Workforce Management
Datapoint provides a range of workforce management solutions. All are stand alone solutions however some have been developed to have tight integration with broader performance optimisation portfolios, campaign management solutions or routing platforms, each of which bring additional benefits. Web service interfaces are also now available to enable integration with third party applications such as HR/payroll.
WFM’s core functionality is to forecast staffing levels, flexibly manage single and multi skilled agent schedules, and accurately track performance against service and campaign goals in multi-site and multi-channel call centres. This results in having the right agents, with the right skills, at the right time and helps with planning and managing the performance of inbound, blended and outbound staffing resources to deal with inbound/outbound calls, web chat sessions, emails and fax.
The solutions Datapoint offers can scale from 50 seats up to global estates of 10,000 positions.Planning Tools For Resourcing Strategies
All the solutions Datapoint provide include powerful strategic “what if” analysis tools for evaluating multiple staffing scenarios. This “what-if” analysis provides the flexibility to compare different forecasting, scheduling and intraday staffing scenarios including planned and unplanned factors such as service levels, growth rates or new product launches.
An unlimited number of scenarios can be created to test any number of scenarios, such as determining the impact that operational changes, marketing initiatives and planned training will have on inbound, outbound and blended campaign activity.
Multi skilling can be factored in, to not only generate optimal forecasts and schedules, but also to identify staffing requirements and optimal skill combinations based on agents’ skill sets and skills-based routing strategies. Some solutions also include an integrated personnel planner to help develop associated recruitment plans and staffing budgets to meet future needs.Multi Site and Virtualised Estate Planning
All solutions enable the planning and scheduling of multi site call centers. They can factor in how calls will flow to every site, based on agent availability and skill groups and also how calls will be delivered by the ACD at each site and the impact that carrier network call routing has on workload allocation.
Virtualised call center planning is also catered for taking into account network call delivery policies and their impact on skills scheduled at each site. Some solutions can also provide data on site call handling capacity to intelligent call routing systems.
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Most call centres maintain separate systems for contact routing and workforce management. This means that updates to agent skills must first be made in the contact routing system, and then be manually updated in the workforce management system. Some integrated solutions can update historical data and agent skills across all contact types and locations automatically synchronising them in real time. This gives planners the highest level of accuracy and eliminates the costly and time-consuming process of manually updating agent skill-set changes.Options In Forecasting Capability
In line with strategic planning capabilities, the solutions enable multi skill, multi site and multi channel forecasting for inbound, blended and outbound traffic. They can accurately forecast traffic volumes and handling times over each time interval from historical contact patterns.
From this they can calculate staffing requirements for each contact type, according to the defined service level targets such as, average speed of answer, maximum agent occupancy and maximum abandonment percentage and the different expectations for response times per media type such as email. Service level targets can vary by time of day, by contact type or queue, and by site.
They can take into account all relevant data, including historical contact volumes, seasonal patterns, campaign completion rates and holiday variations. Data can be weighted to give emphasis to recent history or create an equal average over several weeks and is able to exclude data that is statistically unusual to deliver accurate forecasts.
Forecasting models can merge historical data with current data and provide time based views segmented into monthly, daily, half hourly, or even in quarter-hourly periods. From this the optimal number of agents can be calculated to handle contacts for each intra-day period. In some solutions contact volume and staffing requirements are also automatically translated into their associated costs, making financial planning easier and faster.Forecasting In Blended Environments
Some solutions add extra value for outbound and blended forecasting by taking into account relevant outbound and blended data, including historical contact volume and campaign patterns, such as right and wrong-party connect ratios, as well as campaign list sizes and numbers of passes. Associated best-time-to-call applications provide further sophistication in fine tuning intraday adjustments in order to improve list penetration and effectiveness rates.
For blended and multi channel environments, these solutions use sophisticated outbound forecasting algorithms to calculate multi channel staffing requirements and optimal skill combinations based on agents’ skill sets, skills-based routing technologies, contact volume projections and campaign goals. For multi-skilled call centres, ACD call routing rules can be simulated so staffing requirements reflect efficiency gains from multi-skilling. Network rules can also be simulated and factored in for accurate forecasts across multiple sites that share contacts.
Options In Schedule Design
Schedules can be based on employee preferences, shift templates, contractual agreements or a combination. Outbound campaigns can factor in additional elements such as forecasted campaign requirements. They can calculate optimised times for meetings, training and other off-phone activities. In some solutions, trial schedules can be created before making the most desired schedules official. Individual employees can be manually or automatically assigned to trial schedules based on seniority, skills or start time.
