SWPP
Workforce Management in the
Cross-Generational Contact Center
B y M a r s h a l l L e e , C a r e w i s e H e a l t hSummer 2011
D
oes the following sound familiar? Your 20-something workers want to have their schedule adjusted for a game night or yoga class, and go to HR if it doesn’t happen. Your 30-some-thing workers constantly ask about excep-tion approval, and are really annoyed that the 20-somethings seem so entitled. Your employees 45+ just don’t understand what all the fuss is about and really wish people would just come to work and be part of the team — the only incentive anyone needs is the paycheck! If this sounds familiar on any level, then you are experiencing some of the challenges that come from having a multi-generational contact center.This contact center mix also comes with strengths, however. Built into the above scenario, you have a host of associ-ates who bring staffing solutions to the table. Do you need to find people who can work split shifts or who may be able to be flexible if you are? Do you need agents to buy into how you set and track your KPIs and help set the attitude on the floor? How about a group that is willing to work whatever is needed to get the job done?
How do you keep a staff together and reduce turnover in a contact center when those entering the workplace want flexibility, those approaching retirement want routine, and those in-between don’t
WFM Survey Results . . . 2
WFM Summer Survey . . . 3
Bigger is Better, or Is It? . . . 4
Using Service Level for . . . 5
Back Office Planning The Benefits and Perils of . . . 6
Team Scheduling Using Array Formulas . . . 7
Workforce Management in . . . . 8
the Multichannel Call Center Events Calendar . . . 9
Ask the Workforce Wizard . . . . 11
How Contact Center . . . 12
Managers Can Master Next-Generation Customer Contact Challenges Our Sponsors . . . 13
Schedule SWAP Ideas — . . . . 14
2011 SWPP Conference Industry News . . . 15
Join SWPP . . . 16
I N S I D E
Continued on page 8
WFM Team From Fairmont Raffles
Hotels & Resorts Wins ContactNB
Award of Excellence
T
he workforce planning team from Fairmont Raffles Hotels & Resorts was recently recognized at Con-tactNB’s annual Awards of Excellence in Saint-John, NB. The province’s contact centre association recognizes excellence in the industry among various call centre disciplines, including but not limited to, Employee Experience, Community Involvement, Health and Wellness and for the first time this year, Workforce Management Practices. The criterion for the Workforce Management award was a demonstration of positive changes to the business affecting customers and/or employees. The workforce management practices and tools that are being em-ployed must provide equity between the level of service to customers and a degree of work/life balance for employees.According to the Workforce Team Manager, Louise Andrew, many inno-vative schedules such as the “four on, two off rotating schedule” have been attractive to newly hired colleagues by providing some Saturdays and Sundays off with the tradeoff of working peak hours and most weekends, helping meet the challenge of being a 24 x 7 environ-ment. The recently introduced Sliding Start option has provided flexibility on those days when “life happens.” Mem-bers of the team have worked one-on-one with many colleagues to provide various scheduling options when special circum-stances have come up.
Collectively, the team of seven boasts over 60 years of Workforce Planning experience with four of its members being
E
ach quarter SWPP surveys the workforce planning commu-nity on critical workforce planning topics. Over 200 call center professionals representing a wide variety of indus-tries participated and provided insight into this quarter’s survey on multi-channel workforce management processes.Participant Profile
The largest percentage of participants (42%) are in large centers with over 500 agents. Seventeen percent have 100-200 agents, while 13% have 50-100 agents. Eleven percent have 200-300 agents.
All types of call center operations are represented in the sur-vey, with the biggest percentages representing financial, telecom-munications, health care, retail/catalog, and outsourcers.
Non-Phone Customer Contact Channels Used
Eighty-five percent of the participants respond to email contacts in their organization, while 69% do outbound calling. Sixty-two percent process regular mail, and 61% process faxes. Thirty-seven percent have web chat contacts, while 23% have contacts from Facebook and 15% have contacts through Twitter. Only 1% have no other channels besides phone calls.
Percentage of Total Contacts through
Non-Phone Channels
Forty-nine percent of the participants receive less than 10% of contacts through non-phone channels, while 20% receive 10-20% of volume in non-phone contacts. Sixteen percent receive more than 30% through non-phone channels, while 15% receive 20-30% through other channels.
Change in
Percentage as Other Channels Opened
Almost half (49%) of the participants say that the percent-age of non-phone contacts has increased as other channels have opened in the
orga-nization. Twenty-six percent do not know if the percentage has increased, while 25% say the percentage has not increased.
Same Agents Answering Phone Calls and Other
Channels
More than half of the respondents (54%) say that the same agents answer phone calls and service other channels.
Service Level Expectations for Chat and Voice
Fifty-three percent say that service level expecta-tions for chat and voice are not the same. Thirty-two percent don’t now, and 15% say the two service level goals are the same.
Prioritizing One Channel over Another
When asked if one chan-nel is prioritized over another if one service level is failing, 66% say yes.
Twenty-two percent say no, and 12% say they don’t know.
Deliberate Strategy Used to Encourage Usage
of One Channel
Forty-six percent say that there is not a deliberate strategy to encourage cus-tomer usage of one channel over another, while 42% say that there is such a strategy in their organization.
Favored Channel
When asked what the favored channel is in their organization. 68% say phone calls, while 9% say e-mail, and 7% say web chat. Of those that say “Other,” the answers include website
usage, IVR, and self-service options.
Forecasting For Other Channels
Over half (53%) say that forecasting is done manually for other channels, while 32% say forecasting is done with an au-tomated workforce management system.
W F M S u r v e y R e s u l t s
AGENT ADHERENCE
S
WPP conducts a survey each quarter oncritical workforce planning topics. These results will be published in upcoming issues of On Target, as well as on the SWPP website in the members-only Library section. You may fax this page to 615-352-4204 or fill in the survey online at http://www.swpp.org/surveywm.html.
This quarter’s survey focuses on agent
adherence. This is a follow-up to a similar survey done in 2005. We will compare the answers in the results document.
Responses to the first two questions will al-low us to segment the answers by size and type of call center to contrast and compare workforce management practices. Survey results will be completely anonymous.
1. How many agents are in your call center?
n Under 50 n 300 – 400
n 50 – 100 n 400 – 500
n 100 – 200 n Over 500
n 200 – 300
2. What industry do you represent?
Telecommunications n Utility
Travel n Retail/Catalog
Financial n Health Care
Insurance n Outsourcer
Other: _ _________________________________
3. What is the schedule adherence goal in your center?
<85% n 94% 85-90% n 95% 90% n 96% 91% n 97% 92% n 98% 93% n 99% Other: __________________________________
4. What is your average actual adherence?
<85% n 94% 85-90% n 95% 90% n 96% 91% n 97% 92% n 98% 93% n 99% Other: __________________________________
5. Do you use an automated real-time adherence monitoring tool?
Yes n No
If yes, what adherence statistics do you measure with this tool?
