Solutions

Allows the forecaster to take into account the arrival patterns during the day, not just the total number of calls per day. For example, intraday forecasting will show that there will be 38 calls caming in between 11:30 and 11:45, instead of just saying there will be 1200 calls in a day.

Allows the call center to use multi-skilled agents and get accurate forecasting for those skills, instead of using queue-based routing and forecasting.

Allows the forecaster to remove or smooth out days that aren’t accurate.  For example, if a call center has a day where the phone lines are down, validation allows for removal of the low volume so as not to affect the forecast.

Forcast for “web chats”, which takes into account the fact that an agent can handle multiple chats at one time (parallel sessions).

Forecast for emails, which takes into account that emails can sit unattended for long periods of time without being answered, which creates a backlog.

Forecast for overall historical trend, as well as month-to-month seasonality (i.e., summer months are busier)

Long-term analysis for hiring and attrition management.

Makes schedule adjustment significantly easier and more efficient.

Allows the agent and/or the scheduler to input “availability”, or when the agent is able to work.  Allows for more flexible schedules and more efficient staffing.  The system will automaticallly choose the best possible schedule within the agent’s availability.

Rotation based scheduling allows the call center to put in scenarios such as “each agent must work 1 weekend every month” or “everyone must work one night shift every 2 weeks”

Similar to availability scheduling, but this allows the agent to define their optimal schedule, or preference.  This gives the agent some control over when they are being scheduled, leading to higher agent satisfaction and often to more efficient scheduling.

Automatically optimize the days off for each agent’s schedule, making their days off apply more closely to the call arrival patterns.

Multi-skilling presents a real challenge to call centers.  Allocation of resources across all of the different skills is a complicated process, which makes dynamic resource allocation that much more important.  This allows the schduler to see real-time updates on how changes to scheduling affect staffing levels, whether on a daily, weekly, or intraday level.

Makes it much easier to see where schedule elements are.

Makes scheduling overtime much easier by optimizing where the overtime actually falls, as well as breaks during overtime, using staff available for overtime.

This gives management the ability to see where the agents were in accordance to their schedule.

By using the ACD’s real-time state information, management can see exactly what each agent is doing at that moment, and compare it with their scheduled activites to see who is following their schedule and who isn’t.

This allows management to drill down into the agent’s adherence to see where they stand for the day.

Quickly spot intra-day deviations on common KPIs

In situations where the forecast becomes inaccurate (i.e., unplanned high call volume as a result of a marketing event), allows the forecaster to re-run the forecast to plan for the remainder of the day with an updated forecast.

Optimizes breaks, lunches, meetings etc. on the fly to prevent manual movement of activities.

Keeps the agents informed of schedule changes even while they aren’t at their desk.

Keep the agent informed of their schedule, for both today and the future.

Agents can request vacation time through the agent portal, minimizing confusion and message fatigue.

Keeps the agent informed of their statistics.  Keeps the supervisors from continually running reports for their agents.

Allows the agent to have some form of control over their schedule, which keeps agents happy and management can use preferences to make more flexible schedules.

Motivates emplyees to achieve high-level performace goals.

Agents can see schedules, request vacation, enter prefernces from their smartphone while away from work.

Time off requests can be automatically approved by the system, making the decision easy for management and giving the agent improved response time on approvals.

Communicates changes and ad-hoc messages to agents.

Allows for an extra communication channel to the agents, especially if they aren’t at their desks.

Gives easy plug and play access to the system to retrive information from the switch without heavy customization and IT support.

Charts can be set up to deliver visual information to individual users based on their preferences.

Gives acccess to reports to only those who need them, preventing over-delivery of reports and confusion. Also gives agents and supervisors the ability to run reports without any special reporting engine installation.

Gives SDK access to additional applications for easy transfer of data to third-party systems.

Creates historical snapshots of agents so histories can be kept.  For example, if an agent goes on maternity leave, the system will keep that history instead of overwriting all information every time a change is made.

Gives management access to information on how to do common tasks within the system.