A machine learning approach to process improvement in a telecommunications company

Redesigning and improving business processes to better serve customer needs has become a priority in service industries as they scramble to become more competitive. This paper describes an approach to process improvement that is being developed collaboratively by applied researchers at US WEST, a major telecommunications company, and the University of Colorado. Motivated by the need to streamline and to add more quantitative power to traditional quality improvement processes, the new approach uses an artificial intelligence (AI) statistical tree growing method that uses customer survey data to identify operations areas where improvements are expected to affect customers most. This AI/statistical method also identifies realistic quantitative targets for improvement and suggests specific strategies (recommended combinations of actions) that are predicted to have high impact. This research, funded in part by the Colorado Advanced Software Institute (CASI) in an effort to stimulate profitable innovations, has resulted in a practical methodology that has been used successfully at US WEST to help set process improvement priorities and to guide resource allocation decisions throughout the company.