Last week I attended Customer Contact Point at Lunar Park and caught up with Laurie Walter, Senior Manager Key Projects at Whirlpool, USA. Whirlpool Customer Experience Centre won the 2009 Best Contact Centre 250 agents + in the Contactcenterworld.com awards.

A couple of years ago Whirlpool was looking at ways to reduce costs while at the same time improving customer service. Outsourcing was one option however they decided to trial home based agents instead. The agents who were initially given the option to work from home were selected based on their performance taking into account things like quality, attendance, adherence, attitude, behaviour, and AHT. They started with 5 agents from the email team and found that when working from home they were significantly more efficient than the office based agents. They then extended the opportunity to some inbound phone agents and found that they were 10-12% more efficient. Of the 1200 contact centre agents working for Whirlpool USA, 400 are now home based.

All the agents who work at home for Whirlpool initially started working in the contact centre. Twice a year a Home Interest Form is sent to all agents which clearly defines the home based agent requirements. Those who are interested must commit to a minimum 1 year period of working from home and have high speed internet access. Whirlpool pays for a separate internet and phone line for these agents and supplies them with a laptop.

The at home agents have separate supervisors dedicated to them. These supervisors visit their agents at home once a month and the site leaders visit them once a quarter bringing things like balloons with them to make it a bit more fun.

By having the ability to offer work from home, it has also had strategic advantages for Whirlpool. One facility where 30 senior agents worked was closing down but Whirlpool was able to keep the agents and their knowledge by offering them the opportunity to work from home. The only other alternative was for the agents to drive to the closest office which was two hours away. Previously a lot of work done at this facility was done on paper as it consisted of faxes for credits and order requests etc. They were able to turn this into a paperless environment thus reducing costs further and becoming more environmentally friendly.

So what are the advantages of home based agents?

For Whirlpool they have been able to retain skills they may have otherwise lost. It has provided flexibility for the agents and made working split shifts much more feasible. Attrition rates have decreased and schedule adherence for at home agents is higher. They have become greener by reducing paper usage and driving time for agents. Operating costs have been reduced and their share price has increased. It has been so successful that Whirlpool is now looking at other areas of the business where they might be able to extend this opportunity.

Laurie's advice to you is to run a pilot before offering home based opportunities to everyone. Measure the results and make sure you have tested everything. Remember to involve the employees in daily feedback so you can learn from them too.

Last week I caught up with Gregor Hartnell and Alex Truskin from Computershare, a leading provider of share registration, employee equity plans and other specialised financial and communication services.

Gregor is the Workforce Planning Manager for Computershare’s Australian operations and Alex is their Forecast Analyst for the paper based transactional environment. Gregor has eight people in his Workforce Planning (WFP) team looking after up to 500 agents, across both the call centre and the operational transaction area. In terms of team structure there are:

• Forecast Analysts - forecast volumes & FTE requirements by type/channel
• Resource Planners - schedule staff and activities to the forecast levels
• Resource Administrators - assist with the day to day scheduling tasks
• Real Time Analysts - queue management and workflow re-assignment

Computershare has deployed Workforce Management software (InVision Enterprise WFM) into its call centre and is currently reviewing options to expand this into their transactional environment. Currently MS Excel is used extensively to forecast and schedule staff for the various transactional teams. There are three areas of transactional work at Computershare:

• Mailroom - This team is responsible for opening up to 40,000 letters per day and requires between 20-50 agents. Due to the nature of the work this team can easily be scaled up and down as is appropriate for the workload
• Imaging - This team is responsible for scanning mail and, where possible, interpreting it through Computershare’s leading edge data capture technology. This team requires between 20 - 40 agents
• Transaction Processing - This team is responsible for the data entry of any transactions that could not be electronically data captured. This team requires between 80 - 140 agents

As with forecasting for inbound calls, building the forecasting models for the transactional environment requires the Computershare WFP team to be able to track the number of items received for each of its 1,200+ clients as well as understand the various triggers that cause more or less volume at different times of the year. Unlike inbound calls, transactions have various touchpoints (i.e. open mail, scan, process and audit) which need to be factored into the model at various levels based on transaction type, client and/or user when establishing the resourcing requirement. A workload calculation (Volume x AHT) is used to calculate the staffing requirement, however as the service level requirements vary from same day to five days, the impact of work that is still in progress also needs to be incorporated into this model. With all this in mind, the model takes into account both work in progress and new items, as well as the various touchpoints and service level goals, to establish the daily resourcing requirements.

When the forecasts are created the team inputs this information into an application that utilises MS Access, Visual Basic and a MS Excel front-end to automatically generate new shifts and incorporate the agreed shrinkages.

