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Welcome to WFO Exchange, callcentres.net’s workforce optimisation blog.
The aim of the blog is to share information with you about workforce optimisation and its various different components. As I am out and about, meeting different Resource Planners around the region I thought you might like to know about some of the things other contact centres are doing. I’d also like to get your feedback on some of the questions that our readers might have so that WFO Exchange becomes a useful, interactive resource for all Resource Planners.
I hope you enjoy it and that I hear from you soon.
JA
Post date: 2nd September 2010
Yesterday afternoon we held the webinar for our APAC Workforce Optimisation Benchmarking Report 2010 research results: Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia, Philippines & Singapore. We were delighted to have 3 guest speakers from overseas, Nathan Stearns Vice President of the Business Solutions Group from Nice Systems joined us from the USA, Lester Lang, Head of Marketing from Nice joined us from Hong Kong and Rajeev Venkat, Solutions Director from Verint joined also joined us from the USA.
We had discussed Workforce Optimisation and what it actually is with Nathan and Rajeev and I was just getting into some detail around the Workforce Management results, when all of a sudden a rather loud beeping noise started ringing in our office. Catriona, Julie and I looked at each other in horror as we realised that it was the building fire alarm. What fabulous timing! Of course we tried to continue as normal in spite of the fact that we couldn't actually hear ourselves speaking. Honey, our office manager, ran in to the room and told us that she didn't think it was a fire drill and we should probably leave. We didn't. As the noise got louder and louder and turned into that horrible constant whooping that fire alarms tend to make, we couldn't hold it back any longer and burst into fits of laughter like naughty teenagers. I almost fell on the floor in tears when Catriona let out a rather loud snort and of course blamed it on me. Too funny. Thank you everyone for sticking with us and for all the messages of support we received afterwards. There was no fire and we lived to tell the tale.
Here's a brief summary of some of the things we spoke about through all the commotion;
Workforce Optimisation is a contact centre, organisation or enterprise strategy which involves the gathering and use of data and information to optimise the performance of the employee, processes, systems, management and customer experience. Technologies that were once siloed and used independently are now being linked together making data more readily available in a central location to support better decision making. Workforce Optimisation solutions incorporate workforce management software, quality monitoring/full-time recording, e-Learning, performance management, speech and data analytics, and customer feedback. Though it is expensive to implement the complete solution, customers may opt to do this in phases and select only certain products to begin with, building this up over time.
Workforce Management and Quality Management are currently the most commonly implemented parts of the WFO solution. Typically customers who install workforce management, will also install the real time adherence component to compare what the agents were actually doing compared to what they were scheduled to do and the agent web tools, so that staff can apply for leave and perform shift swaps online. Performance Management is the process of improving operating results using key metrics, goal setting for different hierarchies within the organisation, personalised dashboards and task automation. It enables the user to drill down to different levels in order to self manage and to see the cause of the problem. Although our results showed that over 50% of organisations in the region have implemented performance management, we strongly believe that this is not true performance management and more likely to be more basic reporting from in-house systems. We believe there will be significant growth in the areas of eLearning and Speech and Data analytics in the next 12 months.
As previously mentioned, one component of WFO which is widely implemented and constituted a large proportion of the research is Workforce Management. The availability of hosted solutions has meant that many smaller centres that could not previously have afforded the technology now also have access to some of the best solutions on the market. Australia and India are more likely to have dedicated resource planners than other countries in the region and this is largely due to the size of the centres. In smaller centres it is often a supervisor or call centre manager who is responsible for workforce planning.
Although service level consistency is the top KPI for workforce planners in the region, only a small number are measuring forecasting success at the interval level (15 or 30 minute). This is contrary to what we believe workforce management best practice to be. An example of how to measure forecast accuracy at the interval level would be to achieve 80% of the intervals within your operating hours to be within +/- 5% of the forecast.
Agent adherence and unexpected agent attrition are the two main WFM challenges across APAC.
Of course there is a lot more information available in the actual report which has 200 pages packed with information and statistics for your bedtime reading. If you would like to purchase a copy please contact me at jhazlett@callcentres.net.
