August 2003
The purpose of this report is to review the current status of
EEOC's performance in handling calls from the public, including its
management of human capital, and to recommend solutions to improve
agency performance in this area. Pursuant to a request from the
Chair, the National Contact Center (NCC) Work Group was convened in
February 2003 and undertook a four-month study to determine the
feasibility of and recommend options for implementing a
cost-effective customer service center which would provide optimum
service and quality information to the public in support of the
agency's mission.
The work group researched the design, implementation and performance of public sector call centers and contact centers; surveyed field and Headquarters staff regarding the nature and volume of telephone calls and related customer service issues; and studied the requirements for performance-based services acquisition. Although initially focused on government call center operations, the work group expanded its review to include multi-channel contact center operations which handle telephone calls, e-mail, facsimiles, postal mail, and fulfillment of requests for printed materials.
This Executive Summary highlights the report's findings and
recommendations, summarizes the compelling case for change made in
the report, and recommends parameters for a contact center
operation that would fulfill EEOC's desire to achieve a core
customer service standard and competency that addresses 21st
century needs.
The EEOC receives more than one million unsolicited telephone
contacts each year, 61% of which are requests for information unrelated to potential charges. Various office
management systems, such as appointments, document logs and
electronic logs, have been introduced to handle telephone calls and
contacts with walk-in and mail customers. To date, however, no
solution has been introduced that fully recognizes or utilizes 21st
century technology to improve call handling practices at EEOC on an
agency-wide basis. In many offices calls from the public have been
received and processed in the same way for more than 30 years. Some
offices offer auto attendant systems with menus of options that
range from simple to complex. Furthermore, there is no uniform
approach to answering calls from the public that guarantees
promptness, accuracy, and courtesy.
As mentioned above, the work group designed a customer service
questionnaire for field directors and a telephone call survey
instrument to ascertain the nature and volume of unsolicited calls
from the public received in the field and at two Headquarters
offices. The results of these surveys are summarized below.
The President's Management Agenda requires agencies to become
more customer-focused, to improve human capital management and to
expand e-government services, among other things. The first
impression a customer or stakeholder has of EEOC is often based on
how the agency handles its telephone and other public contacts.
Customer service quality also is directly tied to how accessible an
agency is to its public. The EEOC is a small, chronically
understaffed agency. In attempting to respond to the overwhelming
numbers of public inquiries, EEOC offices must deploy numerous
supervisors, investigators, attorneys, and clericals to answer
telephones and/or return calls on a daily basis which takes away
from time needed to resolve cases in a proficient manner and to
perform outreach activities.
EEOC, at present, has no method for counting and tracking public
contacts and, in particular, telephone contacts. EEOC also has no
agency-wide quality assurance or accountability process to ensure
the delivery of accurate and appropriate information to callers.
Most important, EEOC lacks the technology and resources to manage
public contacts efficiently and effectively. EEOC field offices
have various types of telephone systems, some digital, some analog,
some with automated attendants, some with voice messaging, some
with only live answerers. Various scripts are used by the field
offices on the automated attendant systems with varying levels of
detail. Hours of service are more limited in some offices than in
others. All told, the attempts to provide customer service
represent a patchwork system that could be considerably improved by
consolidation of the field office call center operations.
A national contact center operation would prepare regular
reports on numbers of calls handled by the IVR and agents; topics
covered; languages used; first call resolutions rates; average
speed of answer, average talk times, accuracy of information
recorded; accuracy of information provided; and customer
satisfaction surveys. Daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports
of this type would enable the agency to instantly retrieve
information in response to congressional and other
inquiries.
The National Academy of Public Administration Report (NAPA)
report, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Organizing for the
Future, documents that there are EEOC offices with backlogs of
unreturned messages, offices in buildings with inadequate switching
capacity, and offices with outdated telephone systems. At the other
end of the spectrum, the report acknowledges that a few offices
have automated and manual records of all incoming calls for
management review. In fact, 19 of the field offices have phone
systems with menu options while 32 do not. The overall impression
of the agency is one of widely disparate capacity and performance
among the field offices with respect to call handling
practices.