Regularly (daily and weekly), the WFP team meets with the managers/team leaders of the specific departments to discuss expected performance for future days. The shifts are sent to agents via an automated email. The introduction of software will allow further enhancement such as online access to shifts as well as shift swapping and other functions which are already being utilised by the call centre.

Computershare has developed a purpose built in house Workflow system that electronically manages and prioritises transactions, taking into account client service levels, regulatory requirements, event dates and agent skills and proficiency. In combination with the Workflow system, the role of the Real Time Analyst is critical as they re-optimise agent work allocations based on shifting volumes, critical event dates and agent availabilities.

Schedules are then exported from the custom built roster application and imported directly into the Workflow system. Work allocations are optimised and re-uploaded to Workflow at two-hourly intervals throughout the day.

Gregor notes that the WFP process in the transactional environment is an evolutionary process:

"We can create the most sophisticated models however it is imperative that the internal customers are fully engaged via education and visibility of benefits.

The best place to start is to spend time with the managers and team leaders of the areas to better understand what challenges they are currently facing in running their business.

We rely heavily on the Subject Matter Experts in the particular areas to help us better understand the behavior of the workload. What are the drivers of incoming volumes? What makes the workload peak?"

Once this is understood the Computershare WFP team tracks the workload as it enters and leaves our systems. With over 1,200 different clients the WFP team has implemented tracking systems to capture the workload at a company level. As much as possible, this data capture process has been automated

This week I’m lucky enough to be writing to you from beautiful Portugal where I’ve been speaking at CCPortugal 2010. When working overseas, I am continually in awe of how many people speak English fluently as a second language. Although I speak another language myself, I can’t help thinking how much easier it is because English is my first language. Imagine going to a conference in your own country and almost all the speakers present in another language. It makes me feel quite humble. I’ve been trying to learn some Portuguese while I’m here and you might be interested to know that the Portuguese words for Workforce Management are still Workforce Management- brilliant, I won’t forget that. I’ve also found it interesting that many of the contact centres here don’t use any workforce management software yet even though the average contact centre size is about 250 seats. Over the last couple of days I have been speaking to some of the delegates about the benefits of workforce management outside of forecasting and scheduling so I thought I’d share them with you.

Nowadays most Workforce Management software packages have several different modules. Forecasting, scheduling and intraday management are typically part of the core module with add-ons like real time adherence monitoring, agent web access, analytics and more recently the ability to apply all of this functionality to back office staff. So what are some of the benefits?

Workforce Management tools enable you to store information centrally in one location that multiple users can easily access and report on at any time if required. Some of this information includes:

1. Agent Information: hire date, contact details, skills, schedule preferences, performance data, adherence data, training and leave balances.
2. Forecasting data: trends, seasonality, impacts of marketing campaigns or technology changes etc.
3. Current and historical scheduling information: who worked particular schedules and when they work them.
4. Intraday information: what was the actual service level, how did what you forecast compare to what actually happened.
5. Time Keeping Records: how much training, annual leave, off phone activities, lateness etc. has taken place.
6. Annual Leave Planning: how many hours of leave are available each day of the year and how many have already been taken.

All this information can then be integrated with other systems such as payroll reducing the time and effort needed for data duplication enormously.

Workforce management systems help you to forecast and schedule not just for single site environments but also for multisite, multi-skill and multimedia situations.

Using workforce management systems "what if" analysis becomes much easier. You can easily test out the impact of possible changes in call volumes, AHT, or workload and optimise your schedules to meet the new requirement. You can test the impact of adding different types of schedules before offering them to agents. On an intraday basis you can compare what you had forecast with what is actually happening, reforecast if required and test out the impact of reallocating breaks, training, and meetings etc before going ahead with the change. These add massive time saving benefits.

Real Time adherence tools add huge value. These tools compare what agents were scheduled to do with what they are actually doing and alert you to any discrepancies. The tools allow supervisors to proactively manage their teams and typically improve productivity in the contact centre just by being installed. Let’s take an example of how this can save you money. Imagine you could improve productivity by just 10 minutes per agent, per day. If your average wage rate was $25/hour and you had just 100 agents, that’s a saving of $416.67 per day ((25/6) x 100). If you are open 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year that’s a possible saving of $108,334.

Agent Web Access: I’ve often asked workforce planners across the country what one of their favourite tools in the workforce management suite of products is and the answer is often Agent Web Access. These tools allow your agents to view their schedules online, swap shifts, request leave or other activities, in some centres even move their breaks within certain parameters, bid on what shift they will work and view their performance statistics. Agent’s love it as they feel more empowered and workforce planners love it because it saves them a lot of time processing shift swaps and leave requests. If you allow your agents to bid on the shift they work it also improves morale and the decreases the tendency to call in sick. The schedules can be assigned based on performance so agents know what they need to do to get the best shifts.

