CASE STUDY ONE CUSTOMER SERVICE
A B In-house
Yes Teams Bespoke Call centre? Staff? Approach? IT? In-house Yes Teams Package
Comparison Area: Comparative comment: Prompt and effective resolution of
complaints:
(Greater than 90% Less than 90%)
High High Both likely to be similar.
Consistency of delivery in performance and communication:
(High Medium Low)
High High
Considered that centralisation would be more effective in delivering consistency in performance and communication.
Opportunity for information feedback contributing to increased
sales and profit: (Yes No)
Good Good
A centralised team makes rotation and management of staff easier and gives the Advisors variety and wider experience.
Protection and enhancement of BTC‟s reputation:
(Good Poor)
Good Good Both likely to be similar.
Maximise customer relationship opportunities:
(High Med Low)
High Medium
Bespoke software is more likely to be able to integrate with existing in-house and legacy systems enabling a „single view of customer‟ in a much better way. Packages while offering speedy functionality can be harder to integrate.
Cost:
(High Medium Low) Low Low
In both schemes the relative costs are very similar and would not make a significant difference. However, it was assumed that in-house software development resource would be used if a bespoke development were
undertaken. Table 4.3: Comparison under uncertainty
This provides further opportunity to make additional forms of comparison to the crude
assessments that were made in earlier short-listing. The „textual‟ rather than „numeric‟
descriptions convey uncertainty, which is explored in the following section.
4.3.5 Step four: Choosing commitments for action through time
The final step is the formation of proposed commitments to action through time. Table
the analysis, which have been categorised into one of the three uncertainty types, UE
(uncertainties about the working environment), UV (uncertainties about the guiding
values) or UR (uncertainties about related decision fields), along with an indicator to the
salience of this uncertainty to the final decision. The two most salient uncertainties
identified by the actors were the relative difficulty of integrating packaged software as
opposed to bespoke software (?PACKINT), and the absence of customer service call
centre experience (?EXPERT).
UNCERTAINTY AREA LABEL: TYPE: SALIENCE: From „Managing customer relationships‟ comparison:
? That packaged software will be more difficult to integrate than bespoke software.
?PACKINT UE From „Cost‟ comparison:
? The assumption that in-house development resource
will be available to bespoke an application. ?DEVSKILLS UR ? The ability of an outsourced call centre to use
„company specific‟ bespoke software. ?BESPOUT UE ? Availability of suitable office accommodation.
?ACCOM UR ? No real „Customer Service‟ call-centre experience.
?EXPERT UE ? Soft benefits are difficult to quantify.
?SOFTBEN UV ? The uncertainty of the project being worth the
investment in in-house telephony ?TELINVEST UE ? Will a call centre improve customer service
?SERVPLUS UE Table 4.4: Comparing uncertainty areas
Figure 4.7 plots those uncertainties previously identified on an uncertainty graph for the
Customer Service case, which clearly shows a concentration of uncertainties of the UE
type. This diagram would help in determining which uncertainties will be most influential
on the final outcome and which can be deferred for the moment. The two uncertainties that have been classified „high‟ in salience (the absence of any call centre experience, and
the integration off packaged software to existing systems) are therefore likely to have a
significant influence on the final outcome. Indications of the options likely to resolve
those uncertainties are also indicated.
Comparison A:B High Medium Low
UV
UE
UR
? PACKINT ? DEV- SKILLS ? BESPOUT ? ACCOM ? EXPERT ? SOFTBEN Option: Obtain advice on Package availability And integration issues.Option:
Enter negotiations with building managers
Option: Understand demands on in-house Development resources Option: Understand „true‟ need to satisfy VBM requirements Option: Purchase or develop appropriate expertise Option:
Enter into negotiations with call-centre providers
? TEL- INVEST ? SERVPLUS Option::
Detailed cost/benefit analysis
Option:
Detailed analysis of Operating procedures.
Figure 4.7: Uncertainty graph – Salience of uncertainty to this comparison
4.3.5.1 Commitment package
A judgment has to be made as to what decisions can be made now, how much exploration
should take place in order to reduce uncertainty, and what arrangements can be made to
defer decisions to a later date. SCA addresses this issue by rearranging the feasible action schemes so that the more „urgent‟ decision areas can be brought forward to earlier
branches of the decision tree and those that are less urgent can be deferred. An example
of such a rearrangement for this case is shown in Figure 4.8. In practice when considering decision schemes „A‟ or „B‟, there was little choice in three of the four decision areas in
this case, leaving outstanding the decision of how to provide the IT, which had no impact
more „urgent‟ decision, when the decision schemes were compared in the context of the
likely outcomes the actors in this case were prepared for this decision to be deferred.
Decision now Decision later Scheme
(*) Short listed decision schemes
Call centre? Staff? Approach? IT?
