Description of the process

This process is the key driver of value creation for the contact centre in the area of cost efficiency.

• Achieved by having the right number of people in the right place at the right time – not more, not less.

This process also makes an important contribution to creating value in the area of employee satisfaction.

• Work scheduling processes that include advance notification, flexibility, fairness and personal preference (day of week, start & end times for tours, break & lunch times) improve employee satisfaction.

The impact of this process on customer satisfaction is often misunderstood. A low service level (speed of answering calls) definitely dissatisfies customers. A high service level does not necessarily improve satisfaction. A high service level is expected, neutralizing its value as a key driver.

The main tasks in this process start with a forecast of requirements and end with the production of employee work schedules.

Characteristics of a best practice

This is a highly visible area where the contact centre commits itself to excellence and showcases their results to the rest of the organization.

1. Staffed by professionals with the following knowledge:
• Contact centre suite of technology.
• Queuing theory.
• Statistical Quality Control methodology.
• Contact centre business fundamentals.
2. Service level target for incoming calls and the resulting agent productivity (occupancy) is set according to the needs of the organization, not to a perceived industry benchmark. Response time targets for e-mail, fax, voicemail and letters are also established. A budget is allocated that supports the targets.
3. Typical services provided by this process include short & long-range forecasts, employee work schedules, cost information, hiring requirements, real-time queue activity reports and key high level diagnostic reports.
4. Contact centre agents are engaged in defining the business rules for scheduling.
5. Teamwork and shared team objectives are critical success factors.
• Planning and forecasting is a collaborative effort amongst everyone who requires contact centre resources. Commitment is obtained to the plan.
• Cost and service results are a shared performance indicator.
6. For individual performance metrics, the focus is only on tasks within the employee’s control.
• For contact centre agents, this is typically “adherence” to their schedule, over time.
• Given the impact of the quality of fulfillment, tools and training processes, agent productivity measured by call length or calls/hour is highly debatable.
7. Data from diagnostic reports is expertly communicated to the rest of the organization who are basically uneducated in the science of contact centre management. It is always converged to reflect the relationships between different data points.
• It is dangerous to interpret data on a “stand alone” basis.
8. Many tasks within the process are automated using the best workforce management software you can buy.

Relationships to other processes

Input to force management process:

• The Skill & Knowledge Transfer process identifies requirements for training, meetings, etc.
• Call Handling and Fulfillment processes by design are the major contributors to call length, not agent performance. Call length is a critical component of forecasting the required number of agents.
• The Change Deployment process identifies resources required to implement a change.
• Data is collected to meet the needs of the Performance Feedback process.
• The Hours of Operation process provides some business rules for scheduling.
• The Organizational Design process provides requirements for specialized queues and pooled queues.
• The Network Architecture process provides the framework for the flow of calls to each destination.
• The CTI/IVR process provides additional functionality that impacts forecasting and scheduling.

Output from force management process:

• Data is provided to the Hiring & Selection process to establish a hiring plan.

What’s in it for me?

Obtain the budget needed to achieve service level objectives

A common dilemma for the contact centre is to be asked to achieve a certain level of service with a fixed number of people, without regard to a correlation between the two. Furthermore, budgets are often fixed for the year, without regard to unexpected increases in call volumes. Both are a no win situation for the contact centre. The starting point to resolve this issue is to communicate and collaborate with the key players in the budget process. The leveler in the process is the service level. If the appropriate budget is not available, service level targets are correlated to the number of allocated people. However, the most important task is to deliver the promised results once an appropriate budget is allocated.