Transition Management for Existing Call Centers

Transition Management Services

Our Transition Management Services are designed to help companies reduce call center management and training costs by transitioning services to reliable, professional and cost effective service providers in India. This effective transition management creates adapted customer service processes that are delivered to you in an offshore model.

The Transition model is structured to minimize business service level inefficiencies during the transition of a process from the customer location to the location in India.

This is done by using structured training methodology to speedily transition key business processes of the customer to India. Leveraging best practices from previous transitions, combined with fast vendor selection, enables more time to be spent on critical transition planning and execution.

The benefits of a dedicated offshore center are clear: sustained knowledge retention, better rate negotiation, speedier ramp-up times for new projects and increased productivity. We fit this description, as we have the experience of working with buyers of third party contact center services and in optimizing solutions from both business and IT perspectives giving you the best transition management there is on offer.

Flatworld's transition management is structured to minimize business service level inefficiencies during the transition of a call center process from the customer’s location to our location in India.

Transition Management FAQs

1. What is the time frame we are looking at for the entire process transition?

   Our Transition Management, staffed with consultants and process specialists, lasts between 1-6 months depending on the size, maturity and integrative capacity of the parent organization.

2. What are the assignment objectives of Transition Management?

   • Define and plan resources for the transition clearly identifying the activities, timelines, roles and responsibilities and monitor the engagement on an ongoing basis
   • Detailing of process, technology and infrastructure (‘As Is' and ‘To Be') and actual transition
   • Verify operational design of specific processes identified to be suitable for offshore process delivery

3. What is the overall methodology for the transition process?

   Our transition management gives rise to a mature four-step transition process that includes:

   1. Project Planning
   2. Process Definition
   3. Transition Planning
   4. Design Verification

4. What is the result of each step of process transition?

   Each of the four steps yields a tangible result that enhances the success of our transition management and the further implementation of the project. These are:

   1. Project Plan Document
   2. Process Document
   3. Initiate Pilot process
   4. BAU / Full Rollout process

5. What does each step of the process broadly cover?

   1. Project planning includes the following steps in the transition process

   • Project team set-up
   • Tollgate dates defined
   • Communication plan established
   • Sign-off authority established
   • Resource requirement checklists defined

   2. Process definition encompasses the following definition markers

   • As-is Level 3 SIPOC mapping
   • Base lining / Benchmarking
   • Understanding technology interface
   • Detailing adapted processes/Technology
   • Validate FTEs / detail training needs

   3. The Core issue of Transition Planning covers the following

   • Site readiness gap analysis
   • FMEA / Risk mitigation plan
   • Detailing MIS / Reporting requirements
   • Internal sign-offs
   • Finalize transition document / Customer sign-off

   4. Design verification, the final stage in the Transition process has the following steps to be implemented

   • Pilot monitoring
   • Improvement areas identified
   • Implement corrective action
   • Establish SLAs / Customer sign-off
   • Ramp – up

6. What exactly does project planning entail?

   Here the feasibility of outsourcing the process and understanding business competencies is studied. Once this has been done pre-analysis is conducted to identify and prioritize processes to be transited. The next step is broken down into the following specifics.

   1. Project team Set-up

   • Team Selection
   • Roles and Responsibilities
   • Project Briefing

   2. Define Tollgates

   • Identify key Activities
   • Define internal/ external sign-offs for activities
   • Develop PERT chart
   • Internal sign-off (Timelines)

   3. Communication Plan

   • Information flow within project team
   • Information flow with customer
   • Escalation mechanism
   • Review Mechanism

   4. Sign-off Authority

   • Identify customer interface
   • Define sign-off mechanism

   5. Resource Checklist, A Resource checklist encompassing:

   • Process (P)
   • Hiring (H)
   • Training (T)
   • IT / Telecom (I)
   • Facility (F)
   • Quality (Q)
   • Legal (L)
   • Compliance (C)
   • Risk (R)
   • MIS / Reporting (M)

7. What are the key components of Transition Management that we rate highly?

   When UTC and its subsidiaries decided to outsource some of their key processes to India, it was quickly seen that this stage of the transition model was crucial. This caused Woods, an outsourcing veteran at Otis Elevator to say; “You cannot underestimate the importance of structuring and defining your processes, putting tools in place to measure the performance of those processes, and having processes in place to improve those processes.”
   Thus we have further broken down this stage of the transition process into:

   1. As-is Level 3 SIPOC mapping

   • Level 3 SIPOC Process Maps
   • Define Process Interfaces

   2. Base lining / Benchmarking

   • Activity Analysis
   • Volume Analysis
   • Identify CTQs
   • Define Dashboards