__________________________________________ __________________________________________
6. Is adherence part of an agent’s performance score?
Yes n No
If yes, How important is adherence in the score (or what percentage)? ________________________
7. Does adherence play a role in agent ranking for schedule selection?
Yes n No
8. What incentive programs do you have in place to encourage adherence?
__________________________________________ __________________________________________
9. How are adherence statistics communicated? Choose all that are applicable.
Directly to the agent To the supervisor
To people outside the center Posted for public display
Other: __________________________________
10. What is the biggest cause of non-adherence in your center?
__________________________________________ __________________________________________
W F M S u r v e y
Respond and Win!
Not only will you receive a report of our findings, but you’ll have a chance to win a free SWPP membership for responding to the survey. Please return to SWPP by September 30, 2011. Congratulations to Vincent Adin of RBC, who won a free SWPP membership last quarter for completing the SWPP survey.
Name ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Company __________________________________________________________________________________________ Email Address ______________________________________________________________________________________
Bigger is Better, or Is It?
B y M a g g i e K l e n k e , T h e C a l l C e n t e r S c h o o lT
he concept of economies of scale is a well known opportu-nity in contact centers that suggests that the bigger a team handling the work, the more efficient it will be. Cross-training, networking sites, and other forms of consolidation of resources can bring significant benefits in terms of fewer resources to handle the workload or faster speed of answer with the same personnel. However, there are some tradeoffs to consider in this process.As you evaluate productivity of staff and economies of scale opportunities, one of the key measures is agent occupancy. Oc-cupancy is a measure of how busy a person is during the hour (on a call or in after-call work) compared to sitting idle waiting on a call to arrive. The calculation is simply workload hours divided by staff hours. For example, if there are 50 calls arriving in a 30-minute window that take 240 seconds to handle, that’s 6.7 erlangs or hours of work. If 10 staff are in place to handle those calls, 6.7 divided by 10 yields an occupancy rate of 67%.
Let’s take a look at team size in the chart below, as staff are put in place to deliver a consistent level of service of 80% of calls in 20 seconds. Note that the greatest gains occur when combin-ing small teams. If there are two groups of 10 agents that each handle 6.7 hours of work, the overall occupancy of those 20 people is 67% with much idle time. Putting these two groups together to handle 100 calls as one set of work would only require 17 people (rather than 20) at an occupancy of 78%.
However, if you apply the same thought process to bigger groups, you may be in dangerous occupancy zone. If two groups of 59 staff at a 90% occupancy level are cross-trained to handle the combined set of calls, staffing could be reduced. Instead of 59 x 2 or 118 staff, only 113 would be needed. So there are still staff savings at this larger group size, but combining the two pushes occupancy up to 94% which is a level where agents get virtually no “breathing room” in between the calls.
Calls AHT Workload
Hours RequiredStaff Service Level Occupancy 6 240 sec 0.8 2 80.3% 40% 17 240 sec 2.3 4 80.2% 57% 50 240 sec 6.7 10 88.5% 67% 100 240 sec 13.3 17 83.7% 78% 200 240 sec 26.6 31 81.4% 86% 400 240 sec 53.3 59 83.0% 90% 800 240 sec 106.7 113 82.2% 94%
We definitely gained in efficient use of our staffing resource, but we did it by increasing agent occupancy. This is a good situ-ation up to a point and then it has diminishing value or even becomes negative. Teams larger than 100 tend to have occu-pancies so high that we risk burnout, higher absenteeism, and even turnover.
Now let’s put this into an example where we might be considering consolidation of two teams of staff by cross-training. Perhaps we have a sales team and a customer service team
who handle the same products so they both know a lot about the products already. The sales team needs 12 people and the customer service team needs 32 people during the peak hour of the day. We could cross-train these people on the parts of the process they don’t already know in about one week each. Cross-training could yield a headcount savings of three staff (or $105k if we assume an annual wage rate of $35k). However, there’s more to consider than just pure headcount savings.
Let’s take a look at some of the other considerations: • Training costs for the remaining 41 people (44 minus 3
FTE) could cost about $35k in training time, plus the cost of training resources, plus perhaps the cost of over-time to backfill.
• Recruiting for combination sales and service staff may be more difficult and the pay rates may need to be adjusted. • Some staff may perceive the job as more enriched with
both types of work and others will find it overwhelming. •
The larger agent pool will make shift bidding and time-off planning somewhat easier although agents who were top-ranked in one team may lose that position in the larger team.
• Sales results may go down as people from customer ser-vice may not really have the sales skills of the dedicated sales team.
• Sales results may go up as customer service people offer the up-sell or cross-sell options they may have overlooked in the past.
• Customer service may decline as sales people are anxious to get on to the next commissionable sale and may give the service call less attention.
• Supervisors will need to be versed in both sales and customer service.
• Desktop applications for both activities will need to be provided.
There are probably dozens of other considerations. While doing the front-end analysis identifies the quantifiable costs and savings necessary, it is the other considerations that make this de-cision not quite as easy as calculating the numbers might suggest.
For some centers, it does not need to be an all or nothing de-cision. That is where skill-based routing comes into the picture. We can cross-train those who can and will do a good job in both and leave some reps single-skilled (including trainees). We will gain some of the economies of scale, but not all. We will avoid some of the problems of full consolidation. It is the in-between answer that has worked well for many organizations but it comes with its own challenges in WFM complexity.
Maggie Klenke is a Founding Partner of The Call Center School. She can be reached at 615-812-8411 or by email at maggie.klenke@ thecallcenterschool.com.
Using Service Level for Back Office Planning
B y R i c K o s i b a , P r e s i d e n t , B a y B r i d g e D e c i s i o n Te c h n o l o g i e sWe’ve Got a Hammer
It is not surprising at all that companies worldwide are leaning once again on their workforce management profession-als to solve staff optimization problems within other areas of the organization. The biggest area of growth is in planning for workgroups that handle emails or back office communications — work that can be deferred.
And it is also not surprising that we will take the things we’ve learned in planning for call centers and try to apply them to these other functions. We’ve had terrific success.
But it is important that we do this thoughtfully. We have a hammer, our standard way of analyzing call centers, and it is important that we do not look at all other types of operations as the proverbial nail.
I’ve been visiting many contact center planners this year, and for those who have begun planning for back office opera-tions, there is a common problem: they are finding problems with plans that were developed using service level as a goal.
Similarly, while researching algorithms that use service level as a goal for staff planning, we have run into some pe-culiarities associated with applying our old standard ways of developing requirements for these types of centers.
Our research shows that using service level as a goal with long thresholds (say 12 to 48 hours), as a basis for staffing con-tact centers, where work doesn’t abandon, may be problematic.