A bold vision is necessary to bring about dramatic improvements
in the agency's customer contact and customer service competency
because the current processes are fundamentally inefficient and
outmoded. For that reason, the work group sought to rethink the
agency approach to handling customer contacts in order to achieve
the greatest possible benefits to the agency and its customers. In
order to achieve an "order of magnitude" improvement in customer
contact services, it is necessary to go beyond the usual
incremental functional and process improvements.
Customer contact system improvements desired include: increased
efficiency and courtesy in public interactions; increased public
satisfaction with its interactions with EEOC; use of
state-of-the-art technology to streamline and professionalize
agency interactions with its customers and the public; better
performance management; improved human capital management; improved
quality assurance monitoring; and improved ability to forecast
resource needs. The work group recommends the following specific
objectives which it believes would best accomplish customer service
improvements.
The work group researched a number of options to provide a
solution for the agency's customer service and customer contact
needs: competitive outsourcing of technology and staff for a
national contact center; interagency agreements with federal
agencies holding "umbrella contracts for contact centers"; EEOC
in-house contact centers with contract staff; EEOC in-house contact
centers with outsourced technology; and dispersed in-house
mini-contact centers. As an alternative to a customer contact
center, several field offices suggested that EEOC should simply
upgrade its telephone system capabilities to allow callers the
option of using an interactive voice response system (IVR) to
obtain information or to direct-dial a specific individual. Other
offices suggested adding auto attendant systems to their phones and
allocating additional staff to perform the customer service
function.
In considering these options, the work group weighed the costs
and benefits associated with each as well as the potential for
meeting the agency's desired objective to improve and increase
customer interaction and customer satisfaction, and concluded the
following. Partnering with other federal agencies may tie the EEOC
to pricing schedules negotiated by other agencies and may prevent
the EEOC from obtaining its own competitive contract. An in-house
call center, whether staffed internally or by contract staff,
requires heavy capital investment in telecommunications and
technology, with a continuing need to upgrade. Operating an
in-house contact center did not appear to be a cost-effective
strategy for an agency with expectations of flat budgets in the
near and medium-term. Implementation of an IVR system with the
toll-free number, while a relatively low-cost option, would not
allow for increased and improved customer interaction with
personnel representing EEOC. Allocating additional staff to some
offices and upgrading the telephone equipment in others does not
present the universal solution needed to benefit the entire agency
or even all the field offices in the goal to achieve higher
performance levels for all and a customer-centric
organization.
The final option considered was to recommend no changes in the
current business process. However, it was not considered a
desirable outcome that each of the 51 dispersed EEOC field offices
and headquarters continue to operate separate mini-call centers
with no integration or uniformity of process or procedures, that
customer services remain uneven across the agency, or that
high-graded EEOC staff continue to spend an inordinate amount of
time answering or returning telephone calls which could be resolved
in a more efficient and cost-effective manner through call center
consolidation.
The primary purpose of an EEOC national contact center would be
to handle public contacts in an efficient and easily accessible
manner. An EEOC national contact center would allow the agency to
be accessed by anyone, in practically any language, for the length
of service hours EEOC desires. It also would provide specially
trained staff in one or two locations who can accurately answer
questions or resolve issues in one call, the majority of the time.
This would allow EEOC to realize a tremendous improvement in our
customer service capacity and effectiveness. Specifically, a
national contact center could relieve field offices of the burden
of answering frequently asked questions, providing intake
counseling, making referrals, fulfilling requests for publications,
etc. Field offices could still receive calls directly from parties
to charges, stakeholders, the media, technical assistance
requesters, etc., however, the toll-free number for the national
contact center would provide a central point for guaranteed
immediate access to EEOC should a caller not be able to reach a
local field office.
