1. Minnesota Call Center Best Practices
UI Directors’ Conference, October 2016 New Orleans, Louisiana

2. Overview Minnesota UI is very seasonal
> 50% annually
Program will triple between now and January
Relatively high replacement rate -- max WBA = $683
Online usage > 90%
Very little “out-sourcing”
We control our system
We know and use our data
We control our budget
We manage all reporting
The entire program is in the same division
RESEA is in UI
Usually in top 5 for federal measures.
Data validation is complete and passed
RJM in top 5
Phone wait times ~ 30 seconds

3. The Secret to Running A Great UI Call Center is:
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4. There are NO Secrets Call Center Best Practices are well understood
There are hundreds of books and probably as many consultants
More than likely you have several, very successful, private-sector call centers near you
If you’re like us, these call centers:
Pay less
Have higher turnover (more training challenges)
Deal with topics that are as complicated
Struggle just as much with technology
Are run more rigorously
The technology that supports a call center is designed to make it manageable
The metrics are well understood and call center software is designed to provide it

5. Maybe There’s One “Secret”
Let go of the past and ruthlessly re-engineer everything along lines that emphasize the interests of the customer over the interests of staff
Create the organization it must be, rather than the one you’re more comfortable with.

6. What We Have Been Trying to Do
Recognize we are in the high volume customer service business now and always have been.
Organize and manage to this fact.
Moved to a more retail focus
Single process management philosophy
Simplified processes and made steps more granular
Technology facilitates flow to detect and manage exceptions
Manage exceptions, we don’t enshrine them
Simplify law and policy
Training is nearly continuous, process oriented and follows best practices in adult learning
Embrace performance measures
Embrace budgetary constraints, federal measures, external pressures, busy seasons, recessions and the chance to fail
Decide to be the best in the country – even if you can’t be

7. Customer Service and Production
We are in the customer service business
It happens that our product is UI
We want to talk to our customers (if they feel they need to talk to us)
This means that we keep wait times down so that those who feel they need to talk to us are not discouraged
The call center is the most critical part of our operation
Everything is engineered around it’s successful operation
External and internal communication is designed to be customer-oriented
We try to be as transparent as possible; partly because we owe it to taxpayers and partly because it keeps us outward looking
We are a production shop … Quality or Quantity? Yes!
We make Camrys, not Bentleys
Triage everything, prioritize and monitor everything as if this was a retail environment and we had to earn our customers’ business
Blockages caused by exceptions are detected and removed

8. Structure Focuses Outward
Fully integrated systemically and managerially
We don’t have a Tax Director or a BPC Director
We don’t have turf
We have a “front room” and a “back room”
Focus is always on the “front room” and “back room” is kept as small as possible
Our “front room” is a our prestige operation
Back rooms are very unhealthy organizationally
They eat resources
They fixate on exceptions
They impose burdens on the front room without cost analysis
They are inward looking instead of outward looking
They are the bureaucracy within the bureaucracy
We make it VERY clear that the back room serves the front room
Denigration of the Customer Service Center is NOT allowed
The most important work we do is talk with our customers NOT process Combined Wage Claims or partial successions

9. Business Processes
All business processes follow a Call Center Management approach
Smaller units of work
Work is pushed, not pulled.
Exceptions do not slow the main flow
Minutes per unit are structurally managed
Standard deviation is kept low (at least we try)
Why?
It works
It means there is a similar philosophy to all work
Whether we like it our not, it’s a kind of assembly line
Our work is electronic, not physical.
The “assembly line” never needs to stop to ensure quality
All business tools are designed to detect and move exceptions efficiently to the correct flow
We actively discourage “research” and “getting opinions” in our main flows
We discourage unstructured “self-study”

10. Simpler Law and Policy
We have a strong and supportive advisory council
They have supported our efforts (now two decades old) to continually update and simplify our statute
Generally good support from legislature – probably because of the highly seasonal nature of the program
All the major items are indexed
Most of our law is now (reasonably) well organized and written in fairly clear language
Generally, little interpretation is needed
We don’t write policy or rules (very often)
We actively analyze portions of the statute to see if they are still relevant
Remove exceptions that have little application or cost impact
We try to structure laws so that WE statutorily do right by employers and claimants
We don’t have any sections where choice is exercised
Most choices require complex explanations and speculations about the future
We found the old choice provisions exaggerate “good” choices without accounting for the many, many bad choices.
It is much easier and faster to learn this kind of law

11. Training Nearly all training is now formal
Training examples are chosen for their simplicity, not complexity
The best adjudicator may not be the best trainer
We practice before we do the work
We actively discourage staff from “training” themselves by doing “research” or asking (random) co-workers
This has not been easy – “senior” staff still try to re-train once new staff get on the job.
Training team is run by people who specialize in adult learning
Training team has to earn its keep – not as analytical as we would like yet, but they ARE focused on making the learner successful
Most training has a refresher component provided online
New staff are trained as a team under a supervisor who focuses on on-boarding new staff

12. Performance Be the best in the country
There are a lot of things wrong with USDOL measures, but:
They are universal and have been around a long time
A lot of them conflict with each other – this creates an interesting management problem to solve
External goals are good and real (we need something in the absence of profit)
You don’t have to actually succeed, just keep trying
Don’t manage to the Federal Measures themselves
Do your own analysis of the elements behind them
Manage the elements behind the measures
We are responsible for our own outcomes – including failures. It’s good to work in a program that is constantly measuring itself and finding where it falls short.
“UI is easy because everything is measurable. My program is much harder because nothing is measurable” – Failed (non-UI) administrator speaking un-ironically

13. Contact Information