IBM Daksh Case Studies by Offerings

We work with the world's leading cyber-forum. A Fortune 200 company, the business enables trade on a local, national and international basis and has 95,000,000 registered users.

Business need
To deal with the issues of continued growth on a massive scale, to manage costs efficiently and to keep its customers fully satisfied.

• Trim operational expenses and deliver measurable quality improvements
• Establish real time support for handling queries
• Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty in an increasingly competitive market
• Increase revenues from service and support programs whilst maintaining its brand image

Solution
We provide e-mail-based customer and technical support across four geographic territories and two business subsidiaries.

• Level 1 customer support
  • General support - activation of password, account registration and closure
  • Account status - viewing account activity
  • Billing queries - charges pertaining to listing items and refunding fees (UK only)
  • Queries of payment cycles
• Level 1 technical support
  • Troubleshooting the client's proprietary software

Performance is tracked by a number of key service level agreements including productivity - (e-mails per hour), agent satisfaction and overall satisfaction, quality (process adherence and compliance) and service level.

Results
Our work involves responding to customer queries by email in a wide variety of languages.

Business value

• We were instrumental in phasing out the client's automated email response system, which tracked customer satisfaction.
• Customer satisfaction increased by 110% (rising from just under 34 per cent during transition to a current average score of 72-75 per cent.)

Operational value

• We introduced more automation and continuous process improvement to increase productivity. This involved:
  • Generating numerous macros to automate queues
  • Creating frequently asked questions for standard queries
• Agent Level Productivity increased month on month (from 6 to 10.5 e-mails per hour, over six months and is currently averaging12 per hour)
• We added three new geographies and 14 new queues in the third quarter of 2005.
• Service Levels of 85% have been consistently met and exceeded (currently trending at 88% or above).

The airline offers more than 6,000 flights a day to 450 destinations in 82 countries. It is also a founding member of a global airline alliance that provides customers with extensive worldwide destinations, flights and services.

Business need
To improve performance, retain customers and reduce costs in a highly competitive global market. The company was looking for a business partner that could understand and implement travel technology efficiently.

Key Challenges

• Trim operational expenses and deliver measurable quality improvements
• Managing customer loyalty in an increasingly competitive industry
• Reduce customer management costs
• Increase revenues from service and support programs whilst maintaining brand image

Solution

• Our work involved managing inbound reservations for the company.
  • We handled all inbound phone queries and potential bookings and ticketing issues for domestic travel
  • Our work on the company's loyalty program for domestic travel entailed converting queries into reservations

Progress was monitored through the implementation of key service level agreements on average handling time and quality

Results

Business Value

• Annual cost savings of around US 1 Million by consistently controlling average handling time, which has fallen since 'go-live date' by 18%
• Consistently outperforming service level agreements has lead to the process increasing the headcount by nine times since its inception.

Operations value

• Consistently delivering quality metrics of above 98% (the client's target is 96%)
• Achieved ramp-up performance metric targets within the nesting phase
• Travel subject matter experts deployed as part of service delivery team
• IBM Daksh training methodology deployed by client as a benchmark across all service delivery partners
• IBM Daksh trainers resourced by the client for training other service delivery partner

Our client a major US retailer of electronics, computers, music, videos and games needed to address customer service issues around the seasonal nature of its business and to consolidate the points of contact for customers.

Business need
To co-ordinate numerous contact points to enhance the customer's experience while reducing costs.

Key Challenges

• Trim operational expenses and deliver measurable quality improvements
• Co-ordinate the various points of contact that a customer might interact with when trying to resolve a problem: stores, service center, vendors, and third-party technicians.
• Extremely volatile call arrival pattern along with huge seasonal spike Solution

Our work involves managing online sales and resolving customers' service and support issues.

Using voice and email with the business's customers in the US, we dealt with:

• Sales, order processing, scheduling delivery and installation, selling warranties, installation packages and gift cards.
• After-sales service, scheduling technicians, general troubleshooting for TV, ordering spares
• Customer support for issues related to rebates, policy, order tracking, reshipment, refunds and exchanges.

The process is monitored by service level agreements that deal with customer satisfaction, quality, close and ESP ratios, units per order, documentation percentage and audit, error escalation and other call center metrics.

Results

Our work contributed significantly to increases in business and operational value.

Business value

• 28% of our total billing was passed back to the client as cost saving, as a result of continuous process improvements. These included
• Up-selling on service packages resulted in increased income of more than $1.2 Million per annum
• Additional annual revenue generated through Extended Service Protection on Consumer Electronics Queue
• Improvements were instrumental in the client winning the Biz-Rate Circle of Excellence Award in 2003

Operational Value

• Continuous improvements reduced Tier 1 escalations by 42 per cent; improving customer satisfaction and reducing the cost of operations
• Best in class ESP Ratio compared with the client's in-house operation and other vendor centers
• Successfully managed unplanned additional queues and erratic variations in volume of up to 70%.

