Rise and Fall of a Roaming Empire part 2

Yesterday, the story began by describing the meteoric rise of a wireless telecommunications company that merged with another in the hopes of attaining economy of scale and synergy savings. I pick up the story as a large CIO-led IT project is started.

As the CIO started this herculean project, expected synergies were quantified and budgets set accordingly. The new billing system was expected to reduce the time required by Customer Care representatives to triage and resolve the customer’s billing and provisioning problems. Savings were attributed to the elimination of the legacy tools owned by each of the merger partners. Maintenance and development of a single system would require fewer resources and a more reliable application would reduce the number of errors from that of current systems.

As the delivery of the first phases of the new billing platform approached, Customer Care call centers were leaned down in expectation of more efficient process. With less time needed per call, fewer Customer Care representatives would be needed. So with staff reductions underway and delivery of the billing platform at hand, synergy savings were about to be delivered. Or so was the thought.

Unknown to the CEO and probably the CIO, functionality was regularly de-scoped from each release in order to meet the expected timeline. As with many projects, triage tools were common functions de-scoped. A scenario for disaster was now in place.

The first release was introduced. Issues with the system began to surface. Many were minor and could be fixed with an overnight code drop. Others were more serious and would require a subsequent release to resolve. As the customer bills were received, calls into the Customer Care call centers began to increase. Some were simply questions to the new bill format, while others were more serious errors related to charges.

The Customer Care representatives struggled to meet their internal metrics with the higher call volume and lower staffing levels. Hold time for customers began to creep up. Soon, virtually all call centers failed to meet their 30 second goal for average hold time. Yet, the release and migration schedule continued and each release only added more calls to the call center queues. As average handle time increased, so did abandon rates. Customers were simply giving up and hanging up.

Many would then travel to the nearest retail store for help. Stores were overwhelmed and could not serve their purpose – to sell the companies product and services. Dissatisfaction with the retail store experience plummeted. Soon, the acquisition of new customers began a precipitous fall.

But the situation continued to worsen. Not only were customer calls over billing issues increasing, the frontline Customer Care and retail store representative did not have the tools needed to accurately triage and resolve the problem. As a result, customers who attempted to get a billing issue with their current bill resolved would find that the problem recurred the following month. Repeat calls skyrocketed into an already overwhelmed support system. The Customer Care organization was in a death spiral.

Tomorrow, the conclusion - how a company's reputation can vanish.