new winter 2010 swpp · 2013. 3. 22. · customer service workforce manage-ment at fedex for the...
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SWPP Winter 2010
The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has an-nounced Angela Thomas of FedEx
as the winner of the 2010 Workforce Man-agement Professional of the Year award.
“We are proud to present this distinguished award to Angela,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “Her accomplishments in the area of remote agent deployment are remarkable and show exactly what we are looking for in the recipient of this award.”
The SWPP Board of Advisors selected the five finalists from nominations submitted on the SWPP website. The Workforce Management Professional of the Year award is chosen from the five finalists by the Board of Advisors and announced at the 2010 SWPP Annual
Conference.Angela Thomas
has been supporting customer service workforce manage-ment at FedEx for the last 15 years. Recently, however, Angela has spearheaded a huge undertaking that has changed the call center environment at FedEx — Angela successfully deployed four traditional call centers to be 100% at home employees. The overall savings for this initiative will be roughly $2.5M annually. Angela utilized the latest in call routing technology to enhance the
Angela Thomas
Angela Thomas of FedEx Named 2010 Workforce Management Professional of the Year
As workforce management profes-sionals, we all know the differ-ence that just one agent can
make in our net staffing. Unfortunately, the agents don’t necessarily understand that concept. They may be thinking, “What difference can it make that I come back late from lunch? There are 50 other agents out there on the floor.” Sometimes it falls to the workforce management team to teach them just what a difference they make.
While we all know the benefits to the call center when agents adhere to schedule – improved service level, better customer service, and cost savings for the company – sometimes these benefits are not enough to motivate agents.
So what can we do to teach “The Power of One” to our agent population? Well, there are lots of different ways, and in this article, we’ll explore several options.
One way to get the information to the agent is through an interactive, fun activity. Here are some examples:
Tennis Ball ActivityPull together a group of agents and ask them to line up in two groups facing one another. One side repre-sents the customers and the others serve as call handlers. Give each of the “customers” a tennis ball, which
WFM Fall Survey Results . . . . . . 2
WFM Winter Survey . . . . . . . . . 3
Beginner’s Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Our Sponsors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
The Business World is a- . . . . . . . 6Changing: What the Boss Needs From You
Ask the Workforce Wizard . . . . 11
Events Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Workforce Management: . . . . . 13Three Tips for Managing Agent Schedules During a Downturn
Bright Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Join SWPP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
I N S I D E
Continued on page 8
Continued on page 14
How Do You Teach “The Power of One?”B y V i c k i H e r r e l l
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Each quarter SWPP surveys the workforce planning com-munity on critical workforce planning topics. Almost 250 call center professionals representing a wide variety
of industries participated and provided insight into this quarter’s survey on workforce management team measurement. This is a follow-up survey to one performed in 2006 so that we can see the advancement in this area in the profession.
Participant ProfileForty-one percent of the participants are from call center
operations with over 500 agents, followed by 17% with 50 to 100 agents and 11% with 100 to 200 agents. All types of call center operations are represented in the survey, with the biggest percentages representing financial, insurance, telecommunica-tions, and retail/catalog industries.
Job TitleOne third of
the respondents have the title of Workforce Analyst, while 24% have Workforce Man-ager and 15% have Manager as a title.
Size of Workforce Management GroupAlmost half (49%) of the participants have 1-5 people in
the workforce management group. Thirty-four percent have more than 10 people in the group, and 17% have 6-10 people.
WFM ScorecardForty-two percent of the participants say they currently
have a WFM scorecard. While 36% do not have one, another 22% say they are working to implement one.
In the 2006 survey, 39% had a WFM scorecard, so this number is trending upward.
Forecasting Measures of SuccessWhen asked
what measures are used to gauge forecasting success, seventy-four percent say accuracy by day, 69% say accuracy by month, and 40% say accuracy by half-hour.
In the 2006 survey, the first two statistics were reversed: seventy-three percent said accuracy by month, 69% said accu-racy by day, and again, 40% said accuracy by half-hour.
Speed of Answer Measures of SuccessThe largest percentage (70%) use service level or ASA by
day as a measure of speed of answer success. Sixty-six percent use a monthly number, 41% use a weekly number, and 32%
use a half-hourly statistic. Only 22% use consistency of service over the day.
In 2006, the most common measure of speed of answer success was also Service Level or ASA by day (83%). Forty-eight percent measured by week, and 35% measured by half-hour. However, a few more (27%) used consistency of service over the day as a measure of success.
Scheduling Measures of SuccessOver half
(54%) use schedule efficiency as a mea-sure of scheduling success, while 48% use occupancy rate. Twenty-five percent use the number of intraday adjustments needed, while 12% use cost per call as a measure of success.
The 2006 results showed that 71% used schedule efficiency, 47% used agent occupancy, 29% used intraday adjustments needed, and 25% used cost per call.
Internal Measures of SuccessAdherence to
service level (56%) and forecast accura-cy (54%) are used as internal measures of success for over half of the participants, while budget to actual staff plan numbers are used by 47%. Schedule efficiency is used by 40% as well.
Other Measures of SuccessWhen asked what other measures of success they use,
participants noted abandon rate (60%), customer satisfaction (53%), clear and timely communication of information (51%), and budgeted off-phone hours to actual used (26%) as the top measures.
Compensation Reflects WFM SuccessOver half (53%) of the respondents say their compensation
does not reflect WFM success. In the 2006 survey, although 61% did not have a workforce
management report card, 59% said that their compensation reflected success at specific workforce management duties.
This follow-up survey showed some very interesting results. Workforce management professionals work in an environment where most of the employees around them (e.g., call center agents and supervisors) are measured constantly in many differ-ent ways. However, it has seemed that the workforce manage-ment group is not necessarily measured as closely or with the same detail.
We appreciate your participation in this study and hope that you will participate in our Spring Survey in this newsletter.
Job Title
Workforce Manager
24%
Manager15%
Workforce Analyst
33%
Consultant1%
Vice President2%
Director9%
Supervisor3%
Other13%
74%69%
40%
14%
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Forecasting Measures of Success
Forecast accuracy by day
Forecast accuracy by month
Forecast accuracy by half-hour
Other
60%
53% 51%
26%
11%
3% 3%
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Other Measures of Success
Abandon rate
Customer satisfaction
Clear and timely communicationof information
Budgeted off-phone hours toactual used
Other
Number of payroll adjustments
Number of union grievances
70%66%
41%
32%
22%
8%
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Speed of Answer Measures of Success
Service level or ASA by day
Service level or ASA bymonth
Service level or ASA by week
Service level or ASA by half-hour
Consistency of service overday
Other
54%48%
25%
17%12%
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Scheduling Measures of Success
Schedule efficiency
Occupancy rate
Intraday adjustments needed
Cost per call
Other
56%54%
47%
40%
11%
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Internal Customer Satisfaction Measures of Success
Adherence to service level
Forecast accuracy
Budget to actual staff plan
Schedule efficiency
Other
W F M S u r v e y R e s u l t s
3
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mSWPP conducts a survey each quarter on critical
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 sec-tion. You may fax this page to 615-352-4204 or fill in the survey online at www.swpp.org.