In-house Yes Teams Bespoke A (*)
In-house Yes Package B (*)
In-house Yes Manag‟t Bespoke C
In-house Yes Package D
Figure 4.8: A comparison of the feasible action schemes
Strategic Choice Analysis uses the concept of the commitment package as the framework
for determining those actions that have to be taken immediately, those actions that require
further exploration to reduce the salience of areas of uncertainty, and finally the other
arrangements that need to be made to enable actions to be deferred. Table 4.5 sets out the
commitment package framework for this case and is a summary of the commitments and
Table 4.5: Commitment package framework - Customer Service
The actual decision scheme chosen by BTC i.e. (an „in-house‟ call centre, „yes‟ to their
own staff, a „centralised teams‟ approach, and „package‟ systems) was labelled as decision scheme „B‟.
4.4 The alignment of the Actors in the Network (Alignment logic)
4.4.1 Introduction
The third phase of the analysis uses concepts from Actor Network Theory to understand
the alignment of the actors to the proposed approaches. If we plot the process components
for the Customer Service case study on to a process inscription/specialisation framework,
which represents the view as defined by the actors in the case study (Figure 4.9), the
following can be observed.
DECISIONS NOW FUTURE DECISION SPACE Actions Explorations Deferred
Choices
Contingency Planning Call
centre:
Operate an in-house call centre but rent the telephony from a local provider. Consider the purchase of the appropriate telephony. Limit rental contract to one year.
Staff: Boots own staff to operate the call centre.
Outsource to a third party. Approach:
Centralise the existing teams at Head Office.
Consider
alternative location other than Head Office.
IT:
Start by using a package application in order to gain experience and speed up implementation. Consider alternative package and bespoke applications for future use.
Figure 4.9: Customer Service process inscription/specialisation framework
In the Customer Service case the components of the process are concentrated in the „aligned-commodity‟ space, which would suggest that not only are the components
considered standard, routine and typical of those used by many companies i.e. low degree
of specialisation, there is also broad alignment of the actors that they are of this type (in
other words there is considerable agreement).
4.4.2 People – Customer Service advisors
The Customer Service advisors are considered by Boots to have Boots specific know-how hence the positioning of the „people‟ component towards the proprietary sector however;
their tacit knowledge could be made explicit by use of a knowledge base, software, or
good documentation hence promoting movement back towards commodity. More
importantly however when representing the company, especially when dealing with a
complaint, it is considered very important by Boots that a customer should be able to talk
be empathetic, have a sense of ownership and pride in the company, and therefore
represent it more accurately and favourably. This view was the aligned view of the
internal stakeholders in the network.
4.4.3 Customer „Q‟ – Customer contact software
The use of Customer „Q‟ software as the preferred choice reflected the views of the actors
to limit complexity of the final solution, and to reduce cost by adopting industry standard
protocols and approaches as inscribed within the software. This was a conscious and
deliberate decision that acknowledges the likely limitations of integration with other in-
house software, and therefore the ability to undertake all the customer services identified.
It does however reflect their lack of experience to be able to articulate clearly what
functionality might not be provided within such a package.
4.4.4 Telephony
Without exception, the project team were happy to accept that the telephony components
should be industry standard and that they would work within the parameters of what
could be provided at a cost that was affordable. Long term commitments to telephony
vendors or transaction specific investments were actively avoided and future options kept
open.
4.4.5 Accommodation
Most call centres operate in office environments that are typical of any modern office accommodation, and have minimal „special needs‟ over and above those normally
provided. This was also true in this case and standard office accommodation was made
4.5 Summary
This case study describes the approach taken by Boots The Chemists to establish a
customer service call centre, with the objectives of ensuring consistency in the provision
of prompt and effective complaint resolution and information feedback, all of which
protects and enhances the Boots brand. The existing functionally located customer service
units (which are predominately correspondence based) were not providing the service
required, and a call centre approach was the desired outcome although it was not know
how that was to be achieved. The case study examined in turn the detail of the process
under review (process logic); the approach adopted to decision making (decision logic);
and using concepts from Actor Network Theory an understanding of the alignment of the
actors in the network (alignment logic). Activity Records are used to examine each of the
five prime call centre activities, while the decision making process was re-created by
means of SCA. Using the inscription/specialisation framework developed for this research
by the author, the alignment of the actors in the network is captured for each of the call centre process components. The actual choice adopted by BTC was decision scheme „B‟
i.e. (TEAMS – PACKAGE - IN-HOUSE – YES), which was extremely close to the decision scheme labelled „A‟ (TEAMS – BESPOKE – IN-HOUSE – YES), which
emerged as the optimal choice from retrospectively applying SCA. The differences reflect
a deliberate preference for packaged software chosen for reduced complexity, in
preference to a bespoke solution and increased functionality. The process as determined
in the Customer Service case comprises largely commodity components (telephony,
software, and accommodation), and these are also seen to be commodities by the actors in
the network. However, it was determined that the Customer Service Advisors despite
having commodity skills must be Boots employees, a decision that was supported
universally by the actors in the network. It later transpired that this was the only case
where alignment supported a proprietary solution to manning call centres, and
demonstrated the power and influence of an aligned view. The next chapter examines a