Telecommunications & Global Solutions
Woodside has worked numerous telecom Six Sigma projects, from marketing to maintenance, from call centers to customer retention. In addition, we have worked with a large Global Solutions client to help them recover millions of dollars in lost profits, and optimize their sales and project management value streams.
Hold Time (Average Handle Time) Reduction
Pre-Project Situation
Hold time in a business unit’s call centers represented about 11% of the total Average Handle Time (AHT).
Some hold time was necessary, or business-value-added (“Good” hold time); some was non-value-added.
Project Highlights
Reasons for “bad” holds were studied; weak areas in the knowledge base were improved.
New policies regarding when holds are and are not acceptable were implemented by the Six Sigma Team.
Results
AHT dropped from 560 seconds per call to than 535.
Change resulted in documented savings over $1,450,000 per year.
Reduce RMA-Related Calls
Pre-Project Situation
Approximately 20% of replacement orders resulted in support calls due to failed RMAs.
This situation led to created customer dissatisfaction, increased calls into call centers, back office rework, non-returned equipment, 3rd party shipping problems, and executive escalations.
The Project Goal was to reduce RMA inquiry calls from 20% to less than 7%.
Project Highlights
Six Sigma DMAIC Team discovered that wrong address issues were the primary cause of the problem
Vendor relationships and processes were changed to make it easier for customers to handle returns
Third-party tracking and shipping were instituted.
Results
Defect rate dropped from over 20% to less than 8%.
Change resulted in documented savings over $2,400,000 per year
Reversing Margin Erosions
Pre-Project Situation
Provider of high-tech solutions (WAN/LAN, software, etc.) experiencing margin erosions, approaching becoming unprofitable.
Accounting practices tended to camouflage forecast/actual variances until it was too late to recover.
Investigation of and reaction to large margin erosions after the fact was very costly, and led to high turnover for project managers
Project Highlights
Initial look at project data revealed that margin erosions had shifted upward dramatically following a change in sales compensation policy, resulting in the sales force selling beyond capacity and available technology.
Six Sigma Black Belt's statistical analysis of project data revealed that over 95 percent of causative factors could be traced back to irregularities in statements of work.
Sales compensation was shifted to the old system, sales teams re-configured with engineers and project managrs, and the sales force retrained in company offerings.
Statement of work process was streamlined and rewritten based on results of analysis.
Results
First few projects reported mid-cycle variances of less than 2.5 % (down from as much as 26%).
Documented margins recovered: over $56,000,000.00 per year.