The focus of this survey is training and de-velopment of the workforce management team.
Responses to the first two questions will allow 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?
Under 50 50 – 100 100 – 200 200 – 300 300 – 400 Over 500
2. What industry do you represent?
Telecommunications Travel Financial Insurance Utility Retail/Catalog Government Health Care Outsourcer Other
3. What training is provided to a new person hired for the WFM team in your company? (Select all that apply)
Vendor training on the WFM system Third-party training on principles of WFM In-house or on-the-job training on WFM system Formal training on company offerings, services, proce-
dures, etc. Other: ______________________________________
4. Are WFM team members offered ongoing training? (Select all that apply)
Upgrade training for WFM products by the vendor Third-party training on WFM processes and best
practices Internal training on WFM Leadership development training Internal training on other topics External training on other topics Other: _______________________________________
5. Do your WFM team members attend your software vendor’s annual conference?
Yes, all attend each year
Yes, some attend each year
Only the management level team members attend
No one attends
Don’t have WFM software
Software vendor does not have an annual conference
6. What other development opportunities are provided for WFM team members? (Select all that apply)
Attendance at industry trade shows
Membership in local or area call center groups
Member or leader of project teams
Attendance at SWPP annual conference
Attendance at SWPP regional meetings
Other: ______________________________________
7. Do you offer an apprenticeship or internship program for other company employees interested in joining the WFM team?
Yes
No
Not a formal program but have done it on occasion
8. What percentage of your WFM team would consider themselves career workforce planners?
None
Less than 25%
25-50%
50-75%
More than 75%
9. What do you think is most important development opportunity for your WFM team?
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
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 May 15, 2010. Congratulations to Daniel Stenvall of IKEA, who won a free SWPP Membership last quarter for completing the SWPP survey.
Name ___________________________________________________________________________________________
Company __________________________________________________________________________________________
Email Address ______________________________________________________________________________________
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Ideas from “The Scheduling Swap” Session at the 2010 SWPP Annual Conference
Attendees at the 2010 SWPP Annual Conference had the opportunity to attend “The Scheduling Swap,” a fun and interactive session where participants ex-
changed innovative scheduling processes in their centers. For those of you who weren’t able to be there, we wanted to share some of the ideas that came out of the session, so hope you enjoy these great tips!
Career Path SchedulingWe identified that we had two types of agents: the factory
worker and the future CEO. Based on those types, we developed schedules that focused on their needs. Future CEOs wanted to learn everything, get exposure, and move up. Factory workers wanted no stress, basic responsibilities, and to get off the phones occasionally. We created a path where the CEOs had flex hours, but were involved in project teams, testing, and a wide variety of other projects. On the other side, the factory workers got pre-dictable, set schedules and participated in monitoring and train-ing like everyone else, but in fewer outside projects. This way we got the schedules we needed, and we met career path needs.
Split ShiftsDon’t assume that nobody wants to work a split shift. Split
shifts are a great way to provide coverage in the few morning and few afternoon hours where you have the most calls. We found that there were a few people in our center that actually wanted and preferred a split shift, such as parents and students. We thought nobody would work this schedule, but it was a fit for a few people.
Non-Traditional ShiftsTo increase our schedule efficiency and help improve our
staffing on Monday, we came up with some non-traditional shift types that would help us get more hours staffed on our busiest days and have fewer hours on non-busy days. Many of the staff seem to like this variation by day. Here are some examples:
1. 4 x 9 hour days + 1 x 4 hour day
2. 3 x 10 hour days + 2 x 5 hour days
3. 10 hour day + 9 hour day + 8 hour day + 7 hour day + 6 hour day
4. 9 hour day + 8 hour day + 7.5 hour day + 7.5 hour day + 8 hour day
Training Hours to Match Work HoursWe would always lose several new hires right after training
when they would transition into their new schedules. To reduce this, we changed the hours for training from Monday-Friday 8am-5pm to Tuesday-Saturday 10am-7pm, the shift that most of our new hires will be working. This has significantly reduced our new hire attrition.
Involvement in Recruiting Process Get involved in the recruiting process if you want to reduce
turnover and educate new hires. Over the last two years, we’ve worked with our HR department to meet with potential new hires before they sign their contract. Workforce Planning meets with the candidates following the interview with the Team Leader if the candidate will be moved along. We provide information about the types of schedules they will work and even give them some sample schedules to review. This gives them time to discuss with family before accepting an offer. When they return to sign their contract, we meet with them again to answer questions they may have about schedules. We meet with them two more times to review scheduling before they go to the sales floor. This has dramatically reduced the instances of “Nobody told me that,” “I didn’t know,” etc… We have also seen a reduction in new hire turnover due to scheduling.
Sharing CSRs with Other DepartmentsShare CSRs with Operations to cover peaks and valleys
throughout the year in both areas. Within a week, they spend time in both places. During Operations peak (where they may be doing mail opening, imaging, keying, email, or prepping), the CSRs work one day or less in call center and three or more in Operations. During Customer Service peak, the CSRs work 100% in call center. For a normal week, CSRs would work key-ing or working mail between calls, with some spending one day in Operations, and the rest in Customer Service. That one day in Operations is typically a weekend day or a slow volume day in Customer Service. We also do a short term voluntary layoff in July-August or reduce hours during slow times.
Trading SpacesWe offer agents the opportunity to work when we have
shortages in exchange for when they are scheduled but may need time off. Additionally, for part-time employees, we tell the agent they will work 19 hours per week and ask them to come up with two schedules for themselves that add up to this num-ber. Then whichever schedule meets the needs of the business is what they will be assigned. This saves on attrition and makes a happy agent. We also have an overtime bank — for every hour the agent volunteers to work, they receive two hours in their bank to use later.
Telecommuting to Create Split ShiftsWe had a need to fill opening and closing schedules without
overstaffing mid-day. To make this happen, we offered telecom-muting positions that involved a split shift. It has worked very well.
B e g i n n e r ’ s G u i d e
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B e g i n n e r ’ s G u i d e
Master CalendarWe created “Master Calendars” where we note information
that affects the WFM team. Here are some of the guidelines for the calendar:
• Include any of the phone activity that requires at least five agents or more to be off the phone for any length of time
• Does not include regular meetings/trainings but does include things like fire drills, team building activities, recognition events, etc…
• Formal requests must be submitted to scheduling at least 2 weeks in advance
• Scheduling can approve, deny, or suggest a better time
• Requests are reviewed weekly and covered in weekly meeting with Operations and the Real-Time team
• The calendar is published so all business partners can view it
• Each LOB has its own master calendar
Core and Flex SchedulesWe have a mixture of core and flex schedules, based on
performance. Agents bid for these schedules and the result is that some agents have a flexible (by start time) schedule, while others have a core (same day, same time) schedule. Instead of overtime, agents come in a little later than normal and/or stay longer, or they come in on a day off and pick a different day off.
