MBTA could outsource call center
The MBTA last month adopted a process to consider unsolicited proposals from businesses and organizations, with a top T official declaring the transit agency "open for business."
A month later, the T's Fiscal and Management Control Board will on Monday consider an initial proposal from an Ohio company that says it could run the MBTA's customer call center for half of what the T is currently spending. The board will also hear about a proposal from a private company to offer late-night service, another result of the T's new innovation proposal policy.
"We received an innovation proposal that expressed interest in providing call center services for the T and this proposal would reduce our call center cost by close to 50 percent while also giving us more flexibility, frankly, and enabling us, if we need, to scale up or scale down in the future," MBTA Acting General Manager Brian Shortsleeve told the News Service.
The unsolicited proposal came from Ameridial, which operates 10 call centers in Ohio, Illinois, Maine and North Carolina, Shortsleeve said.
Shortsleeve and FMCB member Monica Tibbits-Nutt told the News Service the MBTA could focus more on resolving the complaints riders lodge on Twitter, via email, with the Boston 311 system and through the call center if it opts to outsource the call center operation. Tibbits-Nutt said the T has no consolidated plan for "actual complaint resolution."
It's about "shifting our focus from just taking in information all these different ways and really focusing on the customer complaint resolution," she said. "We've made a lot of changes, we've made a lot of dents in some of the issues we have, especially from a financial standpoint. But for the everyday user, their commutes have not gotten any better."
The T has 28 employees in its Customer Communications Department now and Shortsleeve said the T is trying to determine what the right structure of a Customer Resolution Department would be. The MBTA spent $2.6 million last fiscal year on call center services and $1 million on complaint resolution services, including employee benefits, according to the agency. Call center costs have climbed 6 percent over three years, according to the T, while call volume has dropped 25 percent.
By switching to an outside provider, Shortsleeve said, the T would move to a cost-per-call or cost-per-minute model, and the "fully-loaded" price per call handled by the call center could be reduced from $9.99 to $5.01. The T estimates that it could cut the cost of the call center to $800,000 while maintaining $1 million for customer complaint resolution.
The Baker administration's move to privatize certain operations at the MBTA has become a growing point of contention between the governor and Democrats, who have held sizable rallies outside the State House and at Faneuil Hall in the last month to condemn MBTA privatization.
In 2015, as part of the annual budget bill, the Democrat-controlled Legislature gave Gov. Charlie Baker the authority to more easily pursue privatization of MBTA services by waiving for three years the law that requires a cost-benefit review from the state auditor for any privatization proposal.
"One of the tools granted to the MBTA and the control board by the Legislature are flexible contracting rights, and those rights were given to the T to help us close what is a $100 million operating deficit and also to improve service and engage with industry in more flexible ways," Shortsleeve told the News Service.
The FMCB will hear more about the proposal at its noon meeting on the second floor of the state Transportation Building at 10 Park Plaza in Boston on Monday. The board will then decide if it wants a more detailed proposal from Ameridial, or if it wants to issue a formal request for proposals, and how an internal customer complaint resolution department would be structured.
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