Simple Math
For deferrable work queues, many senior managers have proposed long service standards, and that has become the norm in the past several years. For example, we have heard from many organizations that their service goal is 80% of emails responded to within 24 hours. There is nothing wrong with that.
But let’s look at the math associated with using that goal to determine staffing requirements by constructing a simple example.
Say that a contact center was forecasted to receive 1000 back office items each day for the next six days, and handle times and arrival patterns, etc… were known. How would we determine how to staff the center? Well, first we would determine the num-ber of staff required each individual time period using an Erlang calculation, a simulation model, or another analytic process.
Would this work for back office transactions?
I don’t think so, and here’s the main reason: because transac-tions never ever abandon, we can never isolate a time period and staff them independent of the previous or next time period. Check out the following table:
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6
Volume 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000
Staff Required 200 200 200 200 200 200
Overflow Volume 0 200 400 600 800 1000
Volume (including overflows) 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
In this simple example, we receive 1000 items to be processed each day. Using an analytic process, we staff to our goal, which is 80% of contacts handled within 24 hours. Given the forecast, each day would be staffed with the same number of agents.
But since the goal is long, and is a service level goal, we know — by definition — that 20% of the forecasted volume in the first day will roll into the second day. Because our goal stated that 80% of the contacts will be answered within 24 hours, we know that if we are “perfectly” staffed, 20% of them will roll into the next time period.
The second day is expecting 1000 contacts and is staffed to answer 800 of them within 24 hours, but will receive 1200 con-tacts. That leaves 400 extra for day three, and so on. In practice, we would have missed our service goal every week except the first, and we would never have enough capacity to handle the contacts being overflowed.
In effect, we make two big mistakes by using the old call center model of planning. First, we use a service level goal that guarantees overflow. Second, we plan for each time period inde-pendently, without understanding the number of contacts that will overflow.
Let’s construct a different staff model. In this model, let’s not assume that the number of staff required will be calculated separately time period to time period.
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6
Volume 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000
Staff Required 200 240 245 245 245 245
Overflow Volume 0 200 240 248 249.6 249.9
Volume (including overflows) 1000 1200 1240 1248 1249.6 1249.9
In this example, the number of staff required will change week over week, based upon the number of contacts that will overflow into the next time period. Assuming that we still want to answer 80% of all contacts within 24 hours, our staff would have to grow to accommodate the overflows being promised by our service goal. It is interesting that the volume, includ-ing overflows, converges to a steady state volume and, hence, staffing required levels are steady, too. There is an argument to make that this is a correct steady state staffing requirement.
But, again, I don’t think that this is right.
What is the Correct Metric for Staffing
Requirements?
There is no reason to believe that any standard call center service metric (ASA or service level) will automatically corre-spond to real production throughput.
In the back office or email world, our operation is staffed to one of three natural states: build a queue (understaffed), reduce a queue (overstaffed), or be perfectly staffed to match demand. Do any service level goals or ASA goals naturally correspond to any of these states? They don’t (and if somehow they do for your operation, it is likely accidental).
For this very basic reason, it really makes sense to staff your deferrable work queue to this obvious metric: always staff your deferrable queue operation so the work in equals the work out.
Ric Kosiba, PhD is a charter member of SWPP and co-founder and president of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies. He can be reached at [email protected] or (410) 224-9883.
The Benefits and Perils of Team Scheduling
B y P e n n y R e y n o l d s , T h e C a l l C e n t e r S c h o o lO
ver the last 10 years, more and more organizations have moved toward self-directed work teams. The result has been better productivity, increased employee motiva-tion, reduced bureaucracy, and continuous improvement in the work product being delivered. According to the book,Self-Directed Work Teams: The New American Challenge, numerous
companies like Xerox, Proctor and Gamble, and BlueCross/ BlueShield have realized the enormous power of fully trained, fully committed, fully autonomous teams that are responsible for turning out a final product or service to the customer.
Although these self-directed work teams are most often implemented in manufacturing environments to turn out a better quality product more efficiently, many customer service organizations have also embraced this concept. But while some of the concepts of work teams have resulted in delivery of better, more efficient service to the customer, other components of the team concept have created service problems. This article will examine some of the advantages and disadvantages of this practice in today’s call center.
A self-directed work team is a group of employees fully responsible for a product or service. Every member of the team shares responsibility for the finished product, but the concept goes beyond just demonstrating teamwork. The members may possess a wide range of cross-functional skills within the team, and have much greater decision-making capability. The team plans, sets priorities, solves problems, schedules and assigns work, and handles personnel issues like hiring, training, evalua-tion, and disciplinary action. The definition of a team varies by organization. While an “average” team size is 10, some compa-nies operate with four-person teams while others have teams made up of 18-20 members.
A big issue for the team concept in the call center lies in the scheduling of team members. While some companies have teams where all members start, take breaks, and leave together, others may have teams where the members’ schedules many have varying start times and breaks, and may even work differ-ent shifts.
The Economies of Teams
While the notion of “eat, sleep, and breathe together” may indeed foster a sense of group spirit, teamwork, and better in-dividual productivity in some areas of the company, a company may not be able to afford to assign team schedules to the staff in the call center.
Organizations must keep in mind that telephone call work-load is not like any other work in the company. The call center is at the mercy of the incoming call workload, which arrives ran-domly within each hour. Unlike the sequential tasks associated with paperwork or manufacturing, the random arrival of the call
workload results in schedule requirements that can vary widely from hour to hour. Inefficient schedules can result in overstaff-ing and excessive costs in some hours and understaffoverstaff-ing and poor service in others.
So why is team scheduling probably not as applicable in the call center as in other areas of the company? Scheduling in blocks of 10 people is just inherently less efficient than sched-uling for the exact number of bodies in chairs needed each half-hour. The schedule requirement may call for six people to be on the phones at 7:00am, eight at 7:30am, and 10 at 8:00am. Scheduling all 10 people to start at the same time to support the team concept overschedules for the first two half-hours of the day, resulting in overstaffing for this slot, which probably leads to understaffing later in the day.
Let’s look at the effect of team scheduling versus a tradi-tional scheduling approach for a small (20,000 calls/month), medium (60,000 calls/month), and large (300,000 calls/month) call center. All scenarios assume a 24 x 7 operation, an aver-age handle time of 180 seconds per call, and a service level goal of 80% in 20 seconds. The full-time equivalent (FTE) staff members represent total weekly staff hours needed divided by 40 hours per week. The required FTE is the absolute number required to handle calls at the desired level of service. Sched-uled FTE numbers represent the number of staff that must be scheduled in order to provide enough schedule coverage for the desired level of service.