For all you Kiwis out there, I hope you'll join me on the afternoon of the 24th September for the launch of the WFO Networking Group in Auckland. Spend time with your workforce planning peers and leading industry experts discussing the issues most relevant to you. At the launch of the APAC WFO Network Group you will join with other workforce planners from call centres of all types and sizes and learn best practice techniques from our recent WFO research findings.
Time: From 2-5pm
Cost: FREE
Where: Salmat -
Level 2, Building 8, 666 Great South Road,
Penrose, Auckland
New Zealand
Click here to register your seat
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Post date: 19th August 2010
Well as Catriona said earlier this week, it's G-Force time again so I'm writing to you from The Crown Casino in Melbourne where we've had 3 days of information packed days and a little bit of partying on the side which conveniently coincided perfectly with my birthday. Thanks Genesys for the great entertainment at last night's Gala ball the theme of which was Rio Carnivale. We had everything from Brazilian dancers, to Zumba lessons, an amazing illusionist and of course the highlight of the night (before we hit the night club) Jimmy Barnes and son David Campbell. Brilliant!
In July, Genesys launched version 8.0 of their Workforce Management software solution which has a completely new interface and some additional features like Training Manager and Skills Assessor. Training Manager automatically builds customised training plans that account for agent needs, service level impact, the availability of agents, trainer and classrooms. It also provides an optimal online view of training schedules and can automatically track and reschedule training for agents who miss their courses. Training Manager can be linked to learning management systems, enabling eLearning courses to be pushed to agents at their scheduled times. Genesys Skills Assessor gives team leaders, supervisors,and training departments the tools it needs to assess and address employee skills gaps. Tests can easily be customised and pushed to employees to gather information on their current skills sets. Very cool.
At the recent WFO Exchange Network Groups in Sydney and Melbourne we had feedback that you would like an online forum to post questions and ask for advice on different areas of workforce management. Well your wish is our command. We are excited to launch the new WFO Exchange Forum. Please visit www.callcentres.net/wfoexchangeforum, register and start asking your questions or posting information you think others might find useful. Of course let us know if there is anything else we can help with.
Have a great week.
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Post date: 5th August 2010
On the 21st of July, I attended an event hosted by American Express on "How to turn your team leaders into Workforce Planning Advocates."
Afterwards I caught up with Toon Lim, Vicky Cowin and Neeraj Chopra to discuss the topic further. American Express firmly believe that team leaders and workforce planners should work very closely together to meet the customer, employee and shareholder goals. American Express send all new team leaders on a two day Call Centre Management Workshop. This is run internally and covers the following;
1. Call Centre Fundamentals: This covers topics such as the Powerful Pooling Principle, The Power of One and the Law of Diminishing Returns.
2. Skill Routing Principles: This reviews the principles of skill routing eg skill based routing, skill consolidation and the definitions and attributes that make up the best customers and best customer care professionals.
3. Forecasting and Scheduling: This includes a review of the workforce planning cycle eg updating historical patterns, normalising historical data, creating forecasts, scheduling and intraday day management.
4. Role Clarity: This includes definitions of the roles and responsibilities of the VP's, Customer Service Leaders, Team Leaders and Customer Care Professionals.
5. Service Level Management: This includes an overview of service level planning principles and tactics eg effective daily huddles and includes a live demonstation of what's actually happening on the floor
6. Performance Management: This is an overview of the benefits of Performance Management, the technology used by the contact centre and techniques to improve performance management eg coaching guidelines
On completion of this training the new team leaders are able to put this into practice. They get involved in the daily group huddles, weekly schedule review meetings, fortnightly capacity planning, and monthly/ fortnightly forecast review. In addition to this they have one on ones with the workforce planners directly where they plan for the next weeks coaching, meetings and annual leave.
There are also adhoc meetings where the team leaders and workforce planners job share to learn more and understand how to work more closely together. By doing this American Express believes that teamleaders become advocates of the workforce management process and will share this information with their team and peers.
The forecasting process is very open and visible across the business. Every fortnight the workforce planners host a Forecast Review Meeting which is attended by managers and team leaders. During this meeting all assumptions around call volumes, call patterns, day of week patterns, AHT distributions, service levels, campaigns, promotions and projects are discussed so that these can all be included in the upcoming forecast. American Express believe it is important that team leaders are also included in this process as it then becomes "our forecast" and everyone owns it.
