BBN Technologies

Windmills and a Butterfly?

What do windmills and a butterfly have to do with call centers?

The picture of the windmills and the butterfly is a visual reference to chaos theory, which is also known as the “butterfly effect”. Mathematicians and physicists (we have many of both here at BBN!) use chaos theory to describe how small changes can have very large effects. You may recall actor Jeff Goldblum mention chaos theory in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park. Brought to the island for a safety inspection, Dr. Malcolm (played by Goldblum) predicts failure because of the risk that small changes under specific conditions could grow exponentially and produce unexpectedly large outcomes.

The butterfly effect refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or enough wind to power a windmill farm!). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena.

Over 10 years of call center research and practice, BBN has observed that call centers demonstrate some characteristics of chaos theory. In particular, we’ve found that small changes in business policies, processes, scripts or menus can have a very large impact on call volumes, call durations, sales and caller satisfaction. Therefore, improvement strategies and analytics should not seek big changes, but rather should seek those changes that have a big impact.

With this principle in mind, BBN developed AVOKE Caller Experience Analytics to not just reveal problems, but to quantify their impact. Our approach enables call centers to realize value quickly by focusing first on the small changes that have the largest impact (something we call “Quick Hits”).