Small Medium Large
Required FTEs 22 38 119
Scheduled FTE (traditional schedules) 25 45 141
Scheduled FTE (team approach) 70 96 192
Overstaffing by Team Approach 180% 113% 36%
As shown in the table, team scheduling in a call center does not make sense from a pure cost standpoint. Particularly for a small center, any advantages gained by team scheduling are greatly outweighed by staffing inefficiencies, resulting in either excessive cost to hire unnecessary staff, or more than likely, poor service to the caller as a result of not having the right number of staff in place at the right time to handle the call. And, although the results of team scheduling do improve as the size of the cen-ter grows, even in a large cencen-ter with more than 100 staff, team scheduling is not an efficient practice.
Team scheduling fares better when the work is made up of something other than all incoming phone calls. A large Mid-western bank for example, previously handled calls by a group of frontline representatives who would handle some percent-age of calls and pass on the remainder to a second tier group of
E x c e l T i p s
problem-solvers to research and follow up. Reorganizing both groups of representatives into self-directed work teams with cross-trained representatives to handle all types of calls resulted in a more equitable distribution of work and a greater sense of control and ownership among the staff. In this case, the teams follow the same schedules and work identical shifts. Although this type of scheduling results in overstaffing with respect to members needed for handling the incoming phone workload, there is a near equal amount of paperwork to accomplish each day and during idle telephone times, the staff can research and process paperwork. This is one case in which an organization managed to reap the benefits of work teams and still maintain an efficient call center operation and scheduling process.
Conclusion
Certainly, the practice of self-directed work teams has many advantages, including less supervisory or management time,
happier and more highly motivated employees, along with bet-ter quality and efficiency. However, as you consider the team concept in your call center, it is important to keep in mind that an incoming call center is a very different environment than its administrative or manufacturing counterpart. While many of the team concepts work well in the call center, be careful of team scheduling that could easily wipe out any efficiency gained by teaming in the first place. Each organization must evaluate each component of the team concept carefully and decide what makes sense based on a fully informed cost and service perspective.
Penny Reynolds is a Founding Partner of The Call Center School, a Nashville, Tennessee based consulting and education com-pany. The company provides a wide range of educational offerings for call center professionals, including traditional classroom courses, web-based seminars, and self-paced e-learning programs. For more information, see www.thecallcenterschool.com or call 615-812-8400
The Benefits and Perils of Team Scheduling
Continuned from page 6
Using Array Formulas
B y M i c h a e l H a r k n e s s , I n t u i tI
n many instances, array formulas pro-vide a great way to turn multiple cells of formulas into a single cell. I’ll sum-marize one good example — calculating partial-period values (e.g., month-to-date).Let’s consider a simple example where we have daily data for Offered Calls, Handled Calls, and Abandoned Calls. To determine the values for a specific date, there are many simple formulas. However, if we want to calculate the month-to-date values, it may require manually changing the formula range or using multiple cells of formulas. We’ll use a single array formula.
In the data shown here, cell B39 has the formula “=SUM(IF(A2:A32<=C34, B2:B32))” to calculate the number of calls offered for all dates less than or equal to the date entered in cell C34. The same methodology would be used to calculate Handled and Abandoned. After typing the desired array formula, you need to
simultaneously press CTRL-SHIFT-EN-TER. The formula will then have brackets “{=SUM(IF(A2:A32<=C34, B2:B32))}”. If you don’t press CTRL-SHIFT-ENTER, the brackets won’t appear and the formula won’t work how you want.
A useful variation of this is to replace a specific date (cell C34 in the formula above) with the function “=TODAY()” in order to calculate month-to-date or week-to-date values without needing to specify a new date each day.
Taking this example further, your array formula could sum only for certain dates and for a specific workgroup and for a specific location all at once (assuming your sheet has workgroup and location data). This can be accomplished by nesting addi-tional =IF() statements within the formula.
Michael Harkness can be reached at [email protected].
Workforce Management in the
Cross-Generational Contact Center
want to feel watched? A great deal has been written anddis-cussed about the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. The challenges that are faced in attempting to implement or continue WFM in a cross-generational environment are many. Here are some tips and insights.
It helps to first define each Genertion and what we mean by each term. Depending on the source, the exact dates vary. The following are general birth ranges for Boomers, X-ers, and Y’s. Baby Boomers represent those born between 1946-1964, Generation X (Gen-X) between 1965-1979, and Generation Y (Gen-Y) are those born 1980 and beyond. Each generation has its own styles of communication, understanding of work / life balance, and relationship to technology. Each member of these generations bring a different world view to work with them. Understanding the differences in the context of WFM may help to make the work life better for everyone.
The Baby Boomers in general have been molded by a world view that fosters a “can-do” attitude that places work at the forefront. This is a generation of workers who may not be surprised by a call from work at anytime. They appreciate meet-ings, collaboration, and thoughtful content in communication. Instant messaging may seem intrusive; e-mail, while appreciated, is no substitute for a conversation. This is a group that works to get ahead, and works because it is expected. Work dictates life, not the other way around.
Gen-X has evolved an attitude of rationalism and skepti-cism coupled with a desire for some structure, and a balance of work and the rest of life. Meetings are OK in doses but e-mail the high points and get to the point quickly. Feedback to them is not only important, it’s key. Work is what you do to support your lifestyle but it isn’t everything. Work is work. Home is home. Play is play. X’ers doubts the sincerity of your motives until proven otherwise.
Gen-Y is engaged in their immediate world and based in realism. This is a group that was raised in an era of nurture, feedback, and constant technological advancement. They com-municate fast, in bullets, real time, e-mail is preferred to meet-ings and instant messaging to e-mail. This group blurs the lines between work and life in new ways. They leave the job at work but bring the co-workers to the party. They also expect their work to be a challenge, fulfilling, and flexible to their life.
These differences present a maze for the workforce planner to navigate. Boomers can question the work ethic of X’ers, who may in turn consider the Y’s “entitled.” Y’s often see X’ers as “whiners,” and both X and Y may see Boomers as workaholics. So how do you then staff your contact center with members of each of these generations, run performance-based scheduling, manage to adherence, and try to keep turnover to a minimum? The questions are more obvious than the solutions. By its very nature WFM is an aspect of the contact center world whereby the work-life is set, managed, and to a degree controlled.
Gen-Y desires work to conform to the rest of life.. Often this group may take lower pay for the hours they want and the
increased flexibility it provides. Shift bids and adherence are in direct contrast to their view of their perceived place of work. In the past, I have actually had a couple of parents call me and at-tempt to negotiate for their “child” about shifts, adherence, and working hours.
Gen X, who is generally skeptical while wanting structure and feedback, may not respond well to perceived total control. A computer is going to seriously tell me when to take a break? Though they like feedback, an X-er typically doesn’t respond well to “big brother.”
Baby Boomers tend to not like feeling that they have to be watched, as with adherence scores. There is often a feeling of if everyone just comes in and does their job, why do we need a system that tells when people are here, what they are doing, and when they can have a break? “I’m an adult — do I really need to be watched?”
