NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – March 4, 2024 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced Elias Saykali of TD Bank Group as the winner of the 2024 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry.
“We are continually amazed by the quality of nominees for this award, and are so thrilled to recognize Elias as this year’s winner,” said Vicki Herrell, Executive Director of SWPP. “Through his leadership and vision, he was able to achieve great results for his company and their customers in the workforce management arena.”
The other finalists for the award include Eric Bigelow of Qualfon, Brandon Kelly of Options for All, My Tran of UC Davis Health, and Chris Trujillo of Memorial Hermann. 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 2024 SWPP Annual Conference.
Elias Saykali is Senior Leader, WFM Command & Dispatch Centre for TD Bank Group. This financial services company employs 12,000 agents in 23 locations and remotely on a 24x7 basis. They handle five million monthly inbound and outbound voice, inbound chat, social, email and back office contacts. The technology used includes Cisco UCCE, Genesys Routing, NICE WFM and EEM,
Genesys WFM, and Verint. The workforce management team employs 160 people.
According to the Senior Manager of Command & Dispatch, Elias possesses a rare combination of strategic thinking and hands-on problem-solving, making him an exceptional leader. His ability to envision and implement groundbreaking processes has been a driving force behind his team’s success. He is known for fostering a collaborative and motivated team environment where his leadership has become synonymous with success.
Elias has accomplished many amazing things during his tenure at TD Bank that produced great results for the organization, including:
Elias consistently secures the highest employee engagement survey results across the entire WFM department with a 98% employee engagement index score (median score 86%).
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – Feb. 28, 2024 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced the five finalists for the 2024 Workforce Management Professional
of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry. The finalists are Eric Bigelow of Qualfon, Brandon
Kelly of Options for All, Elias Saykali of TD Bank Group, My Tran of UC Davis Health, and Chris Trujillo of Memorial Hermann.
“These five workforce management professionals are truly representative of the ‘best of the best’ in our industry,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “They have all demonstrated great leadership and ability in the field, as well as shown measurable results for their companies. We are pleased to present them as finalists for this distinguished award.” The winner of the award will be announced at the SWPP Annual Conference, which is held in Nashville, Tennessee on March 4-6, 2024.
Eric Bigelow is Workforce & Systems Support Manager for Qualfon, a business process outsourcer with 10,000 agents in 25 locations operating 24x7. Monthly volume is eight million contacts including phone, chat, email, and back office. The workforce management team includes 200 people utilizing Verint WFM systems. Eric’s team includes four analysts supporting the 200 WFM team members.
Eric began his contact center career in frontline roles and moved to an insurance company in their WFM team as it expanded from one center to multiple sites and BPO relationships. He then joined Qualfon, where he led the WFM team and real-time analytics (RTA) team before becoming the internal product manager for Qualfon’s Verint solutions. Here are just a few of Eric’s accomplishments:
Eric’s team rolled out Request Management and the Verint Mobile Work View application, converting a manual email-based process for shift changes and exceptions to an automated one. This saved time for employees, supervisors, and managers by handling schedule changes, callouts, no shows, and absenteeism. This improved employee satisfaction with increased scheduling flexibility. The WFM team saw 3000 tickets per month reduced by 55%. The no call/no show rate was reduced to 5% from 7-8% and a 1-2% reduction in attrition has resulted in a 33% reduction in the new hire classes.
The team is now working to deploy flextime to give employees options to better manage work-life balance. Previously, employees who couldn’t get a shift change request approved for an appointment would often call out for a full day. Now they can work their full weekly hours and still attend the appointment. This increases productivity and employee engagement, reduces absenteeism and no shows, and lessens the impact on service levels.
Brandan Kelly is Workforce Manager for Options for All, a health and human services company serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The center operates Monday-Friday from 7am-5pm and employs 350 agents in seven centers with some agents working from home. The center uses Zira for workforce management with integration to SetWorks as the CRM, and Paycom as the HRIS.
After completing six years in the US Navy, Brandan joined Options for All as a frontline agent. As he transitioned into the role of Workforce Manager, he recognized the need to enhance the scheduling efficiency and align WFM planning with dynamic client contact requirements. Utilizing an RFP process, Brandan selected a vendor who partnered with them to iterate through multiple rounds of development and testing that resulted in an AIpowered scheduling system utilizing advanced algorithms. The system automated the staff-client matching process, ensuring optimal workforce deployment and automated workflows for routing tasks such as emails and SMS. It also provides a real-time attendance tracking system to monitor and improve staff presence.
Brandan has had many accomplishments, including:
Brandon was distinguished as a keynote speaker at two pivotal industry symposiums, addressing a statewide assembly for the California Department of Developmental Services and a national audience at ANCOR, where he shaped conversation for ANCOR’s influence in the national’s capital on behalf of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In each forum, Brandan delivered a comprehensive talk on his pioneering development and deployment of a state-of-the-art scheduling system, a groundbreaking innovation in the realm of call center operations. His discourse detailed the journey from conceptualization to execution of this novel scheduling model, which has set a new benchmark for operational efficiency in the sector.
Elias Saykali is Senior Leader, WFM Command & Dispatch Centre for TD Bank Group. This financial services company employs 12,000 agents in 23 locations and remotely on a 24x7 basis. They handle five million monthly inbound and outbound voice, inbound chat, social, email and back office contacts. The technology used includes Cisco UCCE, Genesys Routing, NICE WFM and EEM, Genesys WFM, and Verint. The workforce management team employs 160 people.
According to the Senior Manager of Command & Dispatch, Elias possesses a rare combination of strategic thinking and hands-on problem-solving, making him an exceptional leader. His ability to envision and implement ground-breaking processes has been a driving force behind his team’s success. He is known for fostering a collaborative and motivated team environment where his leadership has become synonymous with success.
