Revolut Mock Interview: Strategy & Operations

1. Assess current situation
   1. Baseline current demand volume of calls - what are the key use cases? What are the customer segments being affected
2. Develop list of potential solutions
   1. Solve root causes
      1. Are there any recurring or high volume tickets that can be avoided if the root causes are fixed?
   2. Improve agent model
      1. Increase # of agents
         1. Outsource to lower cost locations
      2. Increase agent productivity
         1. Streamline call scripts
         2. Improve training
         3. Better tools - e.g. knowledge base or search function / decision tree support
   3. Improve alternative channels (to take on more demand)
      1. Improve existing AI chatbots to handle more sophisticated tickets
      2. Better FAQ etc
3. Prioritize solutions
   1. Cost
   2. Operational complexity
   3. Time horizon
   4. Impact to key metrics
4. Develop implementation plan

A good answer should be able to generate a structured response, including being able to elaborate the potential solutions in a way that demonstrates good logical thinking.

At first glance, things do seem to be doing well

• The call center has been handling increasing volumes (and assuming their headcount and salaries did not increase in the past 6 months, cost per call would have also reduced)
• Key metrics have been improving
  • AHT, AWT have been trending down on the whole and AWT across segments has been reducing

However, there are several concerning insights

• CSAT is a measure of customer satisfaction, therefore it is not unreasonable to assume that customers would be satisfied if their issue is resolved. However, agents seem to not be rewarded or recognized for resolving issues but instead just only the volume of calls handled - this could potentially be causing sub-optimal customer experience
• Therefore, one hypothesis could be that calls are being rushed / ended earlier but the issues are not actually being resolved, therefore customers are not as satisfied leading to a fall in CSAT scores
• In addition, while average waiting times have decreased across segments, there is no prioritization between customer segments even though the more expensive tiered customers (Metal & Ultra) should be getting priority customer support

A sharp candidate will note that while the dashboards show improvement, they actually do not show the KPIs - so some further information would be needed to help judge the performance

One potential answer could be:

It would be critical to get risk stakeholders involved as early as possible, given the highly regulated nature of Fintech and potential for us to mishandle fraud complaints etc

Given that one of the potential solutions is to also 'nip the problem at the bud' - it is also important to be able to have close collaboration with other business lines and business owners. There could be a potential risk here, therefore senior alignment and support for this issue would be paramount

We've found out some challenges in our call center operations. Upon digging deeper, we've realized that our CSAT scores are going down as our customer service reps are rushing to complete calls in order to meet the growing volume of contacts. However, these calls are ended but not resolved, leading to a higher FCR and lower customer satisfaction.

One potential solution we are exploring is to upgrade our existing chatbot - the solution seems promising as it will enable us to handle 50% more volume (total 36K contacts, vs 24k today) with an on-going cost savings of USD 4M and a payback of just 1.5 years. However, we would still need to conduct further analysis into the quality of the AI chatbots as well as look into any potential legal implications from reducing call center headcount.