May 2001

BY NATHAN STEARNS, IEX

The case for skills-based call routing has been made. In today's competitive environment, contact centers must provide better service with fewer people. They have met this challenge by merging isolated, single-skilled work groups and by hiring or developing agents with multiple skills.

However, skills-based call routing substantially complicates forecasting and scheduling. Before ACD skills-based call routing technology, workforce schedulers used Erlang-C, a World War I-era formula developed by mathematician A.K. Erlang. Although traditional scheduling software makes using Erlang-C easy, it inadequately accounts for factors such as call flow and waiting time, among its many limitations.

Newer forecasting methods use queuing of multiple call types, supported with mathematical formulas. However, these newer formulas have not encompassed routing that is based on time of day, day of week, idle agents or time in queue. They don't account for each agent's effect on multiskilled efficiency gains. They don't work well for ACDs that assign each agent a unique set of skills and skill levels. Forecasting by formula becomes inaccurate when it is used with the latest ACD technology that dynamically moves agents into and out of skills, based on the expected wait time for each call type.

Another approach to scheduling uses ACD simulator programs that require numerous iterations. After entering an initial set of assumptions, a scheduling analyst makes manual adjustments, then reruns the simulation, analyzes the results and adjusts again. Stand-alone ACD simulator programs are so time-consuming, they become impractical.

Simulation techniques can, however, provide accurate forecasting and scheduling tools. The solution to today's daunting scheduling task is to embed a simulator within the contact center's scheduling program. The new, muscular scheduling software automatically generates schedules, simulates network and ACD call routing, analyzes the results, determines changes to schedules and adjusts schedules to determine the best solution -- all without user intervention.

The result has been staffing forecasts that account for economies of scale gained by using multiskilled agents and advanced skills-based routing scripts. Today's scheduling software can specify the number of agents needed for each time period to maintain a given service level and maximum occupancy. The many variables and complexities associated with a multiskill environment are analyzed, resulting in effective working schedules.

Additionally, today's scheduling software creates labor benefits that can produce subtle savings in recruiting and training. This is welcome news to contact centers scrambling to find and retain qualified agents. In addition to facilitating smoother schedules and greater work variety, agent preference for hours, vacation, type of work and other factors can be accommodated. To a surprising degree, sophisticated routines can grant agent preferences, either within a skill group or by overall seniority.

The complex problems that result when single-skilled groups merge can be effectively handled, but other factors are adding new complications. The relentless pressure to improve productivity has created new trends. More companies are merging the functions of contact centers at multiple locations. Other centers have added responses to new media, such as e-mail, fax and Web chat, to their services.

The complexity of scheduling expands exponentially when it involves multiskilled agents working across multiple ACDs. Multiple site contact centers that share call volume via network call routing must plan an allocation of the total forecasted calls at each site. Obviously, managers need to know how many calls will be routed to their site so they can schedule agents accordingly. Call routing techniques can include percentage call allocation; routing based on average speed of answer; or quota routing -- sending a specified number of calls to a particular service bureau site.

Many of yesterday's traditional call centers are becoming today's integrated contact centers. More and more, they are being asked to handle not just calls, but also media such as e-mail, fax, voice-over-IP or Web chat. When a center implements a technology that integrates all those media into an agent's desktop, it is building on top of skills-based scheduling.

If skills-based scheduling based on phone calls was complex, multisite, multimedia centers are a whole new world. Agents at such centers might have an e-mail skill, plus one or more call skills. Within e-mail are skill subsets such as general inquiry or billing, just as there are skill sets involved with inbound calls. The scheduling challenge is to designate which specially trained agents receive the e-mail messages. General account inquiries often cannot use a script. An agent must respond, sometimes using templates customized with information associated with the customer's e-mail address.

Typically, an e-mail response can be interrupted by inbound calls, although the center might want an agent to finish writing under certain circumstances, or might want that agent interrupted only by certain calls. Yesterday's scheduling methods that use mathematical formulas or limited simulation won't come close to giving an accurate picture of so complex a situation. Routing scripts can be unique per company, and can differ from one week to the next. That variety creates a huge set of assumptions for any forecasting system. To ice the cake, add in the futuristic factor that e-mail responses can use at-home agents -- employees working from home, taking inbound calls and responding to e-mail. The technology is available to allow anyone sitting at home with Internet access to do his or her work via an Internet connection.