Elias has accomplished many amazing things during his tenure at TD Bank that produced great results for the organization, including:
Elias consistently secures the highest employee engagement survey results across the entire WFM department with a 98% employee engagement index score (median score 86%).
My Tran is Business System Analyst Supervisor II for UC Davis Health. The organization has one center but over 80% of the 300 agents work from home. Cisco Unified Contact Center and Calabrio One WFM are utilized. The WFM team has two additional members reporting to My. The agents handle 1.5 million inbound patient inquiries, make 15,000 outbound patient contacts, and 150,000 patient referrals per year.
My began his career as a phone agent and then supervisor. When WFM was introduced in his center at a previous job, he volunteered to spend time with the WFM team to better understand what WFM is and why it matters. He then joined another organization where he worked alongside the individual who had built eHealth’s WFM function from the ground up. When the opportunity to build the first-ever WFM function at UC Davis Medical Center presented itself, he jumped at the chance.
The UC Davis Medical Center relied on its front-desk receptionists to handle patient checkins and scheduling, which was not efficient and did not provide the superior customer experience they wanted. Launching a modern, WFM-fueled contact center took the service level from 35% in 60 seconds to 60% in 60 seconds with an abandonment rate of 1.74%, but My believed they could reach 80% in 30 seconds. However, that required a significant change in the processes and culture which required education and knowledge sharing with a team of tenured personnel.
The results of My’s initiatives included:
My’s focus on continuing improvements and education has included creating training materials and classes, dashboards to enable agents to self-monitor, collaboration with the quality team, a SharePoint knowledge management system, dashboards for telephony, WFM and operations, and he is leading the definition, planning, and development of a contact center technology roadmap to cover the next five years.
Chris Trujillo is System Director of Workforce Manager for Memorial Hermann. This healthcare organization operates 10 centers 24x7 using Cisco and Calabrio WFM technology. The 500 agents handle 650,000 monthly contacts and the operation has a WFM team of six people.
Chris has over 20 years of WFM, capacity planning, and analytics experience in centers of all sizes. He has worked with a variety of systems and built/rebuilt WFM departments in multiple contact centers. He joined Memorial Herman two years ago, and the organization had no WFM processes or systems at the time. At the time he joined Memorial Hermann, the wait times in some departments were as high as 10+ minutes.
The Calabrio WFM system was implemented along with Core Reporting. Chris’s accomplishments include:
According to Dale Sturgill, VP of Strategy, “Chris’s work has led to efficiency gains not seen in Memorial Hermann contact centers in all its history. As the company moves toward a more digital set up, Chris’s efforts have prepared for the transition while also taking care of patients.”
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 will be announced at the 2024 SWPP Annual Conference.
Solution’s 80% accuracy rate expected to reach 90% in 2024
Atlanta – September 12, 2023 – Intradiem, the leading provider of contact center automation solutions, is introducing the first AI-powered technology solution to quantify agent “burnout” and predict the risk of attrition at the agent level. Currently, the solution predicts churn accurately 80% of the time, but with refinements and model training in progress, the rate is expected to increase to 90% or more by 2024.
Rigid schedules, repetitive work, and regular hostility from frustrated callers make a call center agent’s job notoriously stressful. That fuels chronic attrition, which in turn raises costs and undercuts consistent customer brand experiences. Agent attrition is estimated at 40-70% annually, with some organizations turning over their entire agent populations each year. Replacing a single agent can cost $20,000 to $35,000.
“Agent attrition is always a pressing issue for contact center leaders. It’s costly to find, hire, and train agents, and a lack of experienced employees can negatively impact the customer experience,” said Robin Gareiss, CEO and Principal Analyst at Metrigy, a research firm specializing in customer and employee engagement. “Intradiem’s solution helps companies retain what are among their most valuable employees–those who know the customer. By using Intradiem to identify agents who are at risk of quitting and immediately taking actions to remediate, companies will save money and enjoy happier agents.”
Using its vast real-time contact center data, Intradiem’s AI model measures the data against expectations or past performance in real time and designates each agent’s burnout risk on its dashboard. Once an agent is identified as an attrition risk, the tool alerts a supervisor and provides recommendations to reduce the risk of resignation. Recommendations range from initiating conversations to deploying additional training, coaching, surprise wellness breaks, or other actions, many of which can be automatically scheduled or delivered through Intradiem.
“With Intradiem’s extensive amount of real-time data and our talented team of developers and industry experts, we can bring powerful AI solutions to contact centers’ most critical and enduring challenges,” said Intradiem CEO Matt McConnell. “This is a genuine breakthrough with benefits that will ripple through the entire customer service delivery chain, from agents to operations to customers.”
To learn more about this first-of-its-kind AI-powered solution, register for Intradiem’s September 14 webinar hosted by the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP): Busting Burnout – How you can use AI to predict and dramatically reduce Contact Center Attrition
Intradiem believes technology should be used to empower workers, not replace them. Our patented, AI-powered contact center automation technology integrates with WFM, ACD, and other systems and processes their data output in real time, revealing unused capacity that can be redirected to its most productive use. Through real-time monitoring of schedules, call volume and workflow, Intradiem delivers unprecedented call-handling support and identifies opportunities to deliver breaks, training, and other time-sensitive tasks within the flow of actual conditions. We help contact centers boost operating efficiency, enhance agent engagement, and improve end-customer experiences while delivering concrete savings and same-year investment return.
About Metrigy
Metrigy is an innovative research and advisory firm focusing on the rapidly changing areas of workplace collaboration, digital workplace, digital transformation, consumer experience, and employee experience – along with several related technologies. Metrigy delivers strategic guidance and informative content, backed by primary research metrics and analysis, for technology providers and enterprise organizations.
