Call Centre & Process Mining

The Call Centre

Process discovery, analysis & improvement through process

mining

George Varvaressos

Business Process Mining © 2009

What is Process Mining?

• Process Mining is about;

– the discovery, analysis and monitoring of business processes by extracting information from an organisation’s event logs

– the reverse-engineering of processes – analysis of human workflows

– conformance, performance analysis and

– auditing capabilities


Call Centre – the ‘as designed’ process


Event Log – generated by the call centre process

case orprocess instance


Process_ID EventName EventType Timestamp Originator Type Server Outcome

33116 VRU start 1/01/1999 0:00:31 No_Server PS No_Server Hang

33116 VRU complete 1/01/1999 0:00:36 No_Server PS No_Server Hang

33117 VRU start 1/01/1999 0:34:12 No_Server PS No_Server Hang

33117 VRU complete 1/01/1999 0:34:23 No_Server PS No_Server Hang

33118 VRU start 1/01/1999 6:55:20 Michael PS Michael Agent

33118 VRU complete 1/01/1999 6:55:26 Michael PS Michael Agent

33118 Regular_Service start 1/01/1999 6:55:44 Michael PS Michael Agent

33118 Regular_Service complete 1/01/1999 6:56:37 Michael PS Michael Agent

33119 VRU start 1/01/1999 7:41:16 Jack PS Jack Agent

33119 VRU complete 1/01/1999 7:41:26 Jack PS Jack Agent

33119 Regular_Service start 1/01/1999 7:41:27 Jack PS Jack Agent

33119 Regular_Service complete 1/01/1999 7:44:53 Jack PS Jack Agent

Event log Mxml PromImport Prom

Process Discovery - control flow & performance

What does abusiness process look like?


Process Discovery - control flow & decision points


Process Discovery – key data

• What the business processes actually looks like!

– possible bottlenecks

– the throughput rate

– the arrival rate

– waiting times

– decision points

• Not on the original ‘as designed’ workflow diagram

– abandonment/balk behaviour (black boxes) from VRU only

– abandonment after VRU (10%) including hang & phantoms


Process Discovery – ‘actual’ process


Next step – statistical analysis

• Is the process in statistical control ?

• Yes (excluding abandoned calls)


Capability Analysis – examine the distribution


•Process is lognormal – as expected•Ppk > 1 - Process is capable – can be improved!


Call Centre Process Discovery – summary

•event logs – converted to process data•workflow – designed compared to actual•decision points – business rules quantified•performance data – bottlenecks identified•process capability – in control and capable

•Next step is to examine the process in detail

Process Analysis – only cases that completed successfully


Basic Performance Analysis (global)


Basic Performance Analysis (process 33128)


Basic Performance Analysis (task/originator)


Process Diagram Analysis – most common paths taken


Process Analysis – who are working together?



Organisational knowledge used to aid analysis

•Semantics of names and roles understood by organisation but not known by system•Different to discovered role hierarchy


Organisational knowledge used to aid analysis


Application knowledge used to aid analysis

•Semantics of application understood by domain experts but not known by system


Application knowledge used to aid analysis


Using semantics to check conformance (1)

•Show instances of Regular Service completed by members of Team 4


Using semantics to check conformance (2)

•1 of 56 instances of Regular Service completed by members of Team 4 - (Morgan)


Summary

•Process Mining perspectives

•Control flow

•Performance

•Organisational

•Conformance

•Case

•Part of the Process Improvement toolkit