Schedules can be unique from day to day, be copied from previous weeks, or rotate in custom patterns. They can span over midnight and end-of-week boundaries, and accounts for overhead, weekend fairness and other parameters.
Some solutions recognise the need for agent involvement and the benefit this brings downstream in adherence rates. Agents can rank their shift preferences, including desired start time, end time, lunch time, number of days to work, days off and requests for time off. The scheduling system then automatically assigns each agent to the schedule that best meets their preferences, automatically accounting for seniority or other ranking criteria.
Agent Involvement In Schedule Selection
A more dynamic version of this allows agents to select their shifts from generated schedules, according to the work and bidding rules specified. Bidding can be managed by seniority or other ranking criteria, by work team, and by full-time, part-time or other schedule type.
Once bidding is complete, the assigned schedules can be applied to future weeks, until the next scheduled bidding cycle. This is ideal for contact center environments where contact volumes are more predictable and schedule bidding allows agents maximum choice and predictability for their time at work. In some solutions agents can trade their schedules with one another, individually or within their community.
Trades can even be automatically transferred between agents without supervisor approval using defined parameters such as trades with common skill-sets or within certain timeslots to increase efficiency and reduce administrative costs, while trades outside defined parameters will automatically be sent to a supervisor for approval.
Managing schedules can be via graphic interfaces. Activities can quickly be added, deleted, or rescheduled simply by dragging and dropping icons. Supervisors can also modify schedules in a variety of ways, using bulk editing, filtering and sorting capabilities to simplify schedule management. To increase efficiency, agents and supervisors can automatically receive e-mail updates on actions such as schedule modifications and time-off and trade requests.
Tools For Tracking Adherence
Adherence enables performance tracking by comparing actual versus forecasted contact and staffing statistics for both inbound, outbound or blended resources. As new performance data is generated, dashboards are regularly updated so that corrective changes can be easily made to keep the staffing plan on track. Some solutions provide visual alerts to enable supervisors to respond quickly if variances exceed specified levels.
Outbound tracking comparing actual versus forecasted right party contact data and staffing statistics is handled in a similar way. Datapoint can provide interfaces and system integration skills for enable real-time data feeds from ACD vendor equipment.
Intra day time lines of individual agent schedules provide overview coverage of activities. Other views show how many agents are scheduled to be involved in an activity at any given time to easily identify agents available for reassignment. Unexpected overstaffing can be catered for by assigning offline work to extra agents or conversely unexpected understaffing can be reacted to by canceling meetings or calling in reserve agents.
Multi Site Tracking
Complex multi site operations are catered for in that the solutions can accommodate multiple supervisors making simultaneous adjustments and immediately communicating these changes to all affected users. Geographically separated offices can operate as a single team. Thousands of employees can be a single call-handling team or set up as multiple teams. Large teams can be split into multiple groups within a single call center or across call centers.
Some solutions that offer tight integration with universal routing systems can futher further enhance agent schedule adherence by instructing the router to send interactions to an agent only if, for example, that agent is scheduled to work on that type of activity and is not on break at that time. Workforce routing can also be used to schedule multi-skilled agents to handle the overflow from other contact types during a given period in order to meet service-level objectives.
Reporting
The solutions provide comprehensive reporting with audit trails, analysis tools and a wide range of customisable tabular and graphical reports. These cover every aspect of work generated during the prior phases of planning, forecasting, scheduling, and tracking. They can provide overviews and drill down analysis combining any set of variables. Data can also be easily exported to third-party applications such as spreadsheets for further analysis.
Managers of multiple locations can also configure reports in the local time zone of each site to get the most accurate views.
System Administration
Group and individual access rights allow full flexibility in controlling the level of information and functionality offered to every user in the system. Many rudimentary administrative tasks, such as moving agents (along with their schedules, preferences, etc.) between groups, are easily accomplished using a wide range of timesaving utilities.
Comprehensive auditing features provide a detailed historical record, by Login ID, of access granted and modifications made. System administrator functions are fully accessible from any browser. The easy-to-use browser-based interface gives planners, supervisors and agents convenient access to tools for specific tasks such as building and viewing schedules, creating and manipulating forecasts, managing schedule trade and time off requests, and generating reports.
Integration to other systems such as HR systems or e-learning systems allow managers and supervisors to use this data to calculate payroll and import agent schedule exceptions.
In addition to provides the technical solutions, Datapoint provides a range of consulting and support services for workforce management.
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