1. Resource Planning & Workforce Management Workshop
Wednesday 21st April 2010
Presented By:
Fergus Kelly
Tel:

2. National Technology Park National Software Centre
The Company
People – Leading technology specialists in Verint and Avaya solutions.
Locations – Offices in Dublin, Cork and Limerick with support nationwide
Specialists – Contact Centre Technology
Dublin -Head Office
Sandyford
Limerick– Support Centre
Beacon Court
National Technology Park
Cork – Support Centre
National Software Centre

3. Solutions Applications WFO CTI WFM Reporting Quality ACD Tagging
Support
Applications
WFO
CTI
WFM
Delivery
Reporting
Quality
ACD
Tagging
Design
IP Telephony
Compliance

4. Awards and Recognition
Winner - Contact Centre Supplier of the Year 2009 at the Irish Contact Centre and Shared Services Awards
Finalist - One to Watch Award at the Ulster Bank Business Achievers Awards 2009

5. Verint Workforce Management
                 

6. Why is WFM so Important?
Operating Costs- 60% - 70% of Operating Cost is personnel related
Overstaffed Understaffed
Labour Cost Attrition
Productivity Service/Revenue

7. Fixed Shifts
Idle Time = High
8:00
18:00
Service Level = Low
Staffing

8. Flexible Shifts

9. Headaches with WFM Inaccurate Forecasts Unable to Track Administrative
Missed
Service
Levels
Excess
Idle & Over Time
Ineffective
Reporting
High
Turnover
No Visibility On
Performance
Unable to Track
Agent Adherence
Inaccurate
Forecasts
Low Agent
Satisfaction
Shrinkage
Schedule
Changes,
Effective
Schedules
Administrative
Time
Now that we understand some of the basic principles of WFM, let’s look at the top WFM related headaches or pains that contact centers face. The primary problem the CC Mgr is facing is that running a contact center is a complex, and highly visible job. Some of the challenges CC Managers face are: <review a few, not all, of highlighted challenges>
Inaccurate Forecasts – not having a clear enough picture of anticipated demand as input to the schedule, made more difficult by the increased use of alternative contact channels
High Shrinkage – keeping track of what agents are actually doing when they’re supposed to be helping customers, and the impact that shrinkage has on service levels
No Strategic Plan – having time to look ahead towards how the contact center can play a more strategic role for the company, be it driving more revenue, or how to enter new markets
Low Agent Satisfaction – usually the result of many of these other factors, which in turns drives higher turnover
Not aligned to biz objectives – too focused on the daily crisis to figure out how to align priorities against broader business goals, such as how to make customer service a competitive advantage, especially in service industries
Excess Idle time and Over time – an obvious, and very costly, outcome of other factors, such as a poor forecast.
Ineffective Training – the real point is that managers seldom know if training was helpful or not, and what the outcome is in terms of improved agent performance
Missed Service Levels – A very visible and widely watched metric of contact center success, the risk of this drives other behaviors that ultimately can be detrimental to overall effectiveness (e.g. excess idle time)
Stuck in Crisis Mgmt – many CC Mgrs have told us that they’d really like to spend more time planning and managing, but there’s always a crisis to handle.
Limited Coaching – managers simply don’t have enough time to really manage; to coach their team towards better performance and productivity
High Turnover – losing their most experienced agents; and the constant influx of new people makes scheduling all that much more difficult

10. Limitations of Manual WFM
Forecasting
Difficult to Acquire Data
Hard to Spot Trends
Tedious & Time-Consuming
Staffing
Difficult to Analyze Tradeoffs
Time-Consuming to Perform Multiple Calculations
Difficult to Meet Complex Work Rules
Scheduling
Skill based scheduling - difficult to analyze all possible options
Results in Over/Understaffing
Hard to Meet Desires of Staff
Reporting and Analysis
Historical and real-time insight into the activities of the center
Now that we know the non –linear behavior and some of the intricacies of the contact center operations, let us summarize the limitations of manual methods or spreadsheets.
For Forecasting
It is difficult to Acquire Data: There is no shortage of data in the contact center. ACD have weeks and weeks of data that need to be pulled in for forecasting and other calculations. WFM software can automate this process.
Hard to Spot Trends among in the sea of data and ACD reports. Witness WFM software effectively present key metrics on a real time basis and shows trends – historical and future.
Tedious & Time-Consuming: Manual spreadsheets can get complex when you have to factor multiple agent skills, agent preferences for when they want to work and other business requirements like Service level goals and cost.
Staffing
Difficult to Analyze Tradeoffs: Manual methods do not allow for easy ‘What-If’ scenario analysis.
Time-Consuming to Perform Multiple Calculations
Difficult to Meet Complex Work Rules: It is difficult to factor in complex government and union rules and regulations using manual methods.
Scheduling
Skill based scheduling - difficult to analyze all possible options
Results in Over/Understaffing
Hard to Meet Desires of Staff
Reporting and Analysis
Historical and real-time insight into the activities of the center: Finally, as contact centers are becoming more strategic, it is getting senior management attention and therefore requires a lot of reporting and analysis. Spreadsheets and manual tools do not fit the bill.