   3. Understanding technology interface

   • Hardware/ Software
   • Proprietary Technology
   • Voice/ data Infrastructure
   • Customer Visibility
   • Data access/ transfer
   • Information Security
   • Screen Development (GUI)

   4. Detailing adapted processes/Technology

   • Evaluate ‘As Is' Process/ Technology
   • Define changes/ improvements
   • Issue escalation/ resolution
   • Finalize SOPs'

   5. Validate FTEs / detail training needs

   • Revalidate assumptions
   • Validate FTE requirements
   • Finalize recruitment plans
   • Identify training needs
   • Develop training program/ calendar
   • Define training content

8. How does transition management help specifically in initiating the pilot?

   The blueprint from this analysis is what is used to transit the processes to off shore. This allows validation and adaptation of existing process thereby creating adapted customer service processes that are delivered to an offshore model. The blue print for this stage includes:

   1. Site readiness gap analysis Define site readiness checklists (PHTIFQLM)

   • Identify gaps
   • Define action plans/ time frame

   2. FMEA / Risk mitigation plan

   • Identify & classify potential risks
   • Risk effect analysis
   • Define Mitigation measures

   3. Detailing MIS / Reporting requirements

   • Review existing MIS/ reports
   • Define & Finalize report formats
   • Identify data sources
   • Define MIS formats, data sources, frequency, responsibilities, and recipients

   4. Internal sign-off

   • Communicate Transition Plan to internal customers
   • Discuss, resolve & obtain sign-offs'

   5. Finalize transition document / Customer sign-off

   • Develop Transition Document
   • Communicate & discuss with customer
   • Update document
   • Obtain customer sign off

9. What steps are taken to verify pilot design of the transition management process?

   1. Pilot Monitoring

   • Assess CTQ performance
   • Analyze workflow
   • Evaluate training effectiveness/ skill-sets
   • Evaluate technology interface
   • Stress Test
   • FMEA/ Risks

   2. Improvement Areas identified

   • Define improvement projects detailing objectives & responsibility

   3. Implement Corrective Action

   • Implement action plan
   • Monitor Results
   • Initiate further corrective action as required
   • Finalize SOPs

   4. Establish SLAs / Customer sign-off

   • Service Provision
   • SOPs
   • Resource Commitment
   • Performance Standards
   • Compliance
   • Billing & payment
   • Termination clauses

   5. Ramp–up

   • Revalidate site readiness
   • Complete hiring & training plan
   • Formal hand over/ sign-off from operations

10. How do you establish an ongoing evaluation process?

    Strategic reviews and re-considerations to ensure all prior steps match and support the initial outcomes required of the primary aims. This step also ensures that development of a constant enhancement loop by returning to step one and reassessing your aims at regular periods once in operation.
    An extensive evaluation process is put into place for the evaluation of the transition process and how successful it really is. Just of a few of the parameters we utilize are:

    • Calls / Transactions per hour
    • Agent-wise analysis
    • Call Quality Analysis
    • Objection handling
    • Reporting & Feedback
    • Quality Audit
    • Long Range Forecasts – Trend & Event Driven and Financial cost evaluations
    • Percentage (%) PCA & Time To Answer (TTA) Service Level evaluations and predictions will allow you effective and customer service.

11. Do you have a work force management team in place?

    Our work force management team will implement the following to enable a smooth transition:

    • Forecast the number of calls or items of work (e-mails, faxes etc.) arriving at your contact center
    • Identify the number of people you need to meet a target percentage service level
    • Manage scheduled exceptions
    • Schedule shifts and breaks
    • Produce management information in the form of KPI reports
    • Produce detailed strategies for foreseeable future scenarios
    • Easy service optimization

12. Do you have an operations team that will train, certify and monitor?

    Our trainers are experienced contact / call center professionals who will be providing tailor made training modules relevant to the process transition of the contact / call center. Apart from this self-training tutorials will be implemented to consolidate knowledge processes already acquired.

13. Will there be ongoing support even after all objectives of process transition have been met?

    Once the training is over, we still provide on going contact with the trainers in order to shore up the knowledge process.
    We are dedicated to implementing a long-term commitment to making your investment a success.

Quality Assurance & Testing

We employ extensive procedures in order to ensure a quality solution for our customers. The quality measures are introduced at every stage in the transition process methodology in order to ensure that the transition process adheres to strict quality standards. During this stage, the entire process solution is evaluated and reevaluated for functionality, load, security, and inter connectivity. We have the required bandwidth and state of the art facilities to allow for smooth transition of important business verticals in the call / contact center industry while staying within the ambit of security and web enabled framework security requirements.
Throughout the process, errors and shortcomings are corrected and re-tested for suitable workability.

Read more about the call center infrastructure at Flatworld.

Find out more about the call center quality process at Flatworld.

Read more about the advantages of outsourcing technical support.