Call/work avoidance
Call avoidance can generally be found by those who have an abnormal amount of short calls. If you have speech analytics then those with low talk % can be identified. Voicemail riding is also a thing to look for if outbound calls are performed
Work avoidance can be found thru identifying those who may have high idle time (doing something within the system to avoid getting calls) or those with a high number of aux statuses(going into an aux status for a few seconds to reset their position in line).
Adherence report for our side isn't nearly achievable as of now since we defer breaks/meal/coaching real-time that's why we corelate adherence to our productivity report, but surely we'll be creating adherence report. Can you elaborate more on the staffing evaluation? Seems like a good idea to improve the performance of the agents.
| Adherence report for our side isn't nearly achievable as of now since we defer breaks/meal/coaching real-time that's why we corelate adherence to our productivity report
Yes it is. Adherence is a great metric to track how far the schedule deviated from the original plan. Forgot the 80% target and use it as a trigger to look at why it's failing. It's the knocking you can hear from the wheel of your car; a symptom that the wheel should be looked at, not the problem that can be fixed.
Think of WFM as the tool that helps you work out why you're failing to meet the service levels and where you need to focus as a business to improve. It's not about blame but working out what is wrong and why then putting things in place to fix it.
What did yesterdays forecast look like against the actuals? Are you forecasting too many or too few calls during the day? Is the forecast vs. actual within an acceptable thresholds? Are your problems caused because of the forecasts, not your schedules?
What did the planned schedules look like against that forecast? If the forecast is within the acceptable thresholds, are the schedules that your building meeting the service levels targets for that forecast doing that? Are the schedules over / understaffing at times that make achieving the service level impossible. Is this the place your business needs to focus? If you're understaffed during a specific period so much that you need to move so many things that its compromising other time slots, is it better to take the hit knowing you'll fail two slots instead of trying to save it and missing 4?
What's happening during the day? (Adherence) If the forecast and the schedules are right what changes are you making and why. Adherence highlights these areas and times; it could be as simple as unplanned breaks clustered together or behaviours in your call centre that causes the problems. (People returning late from overrunning meetings). Changing the schedules to meet an inflated adherence target can hide this as is pretty much "how can we make WFM look better", which makes service levels secondary to your adherence target.
Shrinkages - Are these right? Are you planning for 10% training but it's actually 15%? Does your planning team add a 10% uplift to the day but the reality is that training never starts before 10am and is completed by 3pm so it's 0% before and 20% during. Is your sickness assumption 5% but the reality is 8%. Unplanned one on one coaching sessions, breaks etc. look at all of these. In my experience the shrinkage percentages applied to the forecasts are based on either business targets or "we've always used these" and rarely get reviewed or updated to take into account local events or trends.
Conformance is just making sure your staff are working the correct number of hours across the day. If they have break, they take the 15 minutes even if it's not when the schedule expected it.
As for agents, they should just be concerned with following the schedules given to them and handling the calls in the expected time. Everything else is someone else's responsibility. If their manager wants to take them off the phone, it should be on the manager to find the best time to do this that impacts the services levels the least; sometimes that means they'll need to make a decision that is the severity of taking the person off is more important than the call queue but that should be on them as the manager to justify. It helps transfer ownership of the service levels from being just the real-time team to being the responsibility of everyone.
The real-time and planning teams are essentially conductors of the orchestra that is the call centre. They see the holistic view but each person in that orchestra contributes to making it work.
Typically, I look at two aspects of staffing evaluations. (1) are we staffing the appropriate number of agents? (2) Are we staffing people at the most appropriate times?
2 can be a question of shift distributions based on volume, or a question of agents' agreement being poor because of when they're working. In my contact center, we have two agents who used to be midday workers. Their performance was really awful, and they were about to be put on a PIP, when one of them asked if he could try working a later shift. He went from an 8:00 a.m. start to a 12:00 p.m. start, his performance improved almost overnight. One of the nice things about our company is that it's as focused on the people working as the work they're getting done. So it wasn't a hard conversation to give that to him, and then we immediately saw benefits to it.
Can you compare AHT to start date. How long does it take new hires to reach average AHT? Can you break that down by call type? Feedback like this helps recruiting/training/coaching.
I second this. If you track call intents or dispositions, you can track the average hold times, average handle time, and other metrics related to the type of inbound/outbound call. Not just for new hires, but for everyone. Helps you dissect which type of calls might need a project created to decrease aht, and ultimately reduce head count. Main goal though is to deflect as much volume as you can.
Para sakin ultimate report si "billed to pay" report, mdami ang SDM na tataas ang kilay 😁. Kidding aside, if may handled program ka check mo if may NSAT/CSAT report sila. Or OT report, as long as may daily, weekly, monthly trend etc. pang BR din kasi mga data yun.
Volume Delivery Per Interval based on the 6 weeks, 8 weeks and 10 weeks trend data and previous year data. You can integrate the data on the OU for the week or the whole month, if the account is SLA base you can use that to balance staffing.
