Call Center Increases Profitability Using Workforce Optimization Technology

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Sep 2004 by Robb, Drew

Alert Communications of South Pasadena, Calif., found it a constant challenge to accurately predict call volumes or agent requirements. As a result, it struggled to balance the estimation of adequate staffing levels with profitability.

"Labor costs accounted for as much as 60 percent of our revenue," said Steve Covarrubias, a staff analyst at Alert Communications.

Alert implemented the Monet Workforce Optimization Suite by Left Bank Solutions of Los Angeles. This brought about more accurate call volume forecasts, optimization of staffing levels and scheduling of agents, as well as a labor cost reduction.

"Since we adopted Monet for forecasting and scheduling, we've been able to reduce this percentage to as little as 40 percent of our revenue totals. This represents monthly savings of over $11,500. As a result, the software paid for itself within 7 weeks."

Workforce Optimization

Workforce management is all about making agents as productive as possible. That is done primarily through accurate forecasting and optimization of agent schedules, i.e. having enough agents for peak periods and avoiding agents sitting idle by scheduling accordingly. However, this has to be balanced against profitability. You have to get it right so that call wait times are low while agent productivity is kept at a maximum.

Call centers have traditionally used spreadsheets for scheduling. But this manual approach is gucsswork at best, based upon the experience of the call center manager. Under those circumstances it is not uncommon for the call center to be caught flat-footed by demand spikes or to have agents loafing around for hours with nothing to do.

That's why workforce optimization software is catching on as a means of automating the process. According to Saddletree Research of Scottsdale, Ariz., the workforce management market will reach $819 million a year by 2007.

"Several factors are behind this market growth," said Saddletree analyst Paul Stockford, "including the compelling ROI offered by workforce management, the direct impact that workforce management can have on operational performance, and a highly competitive environment."

Call Center Veteran

Alert Communications is no Johnny Come Lately to the call center industry. It opened its first call center in Los Angeles as far back as 1949. By the 1950s, it had expanded to 19 facilities across California. Today, Alert Communications is an integrated eCRM and direct marketing outsourcing company with a total capacity of over 500 seats. It offers call center services both in the U.S. and offshore, and has been ranked in the Top 50 Outsourced Call Centers for the last several years. Its headquarters are in South Pasadena, Calif.

Until recently, Alert provided only inbound services. However, the company continues to evolve and is transitioning away from traditional ACD based call facilities into IP based technology. As a result, about 5 percent of its services consist of outbound and e-mail-based services.

Alert Communications handles about 65,000 calls per month, rising to over 100,000 per month during the holiday season. Its client list includes SBC Directory Sales, Lego, USA Inc., and Disney American Teachers Award.

With such a high call volume to address and a wide range of demanding clients to satisfy, forecasting has become a vital aspect of Alert's operations.

"It is vital for us to maintain an optimal workforce so we can fully service the many clients that look to us to address their outsourcing needs," said Steve Covarrubias, a staff analyst at Alert Communications. "Failure to effectively schedule our workforce would dramatically reduce the level of service we can provide."

Initially, the company adopted a Windows-based workforce management solution from Pipkins. Covarrubias liked the way the software integrated the important aspects of forecasting and scheduling in one program. He felt that, overall, it introduced tools and capabilities that changed the company's standards in terms of workforce management.

"Pipkins multi-skill set staffing/scheduling technology helped us to become more effective," said Covarrubias. "However, we never were fully satisfied with how Pipkins predicted call volumes or agent requirements."

Hc explains that Alert never managed to successfully configure the various forecasting metrics.

Consistent failures in analysis after analysis drove the company to rely on its own determinations on call volumes and the corresponding staffing levels.

But even the most veteran call center managers and analysts can be caught flat footed by surges in call volume or unsuspected seasonal variations. It takes sophisticated forecasting and scheduling software to remote the guesswork. Alert Communications, therefore, decided to evaluate the Monet Workforce Management System by Left Bank Solutions Inc.

Monet includes a wealth of such features as the capability to forecast and monitor Agent Occupancy, a fully integrated Agent Exception Planner, a company wide Agent Availability Calendar, and Multimedia Blending. Monet's Agent Occupancy feature, for example, is the measure of how busy agents are and is expressed as a percentage of logged-in time that an agent is actually busy in talk or wrap up time.