September 12 -
Great leaders know their people. How well do you know yours?
Do this little exercise: Write your name at the top center of a page. Then write the names of each of your team members/employees and underneath each, write:
Now, if you know everything about that person, draw a solid line arrow from you to that person. If you know some of the things, but not everything, draw a dotted line arrow from you to that person. If you know little about that person, don’t draw any arrow.
You can graphically see who you’re connected with personally and professionally and those relationships where you may want to spend a little more time building.
Note: This tip is from Entelechy. For more than 30 years, Entelechy has been providing customized learning solutions for Fortune 500 companies, impacting hundreds of thousands of leaders. Entelechy’s proven leadership development programs drive productivity, morale, customer experience, employee engagement, and innovation. Sign up for Entelechy’s weekly Leadership Minute emails here: http://info.unlockit.com/newsletter.
January 14 -
We are all familiar with the concept of overtime. When we require more staff than we can provide on certain days and intervals, we have a staffing shortage. If this shortage is significant enough, we offer overtime to fill the need. But what happens when we have more staff than we need on certain days and intervals? Consider offering "undertime!" More…
Undertime is the opposite of overtime; when there is a staffing surplus, we can allow a certain number of agents to take full day or partial day leave without penalty. This will help reduce wasteful and costly idle time while allowing agents the flexibility to take leave on short notice. After all, agents have to take their leave sometime. Why not allow them to take leave when it doesn't negatively impact staffing levels? Your call center will reap the benefits as well as your agents, and your Workforce Management team will be seen as supportive instead of too rigid.
It is advisable to limit the amount of undertime you initially offer to ensure you don't unintentionally create staffing deficiencies. This can happen if a large number of agents call out sick or if your volume is higher than forecasted. Every call center and inbound queue has individual volatility, so determining the amount of undertime to offer can be an "art" more than a "science." Be conservative at first until you get a good feel for your specific situation.
Note: This week’s tip provided SWPP Member Jeff Bretana of Navy Federal Credit Union. He may be reached at Je*************@na*********.org.
January 7 -
There are many different types of call centers where the agents need to be knowledgeable about outside vendors’ products and services. This is true in outsourcing centers, as well as many sales and reservations centers. In our call center, we schedule hotel vendors and tourist boards to visit our agents and present information about their product for educational purposes.
Vendor visits are usually 20 minutes in length. Call Center Operations (CCO) will send agents to attend the vendor presentation during slow call times when we have agents available.
This process allows the agent to increase their knowledge, the vendor to see more sales to their property, and in turn, the company has a more productive and profitable staff.
Note: This week’s tip provided SWPP Board Member Debbie Davis-Greene of Trase Miller. She may be reached at dg*****@tr*********.com.
September 17 -
Do you have days where excessive absence or higher volumes prompt the need for immediate help? Do you have a phone tree to contact your agents and offer overtime (OT)? Or do your agents check in to see if there is overtime hours available? How do you recruit those working in the evenings to come in early? We have a great solution in using social media that can help in these situations.
Set up a site-specific Facebook page, and set it up so that people have to be approved to join so you will only have your employees included. You can post fun pictures and other basic information on the page, but more importantly, use this page to post notices when you need help and want to solicit overtime. Create an “Event” on the page called “Overtime” and specify in the event that “extra hours are available today from 2pm to 8pm. Call to verify.” Or if you have at-home access to your agent self-service application, your agents can connect and sign up from home.
The same information can be sent out via a Twitter account. Have a site-specific Twitter account that your agents can “Follow.” Post OT as you need it to the Twitter account and all your agents will get notification that you have available hours for OT.
Both of these avenues can also be used when you are overstaffed and are looking for agents that would like to go home early without pay.
Social media is a great way to reach your agents, and these are a couple of areas where the use of these tools can be very helpful to workforce management.
Note: This week’s tip provided SWPP Board Member Rick Seeley of Convergys. He may be reached at ri***************@co*******.com.
SWPP is on Facebook! Find us at https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Society-of-Workforce-Planning-Professionals-SWPP/74035656291?ref=ts.
And now we’re on Twitter! Follow us @SWPP_WFM!
Have a tip you’d like to share? Send it to: vi***********@sw**.org. If we publish your idea, we’ll send you an SWPP polo shirt.
February 28 -
Getting everyone onboard with Workforce Management can be incredibly difficult. Implementing Workforce Management software is the easy part, while getting everyone onboard with using it and using it consistently is much more difficult. One way to increase acceptance and to drive long term continuous improvement is to create a Workforce Management or Contact Center Committee to help drive changes in processes and create successful strategies.
Be sure your committee is cross functional consisting of contact center leadership, workforce management staff, and front line staff – even engaging staff in different types of contact centers if you are a multi-site organization.
