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Fundamentals of Call Center Workforce Management
Dates

In-person Seminar. 2-day, instructor led training course.

Overview

This call center training course focuses on applying necessary principles of workforce management to overcome daily challenges of forecasting calls, scheduling staff, and managing service levels in your call center.

Workforce management is the process of utilizing accurate staffing figures every hour to maximize service and minimize cost. It is one of the most important planning and management functions of a call center manager or a supervisor. During this training course, attendees will learn step-by-step process of effectively forecasting and calculating staff requirements, creating staff schedules, and tracking daily service and performance. You will also learn about the impact that each and every person can make in terms of achieving service goals for the day.

The training is designed around case study problems that cover typical forecasting and scheduling scenarios, as well as complications in today's environment such as skill-based routing, handling of other media contacts such as email and text chats, and staffing for a mixture of inbound/outbound calling.

Who Should Attend

Fundamentals of Call Center Workforce Management training course is designed for professionals involved in staffing the call center, balancing workers and workload, or meeting call center service level targets. Whether you have a few agents or many, workforce management software or none, you will benefit from this introductory workforce management course.

What You Will Learn
  • How to Forecast, including a look at data collection and interpretation, as well as the recommended forecasting techniques used by support centers.
  • How to Calculate Staffing required in a call center to meet service goals, and the many service and cost tradeoffs involved in staffing decisions.
  • How to Schedule Staff, including the difficulties faced by call centers today in matching the workforce to the workload, and best practice options on scheduling the workforce and managing service on a real-time basis.
Take Home Tools

Spreadsheets, software, installation programs, and other tools will be provided with the course materials on a USB flash drive.

Agenda

Introduction and Overview

  • What is workforce management (WFM)
  • Impact of poor WFM
  • Contact center cost components
  • What makes call center staffing unique
  • Making the most of staffing resources
  • Basic steps of workforce management

Forecasting

  • The data collection process
    • Data validation
    • Dealing with aberrations
  • Sources of call data
  • Business drivers and factors
  • Simple, moving, and weighted averages
  • Time series analysis
  • Calculating trend
  • Identifying seasonal patterns
  • Calculating day-of-week factors
  • Identifying time-of-day patterns
  • The impact of special events
  • Shortcut forecasting approaches
  • Calculation and formula review

Planning Resource Requirements

  • Defining service goals: Service level, ASA
  • Calculating average handle time
  • The relationship between workload and staff
  • Calculating staff workload
  • Techniques for determining staff requirements
  • Understanding the Erlang models
  • Case problem: Step-by-step staffing design

Staffing Tradeoffs

  • Factors that influence staffing numbers
  • Service versus staff relationship
  • Economies of scale
  • Agent occupancy
  • Consolidation case problem
  • Calculating staff for outbound calling
  • Calculating staff for email demands

Scheduling Call Center Staff

  • Balancing contact center and agent needs
  • Basic scheduling principles
  • Calculating schedule requirements
  • The impact of workforce shrinkage
  • Coverage objectives
  • Components of scheduling
    • Shift span
    • Days on/off
    • Start/stop options
  • Schedule creation case problem
  • Implementation challenges and tips

Managing Daily Schedules and Service

  • Tracking schedule adherence
  • Monitoring intra-day variations
  • Tracking and reporting service
  • Daily reaction strategies
    • Staffing plans
    • Call flow strategies

Managing Attendance and Adherence

  • Impact of adherence
  • Quantifying the impact
  • Diagnosing reasons for non-adherence
  • Adherence solutions

Workforce Management Complexities

  • Outbound calling
  • E-mail and other non-phone tasks

Automating Workforce Management Tasks

  • Limitations of manual approach
  • Qualifying characteristics
  • Basic system capabilities
  • Advanced system capabilities
  • Cost justification components

Solving Workforce Management Problems: Most Common Problems

  • Activities:
    • Basic staffing and scheduling
    • Telephone cost tradeoffs
    • Expanding hours of operation
    • Consolidation and skill-based routing
  • Adding multimedia contacts problem

Course Review and Assessment

Registration Fees

The per student registration fee for this training and certification program is $1,795 and includes:

  • 2-day instructor-led training
  • All training materials
  • Certificate of completion
  • Refreshments each day

Class begins at 9:00 AM and ends at 5:00 PM each day. Business casual attire is appropriate.

Date Location Venue Price (US Dollars) Order
May 16-17, 2012 Atlanta, GA TBA
 Price: $1,795.00 
Quantity:  
Seminar Payment Policy
Payment is due prior to the seminar

If payment is not received, a credit card hold will be required for participation. This card will only be processed if payment has not been received within the week following seminar delivery date.

Public seminar cancellation policy

Registrants may cancel up to fourteen days in advance of the seminar start date for a full refund, less administrative fees of $500. Or, you may transfer your registration to another member of your company at no additional charge. Registrants canceling within fourteen days of the seminar will receive credit, less administrative fees of $500, toward any other Resource Center seminar. As seminars can be cancelled for under-enrollment from time to time, we strongly recommend that registrants traveling by air purchase only refundable tickets.

Refunds

If for any reason you are unsatisfied with the training, please notify the instructor by the end of the first day. If you decide to cancel the remainder of the training program, the instructor will collect all training materials. Fees paid, less a prorata one-day on-site training base fee plus any travel surcharges, will be refunded.

In the unlikely event that a seminar must be cancelled by seminar provider due to unavoidable circumstances, you will be notified at least two weeks prior to the seminar date, and your payment will be refunded. Seminar provider is not responsible for losses due to cancellation including losses on advanced purchase airfares. We strongly recommend that attendees traveling by air to attend the seminar purchase only refundable tickets.

Seminar provider is not responsible for losses due to cancellation. In all circumstances, seminar provider's liability shall be limited to fees received.

Seminar agenda and assigned instructors are subject to change.