Telecommunications,
Media, and Broadband

Telecom & Media

We help call centers in telecommunications, media, and broadband clients meet the challenges of competitive intensity and rapid change.

McIntosh & Associates have been involved in the telecommunications, media, and broadband sector since telecom deregulation in the early 1980s. We have a deep understanding of the industry’s past challenges and future opportunities.

Our experience within this sector:

Telecommunications

Media/Content

Broadband Access

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Telecommunications

Managing divestiture, deregulation, & consolidation

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Media

Anticipating customer requirements.

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Broadband

Digital skills supporting digital access.

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Recent experience within this sector:

  • McIntosh has managed over a dozen workforce optimization engagements delivering savings and improved service level performance to firms in the telecommunications, media, and broadband market segments. We focus on effective planning and staffing driven by accurate forecasts and the deployment of flexible workload management processes that support planned workload volumes and provide elasticity and the flexibility to manage unplanned, excessive volumes.  Our intra-day management expertise includes the design and implementation of network operations centers that successfully manage multi-site, insourced and outsourced operations with over 4,000 agents in both brick and mortar and virtual settings.
  • McIntosh has defined and delivered quality assurance processes focused on generating customer loyalty and measuring operational effectiveness for virtually every client in these segments. We have conducted extensive transaction monitoring, completed customer surveys by function, and have compiled client specific customer databases generating valuable customer insights. Regardless of market segment, our methodology accurately assesses customers’ requirements, preferences, and aspirations for service deriving operational tactics capable of delivering differentiated service and support.
  • For a major media firm, McIntosh provided the consolidation analysis for eliminating the existing regional focus to be replaced by a virtual call center organization supporting a national customer base. McIntosh conducted in depth market analysis including labor studies, recommending the final site configuration and providing an ROI model that would allow the client to model various alternatives including adjustments to costs and operational assumptions. The project required five months to complete and generated over $100M in savings.
  • For a major ISP, McIntosh led the effort to consolidate sixteen diverse call centers with different technologies into a single domestic site with consumer and business technical support and customer service outsourced to near-shore and off-shore operations. While not necessarily McIntosh’s preferred solution, the client was in a highly competitive market with all competitors leveraging lower cost, offshore solutions. In addition to project management, McIntosh implemented the network operations center for virtual oversight and management, hired and deployed instructors at all vendor sites, and managed the implementation plan providing staff augmentation support at the vendor locations for 9 months after implementation. The client recognized over $120M annually in savings and won the JD Powers award in both the broadband and dial-up categories just months after implementation.
  • McIntosh’s partners have actively participated in the evolution of telecommunications networks having participated in or leading large-scale tests of network functionality including network prompting, NPX-NXX and next available routing, network queuing, in-transit messaging, and VoIP/SIP migrations. We have managed large scale, multi-vendor networks leveraging routing tools to gain site visibility real-time and to dynamically manage traffic based on network and site conditions.
  • McIntosh has developed and delivered new hire, functional training curricula for domestic, near-shore, and offshore operations and has developed and delivered customized performance management training for front-line supervisors/managers to over thirty call center organizations with over 60% of those projects in the telecommunications, media, and broadband sectors.  Our performance management training is a twelve-week program that includes classroom training over six weeks, daily mentoring for the duration of the project, and ad hoc workshops and learning circles to reinforce skill adoption. All clients participating in this program receive certification and report an ROI of three-six months with demonstrated savings rapidly recovering the cost of the program. Our new hire training curricula are guaranteed to deliver an accelerated learning curve and to reduce the transaction time and resolution inefficiencies normally associated with new hires.
  • McIntosh has provided consolidation analysis modeling multiple operational delivery options with business cases supporting recommended solutions. McIntosh has the ability to develop financially based operational models that document the benefits and risks associated with the operational models (e.g., traditional brick and mortar internal solutions modeled against insourced/outsourced models, fully outsourced models, domestic vs. alternative geographies, and hybrid models with a blend of operational options including the use of home or remote agents).
  • For a major wireless telecommunications firm, McIntosh managed the RFP and procurement process for call center technologies required to support the launch of new products and new centers.
  • For a major DSL provider, McIntosh has delivered performance management training/mentoring and has provided guidance on workforce optimization for a multi-site network that included outsourced near-shore operations.
  • For a major telecommunications provider, McIntosh developed the enterprise customer survey process covering phone based operations and field repair operations. In addition to surveys based on customer interactions, McIntosh developed a survey for customers who had not communicated with the call center or had repair personnel in their home to understand interaction impact on general loyalty.

Industry Insight:

Performance Management

Traditional contact center organizations have historically assumed that good agents make good managers and have not devoted the time or discipline required to create highly effective, entry-level supervisors capable of optimizing team performance. Delivering differentiated service requires planning, metric clarity, effective measurement tools, disciplined communications, superior coaching skills, and accountability for results, all of which do not occur spontaneously, they require training and mentoring.

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