Combating these attitudes and issues will take some time, effort, and patience — make that a lot of patience. Education and process are often the key. Address the benefits of WFM with each group in their own context. For the Boomers, WFM helps keep all team members task-focused and puts them where they are needed when they are needed. For the X-ers, it brings an ability to get consistent feedback against goals and against peer groups. For Y’s, it gives the opportunity for more effec-tive telecommuting, and flex scheduling, not to mention it is technologically-driven.
The trick is to hone in on the aspects of WFM that are empowering to each generation. A contact center workforce ambassador program or committee is one way to tackle this prob-lem. These two options bring agents and supervisors into a setting with your workforce staff to address needs, concerns, ideas, and to educate. Be sure each generation is represented. Remember, gen-erational communication styles. Boomers like face-to-face. X-ers want it short and to the point. Y’s require their information to be immediate and bullet-pointed often via e-mail, online, or through social media. To educate on the benefits of WFM, you have to consider the needs and styles of each of these groups. Meetings work well for Boomers and to a degree X-ers. Concise e-mail or SharePoint is effective for X-ers. Y’s are adept at internal social media, forums, and instant messaging. Try to allow your ambassa-dors the freedom to communicate through any of these means and cycle back to a central communication.
Now carry this over to the rest of the contact center. Try to help meet the expectations of Generation Y in flexibility by using focus groups on shift types. You can use something like Survey Monkey for the tech savvy approach to “What are you willing to work?” and “What are your ideas?” Get as creative as you can, while keeping it within reason, and your own processes. This extra work on your part may reduce turnover in the young-er ranks. Look for options that use flex scheduling and telecom-muting. Your goal is to prove that WFM can be the best tool to empower both of these. You may not be able to give everyone what they want but you’ve made the attempt at flexibility and given employees input.
Continuned from page 1
Workforce Management in the
Cross-Generational Contact Center
For Gen-X, focus on the balance of workload and efficiencythat WFM can bring. Demonstrating the aspects of the system that give feedback on job performance can be a strong selling point for buy-in. Gen-X will also respond well to focus groups for scheduling, processes, and KPIs. The point to make is that the system is not watching to catch you, but watching to help you. We can find overworked individuals and allocate more resources to those times.
As for Baby Boomers, WFM is what equalizes the playing field, balances workload, and keeps everyone busy and humming along. Baby boomers may not have grown up with the idea of feedback, so constant reminders of how they are doing can be overwhelming. Keeping it consistent is appreciated.
In short, it takes creativity to bring a conducive synergy to any multi-generational contact center. While each generation may view WFM differently, there is an approach for each to help WFM foster success. Regardless of the approach, everyone is at your organization to do a job, address the customer or take care of client needs. You won’t be able to make everyone happy, but with some effort, creativity, and mindfulness you can improve the overall environment in which you work. In case you’re wondering about the parents who called about shift bid results, I asked if their parents ever called their employer … the calls ended.
SWPP Board Member Marshall Lee is the Workforce Manager at Carewise Health. He may be reached at [email protected].
Trade Shows/Conferences:
Title Date Location
Call Center Optimization Forum September 15 Orlando, FL
SWPP & QATC Regional Meeting September 29 Indianapolis, IN
Call Center Demo & Conference October 11-13 Dallas, TX
Quality Assurance & Training Connection (QATC) Annual Conference October 12-14 Opryland Hotel Nashville, TN
International Contact Center Summit October 24-26 Miami, FL
Virtual Conference on Workforce Management November 2-4 www.ecrmevents.com
Call Center Optimization Forum November 10 Las Vegas, NV
Government Contact Center Summit 2011 November 14-16 Washington, DC
Web Seminars from The Call Center School
90-minute seminars @ $300 each*
Note: SWPP Members Receive One Free Web Seminar Per Year Fall 2011
Data Collection and Analysis: Getting Off to the Right Start Sept 16
Forecasting Fundamentals: Proven Practices for Predicting Call Workload Sept 23
Calculating Call Center Staff: The Math of Call Center Staffing Tradeoffs Sept 30
Scheduling Principles and Problems: Solutions to Scheduling Challenges Oct 7
Managing Daily Service Levels: An Intra-Day Guide to Managing Staff and Service Oct 14
Introduction to Workforce Management: An Overview of the WFM Process Sept 9
Attendance and Adherence: Getting and Keeping Bodies in Seats Oct 21
Advanced Forecasting Techniques: Fine-Tuning Workload Predictions Oct 28
WFM Design Dilemmas: Optimizing Staffing in Evolving Contact Center Scenarios Nov 4
Skill-Based Routing Design: Balancing Customer, Agent, and Center Needs Nov 18
Skill-Based Routing WFM Challenges: Forecasting and Scheduling for SBR Scenarios Dec 2
* Also available in e-learning format
E v e n t s C a l e n d a r
Continuned from page 8from the very first class of reservation sales agents hired in 1995. Natalie Robertson, Operations Analyst, is responsible for creat-ing efficient schedules that meet the needs of the business and provide some level of flexibility for the agents among many of her other responsibilities. Gerard Cormier, Operations Analyst, plays a key role in the analysis of call data and since he loves a challenge, has created many time saving tools for the team using SQL databases and Excel. Lise Landry,aka Forecaster Extraor-dinaire, is a veteran Workflow Analyst, having been in her role since the department’s inception in the fall of 2000. Anne-Marie Smith, Workflow Analyst, joined the team as a Workflow Reserve in 2007. She spent two years in this role “learning the ropes” until she became a full-time Workflow Analyst in 2009. The team’s newest Workflow Analyst is Tracy Nicol. Tracy came to Fairmont from the Asurion contact centre where she got her first exposure to Workforce Planning during a transition project. Serge Niles, Workflow Reserve, just celebrated his first year with the team. Serge supports the team by covering team meetings and vacation or assisting with extra tasks.
The team is also very involved in the Workforce Planning community. They have hosted Workforce Planning best prac-tices sessions on behalf of ContactNB, and participated in re-gional Workforce Planning networking or learning events. The team’s Manager, Louise Andrew, is on the Board of Advisors of the internationally-recognized Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP). She and Natalie have presented at their
annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Louise is also the Local Leader for the Atlantic Canada Chapter of the Aspect User Group and her team has hosted two networking sessions.
The members of the team take great pride in the role they play. They juggle multiple tasks and processes to ensure that the centre can meet its goal of answering 90% of calls in 10 seconds or less. Somehow, without the use of a crystal ball, they can predict the future by estimating calls often within 3% of the actual results. They work closely with many other teams within the centre to collaborate on initiatives such as recruiting and retention strategies or gaining valuable knowledge on upcoming marketing campaigns.
Scheduling for Other Channels
Forty-nine percent of the respondents use an automated work-force management system for schedul-ing, while 43% schedule manually.
