Beyond Workforce Management:
New Insights into Complex Contact Centers
By Bill Powers, Principal, eLoyalty Corporation
Introduction
Bob, a Customer Service Operations VP at XYZ Corporation, runs a contact center with three departments. He needs to ensure each department is appropriately staffed and resources are correctly scheduled. He also wants to compare the performance of each department as well as the individual Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) within the department. All departments perform call and non-call work, and CSRs handle both call and non-call work activities, often alternating work modes several times a day. Bob has reams of call statistics from his Telephone Switch (ACD) reports and workforce management (WFM) package, but lacks useful information on the numerous non-call work activities.
A thorough understanding of both call and non-call work is vital to understanding and effectively managing contact center functions and processes. Unfortunately, most non-call work activities are either given a cursory overview or ignored entirely by management. This situation is often exacerbated when managers rely predominantly on reports available through standard contact center technology that may not provide the most accurate call data and do not provide information on non-call activities.
Bob's traditional WFM package lacks the capability to accurately calculate total staffing requirements. Measuring non-call work is one area where these programs often fall short. Another involves the fact that the Average Handle Times (AHT) calculated by WFM packages reflect CSR "self-reporting" (button management), not necessarily actual call handling requirements.
This paper will discuss why and how organizations can augment their existing contact center monitoring with accurate call and non-call work analysis. It will further explain how to use the results to accurately forecast, schedule, and measure contact center resources. Finally, this paper will also describe an effective and practical method for bringing this analytical capability into your organization.
Analyzing Work in the Contact Center
Why Analyze Non-Call Work?
Today’s contact centers perform a variety of complex call and non-call work activities that need to be accurately defined and measured in order to appropriately and proactively allocate resources to handle them. Contact centers can improve resource allocation by acknowledging, measuring, and integrating non-call work statistics into their workforce management calculations. With improved resource allocation and the ability to effectively measure call and non-call work performance, contact centers can improve work quality, resource/workload distribution, employee morale and, ultimately, customer satisfaction.
Contact centers that do not have a realistic understanding of the resource requirements to handle non-call work may either spend too much for labor or too little, as evidenced in long queue times, high abandon rates, and general customer dissatisfaction. Underestimating resources required for these activities can result in reduced work quality and performance, as employees attempt to finish all of the work (planned and unplanned) that needs to be done. If resource requirements are overstated, costs are negatively impacted while employee morale suffers from boredom.
An organization that wishes to improve its ability to analyze, forecast, schedule, and measure contact center activities by gaining visibility into non-call work can begin by taking the following steps:
• Identify (and Acknowledge) Non-Call Work Activities
• Measure Non-Call Work
• Analyze Non-Call Work Observations
• Integrate Non-Call Work Analysis into Contact Center Operations
Why Reanalyze Call Work?
Too often, call work analysis is comprised solely of looking at system reports to determine AHT, call volumes, time-sensitive call arrival patterns, and Service Levels (SLs). Call volumes and patterns as well as SLs are usually fairly accurate, however, AHT data is often inaccurate and can be misleading.
AHT cannot be accurately measured by any WFM system. WFM systems simply measure button usage and/or set system parameters. For example, CSR Fred just finished speaking to a caller and has automatically gone into an After-Call Work (ACW) mode. Fred finishes up the necessary ACW work, but prior to pushing the "Available" button, he gets up for a cup of coffee and brings it back to his desk. The WFM system cannot determine how much of that time was spent in true ACW and how much was spent getting a cup of coffee. The WFM system will record the entire time from call termination to returning to the available state as ACW. When the system is set to automatically give a CSR some time between calls, the WFM system typically records that time as ACW. These two measurement errors effectively increase the overall AHT required to handle calls. For a 7x24 call center that averages 5,000 calls per day, an increase in AHT of just 10 seconds will indicate the need for at least 1.8 additional Full Time Equivalents (FTEs).
To read the rest of this white paper, please go to: www.eloyalty.com/publications
|