11. WFM = Optimisation of Objectives
Customer Retention and Business Growth
Enhance customer experience
Minimize crisis management
Provide decision support & management tools
Communicate effectively
Differentiate through service
Premier service for premier and profitable customers
Employee
Satisfaction
Preferences
Schedule needs
Vacations
Consistent and fair processes
Participate in WFM process
Communication and information sharing
Contact
Centre
The challenges shared in the previous slide are only at the tip of the iceberg. A deeper set of challenges facing contact centers today can be grouped into 3 main areas: customer service and retention, employee satisfaction, and costs.
Employee Satisfaction – There are a wide range of issues that fall into this category, all of which affect employee satisfaction. (Review some bullets on slide)
Costs – Controlling or reducing costs is an ever-present challenge. Some of the underlying issues that call centers must face in order to manage costs are….(review some bullets on slide).
Customer retention and growth – For most companies, this is the primary objective. But it often conflicts with the other two. Some of the specific issues and opportunities that affect customer service levels, customer loyalty, and business growth are….
A good WFM solution should balance and optimize all of these factors.
Costs
Create optimal schedules
Accurate forecasting
Precise resource scheduling
Minimal over/under staffing
Optimized use of overtime

12. Verint Workforce Management
A proven, best of breed WFM solution with powerful, yet easy to use forecasting and scheduling features required by contact centers globally.
Active and anchor component of broader analytics powered Workforce Optimisation solution
It helps contact centers
Meet service levels
Lower costs of delivering service
Improve agent satisfaction and productivity
Gain visibility into contact center operations
Plan strategically for the long term
The process of WFM in most contact centers can be broken down into 4 or 5 steps.
Centers typically first determine the level of service that they need to provide to their customers. This is determined by their industry, competitors and other business conditions that will help them retain customers and sell to them. We will discuss more about service level a little later.
They next have to develop a contact forecast – the number of calls, s, chats etc. that the center expects to handle for a given duration. Forecasts are typically done on a weekly basis down to the 15 minute interval level for each day.
Once they have a handle on the forecast (i.e Workload), the next step is to schedule the right number of agents with the skills at the right time so that the center as a whole can meet the service level goals. The schedules are then published to the agents.
Finally, once they are working the plan or schedule, Managers and Supervisors use various tools and methods to ensure that agents are adhering to schedule, and that all key operational metrics are going according to plan or forecast. Corrective action is taken as necessary.

13. Verint Workforce Management
Proven Solution Value-add Services
Forecast Flexibility
Impact 360 Business Process Integrations
Complete Web-Enabled Self Services
CONTACT CENTER
AND
ENTERPRISE-WIDE
Optimized Scheduling
Following are some areas we feel are particular strengths of Witness Systems….
Superior Adherence Management
Better Intraday Management
Strategic Planning

14. Payback – WFM System Improve service levels Increase forecast accuracy
Manage Intraday variations from plan
Schedule breaks, training, etc. at the optimal time
Lower cost of delivering service
Use agent skills and proficiency for more efficient scheduling
Reduce staff hours and need for overtime
Identify overstaffed periods – Time off opportunities
Manage schedule adherence in real time
Reduce workforce shrinkage
Increase agent satisfaction
Better schedules that fit agent preferences
View schedules, swap shifts, bid for shifts, request time off from desktop
Gain visibility into center’s performance
Get alerted and monitor key operational metrics in real time
Comprehensive out-of-the-box reports
Increase productivity
Automate routine administrative tasks
Frees up time for critical 1:1 coaching
Better budgeting and planning
So what does Witness WFM offer contact centers over Excel or other manual methods:
Centers can improve and consistently meet SL by increasing forecast accuracy, managing and correcting intraday deviations from plan. It seamlessly integrates with the other systems in your environment (ACD, routing, etc.)
Centers can meet SL goals but lower the cost of delivering service by using agents skills and proficiencies to create optimized schedules that reduce the need for over time and also by identifying overstaffed periods that can be treated as time off opportunities. Skill-based scheduling is virtually impossible using spreadsheets. In addition, by managing adherence in real-time, centers can reduce shrinkage and lower costs
Centers can increase agent satisfaction by factoring into the schedules their preferences for when they want to work. Using a single browser-based interface from their desktop, agents can view schedules and their personal scorecards, swap shifts, bid for shifts, request time off and access their e-Learning, significantly simplifying their day to day tasks and routines.
Supervisors and managers gain increased insight into the activities of their center, through real-time and historical reporting/analysis. They can monitor key operational metrics in real-time and get notified by a comprehensive set of configurable alerts when the metrics go out of range.
Witness WFM also automates or digitizes a number of routine non-value add administrative processes. This improves overall productivity and at the same time frees up valuable time that supervisors and manager can use for value-add one-on-one coaching.
Finally Witness WFM helps centers get out of crisis mode with long term strategic budgeting and planning
As you can see, these benefits clearly linked to the main headaches and pains identified a few slides back.

