The First Contact Pays

Problem description

Initially, eighteen agents were employed at Volksfuersorge central call center. Their schedules were created based on requirements, which the planners obtained using Erlang C formula in Excel tables. “Request lists served for incorporating employees’ shift preferences in the scheduling procedure. However, the requirement was not known to the employees and they could thus not take this into consideration when making requests”, relates Marco Quoohs, Administrator in the Service Center department. Planners always took changes to the calculated call volume into account but not changes to the employee requirement. To ensure adequate staffing a large over-capacity of employees was scheduled, leading to high personnel costs. In addition, the scheduling procedure was very time-consuming: two group leaders required a full week to create the work schedule for one month.

Decision for a Workforce Management System

In order to reduce employee scheduling expense, the Service Center project team decided to invest in a workforce management system. During an extensive market analysis, emphasis was placed on a system that would allow employees to participate in the scheduling and therefore be highly appreciated by them. Thus, the decision was made to purchase InVision’s Staff Planning System, mainly because its Infothek module offers call center agents an excellent tool for influencing the shift scheduling procedure, according to their individual preferences.

Project description

Implementation of the InVision Staff Planning System

The implementation of a new system often creates uneasiness in employees. Fortunately in the case of Volksfuersorge this could be largely avoided. After SPS was installed in collaboration between InVision and the Volksfuersorge planners, the Service Center employees used the next months to familiarize themselves with the system and to adjust all of the parameters to conform to the company’s rules and requirements. Half a year after the installation, Marco Quoohs made a detailed presentation to his colleagues, explaining scheduling process and operation of the InVision SPS. For example consequences of schedules that do not correspond to the requirement were demonstrated using a callback and recall analysis. A high degree of agent approval for using the software in future scheduling was thus achieved.

Nevertheless, at the beginning there were several challenges. Marco Quoohs remembers “the numerous nuts and bolts with which one can make adjustments in the system. Although the basic training helps understand the scheduling procedure, the first weeks of trying to utilize the software on one’s own can be difficult.” More and more, however, the planners learned to appreciate the numerous setting possibilities so that now almost the full function palette of the software is utilized by Volksfuersorge.

Maintained Master Data as the Scheduling Basis

An employment schedule that is exactly matched to work volume and employee requirements, demands more than neatly saved employee master data. Data relating to company structure and activities, shift types and skills used in the call center, need cautious maintaining as well. The minimum shift requirement that is calculated by SPS for Volksfuersorge Service Center is based on the available personnel capacity. Per day a minimum of 36 different shifts are created, a number that is increased automatically by SPS when necessary. The shifts start and end in half-hour intervals and have durations of between four and nine hours. Furthermore, the system ensures that not only the correct number of employees but also those employees with the required skills are scheduled. For example, an agent who has the ability of processing e-mails, receives the additional skill “e-mail” in his data record. Data pertaining to the definition of absence types, such as vacation, is also kept in the SPS master data storage.

Workload Forecast

In Volksfuersorge Service Center each calendar month is scheduled as a block and the final schedule is released at least one week before the month starts. This means that the forecast of employee requirements (ca. one hour’s work) must be performed early in the previous month, for example, on the 8th of June for the month of July. Thereby, the call center’s historical call volume and call distribution throughout weeks and days will be loaded from the call center’s telephone system into SPS database. This data is then processed in another SPS module, ForecastPro. A planner can modify the data, taking numerous factors into account. His personal experience, special events, mailing campaigns or a higher expected call volume due to changes in the insurance market, could be an example. This allows the forecast to be adjusted to new influencing conditions. As soon as all data and parameters have been finalized, the number of shifts needed to cover the expected month’s workload, will be calculated. The planner will then permit the employees to request these shifts utilizing Infothek.

Agents influence the Scheduling Procedure

All sixty agents have individual access to InVision SPS. By logging in, each employee can view the exact shifts that are relevant for him, i.e. that are compatible with his contract, skills and times for which he is available. The agents now have one week (in our example until June 15th) to enter their shift requests for the coming month into Infothek. They can also enter alternative requests in case it is not possible to have their first choice. It does not make a difference in his chances of receiving one particular shift, at what day of the week an employee makes his selections in the Infothek. After the request period is over all shift requests will be considered equally by the system during lottery and shift assignment. The results will then be monitored by the capacity planners. They move or change individual shifts when required, before a preliminary schedule is supplied to all employees of the Service Center, in our example on the 19th of June. The employees view this schedule and request changes to their shift assignments. A report is also made available, displaying calculated employee requirements and their coverage obtained through the preliminary schedule. Each agent can estimate the chances of receiving any additional shift request by viewing this data. The employees inform the team leader of their new requests or modifications and he will incorporate these into the schedule. On the 22nd of June, the final schedule for July can be distributed. The result of this optimized scheduling procedure for Volksfuersorge Service Center: the forecaster and planner can perform the scheduling in two work days in total, while on average between 80 to 90 percent of all shift requests can be fulfilled.

Requirement Oriented Scheduling

InVision SPS’ core task is creating the schedule, i.e. assigning employees to the required shifts. Complete employee schedules are created on the basis of previously calculated shift requirements and requests entered in the Infothek module. Schedule data can be displayed in various formats, allowing easy analysis of surplus or inadequate coverage as well as vacation scheduling and substitute search.

The only Volksfuersorge Call Center employees who can not be flexibly scheduled by means of the Infothek method are students and interns who can only work at fixed times on two days and thus, must be put onto fixed shifts. Fixed shift assignment is one of the methods of shift scheduling that can be used within the InVision SPS in addition to the requirement based lottery procedure.

Monitoring

OnlineCockpit is a module to enable Volksfuersorge Service Center planners to extensively monitor scheduling results. Displaying staff requirement and its coverage is hereby of prime relevance. As mentioned earlier, this data aids employees in deciding which shift or vacation requests are worth making after viewing the preliminary schedule. Esport of SPS data into external applications is also supported, allowing it to be compared and balanced with other figures in order to take additional requirements into consideration. This makes it possible to determine for example, whether a short team meeting will have an effect on the desired service level. Such information will influence future scheduling procedures and enable the resulting schedules to be improved over time.

Results

Before using this workforce management solution, two planners had to work for one week to schedule 18 employees. Now these two planners require only two days to schedule 60 employees, a more than 8.3 fold improvement in scheduling efficiency. “Naturally introducing new software creates some complications, initially. These were completely solved, however, through InVision’s excellent hotline team. Now we are able to schedule most employees according to their requests and, at the same time, exactly in harmony with our requirement”, states Quoohs with satisfaction. Motivation is improved through reduction of stress (due to overwork) and boredom (due to lack of work). This effects the quality of service offered to both internal and external customers in an extremely positive way. Thus, the ambitious goal of satisfying the customer at the first contact can almost always be achieved at Volksfuersorge Service Center.