Use of Additional Software
Eighty-one percent do not use other software besides work-force management software to help forecast and schedule non-phone channels. Of the 19%
that do use other software, some of the programs noted are Excel, CenterBridge, Access, Forecast Pro, and LivePerson Chat Staff-ing Calculator.
Social Media Channel Responses
Eighty-three percent say that call center agents do not respond to social media channels, while 11% say that agents do respond to these contacts in their organization.
Closing Comments
Workforce management is being asked to expand their efforts beyond the call center and phone calls, and this sur-vey shows that there are very few centers that are only being contacted via phone. E-mails, outbound calls, regular mail, and faxes are being processed in more than half of the respondent organizations; however, these non-phone contacts are still not a large percentage compared to phone calls. The percentage is increasing, though, as new contact channels are opened.
Interestingly enough, over half say that the same agents answer phone calls as well as other non-phone contacts, which seems to be a return to “universal agents” which were popular in the past, but had lost favor in recent years. But in a strict de-parture from this statistic, over three-quarters of the participants say call center agents do not respond to social media contacts.
WFM Team From Fairmont Raffles Hotels & Resorts
Wins ContactNB Award of Excellence
Survey Results
Continuned from page 1
Continuned from page 2
Back row from the left: Tracy Nicol, Serge Niles, Anne-Marie Smith, Gerard Cormier. Front row from the left: Louise Andrew, Natalie Robertson, Lise Landry
Have a tough question?
Send it to [email protected] and we’ll try to find an answer!
Question:
This year a decision was made in our company to include abandon calls in the calculation for service level in our contact center. Previously they were not included. Our customers are our sales force who cannot call elsewhere to get their information or service, but they do have a robust online system to use. The other options of chat and email are just starting to be implemented. I would like to know if there is a prevalent industry standard for how abandoned calls are viewed when it comes to service level calculation.Answer:
We posed your question to some of our “wizards” in several different industries to get as much feedback as possible on this topic. Here are some of the responses:• In my experience, I have always used abandons as part of our service level calculations. That said, in recent years, I believe there is more of a trend to ex-clude “short-duration” abandons, say under 8-10 sec-onds, to account for quick hang-ups and incorrectly dialing, etc. It really does depend on your industry and expectations of the organization. Depending on your level of abandons, it may or may not have a significant impact on your staffing level to make it work. I always try to ask the question of leader-ship when these things occur: “What is the business driver behind the request/need?” You seem to have stated it well, knowing that your sales force is the lifeblood of the operations and they need to have certain information readily available. If you’re like most of us, labor resources are not easily approved, so having alternative technological processes to get that information to them is the most efficient and cost-effective method. Self-service IVRs, websites, and chat/email can move much traffic off phone lines and still accomplish what your customers need/ want. Another alternative is a “virtual hold” tech-nology that many ACDs have now. Giving custom-ers the option of “call-backs” when the queue is not
so full can syphon off non-essential calls and smooth out peaks of call volume.
• I think it is correct to state that automated workforce management systems generally include abandons in the service level calculation (calls answered within the service objective divided by total calls offered). I also think that service delivery would have to be pretty bad for there to be any incentive to improve things on the margin by not including abandons, although I do get the concept of “natural” abandons (people who would have hung up regardless).
• Depending on the environment and the service level agreement, I have calculated the service level minus the abandons. Typically this is with an ASA aervice level over a true 80/30 type ASA. The ASA, espe-cially as it gets higher, will almost directly correlate with the abandon rate. I would take a look at the ACD data and analyze where the threshold is with “natural” abandons. If the service level is reasonable with a decent IVR, the upfront abandons should be minimal — in which case I would include the abandons in the calculation. I’d also want to look at whether or not the service level target can even sup-port the desired abandon rate.
• We include abandons in our service level calculation. Even though there is the school of thought that some portion of callers would have hung up anyway (short calls, realized didn’t mean to call, etc.), we cannot really determine the real driver of why the person hung up, and from a service perspective, they called us, so we want to ensure we are staffed to handle any call that comes in within our service level objective. Unless you typically run very high abandon rates, it should not have a significant impact on service level goals. If you have a captive audience, meaning this is the only place they can call, I would think your abandon rate would be relatively low because it’s not a matter of ‘forget this, I’ll go someplace else and see what they can do for me.”
How Contact Center Managers Can Master
Next-Generation Customer Contact Challenges
B y J a n e H e n d r i c k s , S e n i o r M a n a g e r o f P r o d u c t M a r k e t i n g , A s p e c tT
he explosive innovation in social media and communi-cations devices so widely embraced by the market has granted consumers easy access to more people, infor-mation, and channels – anytime and anywhere. These buyers have a commanding voice in the global online community and demand to be heard. They expect higher service levels, which constantly pressures the contact center to change and adapt. At the same time, workforce planners and managers are caught between two conflicting realities – budgets that never increase and contact volumes that never decrease. But there is a way out of this double bind.Workforce optimization (WFO) – workforce, quality, and performance management – helps the contact center manage resources more efficiently to solve the quandary of doing more with less. When key WFO capabilities are an integral part of a customer contact solution that tightly links business and com-munication technologies, the contact center has a significant advantage in its ability to deploy informed process control across the enterprise. Communications-enabled business processes with integrated WFO capabilities deliver measurable, actionable results that make the contact center a force for positive change – and continuous improvement – within the enterprise.
Managing new contact center realities
Better resource management, always at the heart of work-force optimization, is becoming more important than ever in a next-generation customer contact environment where con-sumers are interacting with more of the enterprise. Workforce managers and schedulers need to continually plan ahead and respond in real time to shifts in demand and resources, within budgetary constraints and without any sacrifice in quality.
Workforce management technologies make it easier to schedule the right number of agents, back office workers or experts – with the right skills – to effectively improve the total customer experience with the enterprise across departmental boundaries regardless of channel. By automating processes wherever feasible, routine manual tasks are minimized and best practices can become standard operating principles.
While workforce management helps optimize your staff-ing plans, recordstaff-ing and quality management captures the total customer experience and performance management optimizes customer engagement practices. The resulting knowledge be-comes a working asset that enables organizations to infuse every interaction with customer insight. In-depth customer knowledge makes it possible for the contact center to promote a customer-centric culture within the enterprise.
Combined with unified communications-enabled enterprise technologies, WFO capabilities provide practical processes and tools to help transform challenges into a business advantage.
This ability to bridge the gap between the contact center and the enterprise and provide full visibility into customers and processes improves efficiency, productivity, and the effectiveness of each and every interaction.
Creating the ideal next-generation customer
experience
What are the best ways to keep your human resources focused on the customer? Consider how these actions can help you take full advantage of workforce, quality, and performance management capabilities to optimize business processes and the customer experience:
1. Plan and budget for the right number of agents, back of-fice staff, and subject matter experts with the right skills at the right time — Use sophisticated workforce
manage-ment forecasting and scheduling tools to simulate staffing scenarios and schedule resources on the fly through power-ful “what if” analysis. Easily adjust resources for key events such as an ad campaign and model the unexpected, for example, a groundswell of activity in the social sphere.