Let’s face it, different levels of the contact center have a different perspective and different interests. Some are more data driven and some are more people driven. Having a cross functional committee will help to drive a shared vision and commitment to your workforce management strategy and help to drive change successfully at each level of your contact center.
In selecting your committee, be sure you have members who:
As stated above, buy-in is the hardest part of Workforce Management – having your cross-functional committee in place will help ensure that every level of your contact center is invested and empowered in the Workforce Management process.
Note: This week’s tip is provided by SWPP member Micah Schrom of OptumHealth. He can be reached at mi**********@op*********.com.
January 28 -
Whether it’s the holidays or the summer months that are the peak season in your call center, we can always “weather the storm” better if we plan ahead. Sail through your busy season by creating a Peak Season Planning Timeline.
In addition to the large scale action items, be sure to include those small, perhaps tedious, items that are easily forgotten. Start off the planning with a kickoff meeting and assign each deliverable to a specific person or group with a due date. This level of detail can help ensure that the work is properly distributed and increase accountability. Setting up meetings weekly (or monthly depending on how far out you are planning) is a great way uncover and resolve any issues and to stay on track.
During the busy time, routines (e.g. performance coaching, team meetings, training) are often abandoned due to the increased workload. Be proactive. Carefully review what must be done and what can be suspended. Identify how long modified operations will last and communicate that timeline to the front line. Communicating the plan in advance highlights preparedness and can help lesson the stress associated with increased volume.
Immediately document what went well and what needs to be improved. It is difficult to remember a year later what did not go as well as it could have. Having a document to which to refer can be invaluable in improving year over year.
Note: This week’s tip provided by SWPP Board Member Kristi White of FedEx. She may be reached at Kr**********@fe***.com.
This week’s tip is brought to you by The Quality Assurance & Training Connection (QATC), a new membership association designed specifically to facilitate the education, sharing of ideas, and distribution of knowledge among quality assurance and training professionals in the call center. For more information about QATC, please visit our website at www.qatc.org. To receive the QATC Tip of the Week each week, register at www.qatc.org/requesttip.html.
Have a tip you’d like to share? Send it to: vi***********@sw**.org. If we publish your idea, we’ll send you an SWPP polo shirt.
September 27 -
We use a program called “Bank Time” in our center, which allows CSR’s to plan their time off in advance for necessities such as professional appointments (doctor or dentist visits, parent-teacher conferences, etc.) and still have a positive attendance record.
The CSR must submit a “Bank Time” request form to the workforce management team at least two weeks in advance. If the request is approved, the CSR will be able to work additional time in advance of the appointment during the same week of the scheduled appointment. The workforce management team will schedule the CSR to work additional time immediately before and/or after the CSR’s normal shift, but not on their scheduled day off, and will produce a schedule indicating hours that are to be worked in order to “Bank” the time.
For example: Chris has a scheduled doctor’s appointment on Thursday April 10 at 3:00 p.m. Chris’s normal schedule is Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Chris will need to leave work at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 10. Therefore, Chris will need to “Bank” two hours of time earlier in the same week. The workforce management team will produce a schedule for Chris that will have him work two hours of additional time over the course of the three previous days. Therefore, when Chris leaves at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, there is no negative impact on his attendance.
Here are some other guidelines for the program:
This program is designed to meet the needs of our CSRs and that of the business, and provides a win-win situation for both the CSR and the workforce management team.
Note: This week’s tip provided by SWPP Member Chris Stern of T-Mobile. Chris may be reached at:
ch***************@t-******.com.
July 21 -
Our company has a daily program available to the Reservation Sales Reps and Customer Care Agents called Early Release (ER). If an agent wants to leave work early without being penalized, they can sign the ER sheet upon arriving to work with their phone login, shift start and end time, and the time they wish to leave.
Throughout the day, the operations team determines whether they can allow agents to leave early based on the daily operational needs (service level, calls, staffing, etc). If so, the agents are called according to their shift end time and sent home. From the time they leave until the end of their shift is unpaid time.
This program benefits both the company and the agent. It allows the agent time off from work for personal time they may need without being penalized and it benefits the company both operationally and financially.
Note: This week's tip provided by SWPP Board Member Debbie Davis of American Airlines Vacations. She may be reached at dd****@tm****.com.
This Tip of the Week is sponsored by ICCM - International Call Center Management Conference & Exposition, which is set for August 25-28, 2003 at Lakeside Center at McCormick Place, in Chicago, IL. ICCM is the largest global gathering of call center and customer contact professionals! The conference features four full days of in-depth content as well as the ever-popular call center site tours. The show floor offers buyers the opportunity to see and test the latest innovations, as well as hear feature presentations from the industry's leading suppliers. Find out why ICCM is an annual must attend! Register at www.iccm.com today!
