Melanie Foley, Director of Community Support Services
Members of Melanie Foley’s team are the first people you interact with when you contact TSS. If you have a question they can answer or issue they can solve, they’ll take care of it. Otherwise, they forward the case to someone who can. Melanie joined Tufts in December 2014 with 10 years of experience in customer service.
What did you hope to achieve when TSS opened last year?
I focused on establishing certain metrics early on so I could track our performance over time. We measure productivity by looking at how we manage inquires and requests, the number of cases we handle, how well we do with SLAs (service level agreements) and the number of abandoned calls. We also measure quality. I listen to live calls, score those and review the documentation afterwards. I do this so I can look for coaching opportunities and talk with my staff. I might talk to the person one-on-one or with the whole group, depending on what’s going on.
Have your goals changed over time?
Given that this was a completely new operation, at first we just tried to do the best we could. Almost every call gave us something new to consider. We were writing several new knowledge articles every day to help staff address issues we hadn’t expected. Now we have time to think about how we can improve the experience for people who contact us. I meet regularly with Pete Barron, Peter Barone and Carol Liedes to look at what we need to do so that Tier 1 can handle more issues right away without having to transfer them.
Sometimes people call and really want to talk to someone in Tier 2 but at times Tier 2 staff are engrossed in something operational or time sensitive. So we really want Tier 1 to answer as many calls as possible. Then again, some cases do need to be handled by Tier 2 so we’re also looking at how we can improve the transfer of cases between the two tiers.
When you imagine the coming year, what do you see?
Now that TSS has been in operation for a full year, we won’t be doing things for the first time any more. When we answer year-end inquiries about things like W-2s and 1099s, we’ll have the benefit of experience. We can do refresher trainings as needed and the staff will be ready to go. The first year, we were just getting our feet under us. Things will be more fine-tuned the second time around.