Contact centers have three integral components: (1) human
resources (management personnel and agents who handle customer
inquiries); (2) technology (desktop applications, knowledge-based
software, etc.) to handle customer contacts including the routing,
resolution, and fulfillment of a request at the appropriate level
of expertise; and (3) call content (based on scripts and training
provided by the client).
Furthermore, contact center staffs are trained in "soft skills"
(how to be polite, and courteous, how to speak with people who are
experiencing difficulty in their lives, how to handle emotional or
angry callers) and "hard skills" (the laws, procedures, structures
of client organizations, program-specific knowledge,
client-specific software, and referral information).
The work group recommends that EEOC undertake a national pilot program during which contact center agents would address most public inquiries including inquiries from callers seeking to file a charge. Callers seeking to file a charge can be referred to the EEOC web site for self-service or can be assisted by having an EEOC-developed electronic assessment tool and questionnaire administered over the telephone. If the caller meets the criteria for moving to the next step in the process, the contact center agent would complete an on-line questionnaire for the caller and submit it to the appropriate office for decisions on actual charge filing and processing. Other inquiries can be answered by contact center staff who have been intensively trained and supplied with scripts to respond to anticipated questions.
Based on its research, the work group recommends that the
national contact center consist of a vendor-provided facility,
technology, and staffing. The technology provided would include a
single toll-free number and an Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
system. Inquiries coming into the center would be categorized into
three tiers. Tier one inquiries would include frequently asked
questions (FAQs) on EEOC laws, procedures, locations, hours of
work, etc. Tier two inquiries would include those from persons
seeking to file a charge. Tier three inquiries would comprise those
of a complex or novel nature. Many basic inquiries and FAQs would
be handled by the IVR system. Contract center staff would all
handle all inquiries categorized as Tier one not covered by the IVR
and all Tier two inquiries. Tier three inquiries would be
transferred to EEOC staff for resolution. E-mail and facsimiles
could be responded to within 24 hours.
Using a contact center vendor presents an opportunity for EEOC
to partner with a private or public contractor which specializes in
multi-channel contact center operations and customer service. The
goal is to improve service quality and expand access to the public.
Contact center vendors benefit from the ability to use economies of
scale, retain a customer focus, and leverage its knowledge of
appropriate technology such as automatic call distribution (ACD),
computer telephony integration and staffing issues. EEOC would,
however, own all data and records generated and it would benefit
from the vendor's investment in state-of-the-art contact center
technology. In addition, the multi-channel aspect means EEOC could
easily expand contact center services in the future to include
electronic mail, postal mail, and facsimile services, as the demand
grows.
The investment in a national contact center would reap multiple
benefits including the ability to have telephones answered
immediately by live bodies on a nation-wide basis, rapid and
accurate routing of potential charge inquiries to the appropriate
field office for processing, the ability to spot trends and
emerging issues to inform policy development, and the ability to
fully meet the e-government expectations of the President's
Management Agenda. Establishment of a national contact center would
allow the agency to consolidate the twelve different national
toll-free lines and to eliminate the publications center -- a contract
currently costing $100,000 per year. In addition, the EEOC would
save on telephone costs and staff time related to returning
thousands of calls from the public currently being left as messages
on auto attendant, voice mail, and manual message systems. A final
benefit accrues when the agency realizes the return on investment
of having its professional staff fully deployed in investigative
and outreach activities, rather than answering the phones.
The EEOC is currently undertaking a four-year restructuring
process. It is acknowledged that the agency's creation of a
national contact center to consolidate its customer service efforts
is a change that has not been fully embraced by all of the agency's
staff. While responses from at least half of the district offices
reflected cautious support for a contact center, a number of
districts reported no concerns or requested additional staff and/or
upgraded telephone equipment to handle individual district
inquiries.
