Work force optimization is viable for small call centers

Until recently, workforce optimization was very much the province of mid-size and large contact centers. Packages cost $100,000 plus and 100 agents or more was the sweet spot in terms of viability. In the past year, analysts revised that number down to about 60 seats. Below that number, they said, manual processes were manageable for forecasting and scheduling.

Interestingly, small contact center managers disagree. Orange County Credit Union (OCCU), for example, has 25 fulltime employees (FTEs) in its inbound call center. Using spreadsheets and manual methods resulted in inefficiency and poor service.

"We were making decisions on staffing levels and agent schedules with our blindfolds on," said Randy Stolp, assistant vice president of telephone services at OCCU. "When we understaffed, we failed to meet our service level agreements, and when we overstaffed, we reduced our profitability."

As OCCU and scores of other small contact centers have discovered, manual processes become unwieldy and inefficient when there are more than 20 agents. With less than 20 agents, it may be possible to get by using spreadsheets to schedule agents, and managers walking the floor can monitor the quality of customer service. However, once the call center is over 20 agents, these manual processes fall apart, forcing users to turn to workforce optimization technology for help.

Vendors agree

When I walked the aisles of the recent Annual Call Center Exhibition (ACCE) in Seattle, all the workforce management vendors were keen to talk about their solutions for the small business. All agreed that workforce optimization was a necessity for organizations of twenty of more seats.

That's why they are scrambling to meet this new demand. Most are now offering, or are gearing up to offer, products below the six-figure price zone - and in some cases, below $20,000. Envision, for example, has a workforce management application available for about $50,000 for 100 seats. According to a company spokesman, 50 seats is not cost effective right now as it costs much the same as the 100-seat version. However, the company plans to have a smaller package on the market for 50 seats within a couple of months.

IEX is around $30,000 for 50 seats, with more to pay for additional modules such as adherence, Web-based portals, multimedia blending and vacation planner. GMT says its pricing is about 30-40 percent less than Blue Pumpkin and Aspect. 50 seats works out a little more than $30,000 range. There is an additional module for real-time control that you pay more for. Symon said 50 seats cost $55,000. This includes ACD connection, agents browsers, real time adherence, installation and one year's maintenance.

Pipkins offers a hosted solution - the application is on a server hosted by Pipkins and customer pays monthly. This is a good option for highly seasonal traffic where a 20 center call center needs to go up to 100 reps for short periods as you only get charged for what you use. Billing is based on usage, not licenses. Some functions are missing, though, compared to when you buy and host the system on your own servers such as alert pop-ups to warn staff about schedule adherence, upcoming breaks etc. Once you get to 100 users or so, it is probably more cost effective to buy your own system. 50 seats on subscription costs $600 to $700 per month hosted, while a 50-seat system costs about $75,000.

Probably the most interesting of all the offerings, though, is Left Bank Solutions Monet Workforce Management System.

For less than $20,000, small contact centers can purchase the entire suite. While some vendors charge more for maintenance, additional modules and ACD connection, these are all included in the price of Monet. Further, it scales up to several hundred seats, at an additional cost of $150-$200 per seat.

Orange County Credit Union, for example, purchased the product for $17,000. According to OCCU's Stolp, that figure included the call center suite, a customized version to manage scheduling and forecasting in OCCU's seven branches, all the custom coding, installation and one year's maintenance. Next year, the cost will be $2,200 for maintenance, he says.

"We expect to save, at a minimum, the equivalent of one FTE, or $25,000 within the first year after implementing Monet," Stolp said. "Monet has eliminated the guesswork from our profitability analyses and scheduling, and can help us improve our service levels by at least 5 percent."

Small contact center

On Net Communications is a busy call center outsourcer located within the tranquil setting of Weardale in the northeast of England. Launched in January of 2004, it carries out work for various organisations but specializes in the local government and education sectors. The workload is currently split 60 percent outbound and 40 percent inbound. Over time, however, the ratio is shifting in favour of inbound call center operations.

This expanding company currently has 20 agents on its books - nine full-time staff and 11 part timers. It uses the most advanced multimedia technology and offers arange of customer contact management services.

Until a few months ago, On Net Communications used Excel spreadsheets to manage its internal operations. This involved repeated data entry and absorbed staff time. Further, human error became a fact of life due to the amount of manual keying and re-keying of information, schedules and campaign information.

"Administrative staff had to manually keep track of agent activity, campaign planning and calls volume trends," said Stanton. "This was time consuming and inefficient - amounting to twenty or more hours every week."

Planning and managing multiple campaigns at once was a real problem using On Net's old-fashioned system. As a result, planning was done on a somewhat haphazard basis. It was purely driven by estimates, and the company had no realtime adherence/facility at all. Further, manual reporting meant long hours and late nights for team leaders.

As an outsourcer, On Net Communications recognized the need for a program to help plan and monitor numerous campaigns at the same time. It selected Monet by Left Bank Solutions.

"In terms of administration, we have reduced hours spent on campaigns by 75 percent slim-lining from 20 hours per week down to five," said Stanton. "Monet has also dramatically eliminated the chances of human error and inaccuracies we suffered before."

On Net's technology platform consists of the following elements:

* Adaptive Messaging, which manages all inbound and outbound contacts utilizing Progressive and Predictive Dialers, Contact Blending, Screen- Popping and Automatic Response Handling.

* Call View, which produces automated and manual reports for any aspect of a campaign; historical and real-time reports can be compiled in graphical, statistical and tabular formats and exported into any medium, for example, email, spreadsheet or web browser.

* Intertel Axxess, a resilient call handling platform, VOIP with an Intertel programming studio that allows the company to configure the telephony on a system wide basis down to the individual key sets.

* Skill Map, which acts an interface with Intertel giving dynamic call routing to agent skill levels.

* SQL Server 2000, a relational database management system that stores, manipulates and outputs data in various formats.

* Monet, a workforce optimization system that effectively manages campaign forecasts including costs, staffing schedules and agent real-time adherence.

According to Stanton, workforce optimization has provided her with a wealth of features that help to reduce costs while heightening efficiency. The agent occupancy feature, for example, measures how busy agents are. It is expressed as a percentage of logged-in time that an agent is actually busy in talk or wrap-up time. The capability to forecast, modify and monitor a center's agent occupancy rates is displayed next to the current call history and service level objectives. This allows for even greater contact center flexibility during the agent scheduling and adherence process at On Net.

The exception planner enables the scheduling of recurring exceptions at On Net as well as mid-day exceptions. It takes countless exceptions into account when choosing shifts, and scheduling breaks. For example, a manager can use this tool to schedule an agent to attend a training meeting from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the second Friday of every month, or set up a rotating schedule where agents have different days off on alternate weeks.

The availability calendar permits call center managers at On Net to see how existing exceptions affect staff availability. Managers can select any set of dates from the entire year and view agent requiremerits and availability, along with the number of exception hours, broken down both by agent and exception type. This tool is particularly useful when deciding upon and granting agent vacation requests, as well as scheduling training meetings and jury duty.

"The great thing about Monet is that it is an affordable way for us to offer services that rival those of the largest contact centers," concludes Stanton.

"Workforce optimization reduced our center costs in a matter of days and you can simply use the system to produce center budgets by running a costing of all forecasted agent shifts and agent schedules. This has increased our profitability by 20 percent since the turn of the year."

Copyright Publications & Communications, Inc. May 2005
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