April 1, 2002

MANAGING TECHNOLOGY

Citizens Calling

By Shane Harris
sharris@govexec.com

s government inches closer to citizen-centric service, agencies have turned to call centers as the way to reach out and touch constituents.

Retailers such as Land’s End made call centers famous by providing friendly and efficient phone service to customers who had neither the time nor desire to go shopping. Agencies are building on the same idea—providing citizens with a quick and easy way to ask for government services or get questions answered.

“Call centers have been around for . . . close to 20 years,” says Jeff Furst, president and chief executive officer of FurstPerson, a Chicago company that helps organizations hire people to staff their call centers. Most government agencies got into the call center business in the mid-1990s, though some, such as the Social Security Administration, made forays in the late 1980s, says Daryl Covey, the field support team leader at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Next Generation Weather Radar Operations Center. The facility, in Norman, Okla., operates the government’s Doppler weather radar system. Covey manages the facility’s call center and co-chairs an annual conference for federal call center and help desk managers.

The government’s mission to provide better service has evolved into a commercial-type endeavor. Now, agencies from Social Security to the Internal Revenue Service refer to citizens as “customers” and try to treat them with the same respect they’d expect from a private company.

Call centers are a critical link between agencies and their constituents, a first line of contact for citizens. Some serve huge audiences, while others cater to smaller ones. In either case, most people see the call center as one of government’s most visible efforts to become citizen-centric.

STANDING BY

Social Security runs one of the largest call center operations in the government. It has had a national, toll-free number since 1988, says Donnell Adams, the associate commissioner for the Office of Telephone Services. Today, the agency operates 36 teleservice centers.” Adams estimates the agency has about 4,000 teleservice operators. They’re expected to answer a wide range of questions, usually about retirement benefits and supplemental income programs, says Roy Snyder, deputy associate commissioner for the office. Operators must complete 10 to 12 weeks of training to become versed in the policy and legislation that forms the backbone of the Social Security system, Adams says.

But what if an operator doesn’t know the answer to a caller’s question? The agency has developed an online teleservice center guide, Adams says, so operators can avoid having to refer callers to other parts of the agency. Operators also use a “decision-based” online help menu to determine what questions to ask callers to pinpoint what they need to know, Adams says.

Social Security’s call volume varies during the year, but it’s always high, Adams and Snyder say. In fiscal 2001, citizens placed about 90 million calls to the toll-free number. New technology allows the agency to route calls to teleservice centers all over the country. The system used to shunt calls to centers nearest to callers, putting a huge strain on some centers while leaving others much less busy. Adams and Snyder say only about 75 million of last year’s calls got through. That means callers hung up without being helped about 15 million times. Of those callers who did get through, 59 million spoke to live operators or used an automated platform by pressing numbers on their telephone keypads.

Adams says Social Security doesn’t look at response time as a primary means of measuring its call centers’ performance. Instead, officials measure the percentage of callers who receive help after actually getting through to the center—that is, not getting a busy signal. Last year, 93 percent of those callers got help, Adams says. SSA’s callers waited an average of just over two minutes before reaching an operator. In comparison, callers to the IRS’ center waited an average of more than four minutes last year, according to a January report by the General Accounting Office (GAO-02-212). During last year’s tax-filing season, IRS operators helped more than 50 million callers.

At Social Security, callers’ questions were resolved in six to seven minutes, Adams says. The agency is building a system to track repeat callers, like retailers do, but Adams says officials must move carefully. The kinds of tracking technology on the market today were built for a sales environment. That doesn’t jibe with Social Security’s mandate to serve all citizens equally, he says. Equal service is the cornerstone of any government call center. When the pool of customers is smaller, officials find it easier to target what customers need and thus build the call center to suit them. The Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver has learned that lesson firsthand, rejoicing in the efficiencies its call center operation has brought to its business.

The personnel center maintains records on all Air Force reservists and Air National Guard employees. It serves more than 900,000 customers, who frequently call about medical care and benefits, says Lt. Col. Frederick “Bud” Bromley, deputy director of communications and information. The center also serves retired reservists, Bromley says, and it’s not uncommon to get a call from someone who hasn’t contacted the agency in at least 10 years.

