Success through Workforce Optimisation in 2009
CCF Online's Editor, Claudia Hathway reports from Sabio's recent seminar that looked into how WFO can prove a key success driver for the coming year
Current economic conditions mean that 2009 is already seeing contact centre operators working hard to achieve the delicate balancing act of improving their customer service levels while still succeeding in reducing their overall costs. Clearly when times are tough the ability to optimise the performance of your contact centre becomes even more fundamental to business success, so CCF Online was delighted when it was invited to Sabio's recent seminar which allowed attendees to look in detail at how Workforce Optimisation (WFO) can play a key role in helping organisations manage their way through the downturn.
Sabio's Andy Roberts helped set the tone for the seminar by asking the 40+ delegates from a range of market sectors to put their recession-related gloom to one side for the day. "We all know about the challenges we face – keeping customers happy, getting more value from the business, increasing sales, and cutting costs, to name just a few – but our seminar is all about providing you with practical advice to help you address these concerns. The goal of our day is to give you insights that can make a difference tomorrow, and then through the rest of 2009."
The Reality behind Workforce Optimisation
Michael Andrews, who heads Sabio's specialist WFO practice, then looked at the reality behind workforce optimisation in today's economic climate. Michael began by pointing out that when times are tough, it always makes sense to focus on people: particularly in the contact centre environment where people are your most valuable and expensive asset, and ultimately deliver the service that is your organisation's key differentiator.
That's why WFO, and its ability to both help you maximise the value from your employees, technology and processes, as well as listen in detail to what your customers are saying, can lead to significant competitive advantages.
Where Workforce Optimisation can also unlock real value is through its ability to remove much of the needless administrative duplication and time spent on manually integrating the output from your different Workforce Management (WFM), Recording, Quality Monitoring (QM) and Performance Management tools. Immediate benefits here can include removing much of the non value-added administrative activities that tend to monopolise so much contact centre management time, including sorting out holidays, handling shift swaps and agent sickness, as well as reporting and exception management.
Other key areas where an integrated WFO approach will add value include the ability to compare internal and external perceptions of service quality, combining WFM and Quality Monitoring to uncover the reasons behind non-adherence, and using QM to pinpoint skill gaps. Michael Andrews emphasised that the good news is that organisations who are committed to the WFO process can take advantage of the current market conditions by differentiating themselves significantly from their less optimised competitors.
Balancing cost reduction with customer centricity
The next speaker, Bill Durr from Verint Systems, is recognised globally as a thought leader in the global WFO field. In his presentation, Bill focused on how organisations can apply WFO concepts to help take their contact centre through to the next level of performance, and presented a detailed roadmap for transforming the workplace through workforce optimisation.
Bill described today's market conditions as the result of a 'perfect storm' of change drivers, suggesting that today's contact centres not only face challenging economic times, but are also having to deal with major shifts such as Web 2.0 and the Internet, the rise of self-service, and the market impact of "Generation Y", the population grouping born between 1980 and 2000 that views online as an essential part of their life rather than just another channel.
In looking at how customer contact is evolving, Bill Durr outlined the differences between defensive WFO strategies where the focus is on improving productivity and achieving lower costs, and a more offensive approach that starts to see customer service as a key differentiator, with customer contact being driven by real-time analytics and customer feedback and a true 360 degree view of customer activities.
Bill strongly believes that those organisations that take advantage of a broader WFO approach will position themselves strongly for the inevitable market upturn. "Of course you have to get your house in order by attacking waste and optimising your agent resources, but you can only really take the smart decisions if you understand the true impact on the business. Organisations can start by rethinking some of their service levels, and start looking beyond time-to-answer as the sole benchmark of performance. Other areas to consider include the effective use of overtime, which is not always the expensive option, and the inevitable progression towards homeshoring. Organisations can also benefit from externalising their contact centre, and using techniques such as speech analytics and customer feedback to gain a much clearer picture of what customers are actually saying.
Exploring WFO's potential
Rather than simply talk about WFO's potential, a key part of the Sabio seminar was a series of 30 minute interactive workshops designed to enable attendees to explore the physical capabilities of solutions such as Verint's Impact 360 Quality Monitoring, Customer Feedback and Workforce Management tools. An important element in these workshops was a demonstration of how these different components could then combine to deliver an integrated Workforce Optimisation solution.
From here, delegates could then focus in more detail on some of the latest best practice WFO innovations that can play a role in improving the operational efficiency of a contact centre. Highlights included a demonstration of how organisations could use WFO and speech technologies to help achieve PCI compliance with the latest credit card fraud guidelines, an insight into speech analytics from Verint's Richard Ray, and an overview of how contact centre managers can take steps to unwrap their agents' potential from Marc Jantzen at Blue Sky Performance Improvement.
A clear illustration of the value of adopting a structured consultative approach to WFO implementation came from an overview of a project recently undertaken for Addison Lee. Thanks to an in-depth scenario modelling led approach that involved the whole business, London's leading minicab firm is achieving accelerated ROI, and is already on track to achieve a targeted Ł1 million saving from its Sabio deployment of Impact 360 WFM.
Making savings and improving the customer experience
Sabio was also keen to give some practical examples of how organisations can achieve real savings and improve their customer experience through their adoption of workforce optimisation tools and processes. Examples shared include an insight into a Thames Water project, where after just six months the deployment of Impact 360 WFM has helped to double the efficiency of the resource planning team and automatically process over 15,000 agent holiday requests.
Other examples mentioned included a 50-seat implementation that delivered an ROI for WFM within four months from the overtime saving alone, though to a major 4,000 agent plus WFM solution for Sky that delivered an ROI in eight months and has produced savings of over £1m a year.
Positioned for success
Throughout the day, Sabio and their colleagues were able to clearly demonstrate how WFO and tools such as workforce management can consistently deliver productivity savings across most contact centre environments – while also helping to increase the consistency and quality of service delivery. Factor in additional capabilities such as Quality Monitoring, Customer Feedback, Speech Analytics and Performance Management, and the returns can be even greater.
Given the results achieved by organisations such as Thames Water and Addison Lee, it's clear that WFO has a valuable role to play during 2009. The question organisations should be asking now is whether they can afford to ignore such tools given today's market conditions?