Global leaders in contact center solutions team up to deliver operational excellence, cost savings, and customer satisfaction.
Natterbox, a global innovator in contact center solutions, has announced a partnership with Playvox, a leading provider of Workforce Engagement (WEM) solutions that include AI-infused workforce management (WFM) software and Quality Management (QM) software. This strategic collaboration empowers contact centers around the world to navigate the complexities of planning, forecasting, and scheduling their workforce with ease, while maintaining operational excellence, reducing costs, and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
With customers increasingly demanding hyper-personalized experiences across multiple channels, contact centers face growing challenges in optimizing their workforce to meet fluctuating demand. By integrating Playvox’s cutting-edge WFM capabilities with Salesforce Service Cloud Voice, Natterbox customers can enjoy unparalleled efficiency and effectiveness in their sales and contact center operations.
According to recent studies, contact centers that utilize advanced WFM technology can experience up to a 25% increase in agent productivity and a significant reduction in costs. Through this partnership, Natterbox and Playvox empower contact centers to achieve these efficiencies and more. With Playvox’s workforce engagement tools seamlessly integrated into Natterbox’s contact center platform, managers will have the power to optimize agent scheduling, improve forecast accuracy, and enhance overall operational efficiency.
Jamie Cooper, Chief Product Officer at Natterbox, expressed his thoughts, stating, “This collaboration with Playvox is a great milestone for Natterbox and our customers. By combining our contact center expertise with Playvox’s workforce management capabilities, our customers can have an all-in-one solution that not only streamlines workforce planning but also enables them to deliver exceptional experiences to their customers.”
Louis Bucciarelli, Playvox’s CEO, also commented, “At Playvox, our mission is to empower contact centers to reduce costs and improve customer outcomes in the omnichannel age through our AI-infused solutions. Our partnership with Natterbox aligns perfectly with our vision, allowing us to deliver an industry-leading, fully integrated solution that addresses the growing demands of modern contact center operations. Together, we will bring enhanced efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction to the industry.”
Natterbox and Playvox will work closely together to ensure seamless integration of their respective technologies, enabling contact centers to enjoy the benefits of this collaboration. As a result of this partnership, contact centers will have the tools needed to overcome workforce management challenges, unleash the true potential of their agents, and deliver remarkable experiences to their customers.
For more information about Natterbox and Playvox, please visit www.playvox.com/partners/natterbox/
The world’s leading employee Performance eXperience Platform recently partnered with the respected professional organization to help support call center quality assurance and training teams.
New York, London, Tel Aviv, June 16, 2023 – Centrical, a global SaaS company, and the Performance eXperience Platform for frontline employees is pleased to announce its new partnership with QATC, an organization devoted to facilitating the education, sharing of ideas, and distribution of knowledge among quality assurance and training professionals in the call center.
Of this new partnership, Centrical CMO April Crichlow said, “Partnering with a revered organization like QATC makes perfect sense. Over the past several years, there has been a massive shift in how call centers do business, and this is especially true for quality assurance teams. QM processes are too often transactional, static, and disconnected from the overall employee experience, which prevents organizations from truly optimizing the data they have at their disposal. By connecting quality assurance teams, agents, and supervisors in a dynamic feedback loop, organizations can better understand gaps and more efficiently execute action plans, improving both the employee and customer experience. QATC shares our values and our commitment to elevating the quality assurance experience to help teams drive the most powerful results.”
When asked about the new partnership, Vicki Herrell, QATC Executive Director, stated, “QATC is thrilled to have Centrical join us as we continue on our mission to provide networking and education opportunities for quality assurance and training professionals around the world.”
For over a decade, Centrical has partnered with the world’s leading call centers across industries and organization types to help build strong frontline teams and optimize quality assurance. The Centrical Performance eXperience Platform provides a personalized, holistic approach to quality assurance. The platform leverages AI and advanced gamification to boost motivation, engagement, and performance, leading to a 64% decrease in error rates, an 84% increase in compliance scores, and a 10% improvement in CSAT scores. To learn more about Centrical watch a quick preview of the platform and request your personalized overview.
About Centrical
Centrical is an AI-powered employee Performance eXperience platform that drives best-in-class customer experiences for the world’s leading brands through frontline agent success and growth. The platform provides a unified employee experience with real-time performance management, adaptive microlearning, AI-powered coaching, quality management, and VoE, through a gamified solution to help organizations improve productivity and sales, reduce costs, lower attrition, and increase customer satisfaction.
Centrical was founded in 2013 and serves customers in 150 countries in 40 different languages. Centrical has offices in New York, Tel-Aviv, and London and customers include leading multinational enterprises such as Microsoft, Teleperformance, Synchrony Financial, and more.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – May 15, 2023 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced Rick Seeley as the recipient of the 2023 SWPP Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes an individual who has shown outstanding leadership in the workforce management industry.
Rick currently serves as WFM Supervisor at McKesson. He has worked in contact centers for over 33 years. His interest in workforce management started when he was an agent on the phones at the onset of the Sprint Texas Relay Service in Austin, TX in 1996. At that time, Rick inquired how the Supervisors were creating schedules. Once that was explained, Rick took the data and decided to play with it to create better coverage and better staffing. This morphed into creating the Operations Administrator position for Sprint Relay Services which was the initial
RTA, Scheduler, and Forecaster for all the Sprint Relay Services nationwide. And the rest is history. Rick moved to Dallas with Sprint to work as a Real-Time Analyst and Mission Control Associate with Sprint Long Distance. After Sprint, came Mobilcomm Paging, Alliance Data Systems, Brinks Home Security, Convergys Inc, Conduent, and Everise. He also worked on the vendor side with NICE as well.