Before the call center was streamlined two years ago, operators were juggling upwards of 44,000 calls a month. “We knew how many calls we were getting, but we had no idea what they were really about,” Bromley says.

For years, the staff knew only what broad functional area a call fell into but had no way of tracking the specific nature of the call. The center decided it should centralize those inquiries. That way, officials would be able to track what people were calling about. The sticking point was money. Upgrading the call center would have cost $2 million, according to a consultant who conducted a month-long study. So, in January 2001, project managers went with the consultant’s suggestion to buy a customer relationship management software package. It was up and running in two weeks, Bromley says.

The center also installed an online menu of frequently asked questions, using software designed by Bozeman, Mont.-based RightNow Technologies. It consolidates information into an easy-to-use Web format, according to Steve Nesenblatt, RightNow’s federal sales and customer relations manager. The menu’s capability increases as more questions are asked, answered and added into the system. Online help centers are supposed to minimize the amount of calls that get through to operators. The Web operation went live in February 2000, and, since then, monthly call volume is down to 22,000, says Bromley, less than half the monthly average in previous years.

Officials from the General Services Administration also report success with online alternatives to call centers. A technology help desk team in the GSA’s Public Buildings Service implemented a system last July designed by Computer Associates of Islandia, N.Y., that allows users to submit questions over the Internet instead of the phone. The agency reports the help desk staff can now handle three times the number of queries a month with the introduction of the online system.

Bromley says more than 10,000 customers have submitted online questions, and since March 2000 they’ve viewed answers to nearly 148,000 questions. The database was launched with 200 questions and answers; now it has more than 500, Bromley says.

THE DOS AND DON’TS

NOAA’s Covey says officials should rely on their own experiences as consumers when designing call centers. People will try as hard as they can to avoid asking for help, he says. But when they finally reach the end of their rope, they’ll reach out to a call center. When they call, Covey says, “there’s only one thing [they] want—a quick, courteous, accurate solution. Period.” If an agency can do that, he says, its call center will be successful.

Covey’s agency has used a call center since 1991 to support users of the weather radar system and those who maintain it. His center really looks more like a help desk, he says, since the customer pool is small and callers seek information on narrow topics. Rather than fielding general calls about insurance and benefits, Covey’s agency gets inquiries steeped in minutiae that help the operators zero in on answers. For example, during the Gulf War, a general called wanting to move his weather radar system, and he needed to know how much it weighed.

Covey says the three basic tenets to customer service are people, process and technology. “They should be addressed in that order,” he says. “But in government, there’s a tendency to invert the pyramid.” Dozens of technology projects have failed, Covey and other experts say, because agencies spent loads of money up front on products and didn’t think about how to integrate them into their business processes. As a result, software and systems often go unused. The work of a call center is totally driven by incoming calls, Covey says. Some periods are quiet and others chaotic. But agencies must assess whether their call center employees can handle the call volume and give operators the processes and technology they need. And call center personnel must be motivated, Covey says, or “you’re dead in the water.”

Agencies must provide consistent ser- vice to callers, says call center expert Bill Diamond, a consultant for PeopleSoft of Pleasanton, Calif, in the software manufacturer’s education and government division. The telephone accounts for about 80 percent of all communication between agencies and constituents, he says. Over time, other channels, such as the Web and e-mail, will grow in importance, but the telephone will be the dominant mode for the near future, Diamond says. Agencies would do well to track customers and find out why they stop using call centers, says Tony Castellano, chief operating officer of Anexsys, a call center operator in Chicago. Knowing what turns customers off can tell an agency what its call center is missing.

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Advice From The Experts

Let operators operate. Putting employees in over their heads is a sure recipe for failure. Give operators the tools and the information they need to serve their constituents before your center takes its first call.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. Make sure the process for handling and responding to calls is clear and replicable.

Don’t depend on technology. Simply buying and installing a call center software suite doesn’t mean you’ll be able to better respond to citizens’ inquiries. Define how the call center will operate before buying expensive technology.

Avoid using the phone. While the vast majority of citizen-to-agency interactions are still handled by phone, better technology is enabling citizens to use the Web to do more than just retrieve forms. Online databases of frequently asked questions and the ability to complete transactions online can help callers avoid the hassle of lingering on hold.

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