Some staff have expressed fears that establishing a national
contact center would lead to loss of jobs and a skyrocketing of
charge receipts. This fear is typical in organizations
contemplating moving to outsourced contact centers to improve
service quality and efficiency. In one agency where a contact
center was introduced, there were no jobs lost, in fact, the agency
workload increased. Because of the inadequacies of the old
processes and telecommunications equipment, the agency found it had
been losing six calls for every call taken. Therefore, it is
possible EEOC charge receipts may rise with the implementation of a
national contact center. Should receipts go up, more staff would be
needed rather than fewer. Starting up as a pilot phase, however,
would enable quality assurance procedures to be put in place to
monitor the impact on workload and allow the agency to better
forecast staffing needs.
On the other hand, other agency staff expressed concern that
potentially meritorious charges would be screened out due to the
inexperience of contact center staff and that duplicate contacts to
field offices and the contact center would occur. In fact, contact
center staff would be fully trained in scripts and keyword prompts,
the content of which would be provided by EEOC experts, prior to
going live answering calls. Training of contact center staff is
intensive and normally agents are able to "go live" after three to
four weeks of training. Contact center staff would be regularly
monitored by quality assurance staff and EEOC liaisons to ensure
adequacy and accuracy of responses. A performance-based contract
will ensure the vendor meets or exceeds desired service
levels.
Based on the overall results of this study the work group makes
the following conclusions and recommendations.
Conclusion 1. The agency's current system for handling
unsolicited calls from the public is severely impaired by a lack of
systems capacity, facility infrastructure and appropriate staffing.
Also, accuracy, consistency, responsiveness, and professionalism
are core competencies that must be developed in order to improve
customer service. While certain offices manage to be responsive to
the public, the overall picture of the agency is one of spotty
achievement with no national customer service standard.
Conclusion 2. The national call center solution would benefit
all offices rather than requiring choices to be made on which
offices should be allocated additional staff and equipment in a
given year. A national contact center would allow a quantum leap in
performance, service quality, and appropriate deployment of staff.
To instill public confidence and improve its image, EEOC needs to
present a consistent, high-quality, professional face to the
public.
Recommendation 1. EEOC should establish a national contact
center to serve as a central point of access to handle all
unsolicited public inquiries that currently are received by the 51
field offices. It is not recommended, at this juncture, to include
calls received by the Office of Federal Operations or Field
Management Programs in the national contact center.
Recommendation 2. The national contact center should be
competitively outsourced to allow maximum opportunity to get the
best value pricing for the call center start-up and operations. The
EEOC should use the Statement of Objectives procurement process to
expedite implementation.
Recommendation 3. The EEOC should start operations with a pilot
phase for at least two years to allow for the collection of refined
baseline data on performance metrics and costs during the first 12
months and vendor performance during the second twelve months. This
pilot phase will allow pilot costs to be lower by being spread over
two years. Also, it will allow time for sufficient information to
be gathered before committing to a multi-year contract at a cost
higher than necessary. The pilot should be national in scope in
order to gather accurate and reliable baseline data on service
demands and to evaluate vendor performance.
Recommendation 4. The services handled by the EEOC national contact center during a pilot phase should cover the spectrum of basic inquiries, frequently asked questions, information on laws and procedures, the EEO Report series, office hours, locations, staff directories, and case information, with caller authentication. The EEOC national contact center should respond to inquiries f rom potential charging parties and assist in the completion of on-line charge questionnaires, if appropriate. Other services to be phased into contact center operations include handling e-mail, facsimile, postal mail, and fulfillment of requests for publications and printed materials. The EEOC national contact center should not handle actual charge filing.
Recommendation 5. The EEOC Order
150.005, Protection of Privacy, issued December 5, 1991, which
prohibits the use of electronic or mechanical devices to intercept
or record telephone conversations of EEOC employees and members of
the public who conduct business with the agency should be modified
to allow for monitoring and/or recording of calls of contact center
employees for quality assurance purposes.
Recommendation 6. The EEOC should develop internal and external
marketing strategies to communicate the compelling business case
for a national contact center to its staff, its customers and its
stakeholders in order to solidify support for this
initiative.
This page was last modified on September 14, 2004.