2,. Adhere to the rules of a changing regulatory environ-ment — Use reporting and analysis capabilities to improve
visibility into customer interactions. Quickly respond to dynamic regulations and implement the right controls to ensure compliance and avoid penalties.
3. Motivate and engage your workforce — Identify the best
resources through powerful reporting and analytics into agent performance and the customer experience. Keep the workforce engaged through targeted learning and coaching, and provide an environment where employees are consis-tently empowered and motivated.
4. Capture the total customer experience — Free customer
data from silos by collecting and consolidating data from ev-ery customer touch point regardless of where the interaction originated. Record and analyze customer interactions – in the contact center, the back office, other enterprise func-tions, and the social sphere – using surveys and powerful speech and desktop analytics tools to uncover key insights and trends.
5. Link Consumer 2.0 to Agent 2.0 — Cultivate agents who
are savvy about the social consumer and empowered by next-generation contact management and workforce optimi-zation capabilities. Integrate customer satisfaction data with agent performance metrics to identify and address issues be-fore they impact the bottom line. Inform agent scripts with customer insight to ensure that agents treat each customer as unique and each interaction is productive for both the customer and the organization.
How Contact Center Managers
Can Master Next-Generation
Customer Contact Challenges
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to
Sponsors
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6. Cultivate continuous operational improvement aligned with business goals — Turn customer data into an
enter-prise asset through automated dashboards and pre-built reports that link the customer experience to agent perfor-mance and ROI. Create custom reports to put the customer voice into the right organizational context and share results across the enterprise.
7. Empower agents to manage and improve their performance
— Focus agents on key performance indicators (KPIs) that return the most value and enable performance insight with scorecards. Initiate automated alerts and coaching to iden-tify skill and capability gaps and provide targeted guidance to support improved agent and customer satisfaction. Workforce optimization capabilities make a unified contact center a complete solution by enabling tightly linked technolo-gies and communications-enabled business processes to deliver measurable, actionable results. Without compromising quality, the contact center can drive more efficient and effective resource and process management to improve business agility and reduce the total cost of customer contact initiatives.
Increased visibility into employee performance, operational effectiveness, and the customer experience improves decision-making across the enterprise to better engage customers for a greater competitive advantage. With its process and performance disciplines and controls tested and perfected over many years, the contact center is well positioned to become the enterprise com-mand center for next-generation customer contact. For a closer look at how workforce optimization technologies support the need of the next-generation customer contact center, please download our white paper 5 Ways to Optimize Your Workforce for Customer
Contact in a Social Marketplace on our website at www.aspect.com. Continuned from page 12
Today’s workforce management software is adapting quick-ly to the new push to forecast and schedule non-phone con-tacts, but less than half of the participants are using workforce management software to forecast. More than half are using this software to schedule agents for non-phone contacts, however. And over three-quarters are not using additional software to help in the process.
We appreciate your participation in this study and hope that you will participate in our Summer Survey in this issue, which will be available online soon.
Survey Results
The Scheduling Swap Ideas – 2011 SWPP Conference
A
t the 2011 SWPP Annual Conference, Penny Reynoldsfrom The Call Center School facilitated an interac-tive workshop titled “The Scheduling Swap.” This interactive workshop included the exchange of scheduling ideas in a large group format. Each person was expected to share in writing at least one practical, proven idea that has worked in their center. Through an anonymous voting process, attendees prioritized the ideas from top to bottom based on the originality and feasibility of the idea.
For those of you weren’t able to attend this session, we thought we would share the top 12 ideas with you. Enjoy! 1. Opting In to Flex Schedule. One center uses flex schedules
to minimize understaffing throughout the day. Staff can opt to have a flex schedule during the shift bid process, in which each person has their own default schedule. Two weeks in advance, the center looks at the Intra-Day Performance to see where there is understaffing throughout the day. As a result, the center will adjust people’s schedules earlier or later depending on staffing needs. This flex gives the staff the possibility of a better shift (meaning earlier start time), although it could be less desirable with later hours. They also receive a slight increase in pay for agreeing to flex as needed. They can opt out of the flex schedule at any time, but they understand they will lose the pay differential if they remove themselves from the flex pool. This flex ar-rangement eliminates the need for most of our overtime because it allows the center to maximize staffing hours with the same number of agents.
2. Split Shifts. One center uses split shifts to cover the busiest times of day from 8-12 and 6-10pm. About half the people do this in the office and the other half work this from home. 3. Fixed Shifts for Hard to Cover Days. One center uses
fixed shifts to cover the hardest-to-cover days. For example, if someone wants to have the same shift each bid cycle in order to be able to work a second job, they may request a weekend or evening shift since these are the hardest to fill. If they take one of these, they may “own” the shift and not have to participate in the shift bid.
4. Schedule Re-Bid Process. One center allows the top 5% of performers to write their own schedule. The other schedules in the bid process are then built around these schedules. There are several ground rules such as having Monday as a work day, a minimum of 20 hours a week, and no more than 10 hours per day, but all the rest is wide open to fit someone’s ideal schedule. The benefit is something of true value to the top performers in your center and there is much buy-in from operations and agent side. The choices made by agents have been quite surprising!
5. Flex Start Times. About 15% of the staff is given a vari-able start time window. They have a base start time but may need to start one hour earlier or later on any given day due to staffing needs. To make these shifts more attractive, they are the earlier shifts and do not include the weekend. This flexibility allows the center to cover staffing gaps and cover unexpected meetings and events without much overtime. 6. Point Program for Flexibility. One center has a points
program for agents willing to work a different shift than originally assigned. Each schedule swap allows them to earn 1000 points. When they have reached 7000 points, they can purchase promotional items, gift cards, lunches, etc. Some people come to the WFM team proactively to offer themselves to swap in order to earn points.
7. Three Flex Options. One center hopes for about 40% flex schedules. Each person gets a fixed schedule during the bid process on a quarterly basis, but they can then choose to “flex” their schedule. The three flex choices are: 1) mov-ing start time up to two hours earlier on any given day, 2) have a week-day off that floats from week to week, 3)have a weekend day off that floats. Those agents who agree to flex get a revised schedule then two weeks in advance. This process has helped to fill gaps between bids that are caused by attrition.
8. Rewards for Flexibility. One center finds different ways to reward those agents who agree to be flexible with start and break times. Since the WFM area is short on budget, the rewards have to come from the schedule process itself and rewards could be first pick of vacation week, first on list to go home early, etc. Those people who agree to last-minute flex requests are rewarded “on the spot” with gift card for coffee or “you’re a lifesaver” coupons that can be turned in later in exchange for time off. Not everyone can flex, but it is good to reward people who can help out, especially at the last minute.