15. Forecasting and Scheduling
                 

16. Forecasting Flexible multi-contact forecasts
Forecast Profiles for quick relevant forecasts
Sophisticated trending analysis, special event and outlier handling
Shrinkage by the hour
What-If with unique Agent Profiles

17. Multi Channel and Blending
One Integrated Solution
Full support for inbound phone, and chat
Supports dedicated inbound, outbound and blended inbound – outbound centers and back-office operations
Inbound forecast metrics
Contact Volume
Average Handle Time
Outbound forecast metrics
Connect Rate
Connect Rate AHT
Right Party Connect (RPC) Rate
RPC AHT
Incoming lists
Meets all service goals as closely as possible while maximizing staffing at points where Right Party Connect Rate or Connect Rate is highest
Witness F&S also has a unique feature called Forecast Profiles. Profiles are selections of particular periods that can be saved and reused for different time periods. Selections can be from any specific week or weeks from any time period.
Profiles are useful for modeling contact behavior for any recurring or seasonal events like holidays and marketing campaigns. In this screen, the example is for a company that is in the tax business. To forecast for the current tax season, they can quickly bring in the ‘Tax Season’ profile from previous years that has data for similar weeks. The Profile data can then be quickly altered. For example, if they know that the business has increased by 15% over the previous year, they can correspondingly increase or scale up the Profile data to meet the current business conditions.
By using relevant data and incorporating recent trends, you can improve forecast accuracy.

18. Forecast Flexibility Forecast for different media and skills
Select, combine weight and alter (scale) contact volume, from any week, to predict future contact behavior
One of the first steps a contact center can take if they are not meeting their service level goals is to improve their forecasts. Witness Forecasting and Scheduling has excellent and flexible forecasting features that help contact centers quickly come up with accurate forecasts.
We can forecast contact volume and average handle time for different media, namely phone, , chat and fax.
Unlike competitors, like IEX, which limit you to data from the previous 13 weeks, you can import historical data from any week in the past for forecasting. It can be data from last week, month or year. We believe that just the last 13 week is too limiting.
Each week of data can be assigned different weights depending on their relevance or importance to the current forecast.
Once the data is brought in, forecasters can select, combine and scale the historical data to meet current business conditions.

19. Quick Accurate Forecasts
Forecast Profiles
Quick Accurate Forecasts
Witness F&S also has a unique feature called Forecast Profiles. Profiles are selections of particular periods that can be saved and reused for different time periods. Selections can be from any specific week or weeks from any time period.
Profiles are useful for modeling contact behavior for any recurring or seasonal events like holidays and marketing campaigns. In this screen, the example is for a company that is in the tax business. To forecast for the current tax season, they can quickly bring in the ‘Tax Season’ profile from previous years that has data for similar weeks. The Profile data can then be quickly altered. For example, if they know that the business has increased by 15% over the previous year, they can correspondingly increase or scale up the Profile data to meet the current business conditions.
By using relevant data and incorporating recent trends, you can improve forecast accuracy.
Model contact behavior for holidays, events, marketing campaigns, or any other event using Profiles

20. Sophisticated Forecasting Techniques
More sophisticated and powerful forecasting techniques in Strategic Planner.
Benefit: Increases forecast accuracy by forging tighter link between Strategic
Planner and Forecasting & Scheduling functions.
Using Regression Analysis to account for
Daily trends
Weekly trends
Monthly trends
Quarterly / Seasonal trends
Annual growth trends
Special Events Days treatment
Allows user to flag specific days in the past and future.  User can give a name to the flag, and create as few or as many as they want. 
Reconfiguration
Mark changes to a queue (e.g. change the groups feeding to a queue)
Depending on what was reconfigured, some trends will ignore past data and some will continue to use it.
Use regression analysis based techniques in Strategic Planning to increase forecast accuracy. Identify daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly / seasonal and annual growth trends, flag special events/day and outliers and account for changes due to queue reconfigurations. Combine this forecast with weighted average of selected historical weeks in Forecasting and Scheduling.
For purposes of a Strategic Forecasting, not all data prior to the reconfiguration is ignored.  Depending on what was reconfigured, some trends will ignore past data and some will continue to use it.

