Quickline - number one provider in First Call Resolution

Call Center with IoT automation

Executive Summary

Quickline AG management wanted to reduce customer service costs and improve both quality and customer satisfaction at the same time by implementing a knowledge management system. It was a requirement that the solution would work seamlessly within the existing IT landscape at Quickline and that as many agents tasks as possible could be automated.

A three stage project was carried out with Quickline AG:

Integration with ticket system and CRM
Build up knowledge base for NOC
Roll-out for all departments at Quickline AG.

Industry: Telecommunications, full service provider

Country: Switzerland

Products: Dezide Contact Center, Data Collection / IoT

About Quickline

The Quickline Group counts 24 independent network operators in the Quickline network and supplies around 420.000 households in the Swiss cable network market in the cantons of Berne, Solothurn, Aargau, Basel, Nidwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz, Zurich and Valais. Together, the partners offer Internet, fixed and mobile telephony as well as digital TV / radio.

In some regions, the Quickline Group is a provider of private services and provides them directly with the relevant services and products.

Quickline web site: www.quickline.ch

Business Challenge

Quickline has grown from 5 to 35 customer service representatives within 4 years. The knowledge was wildly scattered and the problem solving process with customers on the phone was not organized or structured. That created inefficiencies due to lack of knowledge and process oriented problem solving. Quickline has grown so quickly, a knowledge database must be implemented to fulfill the needs of the roughly 500’000 customers in the best possible way. Additionally the average consultation with a customer lasted too long due to lack of process oriented support. Part of it was that in the process; the agent needed to open and interact with several support tools and interpret the information in each. Time and knowledge is of the essence and with the growing need from our customers, we needed to be on top of the game.

Nick Gast

(Chief Operating Officer, Quickline)

Why Was Dezide Chosen?

Dezide’s causal AI technology enables any knowledge expert to elicit and formalise his knowledge in the form of potential root causes and repair steps / solutions and questions (related to error messages, tests and configuration). This knowledge is then made available to anyone who needs it, be it end customers, customer service agent or field service technicians.

We looked at several different solutions; however, none of those fitted our needs as well as Dezide. Dezide is not only very easily being implemented or added via an interface to other already running systems, it is also the perfect tool to streamline the work of a customer service in-house or out of the office for our partners. In addition to have the history build in, it gives us the little edge to have a small CRM tool

Nick Gast

(Chief Operating Officer, Quickline)

Dezide Contact Center

This is a screenshot of the Dezide Contact Center embedded in the “QMC” CRM system:

The layout provides a 360 degree view of the customers’ services and highlights immediately any issue related to that customer. The icons at the top of the screen, highlighted with a blue box, provides the agent an overview of the different services and the system will identify if any of these have issues. In this case, the Internet connection for the customer is not in order as indicated by the red bar below the “Internet” icon. The agent is guided through the most efficient approach to help the customer through a serious of questions and solutions as shown below the blue box in the center of the screen. The right side of the screen, highlighted with a red box, displays the steps the agent has already gone through. Marked with a green background we see steps automatically answered through IoT capabilities – speeding up the process further and ensuring the highest accuracy. The IoT capabilities allows the system to answer questions the same way every time by interpreting data accurately – such that one agent does not say ‘Yes, the quality of service is OK’ while another agent interprets the same data differently and answers ‘No, the quality of service is not good’.

Another important benefit of automation is that agents don’t have to switch between several different systems as Dezide automates the process of collecting the data, answering the question, and interpreting data correctly on behalf of the agents. Using IoT efficiently puts everything into one unified application for the service agents abstracting away back-end systems that are difficult to use and takes a long time to learn.

Project phases

The project went through three phases:

1. Implementation of Dezide for head quarters in Nidau

Phase one goals:

Integration of Dezide into existing Ticketing system
Integration of Dezide into existing CRM system
Single sign-on for all users

This phase also included full integration into Quickline’s existing ticketing system and CRM system. After 3-4 months the knowledge base was ready to launch to all agents. The project started end of January and was launched for all agents middle of April.