In addition to e-mail, multimedia contact centers also commonly employ fax technology, particularly when a transaction requires the customer's signature. Agents can call up prescanned images, add responses and fax them to the customer. In another typical situation, the customer re-quests information and indicates he or she prefers to receive it by fax.

An additional, growing new medium is Web chat. For example, a travel agency might arrange a chat about a group tour or new cruise package. Or perhaps when the online grocer doesn't deliver a particular product that had been requested, the customer might go online, queue up and wait for an agent while checking e-mail and doing other things.

Specially skilled agents can handle up to six chat sessions at the same time, although participating in two or three is more common. The advantage of chat is that customers receive immediate feedback and can communicate from their desktops. They need not call a toll-free number and be tied to the phone while waiting. Because of multitasking, chat can be efficient for one-to-one communication. It's less costly than taking up a voice trunk and an agent while generating toll-free call charges. Of course, special agent skills are required: typing, spelling and proper English grammar.

Some of the new media such as e-mail and fax involve a dimension that makes the traditional scheduling approach of using Erlang, or Erlang modified with manual simulations, seem like Morse code. That dimension is time. With e-mail or faxes, a response can wait two hours, four hours or 24 hours. This factor opens up a new level of complication in trying to understand how many agents are needed, and when. With e-mail that can be answered within 24 hours, a center need not forecast and schedule enough people to handle the 200 e-mail messages that might be queued at a particular time. The challenge -- and great advantage -- of managing a workforce using blended-skill agents is the ability to ascertain when to schedule e-mail or fax response based on when call demand is low.

Despite the additional complexities of time and distance, the skills-based scheduling challenge is being met. A new generation of software can deftly deploy a multidimensional workforce at a multimedia, multisite center. In fact, today's scheduling solutions can do even more.

For instance, they can enable intraday management. If conditions suddenly change during the day, management can look ahead several hours. If several key agents call in sick, if unusually high contact volumes are received, if a client develops a sudden need to inform customers, it is possible to recalculate net staff, staff by contact type, multiskilled agent efficiencies and other information. This capacity affords management unprecedented ability to respond to the unforeseen.

Generating such information requires powerful analytical capabilities. This strength extends well beyond putting out fires. Today's scheduling solutions produce analyses that empower both managers and agents. Reports allow managers to compare their available workforce to requirements by contact type and volume, projected weeks ahead. They can look at performance by contact type, agent, time and many other factors. They can see whether employees are arriving on time, taking long breaks or handling their expected workload.

Likewise, employees can monitor their own performance, if management chooses to make those data available on the system. They can even view their schedules -- at the center or on the Web. Without such tools, it is difficult for agents and managers alike to know how well they are performing. The new scheduling tools make it easier to recognize a good agent. When they can see the performance on which they're evaluated, agent morale can rise.

In Europe, where cities such as Dublin and Amsterdam have very tight labor markets, contact centers can use today's scheduling software to give agents their schedules months ahead, a decided advantage for retention. While perhaps not as severe, labor shortages in many U.S. markets and in specialty skill sets make such scheduling refinements advantageous.

For many U.S. contact centers, overtime is routine. For multiskilled agents who have taken calls for eight hours, the ability to sign up for a different skill set makes voluntary overtime more attractive. They can answer e-mail, faxes or letters instead of dealing with irate customers live for two extra hours, for example. Management gains by being able to control and deploy overtime much more tightly.

The obvious advantages to this level of control of skill scheduling in the contact center are numerous. Not only can you have better control than ever before over the predictable and unforeseen in the contact center, you can retain the agents you do have by lessening the pressures and unpleasant surprises inherent in unpredictably varying volume spikes, creating a better experience overall for customers and employees alike.

Nathan Stearns is a director of training and consulting services for IEX (www.iex.com). He is a frequent speaker and writer on the subject of multisite, multiskilled contact center workforce planning and management.

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