ACCENT Marketing Services Replaces
Inefficient, Inaccurate Manual Scheduling
Processes with TotalView

ACCENT Marketing Services operates a bustling contact center with 250+ agents for a telecommunications client in Kingston, Jamaica. The center’s performance was diminished by a number of inefficient manual processes until adopting IEX TotalView and WebStation Plus.

ACCENT lacked consistent measurement processes for many key performance indicators, including adherence and flexibility. Resource planners used manual spreadsheets, exception handling was poor, and intraday reporting was virtually impossible. The processes were so paper-bound that agent sign-ins and sign-outs were recorded in a paper log book. Vacation planning was little better, handled by a workforce management specialist using a spreadsheet from ad hoc agent requests. “Our process automation was minimal to none. It took many hours to prepare schedules each week, and we had regular issues with the delivery of appropriate updates to agents about schedule changes,” says James Hurst, director of workforce management at ACCENT.

As a result of these inefficiencies, ACCENT had trouble delivering consistent service levels to its clients. “With limited drivers for our agents to follow their schedules, it was hard to have any understanding of call volume to forecast until after the day was over,” Hurst says. “And we were not able to ensure our agents provided accurate accounting of their logon time, so we were missing opportunities to invoice the client for time we were paying out to agents.”

With TotalView and WebStation Plus, ACCENT realized tremendous gains in agent adherence through automated schedule tracking and enforcement. Initial readings from TotalView reflected a sub-70 percent adherence rate under the old scheduling policies, but that figure has improved to 90 percent and growing today. “We are now able to easily validate when agents are late, go offline without notice, or miss or are late to lunches and breaks,” Hurst says. “We use that information to coach agents about adherence and conformance.”

Schedule changes, which once required several hours of management oversight to process and approve, are now handled through the self-service WebStation interface. “Before, our managers could spend four to six hours per pay cycle just reviewing their agents’ time to ensure that they were there, properly denoting their time, and being paid for what they worked,” Hurst says. “Now, our agents see all their call stats and performance measurements online, and see immediately when schedule changes are made in WebStation Plus. Vacation planning in particular is easy now, when before it was done entirely by hand and was prone to errors.”

TotalView has improved forecast accuracy by more than 10 percentage points, making ACCENT’s staffing much more cost-effective. “Now, we can work to address changes in interval patterns as they happen when we are out of plan, and are easily able to exclude a day from future forecasts, if needed.”

The gains in accuracy and efficiency in the contact center have led to improved service levels and reduced ASA, creating greater caller and client satisfaction. “We are now in a position to be proactive, rather than reactive,” Hurst says. “Our improved service levels, improved ASA, and improved knowledge on coaching opportunities with agents are definite wins.”

ACCENT has brought order to its busy contact center operations without breaking its operational budget. “IEX’s price was very competitive, and our solution’s bottom line was much clearer than other vendor offerings. There were no hidden add-ons or complicated sales channel concerns,” Hurst says.