Team Leaders and Workforce Planners work in conjunction with each other to propose new schedules based on the business needs, keeping employee satisfaction in mind. Agents bid on their preferred shifts via a web based workforce management tool. The workforce planners create new schedules once a quarter and post these on the web for the agents to bid on their preferred shift. The agents have one week to complete the shift bid process. If an agent is not at work during the week of the shift bid, their team leader will contact them to let them know what options are available. To keep the balance between equal opportunity and business needs, American Express stack rank agents based on agreed performance criteria eg sales targets, customer experience, schedule adherence etc.
On an intraday basis, team leaders use the workforce management web tools to see what the best time is to schedule ad hoc activities such as additional coaching, meetings, time in lieu and off phone activities etc. The team leader will use the tool to decide what the best time is and then work together with the workforce planners to actually schedule the activity. In matters of absolute urgency team leaders have the authority to be able to override this process however they will notify the workforce planners so that a replacement can be found.
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Post date: 23rd July 2010
Hi - I'm back. After a few weeks of travelling around Europe visiting family and friends galore in wonderful, hot weather (yes, even in Ireland) I am back in the beautiful but freezing cold Sydney. I definitely prefer the heat these days.
Last week we had the launch of our WFO Benchmark Results in Sydney and Melbourne (sponsored by Nice and Verint) followed by the WFO Exchange Network Groups. We were delighted to have more than 120 participants in both cities. Thanks to everyone who came along and participated as well as everyone who made the event possible by completing the survey to begin with.
We had some great discussions at the Network Groups and the general consensus was that Sydney would like to have a meeting every 6 months but have an online forum for the region where more regular contact with the group can be made. Melbourne would like to have quarterly meetings again with access to an online forum. For more information regarding these groups, please contact me at jhazlett@callcentres.net.
So what sort of stuff did we find out...
Only 37% of respondents in Australia and New Zealand were familiar with the term Workforce Optimisation and knew exactly what it meant. If you fall into the category who didn't know here's how we define it, "Workforce Optimisation refers to gathering and using data and information to optimise the performance of the agent, processes, systems, management and the customer experience across the business."
A complete Workforce Optimisation solution incorporates workforce management, quality monitoring/full-time recording, e-Learning, performance management, speech and data analytics, and customer feedback.
Of those who responded to our survey 72% had a Workforce Management system installed with a further 17% planning to in the future. Quality Management was similar with 77% already having it installed and 16% planning to. Speech and Data Analytics is likely to show the most growth in implementations in the near future with 40% of participants planning to implement this technology in the near future. Expense is still the primary reason for not implementing a complete WFO system.
The top two KPI's for workforce planners in Australia and New Zealand are forecast accuracy and service level consistency. Surprisingly almost 30% of planners out there are still not measured on any KPIs.
Workforce Management practices are being extended across the business with 41% of respondents forecasting for emails, 31% for outbound calls and 26% for back office.
Schedule flexibility and agent adherence are amongst the biggest challenges for Workforce Planners.
Of course there was a lot more information and the complete report will be available to purchase very soon. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to get in touch.
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Post date: 16th June 2010
Football fever is well underway with the FIFA World Cup kicking off last week. Unfortunately Australia hasn’t got off to the best start after getting a bit of a hammering by Germany on Sunday in Durban (early Monday morning here for those who managed to get up to watch it). New Zealand at least managed to score 1 goal yesterday when playing against Slovakia. Go the Kiwi’s! This leads me to the topic of forecasting and scheduling for special events, as although the football world cup may not have quite the impact on centres in this part of the world as it has in Europe, it’s important for workforce planners to consider the likelihood of additional sick leave or people applying for annual leave around the time of events like this. A recently published survey in the UK showed that in the UK, 38% of football fans were preparing to call in sick on dates coinciding with when their team was playing. This is probably truer for Melbourne Cup in Australia.
So what things do you need to take into consideration in the run up to a special event?
Workload: Are the number of contacts to your centre likely to increase or decrease around the time of the event? Has there been a similar event in the last few years that might help you gauge the impact this year? Will the impact be different depending on the date/day the event falls on? Will contacts arrive in a different manner or at different times than usual? Is AHT likely to increase or decrease? How long will contacts be impacted? Will the success rate of your outbound calls be impacted?
