In addition, resource planners can set business (/service level) requirements so that the company’s customer-service needs are never overlooked. This process will guarantee that the highest performing agents will get most of their preferences awarded. The system also allows users to define metrics and weighted measures for ranking agents, typically by using performance metrics from built-in gamification features or from quality scores, or a combination of both. While the cumbersome process of shift bidding makes it easier to only work with single-skilled agent groups, Agent Preference offers an easier, ongoing process that can work for multi-skilled, multi-channel contact centers. Secondly, an automated Agent Preferences tool is responsive to the growth and evolution of the customer-service industry, rather than restraining it. Each mini-bid is specifically targeted to that week’s forecast. Imagine being able to enact “mini-bids” every week, without any extra effort. Using this option, there are multiple benefits on offer: Flexibilityįirstly, while traditional shift bidding requires contact centers to undergo a bidding process only several times a year – taking weeks to complete each time – an ongoing agent preference system gives agents the freedom to continually request desired scheduling. 80% for third tier agents and 100% for top tier agents. There is no monetary bidding involved but agent-rank tiers can be brought in to determine what percentage of preferences agents receive in their schedule e.g. Agent Preferences: The strengthsĪgent Preferences is an automated system that lets agents enter their preferences for shifts and days off for each day of the week of the upcoming scheduled period by choosing the desired shift category (e.g. In the long run, if agents are performing poorly, the company won’t reach their service level targets. Furthermore, those agents who have to work the less favorable hours, might be being paid more but a “bad schedule” could leave them feeling tired and demotivated. Just as the “best” shifts will end up with the lowest pay per hour, the “overtime”/unpopular shift times will have to be filled by paying agents at a much higher cost, causing payroll costs to rise. If management is making them worry about their livelihood, then this will cause them to lose focus on the job that they are employed to do. Stress for agentsĪgents care first and foremost about their schedules and getting the right number of hours at the times that work best for them. If a shift bid is designed around the first week in September, how does that solve scheduling issues in the third week of November? Equally, a locked-in schedule won’t work for many agents as they often work in contact centers as a second job, wanting the flexibility to fit shifts around other things in their life. Shift bids fail to account for the constantly changing landscape of contact-volume forecasts and, once a shift bid ends, it can cause the contact center to be locked into a set of schedules that allow for almost no flexibility, a problem for both the agent and the center. Using shift bids takes weeks upon weeks to execute, and in most cases, the schedules created are very similar to the ones that were in place before the bid. Time consuming (with often little end improvement) Though the process is good for initiating agents’ involvement in building their schedules there are a few issues that will crop up time and time again: At the end of the process, shifts are awarded, typically to those with the lowest bids (and the highest KPIs). With Shift bidding, contact centers can release the schedule of shifts on offer and agents can then bid for the shifts that they want, entering how much they would like to be paid for working those hours. The question one must ask is: Why is this change occurring? To answer such a query, I will first look at the limitations in sticking to shift bids, and then explore the possibilities on offer with introducing a system that automatically optimizes schedules to agent preferences.
#Shift agent manual
How can resource planners achieve the best balance between agents’ wishes for their schedules and the forecasted needs of the contact center? Rebecca Philp, Product Knowledge Manager at Teleopti, weighs up two options on offer.Īs the contact-center world moves further and further into an omni-channel environment, the option to automate agent shift preferences is growing, replacing the older bidding systems based on manual scheduling.
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