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The Fabricator's Newest Tool: The Call Center
June 27, 2012 |Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Over the past 10 years, the PCB manufacturing industry has faced a number of challenges. Since 2001, the industry has transitioned through:
- The emergence of e-commerce
- Consolidation – 800+ local/regional PCB manufacturers shrinking to approximately 250 facilities
- The move to offshore production facilities (and back)
- Depletion of the PCB design team talent pool
- Economic turmoil, natural disaster, recessions and political issues worldwide
In a report titled “Manufacturing Insecurity,” the consulting firm High Road Strategies reports that the pool of U.S.-based PCB manufacturers has shrunk by 74% since 2000. The widely held belief inside the PCB industry is that the small, local-market PCB manufacturers were generally the first to go in the decline. That loss of the local-market PCB shop may not have had a profound impact on PCB production capacity in the U.S., but it certainly changed how PCB designers have their prototypes built. Combine this loss of a readily accessible manufacturing expert with the ongoing talent drain in PCB design overall and the challenges to successful PCB prototyping become much more serious than just the economics and logistics issues.
That local shop might not have been fancy, but it was a great place to build the first batch of prototype boards. The designer often knew the owner of the shop, and could even pay a visit to ensure that the initial builds were as intended. And that was the pinnacle of attentive customer service: the designer and the PCB shop owner working together to get a meaningful board design realized.
That mutual working relationship between fabricator and designer was a major factor in design success during prototype. There was trust, and that trust created loyalty between designer and fabricator. When the local shops closed, and the designers found themselves without, it was as if the local bookstore had shut down. Sure, one could shop an online bookseller any time, and have books delivered right to the front door, but there was no relationship, no tactile connection to the service, no one to collaborate with or consult about a design challenge.
Simultaneously, the emergence of e-commerce was a key factor in the transformation of some local-market manufacturers into national and multi-national players. Just as the local-market shops were consolidating, production runs were moving overseas, and design teams were finding themselves without a source for prototype work, some manufacturing firms – Sunstone Circuits among them – emerged on the internet.
For many prototype PCB makers, survival has depended upon being nimble, resourceful and of high value to design teams. This winning formula held true in the e-commerce model, but took on some new complications. E-commerce meant that a company could develop a global customer base. But it brought on additional challenges: Time zones, shipping complexities, distance, and the inability of the designer to choose to work directly with the shop. An online source, with its distance, had an even harder time creating that credibility. And for new PCB designers, the relative lack of access to a manufacturing expert makes it even more difficult to learn how to successfully turn a PCB CAD tool file into a successful, high-yield manufactured product.
Not surprisingly, the customer service dynamic in prototype PCB manufacturing has played out very similarly to how it played out for e-commerce book stores. In the prototype PCB manufacturing segment, e-commerce-based providers have a reputation for being difficult to reach. They staff the telephones according to local time zone business hours, and may be inconsistent about responses via e-mail, online chat, or the like. This relative lack of availability stifles the sense of collaborative relationship.
When a designer team is developing a relationship with an e-commerce PCB maker, here are some key criteria to consider:
Call Center Location
Is the call center located in the same facility as manufacturing? A close physical connection encourages direct interaction between the customer service representative (CSR) and the manufacturing experts building your product. In such an environment, you’ll often find a CSR on the manufacturing floor, helping ensure the customer’s job gets built correctly.
“Through having our customer service team located at the manufacturing facility, we are able to process every order change request while the customer is on the phone,” said Al Secchi, customer service manager at Sunstone Circuits. “Our service agents have direct communication with every station within the manufacturing process, making it possible to initiate a real-time change when possible and whenever the need arises.”
Not only does this direct CSR involvement increase the call center’s first call resolution rate, but it also reduces scrap rates and the overall return material authorization (RMA) rates.
Multiple Channels of Communication
When a call center serves technical customers worldwide, it must be fully prepared to communicate with a customer in whatever medium works best for that customer.
Telephone
Inbound telephone support calls are the backbone of the call center’s daily activity. Check for the following key performances from the supplier’s call center:
- Average call answer time.
- 24-hour staffed phone support.
- First call resolution rate – how often is a customer’s issue resolved in one call?
- Overall professionalism and expertise – this is a technical product. Make sure you can get the technical information you require.
Live Chat
Some customers prefer to engage via live chat. The reasons are varied, but include language, location, and time-zone issues. (Sunstone’s live chat, for instance, is available 24/7, and requests to chat typically receive responses in less than 10 seconds.) In an informal test of prototype PCB suppliers who offer live chat, most of these features seemed to be dead links. If your provider offers live chat, check to make sure it’s an active service.
Next to phone calls, e-mail is the predominant customer support mechanism. Check to see how quickly your e-mail is acknowledged with a response. The typical response time to an inbound customer support e-mail should be less than 15 minutes.
