OverviewLoaves and Fishes is a charity which provides seven days of emergency food

supplies to a household once every thirty days once their financial resources fall below a minimum level. Their clients must be referred by an agency. These agencies telephone a call center number at Loaves and Fishes to schedule a pick-up for the client from a food pantry. The call center is staffed by up to three volunteers from a limited pool of about twenty-five between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM Monday through Friday who verify client information, enter the referral in an online system, and schedule a food pantry visit for the client. The call volume can vary by day and by hour. One volunteer is scheduled from 9:00 AM until noon. Up to two additional ones may be scheduled from 10:00 AM until 1:00 PM. The afternoon shift is from 1:00 PM until 4:00 PM. Under-scheduling of volunteers results in paid staff interrupting regular duties to answer calls. Over-scheduling results in volunteers being inactive for much of their shift and their being asked to be present for more shifts. The purpose of this project is to determine ways to make call center volunteer scheduling more efficient.

Project:Project InformationLeader:Master Black Belt:Project Start:Project End:Cost of Poor Quality:

Process Importance

Process ProblemTeam MembersExecutive Sponsors:

Project Champion:Subject Matter Experts:

Project Scope:Process Start Point:

Process Stop Point:

Other Boundaries:

Project Goals

Process Measurements

Steve Nesbit

February 2, 2011

April 19, 2011

Intangible due to Volunteer Staffing

Agency telephones Call Center to registerClient for food aid.

Call Center Volunteer either registers Client and refers to pantry or rejects.

Historical daily telephone call count data will be analyzed to predict those days and shifts during a month when higher than average telephone call and agency referrals can be Expected.

Align daily scheduling of call center volunteers to better meet daily resource needs and minimize missed calls.

Current volunteer staffing scheduling process does not take into consideration the daily variances in the number of anticipated referral calls by agencies to the call center as reflected in telephone statistics.

Current volunteer staffing scheduling process sometimes underutilizes volunteers and distracts permanent staff from regular duties.

Optimize Loaves and Fishes Call Center Volunteer Staffing

Agency client must meet defined criteria And pantries have client count limits.

Project CharterDefine

Project:Project Milestones:

Financial:

Optimize Loaves and Fishes Call Center Volunteer Staffing

Milestone: Date:

Meet Initially with Executive Sponsors 02/02/2011

Contact Telecom Company Representatives 02/03/2011

Observe Call Center Volunteer Activities 02/04/2011 – 02/11/2011

Discuss Measurement Options with Subject Matter Experts 02/04/2011 –02/11/2011

Obtain Measurement Data 03/03/2011 –04/01/2011

Revenue Enhancement: $

Expense Reduction: $

Loss Avoidance: $

Costs: $

Soft Savings: Improve volunteer, agency, and staff satisfaction

Project CharterDefine

Agencies Inputs Process Outputs Clients

Governmental Agencies Non-governmental

Agencies Churches Other Organizations

Name, Address, and SSN of Client Head of

Household Qualification Information: Number of

Days since last server and Financial Assets Number of Other Client Household Members Names, Ages, and SSNs of Other Household

Members

Arrive at Food Pantry as

scheduled Pick up Food Answer Surveys Pantry notifies Loaves and

Fishes whether Client arrived

as scheduled.

Notification to Client of

Acceptance or Rejection If accepted, Pantry Name

and Time to Client If accepted, Update Pantry

with Client and Household

Information and Time Updated Referral System

Step 1:Call Center volunteer takes call from agent

Step 2:Call Center volunteer takes HOH information and verifies eligibility

Step 3: If qualified, referral system updated with household information

Step 4:Food Pantry location and time entered in referral system

Step 5:Client and Food Pantry notified of Client Pickup Time

SIPOCDefine

• Agent gathers Client Information and calls•Windstream Communications gathers call data

• Call Center volunteer answers call and enters Information collected byAgent about Client into referral system

• Client schedules for eachday’s pickups are sent to Each Food Pantry

Start

Potential Client

needing food

contacts agency

Agent reviews and

collects client information

Qualified?

Agent telephones Loaves and Fishes Call

Center

Call Center Volunteer reviews client

information

Qualified?

Call Center Volunteer identifies

Pantry and schedules Client for

visit

Client goes to Pantry and picks up Food

EndClient informed

not qualified

Yes

No

No

Yes

Process MapDefine

The purpose of the data collection is to identify efficiency opportunities for improvements to Loaves and Fishes CallCenter volunteer staffing.

The call data for each call provided by Windstream has hour, shift, and day of week added after being copied to aid in analysis.

All incoming and outgoing calls are available. Certain calls are excluded:-January 10th and 11th due to system issues-January 17th which was a holiday- February 2nd two calls of three hour duration which skewed data.

All telephone calls to the call center number during the months of January, February, and March 2011 were captured and made available by Windstream Communications.

What

Start time, end time, duration, calling number, and whether the call is answered is recorded by Windstream for each call.

Data Type

Data about each individual call is logged by Windstream.

How MeasuredRelated Conditions to Record

Sampling Method

How / Where Recorded

Data stored on an internal Windstream system was exported to a local Excel spreadsheet where day of week and hour of call were added. This spreadsheet was loaded into Access for additional calculations with Access queries.

How will you ensure consistency?

Windstream captures all telephone calls and data about them for billing and other purposes and makes this data available in a variety of formats for a rolling sixty day period.

What is your plan for data collection?

Data for January and February 2011 was downloaded to an excel spreadsheet at the beginning of March into an Excel spreadsheet.Data for March 2011 was downloaded and added to the above spreadsheet at the beginning of April.

How will the data be reported?

