Workforce management in a large contact center isn't something that's conveniently done on paper or with spreadsheets. People used to try, and still do. But the normal result is usually significant overstaffing (and wasted money) or understaffing (and angry customers).
Achieving a provably-optimal result - and then adapting to real-world deviations from traffic projections and real-world issues of agent availability and preference - is best done with specialized software. This is more true than ever, now that agent skills, call blending, and multimedia have become a routine part of many centers' routing pictures. Today's top of the line workforce management software deals with scheduling, plus the logistics of communicating with the workforce providing analytical components for projecting solutions, optimization components for making intra-day adjustments, and interactive/feedback tools for notifying agents and supervisors of schedules, changes, and expectations.
PIPKINS' VANTAGE POINT
The leader in advanced contact center workforce management (we think, anyway) is probably Pipkins (314-469-6106 - www.pipkins.com). Their premier product is Maxima Advantage Vantage Point, a comprehensive, powerful modular package that solves multiple scheduling problems. What we love about Pipkins' stuff is that they view the scheduling part of workforce management (which is, by the way, pretty hard to do, especially where multiple agent skills and other complex variables need figuring-in) as just one aspect of managing a workforce. Once you have your schedules set up, Pipkins' products can monitor what's really happening in your center and help you adapt. They can communicate schedule changes to agents, streamline changes coming back up the tree, and help you figure out and implement spot-solutions to intra-day problems as they arise. Overall, Pipkins' vision seems to be to promote an atmosphere of cooperation between workforce and schedulers, and a sense of team identity and mutual responsibility in staff. It's not just about filling seats and dealing with peak-call loads, after all. It's about productivity and worker retention.
The scheduling components of Vantage Point are powerful iterative tools that can do best-fit projections of agent availability to historical or synthesized traffic data months in advance, dealing with complex skill-sets, agent groupings and shift schedules. They've recently introduced a multi-part intra-day routing suite that lets you reoptimize scheduling (length and disposition of agent breaks, etc.) in realtime to deal with real-world variances from earlier projections. The suite includes IVR, email, web, screen-popup message and other tools for schedule-change notification, agent confirmation, and other activities. The idea, as it was recently explained to us by a Pipkins rep, is to give agents freedom to negotiate and to respect their preferences wherever possible, while maintaining equity and meeting performance goals.
Pipkins' is also now experimenting by extending their toolkit with Iontas' Agent Focus application - a screen-and-application interaction recording system that provides data on how agents use Vantage Point and other call center and non call center apps. This is very clever - examining what agents actually do can insure compliance with stated goals, reveal problems with application Uis and other issues that depress performance below expectations, and suggest numerous strategies for improving contact center efficiency.
What kind of benefits can you get by using Pipkins' kinder, gentler WFM? Hard-dollar ROI, baby. Purdue's Dr. Jon Anton (columnist for our sister publication, Call Center) just completed a study at the Navy's Federal Credit Union contact center - examining specifically the 175 account specialists serving the FCU's Consumer Lending Group. As a function of using Pipkins, the group gained a 3% increase in agent utilization that translated into $450,000 in payroll savings; a 5% decrease in average call handle time that yielded an additional $340,000 reduction in operating costs; and a 36% reduction in credit union members' average call waiting time that shaved $40,000 off the organization's telephone bill.
The study also documented a 38% increase in the percent of calls answered in less than 60 seconds, a 9% decrease in the percentage of calls abandoned, and a 25% reduction in overtime hours in the Consumer Lending Group, even though call volume jumped dramatically during the period covered. Other benefits achieved included a 7% decrease in the overall cost per call, a 10% increase in the ratio of CCASs per supervisor, and only a 4% increase in total payroll despite a 24% increase in answered calls.