9. Student Availability. One center has a range of hours for which students are scheduled for the week – usually 28-32 hours. They provide availability which could be used as 6 hours on Monday, 4 hours on Wednesday, and 10 hours on Saturday. There is no pre-determined shift length or start time on the days available.
10. At-Home Agents. One center has about 10% of the staff who work from home. The expectation is that when someone becomes a home agent they will have flexibility in hours scheduled. For these staff, 80% of their schedule time is set, with the other 20% to be set as needed on a short-term basis.
11. Dream Schedule Definition. One center has a quarterly shift bid where agents rank their preference of schedule pat-terns such as 8x5, 4x10, etc. A comment section is included on the schedule preference form where agents are given the opportunity to outline their dream schedule (split shifts, long day/short day mix, etc). In their performance based schedule bid, the WFM team is able to build some of these dream schedules in as customized schedules in the new schedule alignment. The result is happier agents, better attendance, and reduced schedule swaps.
12. Monday Schedules. Many centers have a schedule where more hours of work happen on Monday and therefore Mon-days are longer work Mon-days in many schedules, with a reduced number of hours offered on other days of week.
Make your plans now to attend this session at the 2012 SWPP Annual Conference on March 7-9 at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville!
China CITIC Bank Implements
Impact 360 Workforce Management
Software from Verint
Melville, NY — Verint® Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNT)
announced that China CITIC Bank, one of China’s largest financial services organizations, has deployed Impact 360® Workforce Management™ from Verint Witness Actionable So-lutions®. As an existing user of Verint’s recording software, this additional investment in workforce management (WFM) made in March 2011 is being used across China CITIC Bank’s contact center in Beijing. The technology is supporting more than 1,200 employees that serve over nine million customers, with a focus on further advancing center efficiency, optimizing service levels, and enhancing customer experiences and staff satisfaction.
The advanced WFM solution combines the power of fore-casting and scheduling with strategic planning, adherence and time off management capabilities—along with a host of perfor-mance management and eLearning functionality all of which are part of Verint’s single, unified Impact 360 software suite.
By automating and simplifying workload forecasts and staff schedules, China CITIC Bank is improving resource alignment based on customer demand and corporate objectives, and ben-efiting from a robust solution that enables multi-skilled contact center operations to perform long-term planning. The solution also is helping the financial services organization develop “what if” scenarios to determine optimum trade-offs among cost, ser-vice level, revenue and staffing.
Pipkins Continues to “Go the Extra
Mile” for Hosted Customers
St. Louis, MO — Pipkins, Inc., a leading supplier of workforce
management software and services to the call center industry, today announced it has implemented a server for hosted custom-ers powered by Fusion-io that supports six times more databases than before. Pipkin saw a significant increase in hosted custom-ers and was challenged to provide a solution to support a wide variety of queries from multiple customers. Joel Gilbert, CIO of Pipkins, Inc., stated “When we decided to expand our hosted solution, we knew demand would be high. We wanted to ensure we had the highest performance up-front to avoid growing pains down the road.” After scrutinizing various solutions, Pipkins determined that Fusion-io had the best technology that would yield the most benefits.
Fusion-io exceeded Pipkins’ expectations in terms of price, performance, and future operational expenses. Fusion-io eliminated database queuing and wait time; exceeded workload goal of 6x the data load to support more databases; cost a frac-tion of the closest alternative solufrac-tion with the lowest future operational expenses; enabled a cloud business to be offered at an attractive, yet profitable, price point; and, fulfilled Pipkins’ commitment to use only state-of-the-art technology in its SAS 70 Type II certified datacenter. Gilbert further stated, “Our cloud customers are extremely cost-conscious but not at the expense of performance. We had to design a high-performance,
yet affordable, architecture that would scale with rapid growth. Fusion-io was the only provider in its space that was able to satisfy these requirements. It hit our price point and exceeded our performance needs.” Pipkins provides the highest level of performance and security for its hosted solution, workforce-scheduling.com, which utilizes both workforce and performance management, as well as back office, on a single server architec-ture and platform with access anywhere, anytime.
Community Workforce Management
Solution Now Integrated with
inContact
Frisco, TX —The WorkForce Management Software Group,
Inc. (WFMSG), the provider of the industry-redefining Com-munity workforce management solution, announced that it has further enhanced its library of ACD compatibility with the inclusion of the inContact® cloud ACD solution.
“Community WFM is now compatible with over 20 distinct ACD platforms and versions,” said WFMSG Principal responsi-ble for Sales and Marketing, Daryl A. Gonos. “What is different about our inContact integration is that our efforts resulted in a data depository that all inContact users may use for report-ing services, not just those synchronizreport-ing with the Community WFM solution. While the interface enables Community WFM to obtain all of necessary statistics for contact center forecasting, scheduling and agent adherence, it is robust enough that inCon-tact customers can use it as a standalone application to archive and report on their inContact data locally. Our solution may be licensed directly from WFMSG and we will install the applica-tion remotely in less than a day,” Gonos added.
InVision Software Presents Innovative
Cloud Solution for Workforce
Management in Contact Centers
Naperville, IL — InVision Software, one of the world’s
lead-ing providers of cloud-based workforce management (WFM) presented its new cloud solution iwfm.com at the NorthEast Contact Center Forum conference and exhibition.
InVision iwfm is a completely web-based cloud solution which offers all workforce management functions from as little as $9 per agent per month. With the introduction of the new cloud offering, companies can use InVision’s multi-award-win-ning workforce management solution without needing to invest in expensive hardware and software in advance. iwfm.com can be used with all current web browsers and is available now with-out a lengthy introductory process.
Regardless of the size and number of agents in a contact center, iwfm.com supports the optimized coverage of employee requirements by the automated creation of shift schedules. The solution includes the whole process of workforce management – from forecasting demand via personnel deployment planning and optimization through intraday management. InVision cus-tomers can give their full attention to the deployment of their most valuable resource – their employees.
16
Visit us on the web at www.swpp.org
Society of Workforce Planning Professionals
6508 Grayson Court
Nashville, TN 37205
Join the Society of Workforce
Planning Professionals
B
ecome a part of an organization designed specifically to facilitate professional development of workforce planning professionals. SWPP provides its mem-bership with a variety of benefits, including this quarterly newsletter, regional networking meetings, online forums, an annual conference, and more.Membership in SWPP is available to anyone in the workforce planning or related profession.
There are three distinct levels of membership in SWPP: individual/associate membership, site membership, and corporate membership. One of these memberships is right for you! Membership costs vary with the type of membership. Prices for each membership are as follows:
• Individual/Associate Membership $295 USD
• Site Membership (up to 3 members) $595 USD
• Corporate Membership (unlimited number of members) $4995 USD Membership applications are available on the web at www.swpp.org. Still have more questions? Call us at 877-289-0004 or email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!
