Abstract:

A telecommunications company in the United States wanted to improve service by aligning internal service levels with customer requirements. They 1) identified customers' top priorities; 2) chose the priority with the most opportunity for improvement; 3) mapped the top priorities to internal process measures; 4) validated that the internal measures were related to customers? priorities; 5) developed internal service thresholds; and 6) employed the results to drive process changes. This paper describes these steps for the company's repair process for measures related to their callcenter, the repair representatives, keeping time commitments, the timeliness of the repair, and the reliability of the repair.