Now is a Better Time Than Ever to Update from Manual to Automated Forecasting Models

Even in the best of times, determining the right staffing levels needed to keep a contact center operating efficiently while adequately meeting customer demand is a delicate balancing act. Staffing too many agents needlessly drives up costs: staffing too few at peak times causes service levels to suffer. The first step in making informed forecasting calculations is to accurately estimate the volume of calls coming into a business’s contact center. Of course, this is easier said than done, particularly in an environment where many organizations are experiencing dramatic call spikes driven by concerned and often panicked customers.

While there are many ways a company can try to figure out the number of calls coming into the contact center, the method will ultimately depend on which sources of information to which it has access. Obviously, the most effective way would be to obtain an accurate calls-per-day figure from an Automated Call Distribution (ACD) system. But even though these systems have proliferated over the years, far from every company that could benefit from such a solution has one in place. For many businesses that do not have an ACD or effective call logging solution, the option becomes simply asking staff to manually log the number of calls coming in.

Trying to match agent availability and skills with staffing needs while keeping track of work hour limits and labor costs is a daunting task, especially when done manually or with Excel spreadsheets. Some companies still employ downloadable templates to do their scheduling in Excel, often employing Erlang C formulas.

While using Excel can be a viable option for some smaller companies, it can turn into a tedious, time-consuming and inefficient process, particularly when there is a need to scale up rapidly. Making it all work is dependent on the contributions of a few lead users who have the requisite knowledge and system access. These lead users must frequently create new tables or worksheets …sometimes entire new files…to set up new staff groups, forecast time periods, call types, forecast variables, or forecast methodologies, These files then must be stored and linked together. If they include elements an entire team to needs to access, the files must be stored on network shared drives. In addition, spreadsheets tend to get progressively more complex, hard to maintain and error-prone

In an evolving period that calls for rapid response and flexibility, businesses are becoming increasingly frustrated with the limitations of Excel and are now seeking a simplified and more accurate planning process. Contact center managers and executives are seeking to find ways to connecting themselves with the tools that can take their WFM practice to the next level. Now they can take advantage of a focused educational presentation to help them expedite the timetable to understanding and implementing a more time-effective solution.

Genesys will present a complimentary tutorial “Best Forecasting Methods In the 21^st Century.” on CrmXchange. The webcast, scheduled for Thursday, May 28^th at 1:00pm ET. will be led by Shawn McCormick, Senior Solution Architect, Genesys. Shawn brings to the table more than two decades of experience supporting the Workforce Management/Workforce Engagement needs of companies of all sizes from just about every industry sector. He started his career as a manager doing scheduling on paper from a forecast sent down from corporate and thus respects the tradition while embracing the enhanced possibilities offered by WFM technology.

Among the topics he will delve into are a review of what is actually possible and how automated forecasting plays a role in preserving business continuity. This includes:

• Considerations for the manual planning processes and the perspective of faithful Excel users
• If automation is right for a specific company – what needs to be looked at to make the correct assessment
• How the use of AI enables businesses to perform the planning process more accurately and rapidly than ever.

Register now for this topical webcast: if you are unable to attend the live presentation, a link will be posted 24 hours later to allow you to access it.

 

 

 

 

An Online In-Depth Education Program Without the Cost and Inconvenience of Traditional Live Conferences

While there are numerous quality live conferences in the CX/contact center space that delve into workforce optimization, attending these events often entails a series of complex decisions. First, you must determine if it includes enough seminars that are relevant to your specific needs and exhibitors with the right solutions to advance your program. Then, you need to obtain approval and funding, plan the details of the trip and make sure all your responsibilities are covered while you are away. While some consider traveling to an event a welcome break from routine, others find it a time-consuming, expensive disruption that they simply can’t justify.

The need for ongoing education in this critical operational area continues to grow. Over the past 12 years, an increasing number of workforce planning professionals have found a flexible, no-cost, no-travel alternative in CrmXchange’s annual online Best Practices in Workforce Optimization virtual conference, produced in conjunction with the Quality Assurance and Training Connection (QATC) and the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP).

Over the past two years, the event has been expanded to provide even more in-depth education. For 2019, it will take place the first two weeks of November, with the first week (November 4-8) focusing on QA and Analytics and the second (November 11-15) examining strategies for Workforce Management and Performance Optimization.