Rick honed his skills at each stop and continued to learn, innovate, and share that knowledge with user groups sponsored by NICE and Aspect (now Alvaria). Rick has been published in call center periodicals and spoken at various conferences throughout the years. Rick has served on the SWPP Advisory Board since its inception in 2002.
On a personal note, Rick has been married to his wife Becky for 40 years and has three children and one stepson along with six grandchildren. Rick is an Army Veteran with Vietnam experience. He also spent 25 years as an official in Texas High School sports and had a nine-year career in the country music entertainment world.
Rick was nominated for this pres<gious award by four different industry supporters. Here are some of the accolades for Rick submitted with his nominations:
“What sets Rick apart is his unwavering commitment to sharing his wealth of knowledge and experience with others. Throughout his career, he has mentored and inspired countless WFM professionals, imparting his passion and expertise and uplifting the entire profession along the way. As a board member of the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals for 20+ years, Rick has played an essential role in expanding the knowledge of the membership, always going above and beyond to help his colleagues. His contributions to the society are immeasurable, and his dedication and service have helped to elevate the entire profession.” -- Marshall Lee, ttec
“When I started thinking about this year’s Lifetime “Wizard” award, as I call it, I thought back to the early days of SWPP, when we were forming the vision and purpose of the association. There was one gentleman that was
always educating, helping new WFM’ers pick up new techniques and new perspectives. He was always willing to give his time to those that needed assistance with situations and challenges. Experience is said to be the best teacher, and he had plenty of it. He was not afraid to admit he had learned how “not” to do things, from trying and failing. Jovial, humble, and willing are some of the characteristics that come to my mind. There’s a song by Dan Fogelberg called “Leader of the Band” and in it a line that says, “A quiet man of music,” which does not describe our Award winner this year, as he is a drummer by choice. Rick Seeley is my hero on both the music front and the WFM front.” -- Todd Gladden, Planmen
“Over 15 years ago, I was a relatively new addition to the WFM community. With only a few years’ experience, I attended the SWPP Annual Conference hoping to gain the insights and expertise needed to address the call center issues posed to me and my team. While I found many of the sessions I attended to be valuable, there was one in particular that stood out and had a major influence in my career. I don’t recall the name of the session, but I do recall Rick Seeley being there and providing me the guidance I needed. Rick’s extensive knowledge of the contact center and workforce management was evident in his presentation, but it was his wilingness to answer my questions and provide insights and solutions that helped me so much. I was able to bring back so many ideas and so much knowledge that I quickly rose in the ranks of WFM analyst and established processes and programs that were revolutionary to my company at the time. I never had a chance to formally thank Rick for that but it makes me
think that if he influenced my career so positively, imagine how many careers he has helped inspire and shape in the industry.” – Jeff Bretana, Navy Federal Credit Union
“Rick Seeley has been devoted to workforce management as long as I have known him, which is well over 25 years. And, if you want to know how I became involved in workforce, look no further than Rick. He was a major
contributor in turning a fledgling, struggling call center back in the 1990s into a high-performing, cost-saving contact center by helping to establish a workforce team and processes from the ground up. Rick served as my mentor in those early days, and he is a key reason I stand here today and have been involved in this field of work for over 25 years and this organization for almost 20 years. The Oxford Languages dictionary defines achievement as ‘a thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage, or skill.’ I’ve had the privilege to have been mentored by Rick, to be his boss, his peer, but most of all, his friend, and I feel he is the epitome of a workforce management career that
has been done successfully, by effort, courage and skill and I submit to you this nomination for the Lifetime Achievement Award.” -- Sandra McFatridge, Nissan
For this award, candidates are evaluated in terms of major contributions to the field of workforce management throughout their careers such as:
The award is for lifetime achievement rather than for a single contribution, and nominees should have a minimum of 25 years of distinguished service to workforce management.
About SWPP
The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) is an organization devoted to facilitating education and networking opportunities among workforce planners across all industries. Membership in SWPP is available to all workforce planning professionals and other interested parties from consulting and vendor organizations. Both individual memberships and corporate membership options are available, with full benefits and costs outlined on the organization’s website at www. swpp.org.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 23, 2023 — Playvox, the leading provider of Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solutions for digital-first contact centers, today announced continued growth driven by new customers and partners, new and enhanced products, an expanded leadership team, and continued industry recognition.
Continuing its momentum from the prior year, Playvox added several marquee clients and partners to its portfolio. Brands in a range of industries selected Playvox to support and optimize customer and agent experience, engagement, and workforce solutions. A sampling of new customers includes Squaretalk, Harry’s Inc., Telarus, Jenne Cloud Services Brokerage, and InflowCX.
More recent wins include fashion brands Skims and Decker’s, innovative pet food brand Farmer’s Dog, iconic coffee best seller Black Rifle Coffee, and leading data platform MongoDB. These customers selected Playvox’s WEM solution to increase productivity, efficiency, streamline costs and drive growth.
Playvox introduced several new product innovations to support its growing customer portfolio, including Customer AI, which analyzes millions of customer interactions and detects issues sooner to prioritize the right fixes faster; AutoQA, which transforms Quality Assurance (QA) with the power of AI; and an enhanced Workforce Management (WFM) Capacity Planner solution, dedicated to helping managing employees more effectively.
Playvox also recently announced new Workforce Engagement Solutions for Salesforce Contact Center. Salesforce Service Cloud customers can now better manage forecasting more efficiently, scheduling, adherence, capacity planning and long-term scheduling within the Salesforce Contact Center along with the ability to easily make changes in real-time, based on Playvox’s AI insights. The Salesforce partnership sets the stage for a new phase of growth for Playvox as the company creates unique and valuable solutions for customers in this ecosystem.
