Professional Accomplishments

Throughout my consulting career, I have worked with organizations across different industries, addressing situations involving technology, operations, organizational responsibilities, and business performance.

The three accomplishments presented here illustrate different challenges: restoring a revenue-critical service, strengthening military contact center operations, and developing the capabilities of 125 network operators.

Although the circumstances were different, each engagement required understanding more than the immediate technical requirements. It involved examining how people worked, how responsibilities were understood, what information was available, and what needed to change to achieve meaningful results.

I invite you to explore these experiences, consider the circumstances and decisions that shaped their outcomes, and reflect on what similar perspectives might reveal within your own organization.

Restoring a Revenue-Critical Contact Center

The Situation

A Chicago organization experienced a critical disruption when its contact center's inbound telephone number stopped functioning. Multiple engineers had investigated the issue for approximately a day without identifying the cause. The client reported that the disruption represented approximately $1 million per hour in lost revenue.

My Contribution

I was engaged to investigate the disruption. After examining the most common technical causes and finding that none explained the outage, I expanded the investigation beyond the organization's internal systems to include the third-party service provider responsible for delivering telephone calls to the contact center.

I asked whether the provider had made any changes since the previous Friday, when the contact center was still receiving calls. This revealed that the service provider had performed a reset on Friday night that did not include the contact center's telephone number in the configuration.

Previous resets had been completed successfully, so there had been no apparent reason to suspect that the reset procedure was responsible for the disruption. This particular reset, however, had produced an unexpected configuration omission.

I coordinated with the service provider's engineer to restore the missing configuration, allowing inbound calls to reach the contact center again.

The Outcome

Inbound telephone service was restored in approximately half a day on-site, ending the disruption to this revenue-critical operation.

Improving Military Contact Center Operations and Readiness

The Situation

A U.S. military contact center was operating with several limitations that affected how personnel received information, obtained assistance, and communicated across departments.

Callers encountered repetitive hold music and confusing telephone menus. Contact center agents spent time responding to routine ticket-status inquiries, while the available reporting did not provide sufficient detail to understand call transfers, incorrect routing, or repeated calls.

The environment also lacked the ability to distribute certain operational announcements quickly and to accommodate exceptions to standard call-processing procedures.

My Contribution

I worked on improvements to the contact center's operations, communications capabilities, and supporting technology.

The changes included:

  • Improving the caller experience. Introduced randomized hold music, incorporating military music and jazz, rather than repeatedly playing the same selection.

  • Expanding operational measurements. Added reporting capabilities to examine transfers, incorrectly routed calls, duplicate calls, and the departments sending and receiving transferred calls.

  • Reducing unnecessary agent workload. Integrated ticket-status information so callers could obtain routine updates without requiring an agent to retrieve the information manually.

  • Strengthening operational communications. Introduced announcement capabilities that allowed authorized personnel to distribute messages to designated departments using specific codes. These capabilities supported communications concerning situations such as active-shooter drills and service outages.

  • Simplifying call navigation. Revised telephone menus to make routing clearer, including distinctions between classified and non-classified services.

  • Reducing administrative demands on officers. Introduced administrative dialing support to reduce the time officers spent placing routine calls.

  • Accommodating operational exceptions. Added exception programming so the system could respond to circumstances that did not fit standard call-processing procedures.

The Outcome

The improvements provided more useful operational information, reduced routine demands on contact center agents, and made it easier to direct callers to the appropriate resources.

The expanded reporting also gave personnel better evidence for identifying recurring call-routing difficulties and determining where operational adjustments were needed.

The announcement capabilities strengthened the contact center's ability to support time-sensitive communications, while the other changes improved the flexibility and usability of the operating environment.

Developing Operational Capability Across 125 Network Operators

The Situation

At Electronic Data Systems (EDS), approximately 125 network operators were responsible for supporting a complex data center environment serving multiple customers.

While walking through the support center and listening to personnel, I became aware of recurring complaints about the IBM network-management application. Operators described it as difficult to use, insufficiently user-friendly, and lacking capabilities they believed were necessary to perform their responsibilities effectively.

The challenge was not simply whether the application possessed the necessary functionality. It was also whether personnel understood how to use that functionality within their actual operating environment.

My Contribution

I approached the Director of Operations and proposed developing a customized training program for the 125 operators, using EDS's actual IBM application, network infrastructure, and operational procedures rather than relying exclusively on IBM's standard training curriculum.

To understand the requirements, I met with experienced, intermediate, and newly assigned operators. Each group provided a different perspective on the environment, the difficulties they encountered, and the knowledge necessary to perform their responsibilities.

I incorporated their actual naming conventions, network configurations, operational procedures, and recurring customer-support situations into the curriculum.

The training included:

·       Understanding the operating environment. Using EDS's actual network and application to demonstrate how systems, devices, and supporting resources interacted.

·       Recognizing common operational difficulties. Incorporating frequently encountered problems and errors reported by both operators and customers.

·       Developing practical troubleshooting skills. Teaching personnel how to recognize symptoms, investigate conditions, and apply appropriate resolution procedures.

·       Improving cross-departmental communication. Helping operators understand the terminology and information needed to communicate effectively with other support groups.

·       Applying knowledge immediately. Using familiar screens, naming conventions, and realistic operating situations so personnel could transfer what they learned directly into their daily responsibilities.

The resulting program provided operators with a practical reference for handling familiar operational situations, rather than simply teaching application features in isolation.

The Outcome

Within days of the training, the support center director sent a letter to my IBM manager reporting improvements in employee morale, how operational problems were being handled, and personnel attitudes toward the technology they were using.

The engagement demonstrated that improving an organization's operational capability does not always require replacing its technology. Sometimes the greater opportunity lies in helping personnel understand the systems they already possess and apply those capabilities more effectively.

The customized training approach was also significant within IBM. Initially delivered as a value-added service, this type of engagement subsequently became billable training work.