The Contact Center

An 'issue' arose at yesterday's User Group Meeting regarding the future of the Contact Center.

First, there is no 'issue' today.

Second, Contact Center costs must be contained by FY2010. Herein lies our challenge, a challenge briefed to the GEB in July when presenting the FY2010 budget for approval.

The following statistics are representive of a week's effort at the Contact Center:

• Filing for Financial Assistance - 781 calls or 12.02%
• Questions on how to engage the Offering Agency - 459 calls or 7.06%
• Individual looking for Assistance or looking for a Grant - 290 calls or 4.46%
• Questions regarding Government Grants for Small Business - 213 calls or 3.28%
• Finding Grants - Searching for Grant Opportunities - Advanced - 200 calls or 3.08%
• Password, Username and Log In - Forgot Password - Grant Community(!) - 145 calls or 2.23%
• Questions regarding Student Aid - 116 calls or 1.78%
• Questions on Possible Fraud - 67 calls or 1.03%
• Finding Grants - Searching for Grant Opportunities - Basic - 36 calls or 0.55%

Summing up the above, >35% (specifically, 35.49%) of the phone calls have little to do with "applicant submission." By this I mean the following, if you have to submit an application today by a specific time, you - the applicant - are competing with the above inquiries.

If 35+% of the Contact Center's effort is engaging miscellaneous phone calls, and I am by no means denegrating the merit of these phone calls, then the Contact Center's efforts are being taken away from the applicants who have toiled against a deadline to make a submission. Thus I hope you can understand why I included the entry below.

Now, of the remaining 64+%, just less than 50% deal with CCR registration, obtaining a DUNS number, determining the points of contact at a given agency, and other similar topics.

Therefore, of the phone calls received at the Contact Center, only ~15% dealt with the actual submission of an application on a given date due. This means that for every 20 phone calls at the Contact Center, 17 are (generally) non-critical while 3 are of a time-critical nature.

As a consequence the 5.66/1 ratio against the submitting applicant needs to be addressed if we are going to meet our Grants.gov PMO Strategic Plan vision, mission, goals, and values.

How are we going to take care of and place a priority on the "applicant" on the day s/he needs support? We believe we need to empower the applicant as much as possible. As we move to FY2010, we are developing a strategy that at present consists of the following.

Goal: Reduce Call Center Dependency by Empowering the Applicant

1. Employ full Adobe functionality in all future forms, i.e., employing Adobe’s ‘self-diagnostic’ capability.*
2. Employ a ‘self-diagnostic computer tool’ to assess the applicant’s computer to ensure s/he has the proper software &/or viewer as well as RAM, etc., to transmit the application.*
3. Include latest Adobe viewers, which display upload progress and speeds, i.e., telling the applicant the progress being made in submitting their application.*
4. Speed & Reliability Upgrade –will enable greater processing power than Grants.gov has ever had.*
5. Our 'new' systems Dashboards will allow us to replicate and/or view the applicant experience and proactively address problems.*
6. Transition to cloud computing will allow for greater scalability in supporting our applicant/customer base in terms of bandwidth and processing power.*
7. The transition to RSS from 700k daily emails will free up processing power for the applicant community and reduce stress on the system.*
8. Redesign our website, which has admittedly grown cumbersome over the years with 18+k pages, to make it more functional, interactive, and user friendly.*
9. Employ two Contact Center phone numbers: one for non-critical issues; one for day-of-submission applicant support. The latter would receive increased emphasis and take priority over the former.

All items marked with an "*" above, if properly addressed, will significantly reduce the phone call volume - but none so more as, perhaps, #8 above.

We believe that the more we empower the applicant with his/her own tools to simplify & verify the application completion and submission process, then the present ~15% of Contact Center day-of-submission calls will be significantly reduced.

Similarly, the better we structure our information architecture on the website, then the remaining 85% of calls will also be significantly reduced.

Yes, our objective is to eliminate the need for the Contact Center. It should be the objective of every effective and efficient organization. Will we attain that objective? Only time will tell the tale. But until we implement all of the above actions, and more, will we begin to make such an assessment.