Playvox expanded its executive leadership , adding Michelle Randall as Chief Marketing Officer and Andrew Kaufman as Chief Financial Officer. To reflect the growth and trajectory of the organization, Playvox also announced several senior level promotions, including Chuck Krogman to SVP, Global Sales, Ismaily Piedra to SVP, People & Culture, Cheyne Wagner to Chief Technology Officer, Alex Bullen to Chief Product Officer, and Emily Gray to Chief Customer Officer.
Playvox’s customer advocacy remains strong. Its Quality Assurance solution was recognized as a G2 Grid Report leader for the ninth consecutive quarter. The Playvox solution received 26 badges and ranked number one in eight Contact Center Quality Assurance Reports. Trust Radius also recognized Playvox with Top Rated Awards in the Call Center Workforce Optimization and Workforce Management categories. It was the second consecutive year Playvox was named the category leader for Workforce Optimization.
TMC also named Playvox’s Capacity Planner as a 2023 CUSTOMER Product of the Year Award winner. TMC recognized the product for advancing the call center, CRM, and teleservices industries and enabling clients to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers.
“Playvox remains laser-focused on serving our diverse portfolio of customers with solutions that enhance agent and customer experience,” said Louis Bucciarelli, Chief Executive Officer of Playvox. “Playvox’s values, such as ‘be a good human,’ are at the core of our high-performance culture that celebrates diversity, authenticity, and autonomy. Our entire organization has made great strides in product excellence and innovation, partnerships, and new and expanded customer relationships. The commitment, not just to Playvox, but to the industry, makes me proud.”
Playvox’s powerfully simple Workforce Engagement Management solutions transform customer care. We understand that exceptional employee engagement produces extraordinary customer experiences, and we love creating solutions that help our customers unlock the full potential in every employee and every interaction. Playvox powers the world’s fastest-growing brands and proudly serves expanding digital experience pioneers such as Noom, NuBank, Stitch Fix, and Twitter. Our agent-empowering suite of scheduling, performance, learning, quality feedback and gamification lives seamlessly in the modern support operations ecosystem with platforms like Salesforce, Amazon Connect, Slack, Kustomer and Zendesk. Learn more:
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – May 15, 2023 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) is proud to announce Brandon Emms of GreenShield as the winner of the 2023 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry.
“We are so thrilled to announce Brandon as the winner of this prestigious award,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “His knowledge, leadership, and vision have helped him achieve great results for his company. We believe he is truly representative of the great workforce management professionals around the world.”
The other finalists include Mary Kathryn Dorr of Trimble Transportation, Trent Ryan of Netflix, Caci Cooper of Optum, and Tim Bodway of Thrivent. The winner was announced at the 2023 SWPP Annual Conference.
Brandon Emms is Manager of Workforce Management for GreenShield. The insurance company has one location with 200 agents handling calls and emails. They utilize systems from Avaya, Verint, and Nuance. Brandon has 13 years of workforce management experience spanning two organizations: The Minacs Group and GreenShield. While at Minacs, Brandon's accountability grew from a Real-Time Coordinator to Workforce Team Manager, where he led a global, multi-site team. At GreenShield, Brandon's career has grown from an Operations Analyst to the Manager of Workforce Management, where his team drives service excellence in both front- and back-office functions. He is currently in a one-year placement as Manager of the Contact Centre.
GreenShield is a not-for-profit social enterprise with a mission of providing better health for all. Brandon is very effective in connecting his team’s contributions to the company’s mission. As a result, the engagement scores for Brandon's team is typically at or near the top of the entire company. GreenShield's contact centre is a unionized environment and through Brandon's passion for both people and results, Brandon has built very strong relationships with the workforce and Union Committee. Brandon’s internal clients praise him and his team for the quality and timeliness of their deliverables, which has driven very strong working relationships and business results. Brandon excels in challenging the status quo and making continuous improvement part of regular work. Brandon has a very strong commercial mindset and applies it every day, as budget and margin are factored into all decisions he makes.
In early 2022, productivity was a significant challenge as the organization was adapting to the new world of the hybrid workforce. Service and budget suffered during this timeframe, without any relief in sight. In response, Brandon saw an opportunity to drive improvements in three ways: increased productivity, reduced contact volume, and improved adherence to the long-term plan.
While productivity measures were well understood at the macro level, distilling them down to the team and individual were always more challenging. Brandon and his team played an instrumental role in the development, integration, and adoption of individual statistics. This contributed to a 25% improvement in AHT between Q1 and Q4 of 2022. Brandon also led a critical initiative to reduce call volume by introducing a first-call resolution program. In addition to reducing call volume in one of GreenShield's top categories, it also increased employee engagement and supported efforts to measure customer effort.
Brandon also introduced a new tool that automatically measured adherence and results against the long-term plan. This tool has been extremely valuable in driving alignment between operational leadership, workforce management, and senior leadership and contributed to one of the strongest service years in recent history at GreenShield. The total impact of these initiatives equates to roughly $2M in bottom-line impact, which GreenShield uses to fund its social impact initiatives around improving mental and oral health across Canada.
Brandon and his team have presented at the SWPP Annual Conference on a range of topics in each of the last four events. The presentations have all received 5-star ratings, highlighting the substantial impact Brandon has had on the SWPP community.
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 2023 SWPP Annual Conference.
