I am really looking forward to catching up with lots of you over the next couple of weeks at the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane network groups. We've had lots of registrations so far for each group so I'm sure we'll have some interesting discussions. If you haven't registered yet then please do so by sending an email to me at jhazlett@fifthquadrant.com.au with your name and the session you would like to attend.

Last week at the Fifth Quadrant Customer Service Industry Symposium my colleague Chris, talked about the rise in social media and mobile apps as customer service channels. There are expected to be 16 billion mobile apps in use in 2013. In Australia 52% of consumers own a smart phone therefore as people have much easier access to the internet the need for self service and a social media strategy is increasing. Marketing often owns social media however increasingly Workforce Planning is getting involved in forecasting and scheduling requirements to ensure there are staff available when required just as they would for calls and emails. Having a self-service strategy in place also helps reduce the number of more basic contacts into the centre while increasing the number of channels requires agents to have more skills to deal with a more complex working environment. This may then attract different types of people to work there.

From a planning perspective the focus on customer experience also means that different methods need to be adapted in order to collect data and understand how and why people are contacting the organisation so that it is not just about cost saving but also growing the business. This leads to an increasing number of Workforce Optimisation teams being created rather than purely Workforce Management Teams. The Workforce Optimisation teams will pull together information from across the organisation and incorporate quality assurance, speech and data analytics as well as customer feedback to enable improved planning capabilities and enhance the customer experience.

I am delighted to announce that the next round of network groups will be held this month in the following locations in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Please come along, bring your colleagues and anyone interested in learning more about Workforce Planning. We'll talk about the latest findings in the 2012 Fifth Quadrant Workforce Management Industry Report, best practice Workforce Management and discuss the problems you may be working through in your organisation. It's a fantastic opportunity to meet and discuss all things workforce management with your peers. I look forward to seeing you there.

Brisbane Network Group
20th November 2012
Allianz
Level 22, 324 Queen St, Brisbane
2pm-4pm

Sydney Network Group
27th November 2012
Due to demand, we've had to change location to:
Commonwealth Bank
Darling Park Level 19, 201 Sussex street
2:30 pm – 4:30pm

Melbourne Network Group
28th November
Note new Address:
1/446 Collins Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000

2:30pm and 4pm

RSVP to Julie with your details and session wish to attend.

Here at Fifth Quadrant we're excited to launch 2 new surveys for our 2012 Market Reports; one for Workforce Management and one for Quality Assurance. Don't miss your chance to contribute to these and receive a free detailed Executive Summary for the survey you complete.  

Do your agents ever turn up to work late, on the wrong day or for the wrong shift?

Do they complain that it’s difficult to remember what shift they are supposed to be working or that changes have been made to their shift since they printed off a copy of their schedule?

How can you get around this problem?

Although we found that 76% of Australian Contact centres had implemented a workforce management solution only 54% of these had purchased the add-on tool to allow their agents to view their schedules online and even less of these had given their staff access to view their schedules from home.

This is a hot topic when I am interviewing agents on areas for improvement as many of them would like to have the ability to view their schedules, swap shifts and apply for leave from home. Although the functionality to enable staff to do this is available, many IT departments have not yet allowed this type of access to frontline staff which I think is a shame.

Hopefully the availability of new applications such as Nobile ShiftTrack Mobile which recently won Product of the Year 2011 by Communication Solutions Magazine will help to drive more companies towards giving staff access to their schedules from home.

The Nobile ShiftTrack Mobile, is a staff self service module, allowing staff to access key information including shift and meeting times via their smartphone. In addition, ShiftTrack Mobile allows staff to request shift swaps and leave applications.

By using a mobile phone application, staff and managers never have to worry about ...what is my shift next Friday? Am I working next Saturday? Is leave available on that day? Having this information instantly available means less time backwards and forwards between staff and management on administrative tasks and more time for work activities thus helping the centre to run more efficiently.

The latest news on the Workforce Management acquisition front is that Interactive Intelligence has acquired Bay Bridge Decision Technologies. This is extremely exciting for Interactive Intelligence and their customers as it adds significant enhancements to their current forecasting capabilities http://baybridgetech.com. Bay Bridge is currently used by many Aspect and Nice customers around the world.

"This acquisition enables us to bridge the gap between our basic workforce management features, and the advanced forecasting and planning capabilities in the Bay Bridge products, so we can now offer a true strategic planning solution for mid-size and large contact centers," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown. "As the leading vendor in its industry, supplying the kind of advanced functionality required by the world's top brands, Bay Bridge makes for an ideal acquisition that will help our customers further streamline their technology sourcing and implementations, while giving them even greater return-on-investment."

Under the terms of the agreement, Bay Bridge will continue to sell and support its CenterBridge® family of long-term forecasting, analysis and planning products, while separately applying its patented forecasting technology and operations research expertise to advance the functionality of the Interactive Intelligence workforce management product, Interaction Optimizer®.

Interactive Intelligence customers will be able to purchase the Bay Bridge products and integrate them to Interaction Optimizer®, or any third-party WFM solution already in use.