Scheduling: Will you need to change your schedules to ensure you continue to meet service levels? Is sick leave likely to increase around this time? Have you built this additional shrinkage into your staffing requirements? Should you be offering more overtime? Do you need to move other planned events like team meetings, training or one on ones to a different date or time? Should you allow for more annual leave or time in lieu? Would split shifts help so that those interested could go off for a few hours to watch the event and come back later? Can any other additional flexibility be built in to your schedules.
Staff: Turn it into a contact centre event and have team competitions or fancy dress relating to the event to motivate people and get them involved in the hype. Put up large screens in the centre or break rooms so that people can watch the event while working. Don’t forget to ensure that everyone knows what the company plans are around this time and that sick leave and lateness will be monitored more closely.
Enjoy the football. I’m heading back to Europe on Friday so at least I can watch the matches at a decent time.
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Post date: 28th May 2010
This week I’m lucky enough to be writing to you from beautiful Portugal where I’ve been speaking at CCPortugal 2010. When working overseas, I am continually in awe of how many people speak English fluently as a second language. Although I speak another language myself, I can’t help thinking how much easier it is because English is my first language. Imagine going to a conference in your own country and almost all the speakers present in another language. It makes me feel quite humble. I’ve been trying to learn some Portuguese while I’m here and you might be interested to know that the Portuguese words for Workforce Management are still Workforce Management- brilliant, I won’t forget that. I’ve also found it interesting that many of the contact centres here don’t use any workforce management software yet even though the average contact centre size is about 250 seats. Over the last couple of days I have been speaking to some of the delegates about the benefits of workforce management outside of forecasting and scheduling so I thought I’d share them with you.
Nowadays most Workforce Management software packages have several different modules. Forecasting, scheduling and intraday management are typically part of the core module with add-ons like real time adherence monitoring, agent web access, analytics and more recently the ability to apply all of this functionality to back office staff. So what are some of the benefits?
Workforce Management tools enable you to store information centrally in one location that multiple users can easily access and report on at any time if required. Some of this information includes:
- Agent Information: hire date, contact details, skills, schedule preferences, performance data, adherence data, training and leave balances.
- Forecasting data: trends, seasonality, impacts of marketing campaigns or technology changes etc.
- Current and historical scheduling information: who worked particular schedules and when they work them.
- Intraday information: what was the actual service level, how did what you forecast compare to what actually happened.
- Time Keeping Records: how much training, annual leave, off phone activities, lateness etc. has taken place.
- Annual Leave Planning: how many hours of leave are available each day of the year and how many have already been taken.
All this information can then be integrated with other systems such as payroll reducing the time and effort needed for data duplication enormously.
Workforce management systems help you to forecast and schedule not just for single site environments but also for multisite, multi-skill and multimedia situations.
Using workforce management systems “what if” analysis becomes much easier. You can easily test out the impact of possible changes in call volumes, AHT, or workload and optimise your schedules to meet the new requirement. You can test the impact of adding different types of schedules before offering them to agents. On an intraday basis you can compare what you had forecast with what is actually happening, reforecast if required and test out the impact of reallocating breaks, training, and meetings etc before going ahead with the change. These add massive time saving benefits.
Real Time adherence tools add huge value. These tools compare what agents were scheduled to do with what they are actually doing and alert you to any discrepancies. The tools allow supervisors to proactively manage their teams and typically improve productivity in the contact centre just by being installed. Let’s take an example of how this can save you money. Imagine you could improve productivity by just 10 minutes per agent, per day. If your average wage rate was $25/hour and you had just 100 agents, that’s a saving of $416.67 per day ((25/6) x 100). If you are open 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year that’s a possible saving of $108,334.
Agent Web Access: I’ve often asked workforce planners across the country what one of their favourite tools in the workforce management suite of products is and the answer is often Agent Web Access. These tools allow your agents to view their schedules online, swap shifts, request leave or other activities, in some centres even move their breaks within certain parameters, bid on what shift they will work and view their performance statistics. Agent’s love it as they feel more empowered and workforce planners love it because it saves them a lot of time processing shift swaps and leave requests. If you allow your agents to bid on the shift they work it also improves morale and the decreases the tendency to call in sick. The schedules can be assigned based on performance so agents know what they need to do to get the best shifts.
