Managers need to make informed decisions. Using data, or research, to analyze your business is an important part of making decisions and evaluating business performance. An IT manager analyzes service levels, a marketing manager tries to predict results of planned campaigns, and virtually any business manager needs data to identify relationships between relevant variables. Your skill in business research to analyze data and drive decision-making helps you to add confidence despite uncertainty, draw conclusions about organizational performance, and add value to your organization. 

Scenario

As the manager of a customer service call center, you are evaluating the quality of the call center’s operations. One of the most important metrics in a call center is time in queue (TiQ), the time a customer waits before a customer service representative (CSR) comes on the line to help. To provide the best customer experience, you want your customers’ wait to be less than the 2.5-minute (150 seconds) industry standard. You know that when they wait for too long, customers are more likely to have a negative experience or hang up before being helped.

Another metric you measure in the call center is the handle time, or service time (ST), the amount of time a CSR spends servicing the customer. Last month’s average ST was approximately 3.5 minutes (210 seconds). Your industry experience tells you that average ST can be influenced by a CSR’s level of training, amount of experience, and whether the CSR can provide resolution to the issue quickly. Recently, you tested a strategy to have callers identify the type of issue they are calling about and then route calls to CSRs with expertise in that issue. 

The new protocol (PE) is being tested side-by-side with the current protocol (PT) to see if ST is improved with this strategy. The regional director was hesitant to test the PE protocol for two weeks, already concerned about the customer experience, but agreed to the test. After the first few days, the regional director is anxious to know the results and asks you to send a report. You ask the user experience (UX) team to pull a report for the TiQ and ST for both protocols to analyze. 

Preparation

Review the call time analysis provided by the UX team. You may also review the call time data in Excel, if desired.  

Assessment Deliverable

Write a 350- to 700-word email, or memo, about the PE and PT test results after the first few days. Address the following in your email:

• Analyze the impact the new protocol (PE) has had on time in queue and service time.
• Determine if the PE protocol should be implemented widely in the call center with what you know so far.
• Identify what additional data and analyses would be helpful to determine if the PE protocol is working.
• Explain what is likely to happen to TiQ and ST if the PT protocol is kept.
• Explain how a sudden increase of 20% more calls might influence TiQ and ST. 
• Justify whether the data is sufficient to determine if the PE test is successful. 
• Suggest additional metrics and supporting data needed to determine the performance of the call center’s operations.

Format references according to APA guidelines.