Discrete Data – Histograms and the data used to create the charts

Data Collection PlanMeasure

Data Analysis ChartsMeasure

This slide shows the number of incoming calls answered (yes – in red) and not answered (no – in blue) for each day of the period.

Data Analysis ChartsMeasure

This slide shows the another view of incoming calls answered (Total – in blue), their total duration (hours:minutes:seconds), for each day of the period.

Less EfficientVolunteer Scheduling

Equipment Environment

Measure ProcessPeople

Material

Cause

Cause

Cause

Cause

Cause

CauseCause

Loaves and Fishes Call Center Volunteer Sheduling ImprovementLoaves and Fishes Call Center Volunteer Sheduling Improvement

Subcause

Cause

Cause

Cause and Effect DiagramAnalyze

Limited number of Volunteers impact how many can be scheduled

Agencies fail to prescreen properly and call with unqualified clients or fail to gather information in advance increasing call duration.

Limited number of Volunteers might feel overscheduled and no longer want to volunteer

Number of PCs in Call Center is limits number of calls which can be handled at once

Number of telephone lines in Call Center limits number of calls which can be handled at once.

Agencies call business line when Call Center lines are busy tieing up that number

Unanswered Call Center calls answered by staff disrupt normal business tasks

Loaves and Fishes unaware measures of telephone calls available

Call statistics gathered by Windstream are not used to improve scheduling

Data AnalysisAnalyze

This first slide shows the unanswered percentage of the total calls for the entire day (Total – in blue). It shows higher percentages on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and slightly higher levels on Thursdays and Fridays. The following three slides stratify the data by volunteer shift to see if staffing can be proved on individual shifts. (Each unanswered call for an agency calling multiple times is counted once until that agency is answered.)

Data AnalysisAnalyze

This slide shows the unanswered calls for the 9:00-10:00 period by the one scheduled volunteer as a percentage of the total calls for the hour at the beginning of the 9:00-12:00 shift. It shows small peaks on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with missed calls approaching 25% of total calls for that hour and slightly higher levels on Fridays, but not at the level of the next two shifts shown on the next two slides.

Data AnalysisAnalyze

This slide shows the unanswered calls by the scheduled volunteers as a percentage of the total calls for each hour of the 10:00-1:00 period. Call times 10:00-10:59 are in blue, 11:00-11:59 in red, and 12:00-12:59 are in green. It shows peaks on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (approaching 90% some hours) indicating a need for greater resources during this shift on these two days, but not on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

Data AnalysisAnalyze

This slide shows the unanswered calls by the scheduled volunteers as a percentage of the total calls for the 1:00-4:00 period. It shows peaks on Thursdays and Fridays indicating a need for greater resources during afternoon these two days as agencies try to squeeze clients in for Friday and Saturday pantry visits at the last minute. Call times 1:00-1:59 are in blue, 2:00-2:59 in red, and 3:00-3:59 are in green.

Data AnalysisAnalyze

This slide shows average call duration for all answered calls on a day (Total – in blue), but shows only small variations by date and day of week indicating that overall average call duration was fairly consistent across all agencies. The following slide shows the data stratified by agency.

Data AnalysisAnalyze

Average call duration for each agency for all answered calls during the study period (Total – in blue) was charted and showed significant variations by agency for average call duration. While the overall average duration of calls was three minutes and twenty-eight seconds for all agencies, twenty-six agencies averaged over four minutes for their call duration. There could be multiple causes such as larger household size requiring more data to be entered or new clients. Another cause however could be lack of preregistration data being gathered in advance of the agency calling which lengthened the call duration by the agency representative needing to gather the information needed for the referral during the call itself.

The average call duration by agency is shown on the next two slides.

Solution AnalysisImprove

Brainstormed Solutions- Increase Call Center volunteer pool- Begin using Windstream and other statistics about calls and referrals to predict call volume- Increase number of PCs and telephone lines- Improve prescreening by agencies to reduce number of rejected clients- Schedule paid staff in call center when number of lines in use exceeds volunteer staff during periods when a high call volumes are expected. (Tuesday and Wednesday mornings and Thursday and Friday afternoons)-Improve training and materials (including a preregistration form to gather potential client information) for agency staff to reduce duration of individual telephone calls from agencies and client rejections.

Prioritized Solutions1. Identify periods having highest percentages of

missed calls and increase number of scheduled volunteers

2. Identify agencies whose average telephone call duration exceeds one standard deviation above the average and later those above the average

3. Review whether adjusting shifts might improve call volume handling.

Implementation PlanImprove

Action Responsibility Timing

1. Review measurements and adjust volunteer schedules TBD TBD

2. Prepare form for agency to gather registration info prior to contact TBD TBD

3. Identify agencies needing retraining in use of registration form TBD TBD

4. Review and compare measurements for quarter after changes TBD TBD5. Continue to adjust volunteer schedules as needed. TBD TBD

6. Download telephone call information from Windstream monthly. TBD TBD

Control and Leverage PlanControl and Leverage

1. Gather quarterly measurements of missed calls and call durations.

2. Review measurements quarterly for change since prior quarter and other trends.

3. Seek other areas to improve call center responsiveness once improvements from these areas level off.

4. Form used to improve information gathering for preregistration by agencies having a greater than average call duration should be leveraged as a training tool for new staff at other agencies to prevent their average call duration or number of client rejects from increasing.

Control and Leverage PlanControl and Leverage

Leveraged preregistration form which agency would complete before calling the call center should contain the following information:

• Name and address of client

• SSN of client

• Verify thirty days since last assistance from Loaves and Fishes

• Verify financial resources are below minimum level

• Determine how many other people are part of the household

• Obtain the names, SSNs, and ages of other household members.