Flex Options We have implemented several flex options for our agent
scheduling process, including:1. Swaps — An agent can swap his/her schedule up to
two times a month. Example: Agent works M-F 8-5 but needs Monday off for special event. Agent puts in form to WFM to work Sunday in lieu of Monday. WFM checks staffing and will approve or deny based on need.
2. 8-week Exceptions — An agent can request to alter their schedule up to 8 weeks due to extenuating circumstances with proper documentation. WFM checks availability and if they can’t do it, they will send a counter offer for something that will meet the agent’s need and the needs of the company.
Mutual Time OffWe have a mutual time off (MTO) list (or VTO). We use
an online application that allows agents to sign up for MTO for times when they would like to go home early. This is utilized when service levels permit. If we have an urgent need to send people home, we go to the MTO list and send those agents home. They’re happy since they signed up to go home, and we’re saving money by letting them go home. Looking for last minute volunteers takes too long, and the list is very effective. Their name, skill set, and shift is noted on the list to help us identify who to send first.
We hope you will make plans to join us for the 2011 SWPP Annual Conference, which is set for March 23-25 at the Opry-land Hotel.
Thank You to
Sponsors
Interested in becoming a sponsor?
Call Vicki Herrell at 877-289-0004.
Gold Level
Silver Level
Bronze
Platinum Level
Continued from page 4
The Business World is a-Changing: What the Boss Needs From YouB 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 s
The Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article a few weeks ago, entitled “Strategic Plans Lose Favor: Slump Showed Bosses Value of Flexibility, Quick Re-
sponses” (January, 25, 2010, by J. Lublin and D. Mattioli). In it, the authors describe how many CEOs, because of the recent change in the business environment, have given up on trying to stick to a rigid year-long strategic plan. Their businesses benefited greatly by moving to a more flexible and opportunistic corporate decision-making discipline, where budgets and plans are developed more quickly and more often. Their lesson is that business rigidity, especially in the face of change, is risky.
What does that mean to strategic planning? The days where a formal year-long budget is the be-all end-all are over. Instead, plans are meant to be evaluated and re-evaluated ad nauseam.
While rigid strategic plans are no longer seen as appropriate in our ever-changing environment, it does not mean that strategic questions aren’t being asked. Quite the opposite. Constant change has shown business leaders that they need to factor extreme scenarios into their business planning. The big picture questions are being asked, scenarios are evaluated, plans are implemented, the business is monitored, and in the event of the now normal change, these questions are asked again, re-evaluated, new plans implemented and the business continually monitored.
It’s a fast environment and companies that are able to see, analyze, react, implement, and maintain this analytic discipline are the ones that will survive best during this long downturn and be prepared to take advantage when the upturn finally happens.
But what does that mean for us contact center planners?
What Does Our Boss Want?The executives that are directly responsible for the contact
center operation have huge responsibilities. They are account-able for one of the costliest line items in the overall corporate budget: the contact center variable labor budget. Also, the contact center is clearly one of the most customer-facing opera-tions for many of our companies. Most of our end-customers have their only personal experience with our companies when they are speaking with our reps. Our bosses — whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em — are very important to our companies; they control a high cost, high touch operation.
For such a high profile job, we should be aware of what our bosses really want; and it is really not hard to guess. They want:
• Asmoothoperation;toavoidserviceblow-ups.
• Whenthereisaserviceblow-up,theyneedtobeabletoexplain it quickly, and easily. It’s best when the mistake is not the operation’s fault.
• Theywanttolooklikealeadertotheirboss.Thebestway to do this is to provide forward thinking analyses, and to understand how technologies can improve their operation.
• In a fast moving business environment, the boss wants to show their boss they are anticipating any change, and are ready to take advantage of opportunities brought about by this change.
• They want to be able to respond to their boss’ what-ifs (they get what-ifs, too!).
• They want to always have appropriate facts and figures available to them quickly. They need to be confident in the numbers and story they provide their boss.
• They want the appearance of frugality with the com-pany’s money.
Like all of us, our senior leaders have their own set of wor-ries. Primarily, they worry about being caught flat-footed, looking unprepared, and/or looking like they didn’t anticipate something that was obvious in retrospect. They ask what-if questions because that’s how they stay prepared for their boss’ questions.
What Do We Analysts Need To Do For The Boss?This “new” business trend, flexible budgeting and planning,
are not so new for contact center executives. Many of us (but not all of us) have been at the forefront of the rapid-response-strategic-planning-and-what-if-analysis-bandwagon for years. But that does not mean that there is not now added pressure for our executives to produce even more analysis more quickly, given the speed of change and the variability of our forecasts (both business forecasts and center volume forecasts).
So the analyses our bosses provide their bosses are likely getting a lot more attention lately. So what does this mean for our execs?
It means, first and foremost, that the quality of the analyses we workforce planning professionals provide them is beyond important. When an executive takes a presentation to his/her boss, the presentation needs to be rock-solid. As my dad told me when I (finally) finished college, “your number one job is to make your boss look good.” And so, our contact center analyses needs to be:
• Accurate: Wrong answers are not acceptable. It is very important that we, as contact center workforce analysts, are confident with the results we provide.
• Believable and Defendable: Not only do we have to be confident in the results we provide, but we have to be able to make our boss feel confident in our analyses. The surefire way to do this is to validate that the models of the operation (our long-term staff planning models) pre-dict the service levels and abandons we see in our ACD data very closely.
• Consistent: Results have to be consistent across sce-narios. Any manual process we use in our models is
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A d v a n c e d T o p i c s
dangerous, in that human beings, when making complex decisions (i.e., when and where to hire or offer over time) will make mistakes. When I’ve used spreadsheets to determine staff plans in the past, I’ve made serious consistency errors — which made any analyses unbeliev-able. Try having your boss explain your inconsistencies to his/her boss — it can be ugly.
• Comprehensive: We need to ensure that any what-if analyses we provide our managers completely encom-passes the what-if question being asked. This usually implies that a simple call center spreadsheet model won’t work too well, their usually not comprehensive enough.
• Complete: Also, we need to make sure our analyses are of long enough duration. A hiring decision, for ex-ample, doesn’t affect just one month — it is a long term decision- and the repercussions of this decision should be analyzed over the long-term planning horizon. For example, if we are being tasked with determining how many more agents we need to hire given changing volume demand, it does no good to look only at the peak center hour, some months in advance. Instead we need to look at every week in our planning horizon, and con-sider multiple iterations of hiring, overtime, undertime, and controllable shrinkage plans.
It is our job to provide accurate, believable, and defend-able, consistent, comprehensive, and complete analyses for our managers. We’ll work hard for this, but that doesn’t mean we can’t ask the boss for our own important stuff to provide us with the tools to accomplish this goal.
What Does the Boss Owe Us?This boss/analyst relationship is a two-way street. In many
ways, the most leaned upon person in the contact center orga-nization is the long-term workforce planning analyst; if good, this analyst holds the keys to their senior executive’s success. As such, this analyst may often be the most junior person, but not nearly the least important person, at the contact center decision-making table. We workforce planners will promise to work hard, put in the ridiculous hours (especially when the now monthly budgets are due), and provide superior analyses with the tools we have available.