Forums
Online forums allow for community-wide discussion of topics, news and issues. EDN Magazine regularly reports, in its annual survey of electronics designers and engineers, that the typical electronics designer (PCB designers included) is often reluctant to use social networking tools during the design process. While this will evolve, PCB designers are more likely to check for a company’s prior work in a forum rather than appeal for help on a social networking site. Check to see if your PCB manufacturer hosts forums, or participates regularly in other industry-specific forums. Use the forum to talk openly with other customers about their experiences with the company.
Customer Support Rep Training & Support
The knowledge of the staff member customers interact with is critical. Understandably, a customer support position at any call center is usually an entry-level position, and this can be a barrier when developing a world class-call center. Nevertheless, customer service representatives must be able to hold their own during technical discussions. Whether in e-mail, online chat, or on the telephone, the CSRs must be able to deliver on that consultative relationship once enjoyed by the customer with the local board shop.
When a first-line CSR cannot adequately handle a customer issue, what happens next is the responsibility of the call center’s senior technical staff. In many companies, this will result in a Tier 2 escalation and a call back from someone more senior. Generally, the higher the ratio of senior staff to front-line staff, then the higher a call center’s overall first call issue resolution metrics will be. As a customer, you can assess the call escalation process. If an issue requiring Tier 2 help results in the call center taking a message or putting you into a Tier 2 voicemail queue, then senior staffing is light. But if the call center seems to escalate/resolve issues inside the same phone call (a technique called transparent escalation) that call center is more deeply staffed with senior technical help. It is through this deep knowledge that the team is able to successfully implement transparent escalation and achieve a world-class level of first call resolutions.
The Pool Routing System
Another call center mechanism that indicates a well-staffed, well-trained call center is the method used for routing calls. In the PCB industry, two main types of routing methods are commonly used: Voicemail routing and pool-based routing. Most prototype PCB companies use the voicemail routing model.
In the voicemail routing model, customer support is assigned to a dedicated representative, who is backed by voicemail. When customers call, they are routed to the agent assigned to them. If the agent is busy, the customer goes to voicemail where he can leave a message. Efficiency studies show that the voicemail based call routing approach can be a resource drain. Informal studies have shown that retrieving, listening to, and then calling a customer who left voicemail consumes an additional seven minutes on average, per call. If the average customer support call lasts eight minutes, then one full-time CSR can be expected to handle about 30 calls per shift. With this system, once you fall behind, you may never get caught up again. It doesn’t take very long before CSRs end up working entirely from voicemail for the remainder of the shift.
For a pool-based routing system, the phone PBX routes inbound support calls to any available agent. Customer service agents use sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) tools to quickly come up to speed on the customer’s background and specific preferences. Because any agent can quickly respond to any customer call, call center resources can not only be better managed, and staff can effectively handle larger call volumes, but customers benefit from a real-time interaction with a knowledgeable agent, at the time of call. This dramatically increases the customer’s level of satisfaction with the call experience.
Impact on the Customer
Sophisticated and well-trained call center staff and tools, including a pool-based routing system, coupled with the call center’s location inside the manufacturing facility, are the keys to delivering that shop-across-town experience that design teams deserve.
But this improved customer experience does come with a price. The manufacturer must be willing to invest in phone and CRM equipment for the call center. But it seems that most prototype PCB providers do not see as much value in state-of-the-art customer support equipment as they do in the latest manufacturing equipment.
Our internal research has shown that the first-level effect of order price is actually one of the smaller costs in our customers’ project budgets. By providing the same high level of customer support described here, the savvy prototype manufacturer can use the current tools of the market to fill the role of the old local-market board house. A fabricator should be the consultative resource in each customer’s design process – getting the order right the first time, minimizing design revisions, and saving design teams days of project time and hours of labor costs associated with rework and waiting for revised builds.
These incremental savings turn into real savings for the designer. Research shows that an RMA order costs $200 to resolve. Add to this the lost project time, which, for a design team of four engineers waiting an additional five business days for a re-spin (an estimated $10,000 in labor costs). The reduced risk of using the world-class prototype house, with state of the art consultative customer service will more than pay for itself by drastically reducing unnecessary rebuilds. Yet, it’s the secondary cost savers, in wages and project time, that add up to the largest savings for our customers.
Summary
The PCB manufacturing industry has undergone major changes over the past decade, including the loss of many small, local board shops in the U.S. Those old-fashioned local-market PCB providers offered much more than circuit boards. These shops provided a unique, critical service: A direct, personal relationship.
But even though the prototype PCB manufacturing business model has shifted to a more indirect, e-commerce type model in many cases, that direct and personal consultative relationship can still be achieved by manufacturers who are committed to investing in world-class customer service tools, mechanisms and expert staff.
Nolan Johnson is EDA product marketing manager for Sunstone Circuits. He can be reached at njohnson@sunstone.com.