About SWPP
The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) is an organization devoted to facilitating education and networking opportunities among workforce planners across all industries. Membership in SWPP is available to all workforce planning professionals and other interested parties from consulting and vendor organizations. Both individual memberships and corporate membership options are available, with full benefits and costs outlined on the organization’s website at www.swpp.org.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – April 14, 2023 – The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) has announced the five finalists for the 2023 Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award, which recognizes a workforce management professional who has shown outstanding leadership in the industry. The finalists are Brandon Emms of GreenShield, Mary Kathryn Dorr of Trimble Transportation, Trent Ryan of Netflix, Caci Cooper of Optum, and Tim Bodway of Thrivent.
“I am very proud to present these five workforce management professionals as finalists for this distinguished award,” said Vicki Herrell, SWPP Executive Director. “Each year, there are so many outstanding nominations that it continues to be a difficult task for the SWPP Board of Advisors to select the top five. Each one of these individuals has demonstrated great skills, leadership, and ability in our industry, as well as delivered measurable results for their companies.” The winner of the award will be announced at the SWPP Annual Conference, which will be held in Nashville, Tennessee on May 15-17, 2023.
Brandon Emms is Manager of Workforce Management for GreenShield. The insurance company has one location with 200 agents handling calls and emails. They utilize systems from Avaya, Verint, and Nuance. Brandon has 13 years of workforce management experience spanning two organizations: The Minacs Group and GreenShield. While at Minacs, Brandon's accountability grew from a Real-Time Coordinator to Workforce Team Manager, where he led a global, multi-site team. At GreenShield, Brandon's career has grown from an Operations Analyst to the Manager of Workforce Management, where his team drives service excellence in both front- and back-office functions. He is currently in a one-year placement as Manager of the Contact Centre.
GreenShield is a not-for-profit social enterprise with a mission of providing better health for all. Brandon is very effective in connecting his team’s contributions to the company’s mission. As a result, the engagement scores for Brandon's team is typically at or near the top of the entire company. GreenShield's contact centre is a unionized environment and through Brandon's passion for both people and results, Brandon has built very strong relationships with the workforce and Union Committee. Brandon’s internal clients praise him and his team for the quality and timeliness of their deliverables, which has driven very strong working relationships and business results. Brandon excels in challenging the status quo and making continuous improvement part of regular work. Brandon has a very strong commercial mindset and applies it every day, as budget and margin are factored into all decisions he makes.
In early 2022, productivity was a significant challenge as the organization was adapting to the new world of the hybrid workforce. Service and budget suffered during this timeframe, without any relief in sight. In response, Brandon saw an opportunity to drive improvements in three ways: increased productivity, reduced contact volume, and improved adherence to the long-term plan.
While productivity measures were well understood at the macro level, distilling them down to the team and individual were always more challenging. Brandon and his team played an instrumental role in the development, integration, and adoption of individual statistics. This contributed to a 25% improvement in AHT between Q1 and Q4 of 2022. Brandon also led a critical initiative to reduce call volume by introducing a first-call resolution program. In addition to reducing call volume in one of GreenShield's top categories, it also increased employee engagement and supported efforts to measure customer effort.
Brandon also introduced a new tool that automatically measured adherence and results against the long-term plan. This tool has been extremely valuable in driving alignment between operational leadership, workforce management, and senior leadership and contributed to one of the strongest service years in recent history at GreenShield.
The total impact of these initiatives equates to roughly $2M in bottom-line impact, which GreenShield uses to fund its social impact initiatives around improving mental and oral health across Canada.
Brandon and his team have presented at the SWPP Annual Conference on a range of topics in each of the last four events. The presentations have all received 5-star ratings,
highlighting the substantial impact Brandon has had on the SWPP community.
Mary Kathryn Dorr is Workforce Manager for Trimble Transportation which provides call, chat, and email handling 24X7 with 800 remote agents in locations around the world. In 2018, she joined the SWPP Community and has been soaking up the knowledge ever since. However, her Workforce Management career took off when she joined Trimble Transportation in 2020. With the help of her WFM Team, MK was able to implement a new ACD across 16 lines of business to push the ONE TRIMBLE mindset, as well as establish and manage WFM into seven lines of business.
At Trimble, she initiated several programs including:
Other successful projects have included using a combination of her own style of forecasting spreadsheet along with her forecasting expertise to help the contact center meet or exceed all ASA targets for the past 11 months for a savings of $1,943,425. Mary Kathryn has also worked with the scheduler to analyze ideal shifts with each new hire class, and reduced the expected headcount need from 160 in the long term to 130 for a savings of approximately $1,248,000 per year. Additionally, Mary Kathryn heard about the flex programs others were doing at SWPP 2020, and used this information to successfully implement two flex WFM roles at Trimble that saved a 6-month training lead time and allowed her to develop two employees internally, saving an estimated minimum of $100,000.
According to her team, “Mary Kathryn is the passionate, talented, and knowledgeable WFM professional that any company needs, and that the Workforce Management community in general is lucky to have.”
Trent Ryan is Manager of Workforce Management Systems for Netflix. The operation handles phone and chat in 25 locations around the world with many remote agents. Some operations are 24X7 while others adjust to local requirements as many are outsource partner facilities. The WFM team uses Calabrio for short-term WFM planning (scheduling, forecasting, agent shift bids, schedule trades, etc.), Anaplan for long-range capacity planning (staffing, hiring, budgeting), and Koda for a content management tool that documents their call center processes and best practices in a wiki-like format all employees and partners can easily access.
Trent began his career in call centers in the Geek Squad at Best Buy with only two staff handling whatever was needed. He then joined Netflix and grew the team along with
developing an RFP that selected a new WFM tool. Today, Trent manages a team of system analysts who lead the configuration, support, and upkeep of the new WFM system across Netflix’s entire internal and external user ecosystem.
