Customer Success
| Singlepoint | | Print | |
a leading European mobile service providerSinglepoint, part of the Vodafone Group, delivers innovative services that have opened up a new world of mobile communication for nearly 2 million customers across Europe. With these innovative services, Singlepoint customers can send pictures, chat online, communicate via e-mail, download information from the Web, access business applications and much more—right from their mobile phones.To support its user community, Singlepoint runs a fast-paced contact center operation. Its agents handle about 25,000 calls per day, and they are committed to getting callers the right answers, on the first call. Singlepoint chose the IEX® TotalView® Workforce Management system to help ensure their success. TotalView enables Singlepoint to deliver consistent service with lower operating costs and higher employee morale. After installing TotalView, Singlepoint saw immediate results with the Real-Time adherence module and realized significant long-term savings by using it to adopt a flexible scheduling process. Singlepoint also gained added efficiency by taking advantage of TotalView’s open architecture. It has helped them build fairness into their schedules, enabling them to feed overtime records directly to the payroll department. Agent WebStation and Vacation Planner have played key roles in streamlining operations and improving morale as well. Real-Time AdherenceSinglepoint’s contact center saw conformance improve instantly with the introduction of the TotalView Real-Time Adherence (RTA) module. Within weeks, Singlepoint began averaging 99 percent schedule conformance. As a result, service levels have improved dramatically.“Our contact center is meeting or exceeding service goals.” Singlepoint now gets 80 percent of its calls answered in 20 seconds, with a 1 percent abandon rate. “The use of RTA has benefited all departments in terms of improved conformance and adherence scores,” said Andy Worsey, scheduling manager for Singlepoint. RTA compares agent’s scheduled activity to actual activity, using real-time data streams from Singlepoint’s ACD for up-to-the-minute agent state information Flexible Scheduling“The introduction of flexible scheduling is one of the most significant developments we’ve made using TotalView,” said Worsey.Singlepoint was limited to fixed schedules before the company implemented TotalView. Fixed scheduling forced Singlepoint to incur unnecessary labor expenses in order to meet its changing call distribution patterns. They experienced high agent availability during shift changes, and found it difficult to accommodate vacation schedules without paying overtime. “Flexible scheduling allows us to maximize our agent’s time,” said Worsey. By using TotalView for flexible scheduling, Singlepoint reported reducing overhead costs by 5 to 8 percent. Instead of having agents sit idle during shift changes, they now plan meetings, training and coaching sessions during periods of high availability. Singlepoint can also spread vacation throughout the year more easily, which has helped reduce overtime expenses. “These new processes have significantly improved our scheduling efficiency and consistency,” said Worsey. Singlepoint uses two different scheduling methods. Centers with less than 50 agents get individual schedules, and centers with more than 50 agents get team schedules that are developed using agent preferences. “Using a combination of individual and team scheduling allows us to more accurately establish requirements,” said Worsey. It has also significantly reduced administrative work. “We’ve saved about 40-hours per week in manual adjustments with TotalView,” said Worsey. “This helps us perform more a more effective shift analysis, which has further improved scheduling efficiency.” Open Database ConnectivitySinglepoint has taken efficiency to another level by taking advantage of TotalView’s open database. “Open database connectivity has not only played a significant role in building fairness into our schedules, it’s also given us an established link to our payroll department,” said Worsey.Now Singlepoint can match agent preferences to available shifts, and extract overtime information from TotalView that is then fed to the payroll system. It also gives Singlepoint’s MIS department a live data feed for accurately reporting agent performance scores. WebstationThe TotalView WebStation feature has also helped Singlepoint reduce administrative paperwork while improving employee morale.“It provides a direct means of communication between the Scheduling Team and the agents,” said Worsey. “This in itself has improved job satisfaction. WebStation is often mentioned in feedback sessions as an ‘excellent’ new feature.” In addition to improving morale, WebStation has helped Singlepoint reduce scheduling errors. “Fewer scheduling errors result in better adherence scores, better adherence scores result in higher service quality,” said Worsey. Vacation PlannerThe TotalView Vacation Planner package has helped Singlepoint streamline the process of scheduling and approving time off.“Previously, we were often left in a situation where we had to buy holidays from agents at the end of the year because they didn’t take the days,” said Worsey. “Vacation Planner helped us cut these expenses by about 80 percent.” Vacation Planner streamlines the entire time off request process, from selection to approval. It saves management time and ensures objective, rules-based approvals. It also improves morale by giving agents more control over their scheduled time off. For more information about Singlepoint, visit http://www.singlepoint4u.co.uk/ . Benefits
“These new processes have significantly improved our scheduling efficiency and consistency.” |