2. Build knowledge base in Dezide and validate content

Phase two goals:

Build knowledge base in Dezide and validate content
Make use of Data Collectors (IoT) to automate the process of analyzing the customer’s telephone, data lines, and services for a complete optimized environment

This phase was carried out in parallel with phase 1 over a four-month period where the goal was to implement a consistent knowledge base that could be used for first line agents and back-end at the head quarters. Troubleshooting guides that could be used for both types of users were developed. The majority of the time in this phase was spent on building up the knowledge base, where two knowledge experts spent roughly 50% of their time in the Dezide administration tool. As a new guide was built, it was used during a real call from a customer to ensure it covered all the relevant areas. If areas were missing, feedback was sent back through the system to the knowledge experts, who then would make the necessary adjustments and re-publish the guide for further testing.

Approximately 25 days of consultancy was spent on Phase 1 and 2 to carry out integration, implementation, and configuration.

3. Implementation of Dezide for all partners throughout Switzerland

Phase three goals:

Status icons indicating service status per customer to agents
Advanced escalation options with Ticketing system
Advanced assignment rules with Ticketing system

The last phase was focused on providing all of Quickline’s partners access to the tool to use the knowledge base created by HQ. As the structure of Quickline is such that every partner has their own independent location, it was necessary to facilitate advanced escalation options and assignment rules.

Approximately 17 days of consultancy was spent on Phase 2, where most of the time was spent on advanced integration options with Quickline’s own IT infrastructure

Project Challenges

The right team
- Primarily, it is important to gather the right team for the project. You want the most knowledgeable people who are able to work structured and are open to new ideas and approaches. The main reason for this is that Dezide introduces a new way of thinking when it comes to troubleshooting and an open mind is important.
Quality content
- Equally important is it to realize that the saying ‘garbage in – garbage out’ very much applies and you need your best people on the team for building up the knowledge base. This part of the project can be quite time consuming but is essential for successful implementation.

For Quickline it took around three months to build and validate the knowledge base.

Results

Quickline became the number one provider in First Call Resolution and lowest Average Handling Time in all of Switzerland.

24%

First Call Resolution Increase

Up from 75% to 93%

39%

Average Handling Time Reduction

Down from 10.30 to 6.3 minutes

These results were achieved mainly by structuring and optimizing the call center processes in a dynamic and flexible way, and by using the same knowledge base for both backend NOC and all call center agents. Furthermore, automating call center processes extensively through Dezide’s Data Collection Framework had an incredible effect on efficiency and quality.

Nick Gast, COO, Quickline AG explains the results:

Dezide has presented to us the key to be successful in our emerging market and in our customer comes first view. With the logical approach it solves the very complicated business rules and technical processes into step by step easy to follow SOPs. Dezide has become crucial in a high quality and very customer oriented solution approach. After introducing Dezide in our customer care center, we reached out to over 200 customer sales points and implemented Dezide – a true success story.

We are now the number 1 telco provider in Switzerland in terms of customer service. We have the highest First Call Resolution rate and the lowest Average Handling Time in all of Switzerland.

Nick Gast

(Chief Operating Officer, Quickline)

Chief Operating Officer of Dezide, Esben Rasmussen comments on the results:

Esben Rasmussen

Chief Operating Officer of Dezide

Quickline AG is now regarded as the best customer service provider in Switzerland within the communication industries due to its state-of-the-art quality and service for all its customers.

Quickline - number one provider in First Call Resolution

Executive Summary

Industry: Telecommunications, full service provider

Country: Switzerland

Products: Dezide Contact Center, Data Collection / IoT

About Quickline

Business Challenge

Why Was Dezide Chosen?

Dezide Contact Center

Project phases

The project went through three phases:

1. Implementation of Dezide for head quarters in Nidau

2. Build knowledge base in Dezide and validate content

3. Implementation of Dezide for all partners throughout Switzerland

Project Challenges

Results

Quickline became the number one provider in First Call Resolution and lowest Average Handling Time in all of Switzerland.

24%

First Call Resolution Increase

Up from 75% to 93%

39%

Average Handling Time Reduction

Down from 10.30 to 6.3 minutes

Nick Gast, COO, Quickline AG explains the results:

Chief Operating Officer of Dezide, Esben Rasmussen comments on the results:

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