“Most of our agent headcount is outsourced, so we’re very conscientious about making Netflix an account that external agents WANT to work on,” he explains. “That way, we can keep attrition low and minimize the amount of new-hire training we have to do. So I’m always looking for new ideas on what other WFM professionals do from an agent tooling perspective — how they give agents more scheduling flexibility, for example. Since we’re global, that means looking beyond just self-scheduling breaks and lunches, to how we can support agents in EMEA who want to have even more schedule preferences or how we can support agents in Latin America where the idea of schedule preferences is absolutely insane. So what are the best tools and practices we can use to deliver these kinds of innovative benefits in the most operationally efficient ways possible.
”It’s a big undertaking to migrate more than 6,000 internal and partner users from one WFM system to another — especially when you’re a company the size of Netflix. The timing couldn’t have been worse, however. It was early 2020, and the pandemic had unexpectedly hit the world. Netflix call center agents were spread across many different continents and time zones, spoke many different languages, and had to begin working from home ASAP due to COVID-19.
Trent worked with in-region resources to develop a phased schedule that broke all deployment and training elements into smaller, more digestible pieces that allowed for
parallel workflows. Their 11-week program consisted of three two-week workshops for internal Netflix WFM teams plus five one-week workshops for partners. To maximize the training’s effectiveness, contact center leaders worked with regional managers, teams, and partners to understand and properly accommodate the local nuances and labor laws unique to each region. All the pre-planning worked. Under Trent’s watchful eye and project management, the WFM team successfully deployed Calabrio WFM in record time across more than 25 contact center locations spanning 15 countries, in more than 20 languages – an implementation that featured many custom automatic call distribution (ACD) and business intelligence (BI) integrations by the time the new system went live. And, at the height of the pandemic, more than 2,000 agents quickly began using Calabrio WFM after just a week of training — an active user total that’s ballooned to more than 5,000 today.
Additionally, Trent’s work helped Netflix contact center leaders maintain critical customer service operations in regions under strict COVID-19 lockdowns by quickly launching new, home-based contact centers there. Explains Trent, “In the Philippines, for example, we were able to spin up five brand-new contact centers staffed by 1,500 newly trained agents in only two and a half weeks.”
Today, Trent’s focus has shifted from initial implementation to ongoing continuous improvement. “I think one very unique thing about Netflix is we constantly iterate,” Trent says. “That goes for my team, too. So even though we first launched our new WFM system two years ago, half the workflows we use today are ones we added in the last 12 months. And we continue to generate bigger and better business benefits because of them.”
Caci Cooper is Associate Director WFM Strategy and Technology for Optum Healthcare. The company employs 320 WFM professionals and over 36,000 front and back office agents around the world using IEX, DAA, EEM, and Anaplan. The 24X7 operations handles inbound, outbound, chat, and email in front and back office support.
In January of 2022, Caci was tasked with leading the standardization of Optum's workforce planning processes and was instrumental in the transition of 800 individual workforce plans covering over 36,000 front and back-office agents to Anaplan while continuing to maintain/improve utilization of existing workforce management technologies such as IEX, DAA, and EEM. Caci helped spearhead the identification, testing and selection of Anaplan as the vendor. She collaborated with internal IT resources, planning experts, and Anaplan consultants to ensure that the technical and process requirements were understood, documented and planned for an orderly implementation.
Now, only one year later, Optum has standardized short-term, long-term and capacity forecasting into a single framework driven off a single planning hierarchy, standardized calculations, and terminology which is flexible to adapt to changing business requirements and scalable for growth. Throughout the project, Caci demonstrated extensive project management and facilitation skills from coordination of the technical aspects, collaborating with end users to drive application design to meet business requirements, and establish governance/change management all while keeping stakeholders, suppliers, and resources calibrated on expectations, outcomes and direction.
Caci’s technology partners and colleagues commend her unparalleled dedication, work ethic, and results. Her efforts will save Optum thousands of planning hours annually. The planning and build phases were all completed on-time and on-budget which is remarkable for a project of this size and scope. Her incredible grasp of the business objectives, commitment to the quality of the tools they use, and her professional communication kept all parties informed and moving in the same direction. She continuously casts a shadow of being helpful and resourceful as evident by her dedication to her team and the organization. Caci's ability to strike a balance between addressing concerns thoughtfully and managing change to meet implementation deadlines is admirable.
According to the Workforce Planning and Management Leadership Team that nominated her, “By delivering this multi-million-dollar investment on time, Optum avoided undue IT and professional services costs. Upon full adoption of the tool, we expect to reduce our workforce planning efforts by as much as 8% (roughly $400k/year) and help drive operational efficiencies in the neighborhood of $21 million per year.”
Tim Bodway is Workforce Optimization Traffic Analyst for Thrivent, a financial service company with 280 agents working remotely around the US that handle inbound, outbound, chat, and email. The seven-person WFM team uses Avaya, Alvaria, and Salesforce technologies.
Tim has over 10 years of experience in the Workforce Management space, but his knowledge, expertise and intuition surpass those years. He transitioned from a working role as an agent within the call center into a real-time analyst role and five years ago took over primary responsibility of the forecasting and capacity modeling. According to his manager who nominated him, “Tim is the engine behind our call center, providing comprehensive forecasting directing skilling, hiring, cross training and capacity management for eightdifferent product centers within our call center space. He is active in the WFM community, attending multiple conferences and working with partners to identify new product offerings, philosophy changes with the evolving remote call center environment, and actively leveraging opportunities with SWPP to grow and share his knowledge.”