When a business that sells more than 12 items a second and has around 41 million customers in more than 220 countries wanted to improve its already outstanding levels of service and the quality of its operation, it turned to IBM Daksh.

Business need
To consolidate and reinforce its position as the world's biggest retailer of a massive range of products and its reputation for superb customer service.

Key Challenges

• Reduce customer management cost
• Effectively handle seasonal spikes or variations in sales
• Maintain a top-notch customer experience
• Continue delivering a secure e-commerce service

Solution
Our work involves responding to customer queries by email in a wide variety of languages.

• E-mail support implemented across six lines of business.
• The use of English language programs and foreign language programs (in German and French) to deal with:
  • Pre- and post-order related queries
  • Managing queries about 'Where is my stuff?'
  • Customer review updates
  • Empowered decision making, including assisting order placement and compensating customers for any inconvenience
• Performance was monitored by service level agreements for customer satisfaction and response time (C-SAT and TAT).

Results
Our work generated significant benefits in business and operational value.

Business value

• Annualized dollar savings of up to $1 million
• Conducted time and motion study.
• Implemented Best Practices which led to a 25 per cent increase in productivity by 25%
• Reduction in full time employees by 48
• The client's customer base has more than doubled since it outsourced to IBM Daksh

Operational value

• The success of English language programs paved the way for programs in German and French and for voice operations
• Outsourced voice operations were transferred to IBM Daksh after another vendor in India failed to deliver on desired metrics.
• Flexibility to handle huge seasonal spikes (including managing a 40% incremental volumes at one day's notice after a center on the other side of the world was closed down by a natural disaster.)
• Service level agreements for quality and time of response have been met continuously since go live for all lines of business.

We worked with one of the world's biggest financial services organizations to reduce costs, improve quality of service and boost turnover.

Business need
To improve financial and service performance

Key Challenges:

• Trim operational expenses and deliver measurable quality improvements
• Support end-to-end retail banking including investigations and account maintenance
• Improve customer retention rates and enhance the customer's relationship with the bank
• Achieve aggressive cross-selling and up-selling targets for all servicing and sales business

Solution Our work involves inbound and outbound contact with bank clients and back office processes, back up by a full range of service level agreements. These included

Inbound customer service

• Two levels of customer service
• Involves account information, maintenance, and investigations
• Up-selling and lead generation

Client activation unit (Back Office)

• Backend processing of accounts
• Involves verifications, knowing your client (KYC) and account activations

Inbound telesales

• Product portfolio: deposit, credit, loan, investments, and account upgrading
• Involves customer needs analysis, evaluating the right fit, selling, client enrolment, and basic servicing

Outbound client care

• Welcome calls to customers and customer retention

Key service level agreements: Call quality, cross-selling, up-selling, conversion, average handling time, funding units and other typical call center metrics.

Results
Our work had a positive and direct and positive effect on business and operational value for the client.

Business value

• Increased productivity by consistently reducing average handling time by 12 per cent.
• Achieved annual turnover of $2 billion through the client activation unit, against the enterprise target of $1.2 billion
• $35 Million of new income from up-selling and cross-selling through inbound telesales

Operational value

• Continuous improvements reduced Tier 1 help line calls by 52 per cent and escalation calls by 24 per cent.
• Creation of quality framework and productivity management information system helped enhance performance on key metrics by 8 per cent.

Our client is a leader in health insurance and group life, long-term care and disability benefits.

Business need
To become a fitter stronger business by reducing response times, driving up accuracy and cutting costs, in an increasingly competitive market.

IBM Daksh claim adjudicators have financial authority to take independent decisions on claims of more than $100,000 and adjudicate $ 6billion of claims in a year, while managing 20 million healthcare transactions annually.

Key challenges

• Improve financial accuracy statistics
• Reduce health-plan administrative costs
• Competitive pressures to improve claims-processing times
• Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty through effective case resolution
• Managing seasonal fluctuations

Solutions

• Medical and dental claims processing
• Processing hospital and medical claims for preferred provider organization and indemnity plans
• Co-ordination of benefits
• Reworks on erroneous and disputed claims
• Research and repair of claims to facilitate auto adjudication
• E-mail interaction with customers
• Assigning client correspondence

The solutions were underwritten by several key service level agreements including: financial accuracy; total claims accuracy; payment $ incidence; procedural accuracy; coding accuracy

Results
The work realized significant benefits, in terms of business value and operational value.