Analytics: With the online analytics tools that are part of the workforce management suite staff can view the information that is most important to your contact centre performance. Depending on the tool it can take data from different sources such as your workforce management system, ACD, quality management tool and dialer and consolidate this into a focused view for analysing performance. Managers, supervisors and agents can drill down to the information most relevant to them and compare how they are tracking against key performance metrics. The benefits are that everyone has access to the information they need to make decisions within seconds.

Back office: There is an exciting and relatively new phase of workforce management happening around the world. Workforce Management functionality is now being implemented into back office. I met with Debbie May, President and Nathan Stearns, Vice President from Nice last week who were in Australia for the Annual Customer Conference where they launched Nice IEX Workforce Management Release 4. This has some great new features including some pretty cool desktop recording which make accurate forecasting for back office tasks possible.

As you can see there is much more to workforce management software than just forecasting and scheduling. It can save you time, money and improve employee morale. Excel will always be the workforce planner’s friend but workforce management software gives you access to so much more.

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at callcentres.net. First there was the Call Design Boot Camp at the Sofitel in Sydney. It was here I caught up with my friend Vicki Herrell from The Society of Workforce Planners (SWPP) who had flown in all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. Vicki recently announced the winner of the 2010 Workforce Management Professional of the Year and I am delighted to say that our very own Dave Bennett from American Express was one of the five finalists. Well done Dave, that's a fantastic achievement.

Vicki has recently written an article on teaching "the Power of One" and because it's also one of my favourite things to teach I thought I'd share it with you.

How Do You Teach "The Power of One?"

By Vicki Herrell

As workforce management professionals, we all know the difference that just one agent can make in our net staffing. Unfortunately, the agents don't necessarily understand that concept. They may be thinking, "What difference can it make that I come back late from lunch? There are 50 other agents out there on the floor." Sometimes it falls to the workforce management team to teach them just what a difference they make.

While we all know the benefits to the call center when agents adhere to schedule - improved service level, better customer service, and cost savings for the company - sometimes these benefits are not enough to motivate agents.

So what can we do to teach "The Power of One" to our agent population? Well, there are lots of different ways, and in this article, we'll explore several options.

One way to get the information to the agent is through an interactive, fun activity. Here are some examples:

Tennis Ball Activity

Pull together a group of agents and ask them to line up in two groups facing one another. One side represents the customers and the others serve as call handlers. Give each of the "customers" a tennis ball, which represents a phone call. Then ask the customers to begin throwing the ball back and forth to the person across from them, the "agent." This is very comfortable as long as there is a one-to-one ratio of customers to call handlers. Now send one call handler on break but leave all the customers. Send another call handler on an "unscheduled break" and leave all the customers. Keep throwing the balls back and forth to the remaining call handlers. The participants can easily see the impact of losing one agent, and then they really feel the impact of losing additional agents. This is also an excellent illustration to employ when talking about average handle time (how long the call handler holds the ball before pitching it back), schedule adherence, queue times, and service level/ASA.

Bucket Activity

You might want to do this one outside! Have one volunteer slowly pour water into a bucket (one from KFC works well). The water represents incoming calls/orders. After the bucket is full, start to poke holes into the bucket. Let the first holes represent someone leaving for a break or lunch according to their schedule. Agents can come up to plug these holes to stop the water flow. But then poke some holes to represent agents out of adherence - late to work or from a break, for example - and do not plug those holes. As the water drains down, so goes the service level! The draining water can also represent lost orders or lost customers who have waited too long in queue.

Perfection Game Activity

Perfection is the battery-operated game where you set a timer and attempt to place differently-shaped pieces into their respective slots before the timer runs out, which causes the spring-loaded board to pop up suddenly and scatter the pieces. For the illustration to the agents, have three people placing the shapes simultaneously, and they will finish at a leisurely pace before the timer expires. Then remove an agent from the mix because they were signed off unexpectedly and not adhering to their schedule. Then reset the timer for the exact amount of time it took for three people to finish the job. Without fail, the two remaining people work frantically but are never able to complete the task before the timer expires and the pieces pop up. Then explain that the shapes represent calls, and the time it takes to place these shapes into their slots represents handle time. Also explain that when you had the right number of people in place to handle the task, everyone was able to work at a comfortable pace and get the job done. With the unexpected absence of just one agent, the remaining agents were forced to work much harder and still couldn't get the job done.