Analytics: With the online analytics tools that are part of the workforce management suite staff can view the information that is most important to your contact centre performance. Depending on the tool it can take data from different sources such as your workforce management system, ACD, quality management tool and dialer and consolidate this into a focused view for analysing performance. Managers, supervisors and agents can drill down to the information most relevant to them and compare how they are tracking against key performance metrics. The benefits are that everyone has access to the information they need to make decisions within seconds.
Back office: There is an exciting and relatively new phase of workforce management happening around the world. Workforce Management functionality is now being implemented into back office. I met with Debbie May, President and Nathan Stearns, Vice President from Nice last week who were in Australia for the Annual Customer Conference where they launched Nice IEX Workforce Management Release 4. This has some great new features including some pretty cool desktop recording which make accurate forecasting for back office tasks possible.
As you can see there is much more to workforce management software than just forecasting and scheduling. It can save you time, money and improve employee morale. Excel will always be the workforce planner’s friend but workforce management software gives you access to so much more.
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Post date: 14th May 2010
Home Based Agents
Last week I attended Customer Contact Point at Lunar Park and caught up with Laurie Walter, Senior Manager Key Projects at Whirlpool, USA. Whirlpool Customer Experience Centre won the 2009 Best Contact Centre 250 agents + in the Contactcenterworld.com awards.
A couple of years ago Whirlpool was looking at ways to reduce costs while at the same time improving customer service. Outsourcing was one option however they decided to trial home based agents instead. The agents who were initially given the option to work from home were selected based on their performance taking into account things like quality, attendance, adherence, attitude, behaviour, and AHT. They started with 5 agents from the email team and found that when working from home they were significantly more efficient than the office based agents. They then extended the opportunity to some inbound phone agents and found that they were 10-12% more efficient. Of the 1200 contact centre agents working for Whirlpool USA, 400 are now home based.
All the agents who work at home for Whirlpool initially started working in the contact centre. Twice a year a Home Interest Form is sent to all agents which clearly defines the home based agent requirements. Those who are interested must commit to a minimum 1 year period of working from home and have high speed internet access. Whirlpool pays for a separate internet and phone line for these agents and supplies them with a laptop.
The at home agents have separate supervisors dedicated to them. These supervisors visit their agents at home once a month and the site leaders visit them once a quarter bringing things like balloons with them to make it a bit more fun.
By having the ability to offer work from home, it has also had strategic advantages for Whirlpool. One facility where 30 senior agents worked was closing down but Whirlpool was able to keep the agents and their knowledge by offering them the opportunity to work from home. The only other alternative was for the agents to drive to the closest office which was two hours away. Previously a lot of work done at this facility was done on paper as it consisted of faxes for credits and order requests etc. They were able to turn this into a paperless environment thus reducing costs further and becoming more environmentally friendly.
So what are the advantages of home based agents?
For Whirlpool they have been able to retain skills they may have otherwise lost. It has provided flexibility for the agents and made working split shifts much more feasible. Attrition rates have decreased and schedule adherence for at home agents is higher. They have become greener by reducing paper usage and driving time for agents. Operating costs have been reduced and their share price has increased. It has been so successful that Whirlpool is now looking at other areas of the business where they might be able to extend this opportunity.
Laurie's advice to you is to run a pilot before offering home based opportunities to everyone. Measure the results and make sure you have tested everything. Remember to involve the employees in daily feedback so you can learn from them too.
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Post date: 29th April 2010
It's been a busy couple of weeks here at callcentres.net. First there was the Call Design Boot Camp at the Sofitel in Sydney (photos). It was here I caught up with my friend Vicki Herrell from The Society of Workforce Planners (SWPP) who had flown in all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. Vicki recently announced the winner of the 2010 Workforce Management Professional of the Year and I am delighted to say that our very own Dave Bennett from American Express was one of the five finalists. Well done Dave, that's a fantastic achievement.
Vicki has recently written an article on teaching "the Power of One" and because it's also one of my favourite things to teach I thought I'd share it with you.
How Do You Teach "The Power of One?"
By Vicki Herrell
As workforce management professionals, we all know the difference 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 Activity
Pull together a group of agents and ask them to line up in two groups facing one another. One side represents the customers and the others serve as call handlers. Give each of the "customers" a tennis ball, which 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 Activity
You might want to do this one outside! Have one volunteer 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 customers who have waited too long in queue.
