Readilunch

Note: The following problem is fictitious but employs names of, and news from, real organizations. The idea is to increase the reality of the situation, and to improve your awareness of various industries and organizations.

You've recently been hired by the midwest offices of Fidelity Investments as an operations analyst. One of your first assignments is as a member of a six person team aimed at improving call center efficiency. At the first team meeting, the team decided that it would be a good idea to gather information on current call center operations. They put you in charge of gathering an initial round of data for the next meeting.

The team also asked you to bring ideas about potential causes of low call center efficiency to the next meeting.

Because the team didn't specify otherwise, you decide to focus on calls related to the Fidelity Personal Investments (FPI) division.

Fidelity electronically captures considerable information during each call that customer service representatives (CSRs) handle with clients and you have a lot of info to choose from. With the help of a friend who knows how to query the database, you gather information on various call center characteristics.

When doing your analysis and preparing you're report, keep these questions in mind:

What quality tools will help me squeeze the most meaning out of the data for the team?
What do these data tell us about call center efficiency?
What issues related to these data still need clarity before we can fully interpret them?
What other data might be useful to get a better picture of the current situation?

Table 1: Call Center Volume and CSR Count (20 most recent weeks)

Week	Volume	Number of CSR Equivalents
1	12,934	46
2	9,771	42
3	11,398	45
4	11,602	52
5	7,222	39
6	10,589	42
7	16,269	45
8	12,112	44
9	11,584	45
10 (three day week)	4,072	20
11	13,964	48
12	9,746	40
13	10,587	42
14	9,975	40
15	12,841	45
16	11,894	48
17	10,125	42
18	14,850	45
19	11,123	41
20	8,745	39

Table 2: Call Type and Frequency

Subject of Call Number of Calls

Account balance 78

Existing 401K 404

New 401K 278

Mutual fund holdings 23

Taxes 94

Buying/selling mutual funds 142

Table 3: Time Connected to Customer (three observations per day, time in seconds)

Day	Observations (sec)
1	41	270	122
2	578	353	268
3	584	134	148
4	260	336	125
5	746	447	329
6	164	316	556
7	243	153	264
8	99	286	198
9	371	554	139
10	241	220	453
11	975	783	632
12	256	464	336

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