Quest Diagnostics (A): Improving Performance at the Call Centers

In July 2015, MaryAnn Camacho joined Quest Diagnostics’s National Customer Service (NCS) organization as its Executive Director. Quest was the leading provider of diagnostic services and solutions in the United States. Camacho was hired to turn around an organization that had gone through a complex consolidation process the year before, in which its 20 customer service call centers had been pared down to two. Labor costs were high as was absenteeism and turnover. Customers were dissatisfied with the quality of service and some were taking their business to Quest’s chief competitor. There was a lot to fix, and Camacho wondered whether to focus first on people or operations?