I have a dream ..

1
I have a dream ..

• Challenges of Managing High Performing Workforce
  Management  in Today's Complex Environment

Chantal Gagné Director Bell Canada Workforce
Management May 11, 2006
2
or is it a Nightmare?
Work Volume Forecast

• 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

3
or is it a Nightmare?
EXAMPLE OF CALL TYPE BREAKDOWN
FROM
Before, forecast was done at this level and
variability managed globally
TO
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
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What a dream !

• KEY CONSIDERATIONS
• An internal tool was developed to better plan
  call type allocation by vendor, taking into
  account each vendors particularities and
  constraints
• HOWEVER, even though this tool helps better plan
  each vendors allocation, it does not prevent
  increase call forecast variability as its broken
  down into smaller pieces
• With each vendors 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.

5
Talking in my sleep
The Challenge of Staff Planning in Skills Based
Routing Environment

• 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.

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Sweet dreams are made of these
Benchmark corresponding to our reality

• 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?

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Sweet dreams are made of these
Optimal Workforce Management

• 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

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Sweet dreams are made of these
Technology

• 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

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Wake me up before you go !
Thank you