The enhanced conference content reflects the evolution of how contact centers now approach workforce planning responsibilities. It used to be handled in independent groups, with one team handling quality assurance, another conducting training, and yet another developing agent schedules. Supervisors often tried to do coaching with no input from other functional areas, while managers simply ran and reacted to reports. But this disconnected approach no longer works in today’s complex, omnichannel contact center environments. Workforce Optimization is a wide-ranging field that now encompasses all these elements as a unified discipline. And the CrmXchange virtual conference provides WFO professionals with the year’s most convenient and comprehensive opportunity to gain greater insights on the latest technologies, tactics and best practices.

Attendees have the opportunity to meet in real time with industry experts and colleagues who can answer their questions and offer business solutions tailored to their contact centers, without the cost and time away from the office of an on-site conference. Anyone can attend learning sessions the same way they would in an on-site conference.

The format allows entire WFO teams to share newly acquired knowledge throughout an organization. Team members can attend live sessions together or attend different session tracks. All sessions will be recorded and available on demand for one week after the conference – giving those who could not attend the initial presentation the opportunity to view the sessions later.

In addition, attendees can visit the virtual exhibit hall to download product videos, and obtain product information, press releases, white papers, and much more. Sponsors, including Calabrio, CallMiner, NICE, NICE inContact and Verint, are ready to share the latest innovations that may benefit your contact center.

And while you can’t sit down over a drink after hours, you can still chat with presenters and peers in the virtual lounge, a specially designed virtual networking forum for registered members of this online event. Learn what others are doing, meet colleagues, pose questions, and offer your own insight.

The Best Practices in Workforce Optimization virtual conference kicks off on Monday, November 4 at 12 noon ET with a high-interest keynote address Building a Customer Experience Movement which examines the true elements required to create a culture-changing CX program that is built to last. It will be presented by Nate Brown, Co-Founder of CX Accelerator, a virtual community of customer experience professionals.

Join the thousands of industry executives who have already benefited from this powerful complimentary two week online conference Register now and check out the broad ranging agenda.

Trends in Agent Empowerment

Although businesses highlight the importance of customer service and retention, customer service managers continue to report an overwhelming amount of issues. Alarming turnover rates, frustrated workers, inefficiency and inadequacy are some of the issues plaguing contact centers today. The root of the problem? Agent success, or lack thereof.

Think about it – when employees feel they are working efficiently, effectively, and with constant support from supervisors, they work harder. In contact centers today, agents feel frustrated. Too often, contact centers will use outdated software, leading agents to become frustrated and be less efficient with their time. The lack of support from supervisors is apparent, while agents rarely have any means to track their progress, leaving the agent confused and directionless. To top it off, outdated technology used by most contact centers is mismatched with the technology used by the general public today including SMS & MMS text, live chat (not with a robot), social media, and way more.

It is time for contact centers to put their agents’ success first in their line of priorities. In order to do this, they must focus on empowering their agents. What exactly does agent empowerment look like? Empowered agents have access to the tools they need to do an excellent job, are fully supported by their supervisors, are capable of making decisions for themselves, and are well respected by their colleagues.

Millennials entering the workforce place a high value on employee empowerment whether in the contact center, or in another industry. It’s simple – they want to feel supported, respected, and feel as though they have the tools they need to be successful and effective. These tools include a way to track progress, up-to-date technology, effective training programs and constant feedback.

Sharpen has developed a holistic solution designed to eliminate common inefficiencies that ultimately impact the agent, their quality of life, and their ability to provide a perfect customer experience. Check out their webcast on August 2 as they discuss key trends driving new opportunities for agent empowerment, and how contact centers can take advantage ASAP to improve their agents’ experience.

4 Contact Center Tips for Forecasting and Analyzing Data

Picture this: there’s a sudden spike in call volume, but you don’t have enough agents to handle it. Wait times increase and customers become dissatisfied. You get on top of the problem as quickly as possible and scale your workforce up to handle the demand. Soon, call volume evens out again, and now you’re over-staffed and draining your budget.

Improving forecast accuracy can limit these scenarios. Data, history and experience, combined with your own judgement and common sense, make forecasting much more accurate and predictable. A quality system will combine historic data with real-time data for accurate forecasting.

Here’s how to improve your forecasting:

1. Choose quality forecasting software.

Your forecasting software should gather historical data from the past two years to show you daily, monthly and seasonal patterns and trends. It should then monitor performance, document results, and continue to measure and evaluate data on a recurring schedule. Most importantly, your software should repeat this process ­– the repetition is what makes the forecasting so accurate and dependable.

2. Look at both data overviews and specific segments.

Look at historical data, which will give you an overview of NCO and handle time. Also view data in hour, day and month formats. Continue to break data down to view it differently – turn monthly forecasts into daily forecasts, daily into hourly, and hourly into half hour views.

