Customer Success
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A major and distinctive competitor in the United Kingdom’s (UK) financial services market who provides a host of services, including: retail banking, consumer credit, savings products, stock brokerage and assessment. While working to gain a strong foothold in the UK marketplace, the company experienced rapid growth. Throughout this growth cycle, the company found service level goals were often out of reach. “The physical limitations of using Microsoft Excel for forecasting and planning were hindering essential resource management,” said a corporate spokesperson. Faced with the difficulty of managing and controlling a complex and diverse range of processes against strict service level agreements—including statutory and regulatory requirements—the company turned to the TotalView® Workforce Management system from IEX Corporation. “Implementing TotalView was essential to maximizing resource efficiency to drive customer service standards to a higher level,” said a corporate spokesperson. Higher Service StandardsPrior to installing TotalView, customer satisfaction rates were unacceptably low. “The way we allocated resources caused huge swings in service levels throughout the day,” said a corporate spokesperson. In fact, on average, the center was only staffed to handle 62 percent of the incoming calls. As a result, customers either suffered through long hold times or were forced to call back later.TotalView has enabled the organization to develop efficient and effective staff plans — ensuring the right people are consistently on the other end of the line when a customer calls. “With TotalView, we’ve been able to maintain service levels within excellent standards while significantly reducing the need for overtime,” said a corporate spokesperson. Lower Agent TurnoverIn addition to improving customer satisfaction, TotalView helped the company dramatically reduce agent turnover. When the organization was managing forecasting and scheduling using a manual workforce management process, agent turnover averaged 6.5 percent a month. An inconsistent management approach, intense pressure due to poor service levels, limited skill enrichment and lack of variation in roles were cited as key reasons agents left the company.With the implementation of TotalView, the company dramatically improved agent attrition rates. In fact, the organization now sees only a 1 percent turnover per month versus the 6.5 rate it saw previously — a reduction of more than 80 percent. “TotalView has supported the development of a new culture within the business, which has helped us overcome many of these challenges” said a corporate spokesperson. Fair Vacation PlanningThe company attributes the TotalView Vacation and Holiday Planner with bringing consistency to the time off management process. The Vacation and Holiday Planner streamlines the entire time off planning process, from date selections to approval — saving management time while ensuring rules-based approvals. With this feature, the organization eliminated the administrative burden of time off management while giving agents more control over their paid time off schedules.“This new approach has removed inconsistency, replacing it with ultimate fairness, which has greatly improved morale among the teams,” said a corporate spokesperson. Service Goal AttainmentThe intense pressure to meet service goals that were generally perceived to be unattainable was also playing a major role in agent job satisfaction. That’s primarily because, in an effort to meet service goals, the organization refrained from setting up formal times for training, coaching and off-phone work sessions. Instead, these sessions were conducted on an ad hoc basis and scheduling was dictated by swings in call volume. This high-stress environment put a damper on agent morale.With the TotalView system’s patented forecasting and scheduling capabilities, the company can now accurately calculate staffing requirements — ensuring service goals are within reach while identifying optimal times for offline activities. The company uses TotalView to prioritize offline activity; ensuring resource allocation is maintained at an optimal level. All areas of workflow are now handled through TotalView. This has led to a clearer definition of average handle times (AHT) and service standards for non-telephone work. Previously, the turnaround time for non-phone work was 22 days. Now it’s 3 days. That’s a reduction of more than 85 percent. Flexible SchedulingMoving away from fixed schedules to a flexible scheduling model helped the organization further enhance scheduling efficiency. Before TotalView was put in place, agents worked fixed schedules that didn’t take business demands or customer requirements into account.“The ebbs and flows in workload proved to be a bone of contention with the agents who were aware we didn’t get the balance right,” said Bullock, “and it was a major barrier to service goal attainment.” By using TotalView to adopt a flexible scheduling method, we optimized capacity planning — eliminating periods of understaffing and overstaffing to improve service levels while reducing overhead expenses. Skills Based SchedulingThe company further enhanced staff planning with the TotalView Multiskill feature, which is designed to help contact centers take advantage of cross-skill efficiencies. The organization’s planning team previously scheduled for 150 single-skilled agents. Now they schedule for 450 diversely skilled agents who handle over 100 different workflow types.Centralized PlanningIn addition to skills based scheduling, TotalView has enabled the center to take a central management approach to resource planning. This, Bullock said, spurred a cultural shift within the organization. “The TotalView system’s centralized planning capabilities have redefined the role of the management team,” he said. “Instead of being consumed with laborious manual workforce management processes, managers are now able to focus on agent development and customer satisfaction.”In fact, the organization estimates 70 percent of management’s time is now spent on training and coaching agents, which has helped improve performance while bolstering customer satisfaction. “The ability to centralize planning with TotalView has brought efficiencies across all areas of the business,” said Bullock. Improved Schedule AdherenceOne of the major challenges the organization faced prior to the installation of TotalView was managing agent schedule adherence. Previously, agent availability was monitored and controlled on a local basis by supervisors. “It was difficult for supervisors to closely monitor adherence, which resulted in a high proportion of ‘lost’ time across teams,” said Bullock.TotalView has given the organization a comprehensive view of overall agent adherence. Whereas adherence was 60 percent before TotalView was implemented, the organization now consistently achieves 95 percent adherence — a 58 percent improvement. “The ability to monitor adherence has helped us significantly increase our overall efficiency and effectiveness,” said a corporate spokesperson. ConclusionOverall, TotalView has given the company the ability to more effectively manage its complex and diverse contact center operations while maintaining constant staffing levels during periods of significant business growth. The system helped the company produce effective staffing plans, which have had a direct impact on both customer service and agent job enrichment, including areas which are difficult to quantify but are evidenced through customer feedback and agent opinion surveys.Client Profile:Sector: Financial ServicesContact Types: In Bound Calls and Mail Sites: One Contact Volume: 2.5 million per year Site Locations: West Yorkshire, United Kingdom Agents: 450 Type of ACD: Meridian Benefits
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