It’s Budget Season! Three tips to improve your plans.
October 8 – It’s that time of year again! Workforce managers all over the world are working on budgets for 2011. Here are three tips to improve your plan for the coming year. ONE: Flat-lining shrinkage is always a bad assumption. If shrinkage is flat across all weeks of the planning spreadsheet, it means […]
It’s like riding a bike…
October 1 – In our on-boarding process for seasonal employees and new hires, we have a workforce training. This training includes the usual “Power of One” info but also talks about workforce optimization – why we schedule the way we schedule to get the right person, in the right place, at the right time, […]
Smooth sailing through peak times.
September 24 – 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 […]
Use social media to solicit for overtime.
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 […]
Tips on planning for shrinkage.
September 10 – The workforce management team often includes unplanned shrinkage when creating schedules. But do you know what is in your shrinkage calculation? Is it just absences, tardies, and “leave earlies?” Many times these issues are only part of what makes up your shrinkage.  What about adherence? If you are calculating adherence as […]
Slant, Slope, Pyramid, or Hiccup?
September 3 – It’s shift bid time – how creative can we get? How many phone agents will be willing to try something different? Well, with a composite staff of Baby Boomers, Gen-X, Gen-Y, Gen-W, single parents, students, and everyone else that may not want to be identified with any particular group, it becomes […]
Be creative with your shift types.
August 27 – After almost 20 years in the call center business, I was accustomed to the weekly pattern of busy Mondays. But a stint in the Travel sector introduced me to the interesting rhythm of very busy Mondays and super slow Friday afternoons (which could sometimes extend into the weekends). This is just […]
Huddle up!
August 20 – Do you ever think of your contact center as a team? Do you feel as though you literally compete to provide best in class service for your organization? If so do you ever think of your workforce team as being the coach? When you stop to think about it workforce is […]
What to consider when evaluating Speech Analytics solutions.
August 13 – Speech analytics is one of the fastest growing market segments in the call center industry. Once considered the purview of large enterprises, speech analytics technology is now being adopted by organizations of all sizes at an increasing rate. It can be argued that over the past several years, speech analytics solutions […]
Productivity improvements with home working.
August 6 – Organizations that are smart about workforce management realize four tangible improvements with home agent deployments: improved intraday performance, improved agent productivity, reduced overtime and seasonal staffing, and improved “on-demand” staffing. Improved Intraday Performance by 20%. Through use of split shifts or “micro-shifts” with both full and part-time agents, companies can schedule […]
Tips for determining your service level goal.
July 30 – Struggling to decide what your service level or ASA really needs to be? This single metric drives a lot of our planning, staffing and cost in the center and we really want to be sure we are meeting our customer expectations. We have seen a couple of studies recently that shed […]
Entering exceptions in the past – the debate continued.
July 23 – Our tip a few weeks ago discussed whether or not to enter exceptions in the past. We received some great feedback, including this tip. One way to solve the exception game is to manage the adherence KPI as a “pass or fail” KPI. This eliminates the incentive for agents and supervisors […]