3. Compare one month to the same month last year.

Point estimates are too simplistic an approach when it comes to contact center forecasting. A point in the future won’t necessarily match the same point in the past, even if it’s the same hour, day and month of the year. You have to look closely to determine if any data is out of the ordinary, and a good start is to compare this year’s month to last year’s month (i.e. January 2018 to January 2017).

4. Don’t ignore aberrations.

Investigate data that’s exceptionally high or low to figure out if it was caused by a one-off event or if you should be prepared for a regular occurrence. Situations that affect call volume include:

• Billing cycles
• Business mergers
• Change in hours of operation
• Competitor activity
• Holidays
• Marketing campaigns
• New technology implementation
• Planned maintenance sessions
• Weather and natural disasters

Balance customer demand with staffing numbers to keep costs low while managing wait times and ensuring customers satisfaction.

 

Dos and Don’ts of Contact Center Forecasting

 

Forecasting may just be the cornerstone of contact center success. The accuracy of forecasting can affect service level, average speed of answer (ASA) time and occupancy. Though contact center forecasting varies by industry, there are some core principles that just about every organization should follow.

3 Dos of Contact Center Forecasting

Do start with a historical baseline.

Your historical data is what you’ll use to predict the future. You’ll get an idea of what your forecast is going to look like. Then, you can start adding in changes as needed, like as you track productivity changes. By starting with a solid basis, you’ll have a better view of how every change impacts the forecast.

Do use forecasting technology.

The old school way of handling contact center forecasting just won’t work anymore – spreadsheets, no matter how detailed, aren’t smart enough to record and manipulate data. The more inputs you have that affect the forecast, the more you’ll need to rely on modern, smart technology that will communicate results in a way that you can act on.

Do understand that accuracy will change with time.

The farther out you forecast, the less accurate your forecast is going to be. A forecast for the next 30 days is going to be more accurate than a forecast for the next 90 days. Accepting that this is a reality and being transparent about it when discussing forecasting with management will give you credibility.

2 Don’ts of Contact Center Forecasting

Don’t create a target based on a blanket statistic.

If an executive says something along the lines of, “At my last contact center, we had 95% accuracy – let’s aim for that,” it’s important to know why that won’t translate to your contact center. A sweeping statistic like that doesn’t account for details like the specific metric measured or the frequency at which it was measured.

Don’t get hung up on averages.

Averages can be misleading because they can make things seem more placid than they are. Forecasting requires information that will help management make real decisions, not information that’s been watered down so that it’s easier to understand.

Contact center forecasting combines science with creativity. Processing data is the easy part. Figuring out how to add subjective changes requires more creative thinking. Knowing what to expect and what to avoid from the get-go is the best place to start.

Dos and Don’ts of Contact Center Forecasting

Forecasting may just be the cornerstone of contact center success. The accuracy of forecasting can affect service level, average speed of answer (ASA) time and occupancy. Though contact center forecasting varies by industry, there are some core principles that just about every organization should follow.

3 Dos of Contact Center Forecasting

Do start with a historical baseline.

Your historical data is what you’ll use to predict the future. You’ll get an idea of what your forecast is going to look like. Then, you can start adding in changes as needed, like as you track productivity changes. By starting with a solid basis, you’ll have a better view of how every change impacts the forecast.

Do use forecasting technology.

The old school way of handling contact center forecasting just won’t work anymore – spreadsheets, no matter how detailed, aren’t smart enough to record and manipulate data. The more inputs you have that affect the forecast, the more you’ll need to rely on modern, smart technology that will communicate results in a way that you can act on.

Do understand that accuracy will change with time.

The farther out you forecast, the less accurate your forecast is going to be. A forecast for the next 30 days is going to be more accurate than a forecast for the next 90 days. Accepting that this is a reality and being transparent about it when discussing forecasting with management will give you credibility.

2 Don’ts of Contact Center Forecasting

Don’t create a target based on a blanket statistic.

If an executive says something along the lines of, “At my last contact center, we had 95% accuracy – let’s aim for that,” it’s important to know why that won’t translate to your contact center. A sweeping statistic like that doesn’t account for details like the specific metric measured or the frequency at which it was measured.

Don’t get hung up on averages.

Averages can be misleading because they can make things seem more placid than they are. Forecasting requires information that will help management make real decisions, not information that’s been watered down so that it’s easier to understand.

Contact center forecasting combines science with creativity. Processing data is the easy part. Figuring out how to add subjective changes requires more creative thinking. Knowing what to expect and what to avoid from the get-go is the best place to start.