One Powerful Person

Another company has developed a curriculum for their new hires and existing agents called "One Powerful Person." Average adherence of the class attendees is analyzed prior to and after classes to determine the effectiveness of the training. During the training, they do an interactive exercise similar to the tennis ball activity where four individuals are "Agents" serving customers. Line them up a few feet apart, standing or at a table. Have five or six individuals act as "Customers" calling into the center. Line these individuals up arms length away across from the agents. Have a box of "Calls" in between the customers and agents, easily reached by the "Customers." These "calls" can be a box of small balls, cushy items, or anything easily handled in one hand (nothing sharp!). Instruct Agents that they will be receiving Calls from Customers and they will handle the Call from five-seven seconds each, then return the call to the box. Instruct Customers to "hand" a call to a random available agent, counting their delay time if there is no agent available.

Start the call exchange and go about two minutes. Stop and review delay times with customers. Ask Agents how they feel. Remove one agent from the line. Begin call exchange again. After two minutes, remove another agent and continue exchange. Have customers count delay time. Stop after one minute and review delay times with customers. How different did Agents feel after someone was "missing?"

In all these activities, debrief with the group by reviewing differences in delay time based on various agent situations. What was the effect on service? What was the impact on agents? Ask "What difference did one person make in this exercise?"

Following on from Boot Camp a team from callcentres.net took part in the BRW Corporate Triathlon which was lots of fun. Can someone please remind me next year that training for these things is a good idea. Then to top off the fortnight I joined Carol Ritchie (Workforce Planner at HSBC) and I'm sure many more of you at the Spandau Ballet and Tears for Fears concert in Sydney. Talk about a blast from the past :)!

I hope you have stocked up on your chocolate supplies and are getting ready to head off for a few days fun and relaxation over Easter. Before you head off though, I'd like to ask for some advice for one of our readers ......

Hi Julie-Anne!

Advice from your readers please!

Our call centre is about 150 head count. We want to move from a fixed seniority based rostering model that has been in place for over 12 years; some of our staff have been around that long too!

We know that we don't have the flexibility to cope with seasonal changes, or adapt to campaigns or any other challenges, and are suffering in cost and performance as a result.

However, we are worried that we may alienate staff by introducing too much change too quickly.

Our EBA stipulates that rostering negotiations should be in a spirit of mutuality, and that personal circumstances must be considered.

Traditionally this has meant that if an agent gave a reason for a shift change request, they got it, regardless of the business requirement, or how compelling the reason was or wasn't! Once on their preferred shift, the agent never changes shift unless they initiate it!

So we'd like to take a gentle approach to change by introducing some elements of flexbility and "testing the waters".

Do your readers have any experience with introducing a preference based rostering model into a culture like ours, and have some key learnings that they would like to share?

Cheers

Kate

If you've had a similar experience and have some recommendations that you'd like to share, we'd love to hear from you.

Have a great Easter.

UPDATE

We got some great advice from our readers the first piece comes from Deanne from Austar who says:

We rolled out Preference Based Rostering in late 2004!

rior to any changes being made to any rosters we formed a roster focus group which was made up of nominated individuals from each team. They would meet with Management and WFP to discuss options, we found this beneficial to the roll out as we were able to gain their feedback, opinions and discussed all options. They would then return the findings to their teams at their next team meeting. To roll out our Preference Based rostering, we split our centre operating hours into 3 time bands. We then asked staff to rank each time band with their preference and special requirements ? child care or care giver etc. Staff took the process well and most of our employee's did receive their first preference, for those that did not, we set up a waitlist procedure and would move employees as per the waitlist into vacant spaces within other bands. Since setting this up in 2004 we have slowly made more changes to our preference based rostering every year, being open with our employees about any changes has been our best practice.

We also ensure that the WFP team are available to attend team meetings to allow any questions that employees may have to be answered in real time by someone who completes the rostering process. If you need anymore information please contact me

John Bosomworth also had some insightful advice for Kate

Hi Kate Firstly, good on you for taking up the challenge of changing your rosters! If there's one piece of advice I can offer, it's to get the staff involved in the process from the very beginning. There are a number of good reasons for this: Firstly, it helps to mitigate the us versus them perspective which can develop when change is introduced. By having the staff be a part of the process the changes are no longer something that is "done" to the staff by management. Secondly, as you know it's impossible to please all of the people all of time. Collective staff ownership of roster changes means that as a group they all own the outcome.

If there are several possible roster models that will work for management, then let the staff decide for themselves which one they want. Sure, there'll be a few who aren't happy, but at least it's "their" decision.

Keeping the process open and transparent, and communicating every step of the way with your staff enables you to bring them along with you. One of the most powerfull things you can do is outline the business challenges of the current roster with the staff and then ask them to come up with some possible new solutions. Of course it's really important that you also outline the constraints - e.g. maximising service levels, no increase in headcount, fairness etc. An interesting side effect of this kind of open approach is that your staff will not only improve their understanding of workforce management, but they'll also start to get an insight into how challenging it can be! Good luck.