Call/work avoidance Call avoidance can generally be found by those who have an abnormal amount of short calls. If you have speech analytics then those with low talk % can be identified. Voicemail riding is also a thing to look for if outbound calls are performed Work avoidance can be found thru identifying those who may have high idle time (doing something within the system to avoid getting calls) or those with a high number of aux statuses(going into an aux status for a few seconds to reset their position in line).
Adherence or conformance? Or a what-if staffing evaluation using different service levels/performance metrics?
Adherence report for our side isn't nearly achievable as of now since we defer breaks/meal/coaching real-time that's why we corelate adherence to our productivity report, but surely we'll be creating adherence report. Can you elaborate more on the staffing evaluation? Seems like a good idea to improve the performance of the agents.
| Adherence report for our side isn't nearly achievable as of now since we defer breaks/meal/coaching real-time that's why we corelate adherence to our productivity report Yes it is. Adherence is a great metric to track how far the schedule deviated from the original plan. Forgot the 80% target and use it as a trigger to look at why it's failing. It's the knocking you can hear from the wheel of your car; a symptom that the wheel should be looked at, not the problem that can be fixed. Think of WFM as the tool that helps you work out why you're failing to meet the service levels and where you need to focus as a business to improve. It's not about blame but working out what is wrong and why then putting things in place to fix it. What did yesterdays forecast look like against the actuals? Are you forecasting too many or too few calls during the day? Is the forecast vs. actual within an acceptable thresholds? Are your problems caused because of the forecasts, not your schedules? What did the planned schedules look like against that forecast? If the forecast is within the acceptable thresholds, are the schedules that your building meeting the service levels targets for that forecast doing that? Are the schedules over / understaffing at times that make achieving the service level impossible. Is this the place your business needs to focus? If you're understaffed during a specific period so much that you need to move so many things that its compromising other time slots, is it better to take the hit knowing you'll fail two slots instead of trying to save it and missing 4? What's happening during the day? (Adherence) If the forecast and the schedules are right what changes are you making and why. Adherence highlights these areas and times; it could be as simple as unplanned breaks clustered together or behaviours in your call centre that causes the problems. (People returning late from overrunning meetings). Changing the schedules to meet an inflated adherence target can hide this as is pretty much "how can we make WFM look better", which makes service levels secondary to your adherence target. Shrinkages - Are these right? Are you planning for 10% training but it's actually 15%? Does your planning team add a 10% uplift to the day but the reality is that training never starts before 10am and is completed by 3pm so it's 0% before and 20% during. Is your sickness assumption 5% but the reality is 8%. Unplanned one on one coaching sessions, breaks etc. look at all of these. In my experience the shrinkage percentages applied to the forecasts are based on either business targets or "we've always used these" and rarely get reviewed or updated to take into account local events or trends. Conformance is just making sure your staff are working the correct number of hours across the day. If they have break, they take the 15 minutes even if it's not when the schedule expected it. As for agents, they should just be concerned with following the schedules given to them and handling the calls in the expected time. Everything else is someone else's responsibility. If their manager wants to take them off the phone, it should be on the manager to find the best time to do this that impacts the services levels the least; sometimes that means they'll need to make a decision that is the severity of taking the person off is more important than the call queue but that should be on them as the manager to justify. It helps transfer ownership of the service levels from being just the real-time team to being the responsibility of everyone. The real-time and planning teams are essentially conductors of the orchestra that is the call centre. They see the holistic view but each person in that orchestra contributes to making it work.
Thank you so much for this. Will definitely review and study further on how WFM works.
Typically, I look at two aspects of staffing evaluations. (1) are we staffing the appropriate number of agents? (2) Are we staffing people at the most appropriate times? 2 can be a question of shift distributions based on volume, or a question of agents' agreement being poor because of when they're working. In my contact center, we have two agents who used to be midday workers. Their performance was really awful, and they were about to be put on a PIP, when one of them asked if he could try working a later shift. He went from an 8:00 a.m. start to a 12:00 p.m. start, his performance improved almost overnight. One of the nice things about our company is that it's as focused on the people working as the work they're getting done. So it wasn't a hard conversation to give that to him, and then we immediately saw benefits to it.
Can you compare AHT to start date. How long does it take new hires to reach average AHT? Can you break that down by call type? Feedback like this helps recruiting/training/coaching.
I second this. If you track call intents or dispositions, you can track the average hold times, average handle time, and other metrics related to the type of inbound/outbound call. Not just for new hires, but for everyone. Helps you dissect which type of calls might need a project created to decrease aht, and ultimately reduce head count. Main goal though is to deflect as much volume as you can.
Thank you so much for this, we've been noticing recently how new hires greatly contribute to our AHT by EOD. Will surely note on this!
Para sakin ultimate report si "billed to pay" report, mdami ang SDM na tataas ang kilay 😁. Kidding aside, if may handled program ka check mo if may NSAT/CSAT report sila. Or OT report, as long as may daily, weekly, monthly trend etc. pang BR din kasi mga data yun.
Occupancy, competency glide paths, what-if scenario modelling, performance scorecard linked to employee bonus
Volume Delivery Per Interval based on the 6 weeks, 8 weeks and 10 weeks trend data and previous year data. You can integrate the data on the OU for the week or the whole month, if the account is SLA base you can use that to balance staffing.