Difference between revisions of "Scheduling"

Latest revision as of 10:55, 3 May 2014

Scheduling Defined

Workforce Management: Scheduling

Scheduling: The functional process that uses data output from the forecast group and generates employee schedules that best fit volume and arrival patterns to maintain service level within every interval.

Scheduling is one of four cornerstones of Workforce Management: Forecasting (F), Scheduling (S), Real-Time Activity (RTA) and Business Intelligence (BI).

Requirements: What Do We Need For Effective Scheduling?

Conceptually, scheduling means the same thing to most people: calculating staffing requirements from forecast data, and generating "schedules" which are distributed to employees. The core underlying goal of the scheduling resources is to generate schedules as efficiently as possible in order to maintain service level across all 30 minute intervals. Supplemental responsibilities include maintaining data and business requests that impact schedules, such as time-off requests and off phone events such as a training module. These events require schedules to be updated with this information as to maintain control over events that remove resources from the phone.

Like forecasting, how we work within the WFM application to generate schedules requires us to use solid scheduling methodology. It's important that we follow common guidelines so that when we are planning for where staffing resources may be at surplus or deficit, and make determinations on routing shifts or outsource requirements needed, that we can do so as accurately as possible. For this reason, we view the scheduling function as a part of the model with 4 dimensions that defines World_Class_Forecasting_Organization.

Key concepts behind scheduling include generating and utilizing:

• A set of established roles and responsibilities
• A solid process with clearly defined purpose
• A collaboration mentality, with all other departments within the organization (use of wiki!)
• Common data definitions
• Adoption of Data Governance M&Ps to maintain clean data
• Support from call center, regional, division and corporate management
• Technical Tools (WFM Software) and Knowledgeable Resources

Key Scheduling Definitions

Scheduling requires common definition behind terms used in the call center environment. The most important of these terms associated with this activity are:

• Adherence: Defined as a measure of how closely agents stick or "adhere" to their shift patterns
• Adherence Exceptions: Defined as the act of allowing the exclusion of an activity that would otherwise count against an agents adherence score
• Shrinkage (or Roster Staff Factor): Refers to the numerical factor that determines the minimum staff needed on schedule, over and above the base staff required to achieve service level. Items included in shrinkage include breaks, absenteeism, coaching and training.
• Shift Bid: Defined as the process of allowing CAEs to bid on a pool of shift schedules, generally factoring in seniority and a performance index to prioritize a CAE's "rank" in selecting their preferred schedule.
• Activities: Defined as events scheduled and tracked in an employee's work schedule. Activities include events such as breaks, lunch, coaching, absence(s), projects, training, etc. Activities are defined with a name, description, length, paid/unpaid, start time (relative to shift or absolute) and start time range.

Scheduling resources should also be familiar with common definitions from forecasting:

• Talk Time: Defined as everything that happens during the length of the call from the moment the call is answered, to when the call is disconnected after "goodbye". All activity between "Hello" and "Goodbye" is tallied in measuring talk time.
• After Call Work (ACW): Refers to the time spent immediately following the "goodbye" of a call, where agents are completing work associated with the previous call.
• Average Handling Time (AHT): The sum of the Average Talk Time plus the Average After Call Work
• Offered Calls: All attempts made by callers to reach a call center. Offered calls should take into consideration callers who receive busy signals, callers who disconnect before reaching an agent, and callers who speak with an agent. Forecasts should reflect offered calls discounted by 1) multiple attempts from individual callers, and 2) callers who were self-serviced in the IVR.
• Answered Calls: Calls handled by a live agent after reaching an agent group.
• Call Load: Volume x AHT for a specific time-frame. Also referred to as workload, this is the key component used to forecast resources required to handle the calls for any given time segment and call queue.

Scheduling Approach

In our scheduling approach, we are focused on balancing both the internal needs of the business while servicing the external needs of our customers. Scheduling within our call centers takes a straight-forward approach to maximize two core goals.

1. To optimize the schedules and activities of the people servicing our customers, ensuring the optimal FTEs are in place to maintain Service Level and
2. To balance the internal business needs of scheduling breaks, training, lunch and CAE requests while maintaining goal 1, servicing our customer base (SL)

Scheduling Steps

After forecasts have been created, a scheduler goes through a series of steps to generate CAE schedules. The steps follow a pattern defined below:

• Defining shifts and shift activities (shift activities globally maintained)
• Linking shifts defined to activities
• Developing work patterns
• Linking shifts and activities to work patterns
• Defining assignment rules
• Assigning schedules out to agents

Shift

Shifts are defined with the following attributes:

• Name
• Length (including shift activities)
• Type (immediate or deferred)
• Description
• Possible start times (15 minutes, range)

Shift Activities

To maintain consistency in the use of activities across the database, activities and activity types have been globally defined.

Work Patterns

Work patterns define the combination of shifts that employees can work, on what days they can be assigned, and which days they can have off - allowing you to attach the patterns to agents. Work patterns are used to program the system for choices of full-time vs part-time, or choices of 4x10, 5x8 shifts.

Assignment Rules

Assignment rules are defined by WFM to address rules needed to comply with specific agent needs. Assignment rules are used to meet the needs from areas such as union regulations, internal rules, state legislation or specific agent needs. See WFM documentation for additional detail on the use of assignment rules.

Scheduling Approach: Campaign Name Design

A critical portion of the design of the Verint WFM application resides in the campaign name structure. Since we utilize skill based routing, and have minimal to agents dedicated to a single skill, it is most efficient to pool CAEs into a single campaign name structure by location/region. In COA and MDJ regions, wherever agents are potentially "pooled" - only 1 schedule campaign should be utilized, to maximize productivity out of both pools.