But it is not unreasonable to ask for the right tools and processes. In today’s environment, with long-term planning be-ing so important, the big boss needs their answers to be right. So make a list of tools that will make your planning process better. It should include:
1. A well thought through contact center performance database, melding information from at least 1) the ACD (for raw center volume, staffing, and performance his-tory), and 2) the workforce management system (for a
shrinkage history). For completeness you could add 3) payroll rollups (for costing information).
2. A robust forecasting engine, enabling the semi-automat-ic forecasting of volumes and handle times, but also attri-tion and all important shrinkage categories (e.g., sick time is important).
3. A validated-to-be-accurate contact center model, encompassing call, email, back-office, outbound contact types (if you use those contact types). This model (usu-ally simulation) becomes the decision-making engine for any what-if question from the boss. This model needs to be accurate, hence, continually validated against actual contact center performance data. Without this contin-ual validation against real-world data, the model results are a nothing more than a guess.
4. Hiring, overtime, undertime, variable shrinkage opti-mization algorithms to determine exactly when (which week) and where (which staff group) to plan for all of the staffing levers we have to pull to make our plans work efficiently.
5. Variance analyses and reporting tools to provide the boss with rapid “what-happened” analyses quickly and accurately.
6. A seat at the table during all planning meetings. Insist on it. If you get technology items 1-5, you’ll be able to have — at your fingertips — all of the what-if answers residing in your laptop available during the planning meetings. There is no reason that any step in the plan-ning process, from data analyses to new plans cannot be accomplished near real-time.
When there is change and everything isn’t written in stone, you can implement some cool stuff. Make your case for better analysis tools, and if it fails, make it again next month, because next month the budget planning process happens all over again. Change means ideas are tested and evaluated all of the time.
In the Wall Street Journal article, the authors quote Walt Shill, a big shot at Accenture: “Strategy as we knew it is dead. Corporate clients decided that increased flexibility and acceler-ated decision making are much more important than simply predicting the future.”
If you’ve approached your boss for a strategic planning tool, but have been shot down in the past, now is the time to try again — the timing might be perfect for your boss to be recep-tive to another look. Strategic planning is all about decision making and business variability makes it much more important, for the company, and more importantly, for your boss.
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 Business World is a-Changing: What the Boss Needs From You
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A d v a n c e d T o p i c s
Angela Thomas of FedEx Named 2010 Workforce Management Professional of the Year
8
overall scheduling and routing of call volume, which has led to an overall increase in productivity. This has provided the company with an additional $1.2M savings per year, for a total initiative savings of over $3.5M annually. This initiative has had a number of significant benefits for FedEx, including:
• Employee morale around this opportunity has been overwhelming, and the employees are ecstatic about the opportunity to work from home
• Employee loss of coverage (absenteeism) is down by 45% versus the traditional centers
• Facility savings are $2.5M annually
• Increased online productivity savings of $1.2M annually
• Service levels have realized a 1.2% improvement overall supporting enhanced customer experiences
Also, disaster recovery opportunities have been realized to eliminate the impact from severe weather and increase flexibil-ity and employee support for contingency planning during off hours and in critical times.
This project was so successful that the decision was made by the executive team to continue with the initiative and deploy an additional 450 reps to work remotely over the next four-to-six months.
Angela has led the planning team in creating the sched-uling processes for this initiative, as well as developing the requirements for the employees to be working from home. This includes developing online scheduling practices for all aspects of workforce management, and creating two-way communication channels for employees to ensure that all issues are resolved. Angela has also developed the reporting and routing strategies to be deployed in conjunction with the rollout of the remote employees.
Angela led the Operations team in deploying proactive Chat opportunities on fedex.com. This has allowed FedEx to effectively support customers utilizing fedex.com, which has had a significant impact to customer satisfaction, including:
• Customer satisfaction surveys are scoring consistently in mid to upper 90 percentiles
• Job diversification for traditional phone reps has been overwhelming
• Chat reps have provided additional contingency staffing in peak and critical time periods
Angela also was highly involved in the Chat project for workforce management. Angela developed an integrated rout-ing and chatting strategy to ensure that the reps can be dual-utilized to maintain their current productivity levels. Angela also developed new forecasting and planning strategies that will encompass multiple simultaneous chats, and worked with the IT department to ensure that the reps can be utilized most effec-tively to support inbound call volume as necessary in peak and contingency situations.
Dave Loges, Senior Manager, Workforce Management at FedEx, said, “Angela has been a tremendous part of the success that FedEx Customer Service has experienced. Over the last year, Angela has taken a tremendous leadership role while still managing the day to day operations for customer service. Her leadership on the corporate initiatives was both key to their suc-cess, as well as ensuring that the initiatives were effectively inte-grated with the workforce management needs. She has actually been able to enhance the customer experience while bringing tremendous cost savings to FedEx.” Loges added, “We are so proud of Angela and very excited about this honor for her.”
The other finalists for the award are Dave Bennett of Amer-ican Express, Alisha Eads of Asurion, Tony Graczyk of Principal Financial Group, and Victoria Marcella of VW Credit.
Dave Bennett, American ExpressDave Bennett is the Regional Workforce Planning Manager
at American Express based in Sydney, where he leads planning activities across 13 sites in the Asia Pacific region (JAPA). Dave has 14 years international experience in the contact center industry. In his current role Dave is responsible for strategic resourcing, budget and capacity planning, and the forecasting and scheduling across 11 countries.
His key accomplishments at American Express include: the introduction of agent self-serve software to assist with shift trad-ing and holiday allocation; a flexible resourcing strategy based on the “Lifestyle” survey; adopting statistical analysis software to improve forecasting; creating a capacity planning tool for all American Express centers internationally; and leading Contact Center Health Checks at centers in Sydney, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, and the UK. Most recently Dave has launched a major program within the region to fully integrate Service Level Planning functions.
In response to considerable financial pressure across the organization, Dave’s group was tasked with significantly reduc-ing operating costs in 2009 in order to maintain profitability. Towards the end of 2008, Dave played a significant role in ongo-ing international discussions aimed at identifying opportunities
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2010 WFM Professional of the Year Finalists pictured with Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director — R. to L., Victoria Marcella, Alisha Eads, Vicki Herrell, Tony Graczyk, and Angela Thomas. Not pictured, Dave Bennett.
to reduce costs. Highlights of his contribution include present-ing a discussion paper on proposed service level changes to the Customer Service Delivery International Leadership Team and collaborating with his international counterparts to create a calculator to assist leaders with calculating the potential in their markets to reduce costs through improved operational efficiency.
