General Motors of Canada, headquartered in Oshawa Ontario, employs more than 19,000 people nationwide and manufactures vehicles, vehicle power trains, and markets the full range of General Motors vehicles and related services through 743 dealerships and retailers across Canada. Vehicles sold through this network include Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, GMC, Saturn, Hummer, Saab and Cadillac.

Project Summary

Wrote a Request for Proposals, inviting bids from call centre service outsourcers for five Canadian call centres. Included analysis and documentation of existing operations, design of target technical environment and contractual definition of service levels.

Background

General Motors Corp had realized huge cost reductions from consolidating contact centres through outsourcing. Corporate executives assumed that similar, but scaled-down cost reductions could also be realized in Canada.

However, the degree of integration and specialization was already more advanced than in the US. There were five contact centres in place to address customer product inquiries (for all product lines), financing and leasing, warranty and parts, service technician support.

Requirement

Produce an RFP to solicit proposals to find an outsourcer that would offer lower costs at existing, or higher, service levels .

Project After Discovery

Since cost reductions from the degree of integration and specialization was already realized, cost reductions were sought from further automation. Therefore the Canadian RFP was not “just a copy” of the US RFP. It spelled out specific automation requirements through fully utilizing the latest  Automated Call Distribution (ACD) equipment, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology, desktop integration of telephony, scripting, contact management and access to corporate mainframe applications.

Approach

Produce documentation of existing contact centre operations (processes and procedures, staffing, volumes, etc.). Identify any improvements considered.

• Document existing infrastructure.
• Define service level requirements.
• Define and document outsourcer requirements.
• Produce vendor list.
• Issue RFP, receive and assess proposals.
• Short list vendor top three.
• Present comparison for client selection.
• Facilitate contract negotiation