Intraday Management: Do You Plan to React? Or React to Your Plan?

DELIVER

Intraday Management: Do You Plan to React? Or React to Your Plan?

By TMCnet Special Guest
Matt McConnell
  |  May 16, 2013

Despite the detailed planning to ensure staff levels meet customer demand on any given day, any number of events can occur and consequently add additional obstacles for workforce managers. These unexpected events include anything from severe weather that prevents agents from commuting to work, to a product recall that drastically increases the number of customer calls for an extended period of time.

Currently, managers respond to these types of issues by taking the hit to service levels if there’s not a plan in place, manually contacting at-home workers or centers in other locations to pick up the slack for weather events to take one example. Alternatively contact centers can choose to overstaff to some extent or take time away from agent development (or any other activities agents may be doing) to help cover the spike in call volume.

This intraday scramble of finding more bodies to cover more calls or constantly scheduling and rescheduling agents’ activities based on call volume is costly and ineffective. But what if your contact center had reflexes that allowed you to respond to these unexpected events with ease?

Developing business reflexes

Smart contact centers are using intraday management technology – like a muscle reflex – to help them respond to unexpected activities and events. By complementing other contact center technologies, including workforce management, intraday management technology allows contact centers to stay productive despite unforeseen events and find opportunities for improvement across the contact center.

Contact center managers can use intraday management technology to positively impact contact centers in the following areas:

Task management

Dynamically deliver coaching, training, back office, communications, and other off-phone activities during available time through the identification and redistribution of aggregated idle time.

Staffing

Manage overstaffing or understaffing with automated offers of overtime and voluntary time off determined by specific attributes that, for example, would offer voluntary time off to agents who have not received offers for voluntary time off within a designated timeframe.

Alerts and notifications

Send alerts and notifications based on pre-defined business conditions such as social media posts with trending keywords or calls with longer than average handle times.

Queue management

Update queue assignments to manage capacity or reflect updated skills.

Intraday task management for everyday management

Intraday task management is one example of how contact centers respond to fluctuating call volume. With 11 percent of an agent’s day spent in an available state, waiting for a call, workforce managers utilize this time to incorporate agent development activities.

For a large, global outsourcer, Convergys (News - Alert), business includes planning for the unplanned. The company wanted to find a way to improve the efficiency in which it responded to whatever unexpected occurrence came their way. And, it wanted to improve certain metrics and ensure agents completed the training and learning activities required for each client program. All of these initiatives are just as important for the BPO as they were for their clients, both for the end user experience and program commitments.

Convergys utilizes intraday task management technology to help address the “intraday scramble” and automate the intraday scheduling of agent activities during available time. The BPO uses intraday management technology to pool the tiny pockets of idle time and send the appropriate agent his or her prioritized off-phone activities based on pre-defined business rules, when intraday conditions allow. It also allows Convergys to set different thresholds for different types of activities, giving the company more flexibility in how and when it delivers client training as compared to internal training, for example.

Convergys applied this technology to several programs within its organization and recognized significant results including: the deployment of 11,000 hours of training in one month; an increase in agent training compliance from 25 percent to 46 percent;and a 13 percent improvement to its CSAT “very satisfied” score, among many others.

Use business reflexes to react purposefully 

The possible ways for contact centers to improve response times and operational efficiencies are virtually endless using the business reflexes that intraday management offers. Unexpected events touch every business, but the ability to respond to those events is what ensures success. It means the difference between meeting the needs and wants of customers and treading water just to stay afloat.

When considering whether or not intraday management could benefit your contact center, evaluate how you’re able to respond to events that do not align to your schedule. Are your responses knee-jerk reactions, or can you make adjustments that complement service and staff levels? Intraday management gives you the control you need to manage whatever comes your way.

Matt McConnell is CEO of Intradiem (www.intradiem.com). He is filling in this issue for TMC Group Editor Erik Linask (News - Alert), who typically writes the Experience column.




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]
blog comments powered by Disqus