Perfection Game Activity
Perfection 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 reset 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 unexpected absence of just one agent, the remaining agents were forced to work much harder and still couldn't get the job done.
One Powerful Person
Another 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 exercise 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 individuals 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 reviewing 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?"
For a complete copy of the article click here.
Following on from Boot Camp a team from callcentres.net took part in the BRW Corporate Triathlon which was lots of fun. Can someone please remind me next year that training for these things is a good idea. Then to top off the fortnight I joined Carol Ritchie (Workforce Planner at HSBC) and I'm sure many more of you at the Spandau Ballet and Tears for Fears concert in Sydney. Talk about a blast from the past :)!
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Post date: 15 April 2010
Forecasting and Scheduling for Back Office
Last week I caught up with Gregor Hartnell and Alex Truskin from Computershare, a leading provider of share registration, employee equity plans and other specialised financial and communication services.
Gregor is the Workforce Planning Manager for Computershare’s Australian operations and Alex is their Forecast Analyst for the paper based transactional environment. Gregor has eight people in his Workforce Planning (WFP) team looking after up to 500 agents, across both the call centre and the operational transaction area. In terms of team structure there are:
- Forecast Analysts - forecast volumes & FTE requirements by type/channel
- Resource Planners - schedule staff and activities to the forecast levels
- Resource Administrators - assist with the day to day scheduling tasks
- Real Time Analysts - queue management and workflow re-assignment
Computershare has deployed Workforce Management software (InVision Enterprise WFM) into its call centre and is currently reviewing options to expand this into their transactional environment. Currently MS Excel is used extensively to forecast and schedule staff for the various transactional teams. There are three areas of transactional work at Computershare:
- Mailroom - This team is responsible for opening up to 40,000 letters per day and requires between 20-50 agents. Due to the nature of the work this team can easily be scaled up and down as is appropriate for the workload
- Imaging - This team is responsible for scanning mail and, where possible, interpreting it through Computershare’s leading edge data capture technology. This team requires between 20 - 40 agents
- Transaction Processing - This team is responsible for the data entry of any transactions that could not be electronically data captured. This team requires between 80 - 140 agents
As with forecasting for inbound calls, building the forecasting models for the transactional environment requires the Computershare WFP team to be able to track the number of items received for each of its 1,200+ clients as well as understand the various triggers that cause more or less volume at different times of the year. Unlike inbound calls, transactions have various touchpoints (i.e. open mail, scan, process and audit) which need to be factored into the model at various levels based on transaction type, client and/or user when establishing the resourcing requirement. A workload calculation (Volume x AHT) is used to calculate the staffing requirement, however as the service level requirements vary from same day to five days, the impact of work that is still in progress also needs to be incorporated into this model. With all this in mind, the model takes into account both work in progress and new items, as well as the various touchpoints and service level goals, to establish the daily resourcing requirements.
When the forecasts are created the team inputs this information into an application that utilises MS Access, Visual Basic and a MS Excel front-end to automatically generate new shifts and incorporate the agreed shrinkages.
Regularly (daily and weekly), the WFP team meets with the managers/team leaders of the specific departments to discuss expected performance for future days. The shifts are sent to agents via an automated email. The introduction of software will allow further enhancement such as online access to shifts as well as shift swapping and other functions which are already being utilised by the call centre.
Computershare has developed a purpose built in house Workflow system that electronically manages and prioritises transactions, taking into account client service levels, regulatory requirements, event dates and agent skills and proficiency. In combination with the Workflow system, the role of the Real Time Analyst is critical as they re-optimise agent work allocations based on shifting volumes, critical event dates and agent availabilities.
Schedules are then exported from the custom built roster application and imported directly into the Workflow system. Work allocations are optimised and re-uploaded to Workflow at two-hourly intervals throughout the day.
Gregor notes that the WFP process in the transactional environment is an evolutionary process:
"We can create the most sophisticated models however it is imperative that the internal customers are fully engaged via education and visibility of benefits.
The best place to start is to spend time with the managers and team leaders of the areas to better understand what challenges they are currently facing in running their business.