In January 2009, the culmination of these ongoing discus-sions was a request from senior leaders to establish a single view of capacity plan requirements for every market. The regional workforce planning teams were quickly pulled together to share the brief and request an urgent turnaround. Without hesitation, Dave shared the JAPA capacity planning template with his col-leagues overseas and it was agreed that this should form the basis of the new regional templates. Work commenced on populating the templates for each region in record time. Immediately, Dave led from the front on the challenge at hand. His team started working round the clock to populate the tool with JAPA data. In addition to this, he worked on the design of the template and incorporated enhanced features. Over the following days, Dave routinely progressed the template and passed it to his overseas colleagues to populate the template as they arrived to work each morning. It is important to note that Dave was not asked to work on the template for other regions but chose to do so in order to help his colleagues move faster towards the end goal.
At this stage the new template became known as the Inter-national Capacity Plan and requests were quickly coming in to enhance the functionality, aesthetics, and build a user-friendly interface. Dave’s expert knowledge of workforce planning principles and Excel meant he was able to adapt the model in a fraction of the time it would take others to do so. Throughout the process, he showed ingenuity and creativity to produce a tool which far exceeded the expectations of his customers.
Alisha Eads, AsurionAlisha Eads, a 16-year veteran of the call center industry,
has been with Asurion as the Director of Workforce Manage-ment for nine years. Her current responsibilities include interval forecasting, scheduling, and real-time queue and service level management across all of Asurion’s North American sites. In addition to Workforce Management, Alisha also assumes re-sponsibility for the Time Keeping team, which is accountable for maintaining payroll hours. She leads a team consisting of one Senior Manager, one Manager, two Supervisors, six Schedulers, 16 Real-Time Analysts, and three Time Keepers.
Throughout 2009, Alisha has, once again, accomplished the seemingly impossible, and accomplished many goals, including:
• Met service level agreements for all lines of business in every month while exceeding efficiency targets
• Turned down an outsourced facility and rebalanced in-source / outsource mix while exceeding efficiency targets and SLA’s
• Implemented reporting to increase the communication between Workforce Management and Operations
• Instituted an advance planning methodology including a three- and seven-day forecast revision process allowing WFM and Operations to work together to make neces-sary tweaks in staffing to ensure service level is met and efficiencies are maximized
• Finalized the consolidation of the WFM function from decentralized, residing in six different locations, to a cen-tralized model out of one location
• Reorganized scheduling and real time teams to ensure that each team member was assigned to own a specific client or clients within their area of responsibility which generated savings of over $100,000 annually
• Developed a holiday planning and scheduling practice that ensured that service level, operational efficiencies, and employee satisfaction were balanced
• Deployed PTO/VTO /OT management process that increased efficiencies by over 2%
• Grew Asurion’s Work at Home model by nearly 120% and implemented creative scheduling techniques with this team resulting in increased efficiencies
• Converted the primary time tracking system from eTime to Kronos across the enterprise
• Reorganized the Time Keeping department resulting in a 50% reduction in staff within this organization
With all of the above, Alisha was able to secure some very impressive results in 2009 at Asurion:
• An overall Frontline Service Level of 82.8% with 70% of all days hitting a service level between 78% and 85%
• Frontline ASA of 19 seconds on 22 million calls answered
• Abandonment rate of less than 1.8%
• Annual attrition at a record low of 48%
• Annual efficiency of greater than 70% which includes ef-ficiencies greater than 74% within our four largest queues. This is more than a 5% improvement since 2007.
Alisha has also managed Asurion’s staff planning and real-time management through some significant changes in the organization’s multi-channel strategy. This strategy effectively re-allocates volume away from the CSR to automated channels such as the WEB and IVR. Asurion realized significant gains in the automation area in 2009 and Alisha was consistently able to keep up with the volume fluctuations by reallocating staff and moving hours within the system.
Tony Graczyk, Principal FinancialSince joining Principal Financial in 2001, Tony Graczyk has
played a key role within the success of the contact center, and throughout the company. Tony has been a Contact Center Work-force Management Analyst for the past four years and is primarily
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Workforce Management Professionals of the Year
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responsible for supporting the forecasting, scheduling, and track-ing needs of a retirement plan administration call center.
The Principal, a leading global financial company, was in need of a system that could compile and organize all of the staffing processes into a controlled database. The business unit that Tony primarily supports employs nearly 1,000 agents, with around 130 people on the phones and the remainder doing various types of back-office work. Different work types have different seasons of peak workloads, and sometimes people would need to be pulled in from the back-office to assist with phone coverage or vice versa. However, there was no way of tracking how many people were needed, where they would be most proficient, where they should be assigned, etc.
With all of those challenges in mind, Tony established the Swiss Army Team (SWAT) database. This staffing database contains information about an employee’s work history, profi-ciency, skills, location, etc., and helps leaders determine who would be most suited for various situations. All of this informa-tion is conveniently loaded in one place and provides call center managers the ability to identify gaps in the various areas of the business unit. In conjunction with the workforce management forecast for phone needs, back-office areas can enter staffing needs into the database. Once the needs are identified, the col-lective information contained in the database illustrates where resources are in excess and where additional assistance will be needed to maintain service goals. The employee information from the database helps management identify resources from areas that have extra capacity that may be well suited for the assignment. Because the forecast for the various areas of the business unit can be entered months in advance, the plan is in place proactively and can be established to allow for adequate time to complete training for the areas needing support.
Due to the efforts of SWAT, The Principal has been able to look internally to address the common issue of managing peak workload. By redeploying existing staff, overall costs can be reduced and service consistency can be maintained. For example, the average speed of answer for inbound phone pro-cesses would vary by up to 30 seconds (over 85%) from peak to non-peak workload. By redeploying employees, the variation has been reduced to less than 10 seconds (less than 30%). Since implementation, the monthly deployment of resources has only accounted for nearly 0.5% of the workforce in the supported business unit. The estimated cost savings for this area from the ability to redeploy existing resources is conservatively estimated at $1.5M dollars annually. The reduced need to hire and train, more streamlined planning process, more consistent service results, improvement in employee morale, and cost savings re-sulting from the concept have paved the way for an innovation in processes and a more efficient and knowledgeable workforce.
Victoria Marcella, VW CreditVictoria Marcella, a 12-year contact center veteran, plays a
key role in helping VW Credit (VCI) deliver its mission. As the
Workforce Management manager, Victoria oversees forecasting, scheduling and tracking activities covering four contact center sites in Portland, Chicago, Auburn Hills and Montreal.
The Workforce Management team started working with the Customer Accounts department in 2008. In 2009, the partner-ship started to really produce benefits. These benefits have been demonstrated through the reduction of network costs, improved intra-day performance and more efficient use of resources in the department. Creating a successful partnership was a challenge that provided several obstacles for Victoria to overcome. First, Victoria had to gain acceptance from a management team in the department that was reluctant to utilize WFM because they felt they were producing more than adequate results on their own. Victoria was instrumental in developing relationships with their managers and was able to demonstrate how they could utilize WFM. Once they were convinced that it was worthwhile to utilize the WFM team, the challenge then became to prove the value they could add. Victoria had to work diligently on getting the entire behind-the-scenes system configuration completed while at the same time working on requests for the Customer Accounts department. One of the first requests was to look at their schedules.