 

10 Ways to Optimize Contact Center Scheduling

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Contact center scheduling is one of a manager’s more difficult tasks. Forecasting and scheduling requires everything from data analysis to keeping track of employee preferences and availability. Agent turnover, new communication channels and fluctuations with call volume make the process even more complex. Here are 10 bite-sized tips for optimizing contact center scheduling.

1. When hiring new agents, have an idea of your schedule blind spots and then only consider applicants who have matching availability.
2. Your top agents should be available during normal working hours (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) in the time zone of your primary customer base.
3. Let some of your agents choose their own schedule. For example, you can give them the option to work longer hours on fewer days or to change their start and end times based on contact center need.
4. If you’re finding it difficult to get enough agents in the contact center during peak times, consider using incentives, like flex scheduling, a competition and reward system.
5. On top of call metrics, you should also analyze non-call activities, including after-call work, training and coaching time, and break length, to get a well-rounded idea of forecasting and scheduling.
6. Use your contact center software’s dashboard to monitor real-time reporting. You’ll be able to change schedules on-the-fly. For example, you can make adjustments to break times, meetings and training classes to adapt to current needs.
7. Don’t schedule agents based on availability alone – also account for skill level, specialization and types of communication that need to be handled.
8. Allow your agents to swap schedules, so long as the agent they’re switching shifts with has the same skill set. Giving employees schedule flexibility can improve focus and company loyalty.
9. Keep a reserve of agents on-call so that you can have extra help at the ready in case contact volume quickly increases. Make it possible for these agents to work from home instead of requiring them to come in.
10. The right schedule will only work well if it’s adhered to. Monitor for adherence and handle issues that you notice before revamping the schedule.

By not paying close attention to contact center scheduling or relying on outdated techniques and processes, you run the risk of negatively impacting your team while raising costs. Though a definite challenge, managers should approach forecasting and scheduling in an organized, vigilant way.

When is it Time to Ditch the Old Contact Center Forecast?

This blog is contributed by Ric Kosiba, Interactive Intelligence

My last post discussed the attributes of a good contact center resource plan. We hinted at another aspect of contact center planning—that it truly is itself a process—and I wanted to elaborate here. In the 1990’s, a company would put together a plan and a budget for January and use it to restrict all additional resources and spending for the next twelve months– which is why “The Budget” was so important.

Over the last 10 years businesses have recognized that as operations change, business resourcing might also change. But the question we have to ask is when does an operation change so much that it is time to alter the previously sacrosanct budget?

The short answer is this: you alter the operational plan when it becomes too risky or too costly not to. But how do contact center planners know it is time?

Here are some guidelines for evaluating when it is time to change your forecasts:

1. Monitor the plan for variance: Important performance drivers change, and it is up to the contact center planners to monitor and determine how much the real-world varies from the “planned-world”. Items to monitor include contact volumes, handle times, agent attrition, agent sick time, outbound contact rates, sales or payment rates, and customer experience scores.
2. Determine the impact of the variance to the network’s performance: It is important to determine whether the variance is significant. Sensitivity analysis graphs are perfect for this. These graphs show the relationship between a performance driver and performance. For instance, it would make sense to plot volumes (if there is volume variance) against service level. If the volume difference takes the company far from its goals, then something needs to change. Simulation modeling is great for providing variance graphs.
3. Reforecast and determine the range of “possibilities”: When important metrics, like call volumes, start to vary from the forecast it means that something is changing in the real world affecting that metric (it doesn’t always mean “the forecast is off”). New forecasts can be developed, but given that the particular metric is changing, it also makes sense to put bounds around the possible changes associated with that metric. Confidence levels might help determine “the possibilities”.
4. Determine the effects of different management responses: Significant variance to performance drivers requires a management response. Executives should be shown, via an operational simulation model, the effect of the possible alternative resource decisions. If we assume the forecasts will come back into the “normal”, but they don’t, what will be the service performance? If we decide to staff for the worst-case scenario, what will be the costs if forecasts do come back into line? These are possibilities because, well, the future is hard to predict!
5. Choose the resourcing decision that is appropriate for your company’s risk tolerance: Is your company focused on costs? Service delivery? Revenues? Choose the resource plan and forecast assumption that minimizes your operational risk.

We are excited about this year’s educational webinar series titled, Contact Center Forecasting, Planning, and What-if Analyses. We’ll discuss the forecasting and operational risk in more detail, along with tips and tricks about how to put together a great plan. Please feel free to join us for our first webcast on February 24th.