We rely heavily on the Subject Matter Experts in the particular areas to help us better understand the behavior of the workload. What are the drivers of incoming volumes? What makes the workload peak?"
Once this is understood the Computershare WFP team tracks the workload as it enters and leaves our systems. With over 1,200 different clients the WFP team has implemented tracking systems to capture the workload at a company level. As much as possible, this data capture process has been automated.
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Post date: 1 April 2010
I hope you have stocked up on your chocolate supplies and are getting ready to head off for a few days fun and relaxation over Easter. Before you head off though, I'd like to ask for some advice for one of our readers ......
Hi Julie-Anne!
Advice from your readers please!
Our call centre is about 150 head count. We want to move from a fixed seniority based rostering model that has been in place for over 12 years; some of our staff have been around that long too!
We know that we don't have the flexibility to cope with seasonal changes, or adapt to campaigns or any other challenges, and are suffering in cost and performance as a result.
However, we are worried that we may alienate staff by introducing too much change too quickly.
Our EBA stipulates that rostering negotiations should be in a spirit of mutuality, and that personal circumstances must be considered.
Traditionally this has meant that if an agent gave a reason for a shift change request, they got it, regardless of the business requirement, or how compelling the reason was or wasn't! Once on their preferred shift, the agent never changes shift unless they initiate it!
So we'd like to take a gentle approach to change by introducing some elements of flexbility and "testing the waters".
Do your readers have any experience with introducing a preference based rostering model into a culture like ours, and have some key learnings that they would like to share?
Cheers
Kate
If you've had a similar experience and have some recommendations that you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you.
Have a great Easter.
Comments:
We rolled out Preference Based Rostering in late 2004!
Prior to any changes being made to any rosters we formed a roster focus group which was made up of nominated individuals from each team. They would meet with Management and WFP to discuss options, we found this beneficial to the roll out as we were able to gain their feedback, opinions and discussed all options. They would then return the findings to their teams at their next team meeting. To roll out our Preference Based rostering, we split our centre operating hours into 3 time bands. We then asked staff to rank each time band with their preference and special requirements ? child care or care giver etc. Staff took the process well and most of our employee's did receive their first preference, for those that did not, we set up a waitlist procedure and would move employees as per the waitlist into vacant spaces within other bands. Since setting this up in 2004 we have slowly made more changes to our preference based rostering every year, being open with our employees about any changes has been our best practice.
We also ensure that the WFP team are available to attend team meetings to allow any questions that employees may have to be answered in real time by someone who completes the rostering process. If you need anymore information please contact me -- Deanne, Austar
Hi Kate Firstly, good on you for taking up the challenge of changing your rosters! If there's one piece of advice I can offer, it's to get the staff involved in the process from the very beginning. There are a number of good reasons for this: Firstly, it helps to mitigate the us versus them perspective which can develop when change is introduced. By having the staff be a part of the process the changes are no longer something that is "done" to the staff by management. Secondly, as you know it's impossible to please all of the people all of time. Collective staff ownership of roster changes means that as a group they all own the outcome.
If there are several possible roster models that will work for management, then let the staff decide for themselves which one they want. Sure, there'll be a few who aren't happy, but at least it's "their" decision.
Keeping the process open and transparent, and communicating every step of the way with your staff enables you to bring them along with you. One of the most powerfull things you can do is outline the business challenges of the current roster with the staff and then ask them to come up with some possible new solutions. Of course it's really important that you also outline the constraints - e.g. maximising service levels, no increase in headcount, fairness etc. An interesting side effect of this kind of open approach is that your staff will not only improve their understanding of workforce management, but they'll also start to get an insight into how challenging it can be! Good luck. -- John Bosomworth
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Post date: 18 March 2010
Chris Griffiths was back in town from the Philippines last week so I was able to catch up with him for a coffee. Chris is the Director of the Operations Support Centre for Australia and New Zealand for TeleTech and has been spending quite a lot of time working in Manila over the last few months. TeleTech is one of the largest global business process outsourcing (BPO) companies with over 20,000 agents based in the Philippines alone. They have more than 60 people working in the Workforce Planning department for Australia and New Zealand customers and more than 200 covering all regions. With 16% of inhouse contact centres in Australia and New Zealand currently outsourcing at least some functionality (onshore and offshore), I thought it would be interesting to find out a little more about how this works from a workforce management perspective.