This provided a unique challenge since, unlike our Custom-er Care department, they do not just take inbound calls. They also use an automatic dialing system and need to make manual outgoing calls. Finding the balance so that the requirements were met for all three tasks while still delivering schedules that the management team felt were convenient for their employees was quite an accomplishment. Since those initial schedules were released, Victoria has worked closely with the managers on a daily basis in order to meet their changing needs.
Jason VanHeirseele the Section Manager for Customer Accounts had the following to say about his newfound appre-ciation for the service that WFM has provided his department: “Since partnering with WFM a little over a year ago, Customer Accounts has been able to streamline many internal processes — processes that previous to WFM’s involvement were time consuming and manually driven. Being able to shift responsibili-ties such as monitoring late starts, breaks and schedules, have given more time to our supervisors to do what they do best, manage teams and collect funds. With WFM we’ve also been able to centralize and manage our scheduling and call volume more effectively. Workforce Management provides extremely beneficial data that helps our department make timely decisions. This is in large part due to the folks managing the software. Communication is a key component and our department works very well with all folks involved with Victoria’s group.”
Victoria has been able to bring through several internal employees from multiple areas of the company to shadow with WFM. This provides a better overview of what we do on a day- to-day basis, as well as potential career opportunities. To date, 25 candidates have participated in shadow time with the WFM Department.
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Workforce Management Professionals of the Year
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Question: Is there an industry standard or goal for aban-don rate or percentage? Where can I find this information?
Answer: Actually there is no “industry standard” as this can vary a lot by type of call and business. However, most would say that somewhere between 2% and 5% is reasonable performance for most call types. Of course, if this is a sales call queue, any abandon could mean lost revenues, so ensur-ing there is enough staff to keep abandons to the minimum would generally pay for itself. Less than 2% is probably unre-alistic due to wrong numbers, interruptions, etc. More than 5% suggests people are probably tired of waiting but the best way to understand your own callers is to run an ACD report that shows the number of callers who abandoned at various intervals such as 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, etc. Those that abandon before you really got a chance to help them must just be accepted as normal. Generally, you can see the tolerance of the callers in that queue pretty readily in such a report.
If you have an expected wait announcement (e.g., tell-ing callers that the queue is over 5 minutes), you will find that abandon behavior changes. There will be some who abandon immediately after the announcement, choosing to call back at a better time. The rest will generally wait until the forecast time expires, but will abandon in large numbers if the wait is longer than they were told.
Another technology that changes abandon behavior is the virtual queue management system. In this case, when a wait threshold has been reached, the system advises the caller of the long wait and offers to let them key in a number for a call back when the call reaches the top of the queue. This will also result in significant abandons but these people will not need to call back as the system will call them when their turn arrives.
Question: Is it a common practice in contact centers to exclude the number of abandoned calls in the first 20-30 seconds in queue? With our old phone system, we took the number of calls received and the numbered answered, found the difference and then figured the percentage of lost calls. Now that we have a new phone system with lots of new functionality, we are able to track, for instance, the number of calls dropped in the first minute while in queue. Con-sensus in our contact center is that one minute wait time is reasonable and as a result, we are excluding the number of abandoned calls in that first minute from our overall percent-age of lost call. I don’t happen to agree with this decision for a couple of reasons; 1) one minute is too long and 2) I think we are manipulating the percentage of abandoned calls, by not counting all of them, which skews the percentage and
falsely makes us look better than what we are. However, maybe this is a common practice of call centers and I just need to get on board.
Answer: The question of how to treat abandon calls in the speed of answer equation is a good one. There is no “right” way of industry standard, but there are lots of opin-ions about it. So here are some thoughts to guide your plans. The basic calculation of service level is to take the number of calls handled within the goal number of seconds and divide by all of the offered calls. For ASA, the total number of seconds that all callers waited (both those who were handled and those who abandoned) are added together and divided by all of the offered calls. This is where the variations begin.
Some believe that it is appropriate to throw out the abandons of some length because the center really never was given a chance to answer them. So you might exclude those calls that hung up in 5 seconds or right after the announce-ment. You might have a goal to answer in 20 seconds and throw out any who hang up before 20 seconds is expired. Some centers throw out all of the abandons regardless of length of wait and just use handled calls within the goal divided by all handled calls for service level. Any you throw out make the final percentage of service level or ASA look better. But are you concealing the truth?
Another way of calculating the results is to exclude some number of seconds in the queue from all calls including those handled and abandoned. This is driven by understanding where your ACD begins to count the wait. Is it when the call begins to ring into the assigned queue, when it is picked up by the recorded announcement, or after the announce-ment is through playing? Maybe your announcement is in the IVR and not in the ACD at all, but if it is a function of the ACD, the starting point for the queue timer could be any of these. So if you have a forced announcement to tell people you may monitor for quality, is it fair to hold this time against the center as delay?
The best approach to this is to work with your telecom team to identify the specifics of how your systems are con-figured to calculate the wait in queue and what your options are for reporting the data. Also consider that it would be ideal if all of your systems did the calculations the same way. For example, if your WFM system uses SL or ASA to compute the number of staff needed and it uses a different formula from your ACD, you will be mystified as to why your plan calls for more or fewer people than you actually need to achieve the ACD’s reported results. When you have a firm handle on that, then you can consider what is the best choice for reporting the information. But remember, the customer experiences all of the wait even if we don’t report it.
Have a tough question? Send it to [email protected] and we’ll try to find an answer!
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Trade Shows/Conferences:
Title Date Location
Call Center Optimization Forum April 13 Phoenix, AZ
Verint Workforce Optimization Creative Practices Regional Workshop April 20 Chicago, IL
Call Center Optimization Forum May 6 Tampa, FL
Call Center Optimization Forum June 3 Toronto, Ontario
Annual Call Center Exhibition (ACCE) June 14-17 New Orleans, LA
Call Center Week June 14-18 Las Vegas, NV
Call Center Optimization Forum July 15 Denver, CO
QATC Annual Conference Sept. 15-17 Nashville, TN
Education: Web Seminars from The Call Center School — www.thecallcenterschool.com 90-minute seminars @ $300 each
Spring/Summer 2010
Introduction to Workforce Management: An Overview of the WFM Process Define WFM, its importance in the call center, and the detailed steps of the WFM process
May 7
Data Collection and Analysis: Getting Off to the Right Start Review data sources for WFM process and needed adjustments for aberrations
May 14
Forecasting Fundamentals: Proven Practices for Predicting Call Workload Learn strategies for gathering data and applying time-series analysis to predict calls
May 21
Calculating Call Center Staff: The Math of Call Center Staffing Tradeoffs Apply Erlang and other staffing calculations and evaluate service and cost tradeoffs
May 28
Scheduling Principles and Problems: Solutions to Scheduling Challenges Discuss scheduling issues and identify schedule optimization strategies
June 4
Managing Daily Service Levels: An Intra-Day Guide to Managing Staff and Service Monitor intra-day developments and make adjustments to optimize staff and service
June 11
Performing a Workforce Management Audit Identify strengths, weaknesses, and strategies for improving the WFM process
June 18
Advanced Forecasting Techniques: Fine-Tuning Workload Predictions Hear proven practices for improving the accuracy of your workload forecasts
June 25
Skill-Based Routing Design: Balancing Customer, Agent, and Center Needs Optimize routing plans to send each call to person best able to handle it
July 9
Skill-Based Routing WFM Challenges: Forecasting and Scheduling for SBR Scenarios Match workforce properly to your center’s skill-based routing design
July 16
Attendance and Adherence: Getting and Keeping Bodies in Seats Identify strategies for improving attendance and managing intra-day schedule adherence
July 23
* Also available in e-learning format
E v e n t s C a l e n d a r
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Managing call volume is always a challenge for contact centers, but it is especially so during an economic downturn. The state of the economy can increase or
decrease contact centers’ call volumes outside of normal, annual cyclical changes. Inaccurate staffing levels can lead to prevent-able personnel costs or too few agents handling calls, resulting in poor service and displeased customers. Contact centers need to make sure they are staffing correctly for the twists and turns the economy can have on customer service.
