Software-based measurement of client behaviour patterns

NetCologne uses InVision Software technology to improve their customer care service

Problem description

In a company reorganisation process that took place at the beginning of 2003 the seven NetCologne shops were assigned to the private clients unit. This unit, composed of a call centre and a back office division, has taken care since 1998 of a growing number of clients.
In order to obtain first-hand knowledge of customer flow patterns, and to adapt its service to customer demand, NetCologne decided to connect its outlets to the workforce management system from InVision. The Staff Planning System (SPS) has been running non-stop in their call centre since April 2000, and its main function has been the scheduling of the company’s staff. The focus in the outlets is slightly different, as they are more interested in long-term monitoring. Through the measurement and analysis of direct customer contacts the efficiency of the sales outlets and the quality of the service can be greatly improved. As an add-on to the requirements modules and capacity planning modules, the software includes a monitoring tool that displays the collected phone call data in real time. The task the company handed over to InVision was the creation of a user-friendly application that not only specified the duration of the client call, but also registered the type of call that had been made, and then imported it into the Staff Planning System.

Project description

The resulting solution was an application called Shop First Screen. It was developed at InVision using the so-called Development Toolkit, which is a tool that allows your inhouse programmers or IT-savvy employees to extend the Staff Planning System, adapting it to your own needs. Shop First Screen was installed locally on all outlet PCs and was connected to the InVision Enterprise Server over TCP/IP. The Staff Planning System can directly access the server and so allows real-time monitoring of the outlets.

A month after the beginning of the project, InVision was ready to ship the first version of Shop First Screen. A test phase followed, together with some tweaks to adapt the application to the existing work environment and to the Staff Planning System. Additionally, the user interface and the colour combination was improved to make the program more user-friendly. In close collaboration with the outlet employees, the interlocution categories were established, of which three became the main categories: “new contracts”, “modification of the connection mode” and “service”. The total number of categories are now 21, which allows you to determine with the utmost precision what the motivation for the visit was. For a second test phase out in the real world Shop First Screen was set up in all NetCologne outlets. After an initial skill adaptation training the employees were set out to use the application in their daily client interaction. Because of the simplicity of use, the application quickly became widely accepted by the employees. Since the 1st of July 2003 Shop First Screen is running in all seven NetCologne sales outlets.

The way it works

Shop First Screen works like a stop watch: you press a button when the user comes, then you press it again when he leaves, this way the duration of the query is registered. Once he is gone, the employee enters the motivation for the client’s visit, which he chooses from a drop-down menu. Only after this input has been entered does the button for ending the entry appear, so as to avoid entries with no specified motivation or overwriting an entry with new data. The type and duration of the client contact will then go directly into a database located on the InVision Enterprise Server. Using the OnlineCockpit module this data can then be displayed and evaluated. At the time this case study was being written it was an employee of the private clients department at the Maarweg street in Cologne the person in charge of the outlet monitoring.

The evaluation of the client flow patterns can be done in two different modes. In one of the modes you can view the volume of visits for one, various or all outlets, and also view the number and duration of the client contacts. The other display mode allows you to select individual categories and query types from a single outlet or for all of them. This way you be able to find out why a client has chosen this outlet and not another, and adapt your service correspondingly. Between 950 and 1000 people a week pay a visit to one of the outlets. At the beginning of the week the number is higher than towards the end, and this is something that can be taken into account when scheduling, so that enough staff are deployed.

Results

InVision’s Shop First Screen allows the planner to view the course of the client visits and see how they are distributed across the NetCologne outlets. The evaluation via the OnlineCockpit has increased the efficiency of the outlets after only two months. “The data import in real time has allowed the person in charge of monitoring to have an overview of the client flow right at the moment it is happening and this way to be able to react in time” says Dirk Steinfeldt, capacity planner for the private clients unit. If in one outlet there is suddenly more visits than expected, the information is known in time to contract external staff. If on the other hand there appears to be an ebb in the client flow, some of the employees might be able to leave earlier and then make up these hours on a day with more clients. The outlet staff is better prepared fir the client queries, as the needs become more transparent. “Because we have a better knowledge of the client’s needs, we can react client-friendlier”, explains Steinfeldt.