I have a dream …..

Challenges of Managing High Performing Workforce

Management  in Today's Complex Environment

Chantal GagnéDirector – Bell Canada Workforce ManagementMay 11, 2006

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…… or is it a Nightmare?

Impact of

Growth inherent to an evolving telecommunication industry

Change in economic conditions

Advertising

“Self-serve” applications (WEB and IVR)

Productivity initiatives

Increased outsourcing

Calls transfer from Vendors and in-house agents

An outsourcing model per call type

Work Volume Forecast

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Before, forecast was done at this level and variability

managed globally

With each vendor constraints, forecasts are managed at this

level, increasing call variability and vendor volume

unbalance

With increasing vendor call type handling constraints, call variability across vendors increases and service level unbalance can grow if this variability

cannot be mitigated

FROMFROM

TOTO

EXAMPLE OF CALL TYPE BREAKDOWN

…… or is it a Nightmare?

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KEY CONSIDERATIONS:

• An internal tool was developed to better plan call type allocation by vendor, taking into account each vendor’s particularities and constraints

• HOWEVER, even though this tool helps better plan each vendor’s allocation, it does not prevent increase call forecast variability as it’s broken down into smaller pieces

• With each vendor’s constraints, they get a higher percentage of only few own call type• By managing only few call types, it also puts at risk service level for individual call types as

if there is an outage for only one product, only few vendors will handle the spike of calls.• Overall service level unbalance will happen more often.

What a dream !

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Talking in my sleep…

Need to find the right balance between skills based scheduling and employee satisfaction:

Full skills based scheduling violates employee seniority, thus violating employees’ preferences

On the other hand, not using skills and having only one scheduling group will increase employee satisfaction but will not match efficiently force to load

Get to the right staffing plan and maximize occupancy through call overflow across skill groups is a very long and tedious work and often requires simulation

Even once the right staffing plan has been built, staff shrinkage variability across skill groups can lead to an inefficient staffing plan.

The Challenge of Staff Planning in Skills Based Routing Environment

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Sweet dreams are made of these…

What should we target for Service Level? (for non-regulated LOBs)

What is the real cost of poor service level performance?

Are customer really calling back ?

What are the impact on revenue and customer retention?

What are the cost of trunk utilization?

What should be the operating hours?

What should be the occupancy?

Benchmark corresponding to our reality

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Sweet dreams are made of these…

Blend Environment

Inbound and Outbound calls : the 2 call types handled by different channels (in-house vs vendor)

“Voice” contact and e-contact

Balance between training costs for “Mass” agents & implementation of smaller specialized queues (staffing and scheduling in a SBR environment)

Schedules matching force to load while minimizing impact on employee work conditions (retention)

Ratio and working conditions of part time resources and forecasted needs for flexibility…

Recruitment of specialized WFM resources that can take up intellectual challenges in a fast-pace business environment

Optimal Workforce Management

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Sweet dreams are made of these…

Best model ? Should outsourcers be added to our network to benefit from overflow capabilities or be on a separate network?

Contract needs to support the model

Model to provide FTE required

Existing software : evaluation of quality and of the promised savings (Scheduling and Call Routing systems)

Process improvement to support/optimize implementation of technology

Continuous improvement of the voice response system to reduce misdirected calls, increase “self-serve” options and satisfy customers

Technology

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Wake me up before you go !

Thank you