What sets Tim apart in our industry is his balance of data-driven decisions and the "numbers" expertise with interpersonal skills and relationship building, which can be
challenging for many. Recently, he completely overhauled capacity plan meetings by creating a forward-facing viewer that minimizes the full staffing model to only highlight the key KPIs driving staffing requirements with a 24-month outlook on capacity, so managers understand what is ahead and can focus on the data they find most meaningful.
With such strong interpersonal skills, Tim also cultivates a collaborative approach to workforce management – both internally on the WFM team but also with business partners and leaders. Another example of his "hearing" and understanding the delicate balance between what the business wants and needs, was a recent change in reader board technology. The WFM team was brought in late to the game, and immediately found some adjustments that needed to be made to best address the center's needs. Tim jumped into action to own how the data was displayed and worked with the IT department to ensure appropriate settings were in place to ensure data was meaningful and timely. His work to collaborate with the team and partners helped to deliver a product that was a reliable and valuable monitoring tool.
Most notably, Tim was challenged this past year to create a reliable, accurate chat forecasting model. With chat contacts still new to the organization, but a normal and
growing part of the industry, accurate planning presents its own challenges with multiple chat channels, the ability to handle multiple chats at once, and different hours of operation from an inbound call center. Tim built a chat forecasting model from the ground up, but then also integrated it into the current staffing model to have a holistic view of staffing needs for each of their centers. With this new view, Tim was able to accurately staff the chat queues proactively, ensuring chats were answered within service level, without impacting phone queues. Since utilizing this new model, chat SLs have improved 15% and dramatically reduced field complaints regarding responsiveness, improving positive customer sentiment. As chat demand continues, Tim's model will help ensure they are staffing it appropriately to support the overall organization goal to increase their digital presence.
Tim's forecast accuracy is within 3% consistently, often within 1% in some centers. The reliability of his methodology in combining technology-driven forecasts with historical review and his own experience and intuition has built trust in the WFM team within the business. As a direct result of more accurate staffing and forecasting, occupancy in the call center dropped to a more accepted rate, which helped the agents find more satisfaction in their role. This contributed to efforts across the leadership team that resulted in an overall 37% reduction in attrition within their centers.
Tim has been honored internally with several Pathfinder awards within the company for his efforts and focus. Recently his team was recognized with Transformer of the Quarter award internally as a direct result of Tim's new staffing approach that positioned the centers to meet 100% of the attainable SLs across the board during the busy tax season, which was not successfully obtained in previous years (69% success rate over the past 5 years).
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 2023 SWPP Annual Conference.
About SWPP
The Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) is an organization devoted to facilitating education and networking opportunities among workforce planners across all industries. Membership in SWPP is available to all workforce planning professionals and other interested parties from consulting and vendor organizations. Both individual memberships and corporate membership options are available, with full benefits and costs outlined on the organization’s website at www.swpp.org.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 17, 2023 —Playvox, the leading provider of Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) solutions for digital-first contact centers, today announced that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named Playvox’s Capacity Planner as a 2023 CUSTOMER Product of the Year Award winner.
“When I speak with customers about 2023 priorities, many highlight the need for greater efficiencies and point to the value of Playvox’s Capacity Planner. Our WFM Capacity Planner is a transformative offering that changes the way organizations throughout all industries prepare and forecast for the medium to long-term,” said Louis Bucciarelli, Chief Executive Officer of Playvox. “Capacity Planner from Playvox enables contact centers and support hubs to leverage real-time historical data and trends for forecasts, allowing their planning process to move at the speed of their business. We are thrilled to be a recipient of this award and look forward to continuing to innovate on behalf of our customers.”
The 2023 CUSTOMER Product of the Year Award recognizes vendors that are advancing the call center, CRM and teleservices industries one solution at a time. The award highlights products which enable their clients to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers.
“On behalf of both TMC and CUSTOMER magazine, it is my pleasure to honor Playvox with a 2023 Product of the Year Award,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “Its Capacity Planner solution has proven deserving of this elite status and I look forward to continued innovation from Playvox in 2024 and beyond.”
Playvox’s powerfully simple Workforce Engagement Management solutions transform customer care. We understand that exceptional employee engagement produces extraordinary customer experiences, and we love creating solutions that help our customers unlock the full potential in every employee and every interaction. Playvox powers the world’s fastest-growing brands and proudly serves expanding digital experience pioneers such as Noom, NuBank, Stitch Fix, and Twitter. Our agent-empowering suite of scheduling, performance, learning, quality feedback and gamification lives seamlessly in the modern support operations ecosystem with platforms like Salesforce, Amazon Connect, Slack, Kustomer and Zendesk. Learn more:
TMC’s CUSTOMER magazine premiered in September 2012 and is the industry’s new, definitive source for news, product information, and strategies for communications that engage customers and potential customers. Each issue of CUSTOMER includes news and insights on the latest developments in agent training, analytics, ERP, IVR, social CRM solutions, mobile apps, workforce management and more. Please visit http://customer.tmcnet.com for more information.
Through education, industry news, live events and social influence, global buyers rely on TMC’s content-driven marketplaces to make purchase decisions and navigate markets. As a result, leading technology vendors turn to TMC for unparalleled branding, thought leadership and lead generation opportunities. Our in- person and online events deliver unmatched visibility and sales prospects for all participants. Through our custom lead generation programs, we provide clients with an ongoing stream of leads that turn into sales opportunities and build databases. Additionally, we bolster brand reputations with the millions of impressions from display advertising on our news sites and newsletters. Making TMC a 360-degree marketing solution, we offer comprehensive event and road show management services and custom content creation with expertly ghost-crafted blogs, press releases, articles and marketing collateral to help with SEO, branding, and overall marketing efforts. For more information about TMC and to learn how we can help you reach your marketing goals, please visit www.tmcnet.com and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, @tmcnet .
For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.