21. Identification of Outliers
Increase forecast accuracy by automatically flagging data that is not relevant for forecast
Unique feature automatically identifies forecast outliers
Special Events
Holidays
Queue reconfigurations

22. Powerful Yet Easy Use a combination of the long term forecast and
previous historical
weeks in Forecasting
& Scheduling to
increase forecast
accuracy.

23. Forecast Shrinkage Meet Service Levels
Set Shrinkage and Modeling Factor
By Hour
With an accuracy of 2 decimals

24. Set Service Level Goals
Inbound
Service Level or
ASA goals
Outbound
Connect or Right
Party Connect
Goals
Ex. 20% RPC of list for campaign week

25. Forecasting And Scheduling
What–If Mode
Explore and instantly understand how changes in contact center behavior and customer service needs will affect forecasts, staffing needs and costs.
Use copy of the main database to explore other scenarios while keeping initial scenarios intact for immediate management needs.
Start with a populated database for these scenarios and report to compare to the original data.
Before we dive into the Strategic Planning function, let us take a few minutes to point out the other planning feature that is available in the core Forecasting and Scheduling function.
Witness Forecasting and Scheduling includes a What-If planning feature with a unique and extremely useful feature.
The What-if mode enables managers to explore and instantly understand how changes in contact center behavior and customer service needs will affect forecasts, staffing needs and costs. For What-If mode, a copy of the main database is made and used to explore other scenarios while keeping initial scenarios intact for immediate management needs. It therefore allows users to start with a populated database for these scenarios and report to compare to the original data.

26. What if? With Agent Profiles
Unique Verint feature for workforce planning.
Answers the question: Do we have enough and / or the right type of agents to meet the new business requirements?
Use fictitious “agent profiles” with respect to skill mix and schedule preferences that can be used to see if the new business requirements can be met.
Gives an absolute answer in terms of which “agent profiles” and how many instances of that profile are needed to achieve lower labor costs and/or better workload matching.
Staffing or Agent Profiles is a unique Verint feature that can be used for workforce planning in the What-if mode.
Examples of situations requiring this are when a center is planning on adding a new line of business / another call type or want to improve their service levels and may not have enough and / or the right type of agents to meet the new business requirements.
The user can create “agent profiles” that describe fictitious agents with respect to skill mix and schedule preferences. These “agent profiles” can be used in What If scheduling to see if the new business requirements can be met. The scheduling engine will use the “agent profiles” in addition to real agents to achieve optimum aggregate schedules.

27. Optimised Scheduling Individual agent skill and proficiency
Single, multi, virtual and outsourced sites
Multi-contact: Inbound, outbound, blended, and chat
Events and training
Powerful work patterns and rules
Multi-week scheduling
Easy to use

28. Agent Proficiencies – Not Accounted For
Most WFM systems use agent skills when scheduling. Witness takes this to the next level by considering each agent’s proficiency by skill. This is a key differentiator and underscores a fundamentally superior way of scheduling agents. Unlike competitors who treat agent skills at the group level, we recognize that each agent is different and considering their proficiency by skill. Ex. Agent A and Agent B, both speak Spanish but Agent B is more proficient which makes him / her more productive.

29. Agent Proficiencies – Taken into Account
Lower Costs to Service
Here, by taking each agent’s individual capabilities into account, and as such the agents have different proficiency figures as shown;
When we rerun the scheduling engine, we find that we are indeed meeting or exceeding the service goals: 82% against the requirement of 80% without increasing the number of FTEs. So in effect, by taking proficiencies into account, we are able to lower the costs of achieving service level.

30. Event Optimiser Schedule events with minimal impact on service levels
Flexibly take into account several constraints
Event Optimiser
Specify parameter
Occur during a shift
Occur at anytime
Select employees
1:1 meeting
Group training
Identify times
Specify attributes
Min/max sessions
Min/max attendees A B C D
Among the problems contact centers face with regards to scheduling meetings, training and other events are:
That coaching sessions keep getting cancelled or postponed
That not all agents are able to attend training sessions when needed and
The fear of risking service levels for meetings
Event Optimizer solves these problems. It allows centers to schedule events at the most optimal time with minimal impact on service levels. Scheduling events at the right time, minimizes the chances of training getting cancelled or delayed and thereby increases agent productivity because they have the information or training when needed.

