Each quarter SWPP surveys the workforce planning community on critical workforce planning topics. Over 150 call center professionals representing a wide variety of industries participated and provided insight into this quarter’s survey on performance measures for the WFM team.
The participants in the survey work in centers with a wide variety of agent sizes. The financial, heath care, and insurance industries drew the largest number of participants, but all other industries are also well represented.
Respondents were asked about the size of their workforce team. The largest percentage of respondents had smaller teams with 34% reporting a team size of 1-5 people. Another 22% had 6-10 people, 20% had 10-20, and 24% were in the larger center group, reporting a team of more than 20 WFM professionals.
Respondents were asked if they have a WFM scorecard. The answers were closely split between 47% having no scorecard while 45% do. Another 8% were moving toward putting a scorecard in place.
It is common for frontline staff and perhaps even supervisors/team leaders to have performance scorecards. Many centers are moving toward having all members of the center having a scorecard in place, noting what the signs of success are for each position, measuring these results, and holding staff accountable.
The respondents were asked about the most common workforce management metrics that were used as measures of success. Many of the respondents have forecast accuracy as a measure of performance. Most measure this forecast accuracy by month (44%) with fewer numbers for accuracy by more specific intervals like day (36%) or interval (16%).
All are important to measure, but the most telling results are looking at accuracy by interval or day. Simply looking at forecast accuracy for the month can fail to show accuracy deviations that can be used to improve performance.
Survey participants were asked how they measure the success of meeting their service goals, regardless of whether they use service level or average speed of answer (ASA) as the criteria. The biggest percentage (44%) evaluate whether service goals were met on average each day. This is preferable to measuring success for the overall week, which was reported by 24% of participants. Another 14% measure success by half-hour.
It can be misleading to measure success over longer periods such as monthly or weekly. There could be two weeks where service was terrible and another two where service was great, averaging out to meeting the goal. Likewise, just looking at the daily average of service numbers doesn’t provide any information about hourly problems. Service problems in the morning could be “balanced” by outstanding service in the afternoon, and the result would look like all was fine for the day, when in reality, expectations were not met in the early hours and overstaffing was likely in the short delay period. The best approach is to measure interval by interval to fully assess service delivery.
A best practice for many centers is to measure how many of the intervals of the day service goals were met and how much deviation occurred from the goal. Only 11% of respondents report they measure the success by consistency over the day.
Respondents were asked how they measured their success in creating and implementing optimal work schedules.
The most common measure was looking at scheduling efficiency. About 80% of respondents use schedule efficiency as the primary measure of success, looking at the degree of overstaffing and understaffing. Most of the respondents (69%) also look at occupancy rate since one of the objectives of effective scheduling is to meet an “ideal” occupancy rate where staff are productive and busy, but not too overworked. Another way to gauge scheduling success is to evaluate the level of intra-day adjustments needed to meet service goals — a measure used by 40% of respondents.
A final way to look at schedule efficiency is to evaluate the cost of labor compared to productivity, or cost per call. Only 29% use this measure to evaluate efficiency.
Respondents were asked how they measure their success in meeting the need of their internal customers. The biggest percentage (79%) measure staff satisfaction with schedules. This measure can come from a variety of employee satisfaction surveys where specific questions are related to the scheduling process. Another 49% look at staff turnover rates where exit interviews indicate that schedule fit is at least a part of the reason for a agent’s departure. Another 29% report other ways of measuring their success in keeping staff happy with the scheduling process.
When asked about ways to measure long-term planning success, there were several metrics involved. Forecast accuracy was the most noted measure with 35% using this as a measure of long-term success, followed by a comparison of budgeted to actual staff (28%), meeting service level goals (28%), and schedule efficiency (15%).
A final survey question asked about other measures of success. In order of frequency, respondents listed abandon rate (90%), communications (70%), overall customer satisfaction (65%), budget-to-actual comparison (38%), payroll adjustments (4%) and union grievances (2%).
Respondents were asked if their performance and scorecard results had an impact on compensation. Results were fairly evenly split with 52% saying no and 48% saying yes.
The majority of the staff in a contact center have performance objectives and a set of metrics that indicate whether they are meeting these goals or not. It is increasingly common for these performance “scorecards” to extend to the workforce management group. There are many metrics that indicate whether or not the workforce team is performing specific workforce management functions in a satisfactory manner.
The most common measures are forecast accuracy, scheduling efficiency, meeting service goals, and success in long-term planning.