Economic uncertainty necessitates increased agent plan-ning, and workforce management software can improve forecast-ing, simplify scheduling, maintain productivity and keep up mo-rale. Following are ways in which workforce management can successfully help with agent planning during a down economy:
1. Forecast accurately for happy agents and customersIn a downturn, any number of factors can leave contact center managers wondering how to properly forecast and anticipate staffing needs. For instance, with consumers hanging tightly onto their wallets, a promotion on a particular item may not generate the same level of call volume as in the past, and call-ers also may be less responsive to up-sell offerings.
Workforce management software can minimize the guesswork and ensure a contact center is not overstaffed, wasting staff time and money, or understaffed, leading to long hold times, dropped calls and unhappy customers. This adds some level of predictability to the equation.
During a downturn, forecasting may require some manipula-tion in order to anticipate and accommodate the current situa-tion. In the example above, forecasting for special events would allow you to model call volume impact of a new promotion, based off of a past event. You can anticipate call volume impact across multiple days of a promotion. For example, starting two days after a mailing, traditionally there may be a 15 percent increase in call volume for three days. Schedulers could then adjust an impact ratio to scale it up or back, making adjust-ments for shifts due to economic changes.
What-if scenarios can also help with staffing level projections to meet service levels, taking into account different forecast scenarios. You can generate multiple distribution and forecast scenarios to determine the most likely to occur, given the current situation. As a result, you are then able to calculate and estimate resource requirements. This enables you to better understand and manage your contact center during times that have varying contact volumes and contact patterns.
An effective workforce management system also facilitates regular, intraday staffing adjustments to fine-tune schedules if gaps occur during each time interval.
2. Simplify scheduling processes to maintain productivityAn effective workforce management system is always key to maintaining productivity (and controlling costs), especially during an economic downturn. Workforce management can provide the strategic insight required to manage an important component of productivity, which is agent adherence to the schedule.
When budgets are tight, contact center managers must have a very strong grasp on how agents are spending their time and whether they’re following their assigned schedules. All the best planning in the world goes out the window with poor adherence.
A workforce management system can provide historical and real-time adherence reports to watch for inconsistencies between the assigned schedule and the actual activities of the agents. Historical adherence reports show a detailed, daily summary of an agent’s activity compared to the schedule. With real-time adherence reports, a supervisor can monitor what an agent is doing at any particular time – for example, if the agent is on a call, viewing a training demo or on a break.
When schedules and activities match up, there is appropriate coverage of customer calls, important non-call activities such as training takes place, and the company saves money through the efficient use of agents’ time.
3. Motivate agents and reward them for their performance and flexibilityDuring the downturn, agent concerns will arise with regard to job security. Frustration may set in if there is a constant fluctuation in schedules. In order to keep the agents motivated and engaged, it is essential for supervisors to be mindful of the frustrations and reward high performance results and agent flexibility.
Agents tend to be better motivated and productive when they feel empowered and have access to information about their schedules and performance. Workforce management tools allow agents to personally view their schedules and monitor their performance. Supervisors maintain approval control, but agents can trade work shifts with other agents who have similar skill sets or request specific dates for time off. With browser-based access, agents can do this at home or at any contact center location. The flexibility allows for easy schedule transitions without elevated frustration from the agents.
In monitoring performance, agents can check their own daily productivity indicators to keep their performance on track. Performance-based scheduling in workforce management al-lows supervisors to reward agents with their desired schedule based on how well they’re doing their jobs.
A contact center agent is the face of the company to many customers. When a business is weathering an economic storm, there’s little room for error. It is even more critical to hold on to the customers you have. When one call experience can shape a customer’s loyalty and perception of the company for the long-term, workforce management tools can increase a contact center’s chance for success.
Tim Kraskey is vice president of Marketing and Business Devel-opment for Calabrio, a leading provider of workforce optimization and unified contact center desktop software that enables continuous busi-ness improvements in productivity, efficiency and customer satisfac-tion. He can be reached at [email protected]..
Workforce Management: Three Tips for Managing Agent Schedules During a DownturnB y T i m K r a s k e y, C a l a b r i o
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represents a phone call. Then ask the customers to begin throwing the ball back and forth to the person across from them, the “agent.” This is very comfortable as long as there is a one-to-one ratio of customers to call handlers. Now send one call handler on break but leave all the customers. Send another call handler on an “unscheduled break” and leave all the customers. Keep throwing the balls back and forth to the remaining call handlers. The participants can easily see the impact of losing one agent, and then they really feel the impact of losing additional agents. This is also an excellent illustration to employ when talking about average handle time (how long the call handler holds the ball before pitching it back), schedule adherence, queue times, and service level/ASA.
Bucket ActivityYou might want to do this one outside! Have one volun-teer slowly pour water into a bucket (one from KFC works well). The water represents incoming calls/orders. After the bucket is full, start to poke holes into the bucket. Let the first holes represent someone leaving for a break or lunch according to their schedule. Agents can come up to plug these holes to stop the water flow. But then poke some holes to represent agents out of adherence – late to work or from a break, for example – and do not plug those holes. As the water drains down, so goes the service level! The draining water can also represent lost orders or lost custom-ers who have waited too long in queue.
Perfection Game ActivityPerfection is the battery-operated game where you set a timer and attempt to place differently-shaped pieces into their respective slots before the timer runs out, which causes the spring-loaded board to pop up suddenly and scatter the pieces. For the illustration to the agents, have three people placing the shapes simultaneously, and they will finish at a leisurely pace before the timer expires. Then remove an agent from the mix because they were signed off unexpectedly and not adhering to their schedule. Then re-set the timer for the exact amount of time it took for three people to finish the job. Without fail, the two remaining people work frantically but are never able to complete the task before the timer expires and the pieces pop up. Then explain that the shapes represent calls, and the time it takes to place these shapes into their slots represents handle time. Also explain that when you had the right number of people in place to handle the task, everyone was able to work at a comfortable pace and get the job done. With the unex-pected absence of just one agent, the remaining agents were forced to work much harder and still couldn’t get the job done.