31. Ensure all agents are assigned to event
Event Optimiser
Ensure all agents are assigned to event E
Event Optimiser
Move agents around
Drag-drop agents
Identify unassigned agents
View scheduled event
Placed on top of original schedule
Event Optimizer displays how the schedule grouped people into classes so that you can keep track to see who is in what class and who’s not yet scheduled. This way, we can ensure that everyone has gone through the training courses.
It also provides for an easy way to drag and drop people to make further changes.
The scheduled event is placed on top of the original calendar activity in the calendar view. F

32. Work Patterns Flexible Shifts with Work Patterns
Verint Forecasting and Scheduling allows centers to generate flexible schedules using work patterns and easy to use assignment rules. Work Patterns enable centers to easily create potential schedules by putting shifts and associated activities together and then applying special rules to them. Centers can define these rules very tightly or make them general and allow the scheduling engine to determine the optimum schedule.
Using Work Patterns, centers define the combinations of shifts that employees can work, on what days they can be assigned, and which days should be off and then attach the patterns to different agents. Work patterns can be used to give the system choices of full-time schedules, part time schedules, or choices of 4 x 10 shifts or 5 x 8 shifts for example.
The scheduled event is placed on top of the original calendar activity in the calendar view.

33. Assignment Rules Optimize and Comply with Assignment Rules
Flexible, easy to use wizards
to create Assignment Rules
Shift Rules
Fairness Rules
Rotation Rules
Team Scheduling Rules

34. Real time Management
                 

35. Set Alerts
Comprehensive set of configurable and Screen Pop-Up Alerts
1. Organizational Alerts
Schedule change
Request change status
Out of adherence
Serialized bid notification
Activity reminder
2. Campaign Alerts
Actual Service Level or ASA variation from Goal
Actual data versus forecast - Abandons, AHT, ASA, Backlog, CV, Occupancy, SL, Staffing Bodies, FTEs, Dials, Connects, CR and RPC
Actual data versus defined range
System Alerts

36. New method of delivering alerts in addition to e-mail
Screen Pop Alerts
New method of delivering alerts in addition to
Benefit: Does not require users to be logged into their systems or into Impact 360 to be notified of events, activities, schedule changes or when key metrics deviate from plan or forecast.

37. Monitor the ‘Pulse’ of the Contact Centre
Gain Near Real-time Visibility
Spot and respond to events in real-time
Track and compare actual, forecasted and required statistics
View intra-day trends and historical data

38. Overtime and Vol Time Off
Resolve intraday under and over staffing
with OT and VTO Events and Rescheduling
Quickly address intraday understaffing and overstaffing issues
Intraday reforecast & rescheduling
Scheduling OT / VTO using employee rank, seniority or preferences

39. Adherence – Quick Snap Shot
“One fewer agent = 60% increase in Average Speed to Answer for a 50-agent contact center
- The Call Center School

40. Web Self Service
                 

41. Web Self Service Agent preferences based scheduling
Schedule viewing and publishing
Full and Partial Shift Swap
Performance-enabled Shift Bidding
Time off Management
Unified interface for WFM, Scorecards and Learning
Easy to use
“For every 1% increase in agent satisfaction, customer satisfaction increases 0.53%”
- Gartner

42. Capture Agent Preferences
Improve Agent Satisfaction 1 2 3
Capture Agent Preferences
Indicate start-time preference for each day of the week
Indicate desired day(s) off in a week
Weigh importance of days off vs. start time

43. Automate Agent Activities
Automate agent requests for shift swaps & time off
Agents can post partial shift swap requests
Agents can request time off down to 15 minutes*
Track all times off

44. Increase Agent Satisfaction and Supervisor Productivity
Leave Management
Increase Agent Satisfaction and Supervisor Productivity
Approved time off can be withdrawn and a wait list of time off requests will be maintained for substitution.
Waitlist can be automatically sorted by the user’s criteria and processed when a change in time off has occurred.
Two new reports
Withdrawn requests
Waitlisted Requests

45. Improve Agent Satisfaction and Center Productivity
Shift Bidding
Improve Agent Satisfaction and Center Productivity
Shift Bidding + Performance

46. Improve Agent Satisfaction and Center Productivity
Shift Bidding
Improve Agent Satisfaction and Center Productivity

47. Workforce Optimisation
                 

48. Web Self Service

49. Unique WFM Integrations
Include quality scores in scheduling
Drill to interaction from adherence
Optimal scheduling of integrated eLearning
Drill to adherence from Scorecards
Pre-Integrated Suite of Applications

50. Thank You