Business value

• Annualized savings of $12 million. by outperforming on processing accuracy
• Increased productivity by 14% - outperforming other onsite contact centers in the process

Operational value

• Current processing accuracy is in excess of 99.5 per cent
• Reduction in response times by 48 per cent
• Turnaround time slashed from more than 29 days to around 15 days
• Consistently exceeded overall accuracy metrics through comprehensive training and floor support.
• Increased productivity across the floor, thereby outperforming other centers at an enterprise level.
• Improvised a training toolkit focused on the healthcare industry, to ease the learning curve and accelerate ramp-up targets

A company with a long history of pioneering innovation in aerospace, aviation, helicopter design, climate control, elevator design and hydrogen fuel cells was looking for significant improvements in service quality and cost management.

Business need
To raise quality of service while reducing costs.

Key challenges

• Reduce operational expenses and deliver measurable quality improvements
• Achieve greater control and visibility within the procurement process
• Combat a high degree of decentralization that made processes costly and complex
• Increase revenues from service and support programs whilst maintaining brand image

Solution

• Web payment request - Validation of web payment request based on client criteria.
• Process non-PO invoices
• Decision making - approving/rejecting the request
• Daily/monthly communication and reporting to the client

Vendor workflow submission - Creation of a vendor workflow in SAP based on the client's criteria.

• Approving the web payment request (WPR) with the new vendor.

The solutions were underwritten by service level agreements (SLA) for accuracy and response times.

Results
Our work effected significant benefits in both operational and business value.

Business value

• Productivity improvement of 30% (75 to 100 WPR's) at no extra operational cost
• Re-engineered the faxque application
• Increasing RAM capacity and virtual memory reduced search and archiving times
• Savings in management costs in by operating with a less senior team, since July 2005

Operational value

• Process declared World Class (5.5 Sigma) in January 2005 one year into operation; currently performing at 6.1 Sigma
• Accuracy for critical errors are at 99.97 % against a service level agreement of 99.50%
• Accuracy for Non Critical errors at 99.81% against a service level agreement of 97.00%
• Achieving accuracy targets from day one and SLA response times within two weeks of go-live

By providing a raft of support services to an international telecoms giant, we enabled our client to cut costs, improve productivity and significantly improve customer relations.

Business need
To improve performance and retain customers in a hugely competitive industry with a demanding and sophisticated customer base.

Key Challenges:
The business faced six main issues:

• Manage customer loyalty in an increasingly competitive industry
• Reduce customer churn
• Cut customer management costs
• Gain advantage from new channels
• Enhance customer experience
• Increase revenues from service and support programs
• Build on a brand-known for pioneering state-of-the-art network technologies

Solution
IBM Daksh is providing customer relationship management support to the company via e-mail and voice service channels. The processes supported include:

• Support for new account activations
• Ongoing customer support
• Technical support
• Inbound sales
• Transaction processing

Results

• Annual cost savings of US$1 million through the use of innovative knowledge management tools
• Productivity figures up by 25% through continuous improvement program
• Reduced customer management cost for one line of business
• Operational changes then passed on to another 23 line of business units
• Improved customer experience: Enhanced (turnaround times?) TAT by 37.5% by automation
• 6-sigma process initiatives led to increase in customer satisfaction (C-Sat) scores by 60%

We work with one of the UK's leading Internet services provider of broadband and narrowband services, to reduce costs while improving quality and customer satisfaction.

Business need
To enhance the customer experience in a volatile and expanding market, while reducing the cost of managing its consumer and business customers.

Key Challenges

• Reduce operational expenses
• Reduce customer management cost while improving quality and customer satisfaction
• Focus on the high-growth broadband services with excellent customer-support expertise
• Consolidate support operations with a partner capable of delivering improved customer-service
• Enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty in an increasingly competitive market
• Provide faster time to market for new products in terms of sales and support

Solution
Our work involves the management and resolution of all the typical customer queries associated with running an Internet service provision business. These included:

• Voice-based support for broadband Internet services
• Consumer support
• Modem Installation support
• Support for Internet usage and connectivity problems
• Product and account-related queries
• Enterprise support
• Router support
• Domain issues (for business users)
• Hardware troubleshooting
• Customer service
• Order chasing

Performance is measured and monitored by the introduction of several key service level agreements. These included: customer satisfaction, first time resolution (FTR) of issues, cost per resolution and average handling time.

Results
The introduction of our methods and systems reflected positively in the business's performance metrics.

Business value

• Reduced operational costs significantly by increasing FTR by 35% and reducing cost per solution
• Seamlessly managed rapid increase in team size. In fact, the team trebled in size within four months of go live

Operational value

• Continuous improvements brought about quick resolution to customer escalations and reduced the cost per solution
• Process declared world class in just five months from go-live
• Consistently meeting all service level agreements since go-live date
• Provided inputs for call arrival pattern on the basis of which the client streamlined their overall call distribution volumes