One Powerful PersonAnother company has developed a curriculum for their new hires and existing agents called “One Powerful Person.” Average adherence of the class attendees is analyzed prior to and after classes to determine the effectiveness of the training. During the training, they do an interactive exer-cise similar to the tennis ball activity where four individuals are “Agents” serving customers. Line them up a few feet apart, standing or at a table. Have five or six individuals act as “Customers” calling into the center. Line these individu-als up arms length away across from the agents. Have a box of “Calls” in between the customers and agents, easily reached by the “Customers.” These “calls” can be a box of small balls, cushy items, or anything easily handled in one hand (nothing sharp!). Instruct Agents that they will be receiving Calls from Customers and they will handle the Call from five-seven seconds each, then return the call to the box. Instruct Customers to “hand” a call to a random available agent, counting their delay time if there is no agent available.
Start the call exchange and go about two minutes. Stop and review delay times with customers. Ask Agents how they feel. Remove one agent from the line. Begin call exchange again. After two minutes, remove another agent and continue exchange. Have customers count delay time. Stop after one minute and review delay times with customers. How different did Agents feel after someone was “missing?”
In all these activities, debrief with the group by review-ing differences in delay time based on various agent situations. What was the effect on service? What was the impact on agents? Ask “What difference did one person make in this exercise?”
In addition to activities, workforce management teams have used other methods to make “The Power of One” more easily understood. One car rental company “re-branded” the whole notion of schedule adherence to help each individual realize his/her importance to the process. So instead of calling it schedule adherence, it became known as the Customer Accessibility Ratio (or C.A.R. for short). Using a one-page tri-fold flyer and a series of presentations, the workforce management staff explained that the whole idea behind adherence is being ac-cessible to customers — being there when customers call. This made the objective a positive one – being accessible to custom-ers – rather than the somewhat negative “Big Brother” watch for schedule non-adherence.
One automobile financial company also tried to get rid of the “Big Brother” label that can be attached to the group that tracks agent adherence. Taking a proactive approach, they talked about it with the agents by asking them, “What is a big brother? What does a big brother do to you that you hate? They got answers such as, “They pick on you.” “They constantly challenge you.” “They are always watching everything you do so they can tell on you.”
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How Do You Teach “The Power of One?”Continued from page 1
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Then the workforce management team asked, “What does a big brother do that’s good?” The answer usually is, “They protect you.” That’s the answer you’re looking for. Then they bring up the question, “Is challenging you a bad thing?” And they finally get across that agent adherence tracking might make the agent feel like he/she is being picked on, but in reality, it’s challenging the agent to go from good to excellent performance. It also can be communicated that the schedule adherence moni-toring process helps protect and reward the agent that is doing what is right by doing what they’re scheduled to be doing.
Penny Reynolds of The Call Center School has written a book called “The Power of One” that is designed specifically for frontline staff. At the beginning of the book, she outlines its purpose by writing, “Each individual on the frontline in a call center has the power to do two things – make a tremendous difference in a customer’s experience with your organization and contribute significantly to the effective operation of the center. The purpose of this book is to help you understand your important role in both of these functions and to provide tips to maximize your success. The first half of the book focuses on making the most of each customer interaction and the second half outlines the contribution you make in the three measures of call center success – service, efficiency, and cost.”
In the section titled, “Staffing for Speed,” she gives the reader specific information about what a difference one person makes in the call center.
You’ve got an errand you’d like to run next Monday morning on your way into work, so you ask your team manager or supervi-sor about coming in late that morning. She says no because Monday will be a heavy calling time and you’ll be needed on the phones that morning to ensure service levels are met.
You may be frustrated by this, thinking, There are fifty other people here! What possible difference could I make? I think my supervisor is just being inflexible.
While it’s clear that if you’re one of only five people, then your contribution is a significant percentage of the call handling team. But what about when you’re in a center or call handling group ten times that big? Would your absence be noticeable?
The actual difference that one person can make in terms of the service (speed of answer) to customers can indeed be affected
substantially by just one person. There’s a bigger impact in a small center, but even in larger centers or call handling groups, the impact of one person can be significant.
Let’s take the example of a center that expects to receive 750 calls between 9-10am and each call takes 240 seconds to handle. Your call center’s goal is to answer those calls with an average speed of answer (ASA) of under 20 seconds. The table be-low shows what happens with varying numbers of staff on the phones, along with the resulting ASA and service level.
Workload Hours Workload Hours Average Delay (ASA)
Service Level (in 20 seconds)
50 55 18 sec 75%
50 54 28 sec 66%
50 53 46 sec 55%
50 52 84 sec 40%
50 51 201 sec 22%
As you can see, when plenty of people are in place to deliver a very good level of service, then the impact of one person isn’t so much. With 55 staff in place, the delay would be 18 seconds and subtracting a person would worsen that to 28 seconds. On the other hand, if only 52 agents are available and delays are already long at 84 seconds, losing one more person can make a tremen-dous difference in each caller’s expected wait time. The differ-ence between 52 and 51 staff is a jump from 84 seconds to 201 seconds of delay time! In this case, when one person is missing, the impact is almost an additional 2 minutes of wait time per call – a wait that would be very noticeable to the caller.
See what a big difference just one person can make? Delivering good service to callers depends upon every single person being available when scheduled.
The book then goes on to explain the concept of agent occupancy, and also the impact on the call center’s bottom line from non-adherence. Many centers are purchasing this book for each of their agents, and using them as a great starting point for the conversation surrounding agent adherence. The books are $5.95 each with volume discounts available. You can order them online at http://www.thecallcenterschool.com.
There are many ways to teach “The Power of One” to your agents. Try some of these ideas and see what works for you!
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How Do You Teach “The Power of One?”
Does your workforce management team know what your agents do?Have your workforce management staff stay current with what impacts your phone staff. Even if your
workforce management team members have been call center agents, they may not remember what it’s like to take calls all day. And for your staff that have never taken calls, it can be an enlightening experience to spend some time on the call center floor.
Have your team spend time with the agents every so often listening to calls for a few hours to better un-derstand the challenges the phone staff deal with on a day-to-day basis. This will also help with understanding what drives AHT and what questions to ask when anomalies in call volume trends or AHT trends occur.
Additionally, it can help bridge relationships with the phone staff if they feel that the WFM team has the interest and concern in fully understanding their job.
Note: This tip provided by SWPP Board Member Sandra McFatridge of Medco Solutions. She may be reached at [email protected].
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Visit us on the web at www.swpp.org
Society of Workforce Planning Professionals6508 Grayson CourtNashville, TN 37205
Join the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals
Become 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/AssociateMembership $295USD
•SiteMembership(upto3members) $595USD
•CorporateMembership(unlimitednumberofmembers) $4995USD
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!
SWPPWinter 2010
A quarterly publication of the Society of Workforce
Planning Professionals,6508 Grayson Court
Nashville, TN 37205877-289-0004www.swpp.org
Editor: Vicki [email protected]
©2010 Society of Workforce Planning Professionals
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