quality in the industry."

UTD will perform root-cause analysis in all hardware, software and service     areas. Because of the highly confidential nature of this information, the university has established complex and proven methods to ensure the security of the data. "The findings will likely never be released to the public with specific company names," notes Chris Lochemes, news bureau administrator for the American Society for Quality.

The QuEST Forum, administered by the ASQ, is a unique partnership of telecommunications companies founded to foster continued improvements in the quality and reliability of telecommunications service. For more information, see the QuEST Forum Web site at www.questforum.org .