In general, workforce planning for outsourcers is completely dependent on what the client wants, so flexibility is very important. For some clients, Teletech will create historical patterns and forecast for them from the ground up, for others the client will give them the forecast and they will schedule to meet that requirement. Regardless of which method used, Teletech will still track the patterns separately for each client.
From a scheduling perspective, Teletech is predominantly using template based schedules but they are moving more towards preference based schedules where the agents can have more flexibility in the type of shift they work.
Teletech's workforce planning team is typically recruited internally. There are 3 levels of career progression in this area
- Real Time Analysts -responsible for real time agent and queue management, exception entry and on the day re-forecasting
- Forecasting and Scheduling- responsible for short term planning (1-4 weeks)
- Business Analysts- responsible for the longer term staff business planning (4-16 weeks)
Chris also gave me a copy of his ideal Workforce Planning Operational Support Team, click here to view.
For Teletech off shoring has been a very positive experience. Chris's recommendation if you are going to off shore is to
- Make sure you have all your processes clearly mapped out so that everyone understands exactly what they should be doing.
- Have clear escalation paths so that everyone knows when to escalate and who to escalate to.
- Be sure to leave at least 6-12 weeks for cultural emersion.
Manila is a great place to spend time and Chris's favourite place to hang out is The People's Palace in the Greenbelt, apparently a great Thai restaurant...
On another note, don't forget to register for this year's Call Design Bootcamp. For all workforce planners this is a must attend event to not only learn some new workforce planning techniques but to network with your peers. Please see http://www.calldesignbootcamp.com.au/ for more details.
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Post date: 2nd March 2010
Hi there, welcome to the first edition of WFO Exchange, the blog designed to share information with you about different areas of workforce optimisation. This week I caught up with the lovely Melissa Miller and Stephen Pollard, who are the Resource Planners at Allianz. They told me about some of the things they have been doing in Brisbane to improve their forecasting accuracy - one of the areas they are measured on as Resource Planners.
Melissa and Stephen meet with the Allianz marketing team fortnightly to present their forecasts and make recommendations around the best times for campaigns and mail-outs to occur .This allows them to plan operations ahead of time so that they are staffed sufficiently to meet any changes in demand. If an advertisement is due to run at a particular time Melissa and Stephen will know about it and can build it into their forecast. Campaign codes are provided in advance so Stephen and Melissa can build patterns around the impact of different types of campaigns and use these for future planning. This also allows the marketing team to measure a campaign’s effectiveness. Days off are rostered around peak days helping to limit staff shortages. This has been so successful that other key people such as their Relationship Manager are also attending the meetings to ensure the agents have all the relevant campaign information on time.
As some of you may also have experienced, setting up the initial meeting wasn’t that easy. Marketing didn’t understand why they needed to share all this information. Melissa and Stephen managed to convince them otherwise by explaining the impact it was having on service levels and customer satisfaction when mail-outs would go out without them knowing. As they’ve strengthened their relationship with this team, they are now sharing more and more information and forecasting accuracy has greatly improved.
So their advice to you is this
“Build relationships with as many people as possible. If you have the lines of communication open to as many key stakeholders as possible, then you’ll be able to negotiate the best outcomes for the business. Knowledge is the key.”
Melissa and Stephen would like to ask you about Preference Based Scheduling. Do you have any tips and tricks that you’d like to share about how you’ve rolled this out? If so, please let us know.
Have a fabulous fortnight and don’t forget to have a drink on Paddy’s Day (17th March in case you didn’t know).
Comments:
Preferential Rostering Rollout
My experience with this is that expectation management is the key. Make sure your staff have a clear understanding of how their preferences are considered and what other factors should be taken into consideration e.g. what happens if a majority of people asked to have the same shift. -- Mike, AGL
Welcome aboard JA!
Request the information ... build relationships ... is it be possible to make this information a requirement? We run 6 major mail order companies though the one centre. We use mailing dates, mailing quantities, state by state roll out dates, day by day spending patterns within a catalogue, daily call patterns, customers grouped by spending patterns/rates and real time updates. I can't imagine forecasting without that sort of information. And we've declared the dress code for the 17th to be green! -- Neil, Innovations
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