How do you raise or lower agent occupancy?
March 30 – Are you being pressured to raise or lower occupancy in your call center? Unfortunately, occupancy is not a goal that can be set without understanding the trade-offs. Think of speed of answer (service level or ASA) on one end of a teeter-totter and occupancy on the other end. Assuming you maintain a […]
Consult with your QA colleagues about new trends/patterns.
March 23 – When looking at trends or patterns of AHT, after-call work time, or other in-call times, don’t be afraid to consult with your Quality Assurance (QA) team to get their take on things. Talking with the QA team about any specific events or patterns they are seeing may help you understand better what […]
Look at schedule adherence from a historical perspective.
March 16 – Schedule adherence has always been a challenge for workforce management teams to calculate, document, and seamlessly disposition time associated with “out of compliance time.” The primary schedule compliance efforts have centered upon real-time adherence: “Where is Bob, and why is he not taking calls?” This is an important function and has a […]
The SWPP Annual Conference opt-in attendee list is another great way to network!
March 9 – Networking is one of the main goals of SWPP. Every year following the SWPP Annual Conference, attendees have the option of being part of that year’s email networking group. We compile the contact information of those who want to participate and email the list to the opt-in respondents. By becoming part of […]
Use a “SWAT” team to improve service delivery results while getting back in touch with your frontline.
March 2 – Ever have those days where you just need a couple more people on the phones to reach your service targets? Or perhaps there is that one day of the month where you know it’s going to be busy and you have already exhausted all your on-phone resources, like the day after a […]
Are you part of the solution?
February 23 – Are you part of the solution? As workforce planning professionals, we deal with challenges and problems all the time. Too many calls, not enough agents, people not in their seats when scheduled, it goes on and on. Often we have to point out these problems to management for decisions on how best […]
Making use of overstaffing.
February 16 – No matter how well optimized your workforce is, there will inevitably be times you experience overstaffing. Sometimes this occurs for just a few intervals while other times it may occur for a few days. It can even occur for several weeks. As workforce managers, what are we to do when faced with […]
How do you justify your attendance at the SWPP Annual Conference?
February 9 – Approaching your boss to attend a conference can be a daunting task. My advice — treat it like any other business proposal. Highlight some of the specific challenges you are currently dealing with, and explain how attendance at SWPP will help you to address these. The key to a successful pitch is […]
Measuring goal attainment.
February 2 – For the past two weeks, we have been discussing creating business goals and developing strategies for accomplishing those goals. This week’s tip focuses on how to measure whether you have reached those goals. When measuring objective attainment, one way to measure is to take the following formula — (total (missed + met) […]
Developing strategies for accomplishing business goals.
January 26 – Last week’s tip gave information about creating business goals, focusing on how the metric being measured translates into a specific, measurable, and realistic goal. This week, we will discuss developing strategies for accomplishing those goals. The first question the manager should answer when developing goals is, “what is the overall goal of […]
Start the new year right by planning business goals.
January 19 – When planning business goals, every manager should consider how the metric being measured translates into a specific, measurable, and realistic goal. These three parts are very important—they let us clearly communicate our expectations and the business expectations. Measuring success so we can maintain good practices and identifying opportunities for future improvement are […]
Educate your supervisors on IDP reports.
January 12 – Everyone knows WFM can be the bad guy when it comes to requesting time off the phones, but we all know it happens without us approving it. What if they took the time off when we want them to? More… Educating Supervisors on the use of Intraday Performance (IDP) reports can […]