Lfs Call Center

Lion Financial Services (LFS) provides investment management services to approximately 350,000 individual and institutional customers from its 74 branch offices across the US. Transactions are conducted via the Call Centers (50%), branch services (35%), or through the website (15%). The three call centers are located in Chicago, New Jersey, and Boston. LFS customer calls are routed through an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that triages calls into Customer or Broker-related inquiries. A Quickline system has been established to improve customer service by reducing customer time on the phone while still meeting the customer’s expectations for issue resolution. Because LFS is not presently meeting its call center service metrics, an outside consult group, Customer Solutions Group (CSG) has been retained to assist in streamlining the staffing and Call center-related inefficiencies.

Re-Allocation of Staff Based on a new Call Center structure

The present staffing model for the Call centers is predicated on 170 agents working a 40-hour week to answer 30,000 calls. The two-tiered service system of separate broker and customer calls has led to longer average call-answer times by 26 seconds per call. One cause of the higher wait time is segregation of customers and resources. Estimates suggest that approximately 20% of customers will elect to use the Quickline system. This reduction in call volume to be handled by agents will allow for some reduction in the number of agents needed, and may allow for re-allocation of agents to cover the heavy high volume call periods where the center is clearly understaffed. As staffing constitutes 70% of the total operating costs of the company, a decrease in staff would equate to significant savings while providing service that is more in-line with the companies desired reputation.

Economies of scale can be applied to this concept when considering that the number of calls per Agent will increase at the same average cost per...