FREE Training on Best Practices and Technologies
Contact Center Workforce Management:
Models, Algorithms, and Best Practices
Starting on Thursday, January 20, each month, the ac2 team will discuss relevant topics in the workforce optimization arena via free 60-minute web seminars. ac2’s WFM seminars are guaranteed to be 100% free of product discussions. They focus on models, best practices, new trends, and technologies. Every contact center professional can benefit extensively from these discussions.
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Liz Beardsley Turner joined ac2 Solutions in 2008 as Director of Professional Services. Prior to joining ac2 Solutions, Liz served as Manager of Forecasting & Schedule development for Delta Air Lines, Inc. In her 31 years of service, she obtained a wealth of knowledge and experience as she led a dedicated team of analysts in meeting the resource management needs for Delta’s global operations, both internal and outsourced call centers. Her efforts and achievements have been recognized in the call center industry, especially with her involvement in SWPP, where she was a finalist for Workforce Management Professional of the year in 2008.
Dr. Turgut Aykin is the president of ac2 Solutions. He has published numerous scientific articles in refereed professional journals on contact center efficiencies, and he has routinely been invited to contribute at national conferences. He has served as an Area Editor and member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector (IJISSS), and is a member of the International Journal of Operations and Quantitative Management. He has worked with many Fortune 500 companies including Bank of America, Caterpillar, Celestica, Charter Communications, Convergys, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Phillips, and Siemens (Munich, Germany) in improving their processes and performance. Dr. Aykin holds BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research.
Forecasting: Basics, January 20, 3pm ET – Click Here to Register
Without a solid forecast in place, the best workforce management systems will falter. While forecasting methodologies range from simple gut feel to intricate mathematical algorithms, there are several that every workforce management analyst should be aware of to effectively forecast the center’s call workload. This session will focus on the basics of contact center forecasting including:
- Forecasting process
- Forecasting methods
- Judgmental methods
- Time Series methods
- Time series patterns: trends, seasonality, and cycles
- Weighted moving averages
- Exponential smoothing
- Time series decomposition
- Special event period forecasting
- Data quality control: Outliers and missing data smoothing
Advanced Forecasting, January 27, 3pm ET – Click Here to Register
In today’s complex multi-skill, multi-site, multimedia contact centers, forecasting can be an extraordinary challenge. During the second part of ac2’s seminar series on forecasting, Dr. Aykin will review a number of powerful time series techniques used for forecasting at contact centers, and discuss advantages and risks of each. This session will focus on several advanced time series models for contact center forecasting including:
- Review of basics of time series forecasting
- Time series models
- Exponential smoothing
- Time series decomposition
- Box-Jenkins ARIMA Models
- Dynamic regression
- Curve fitting
- Expert systems for contact center forecasting
- Agent requirements forecasting
- Forecast accuracy tracking
Optimal Scheduling, February 17, 3pm ET – Click Here to Register
Complex work and day-off patterns, shift start times and lengths, break windows and durations, agent availability, skill sets, varying contact volumes and handling times, multiple sites, multimedia channels, and an astronomical number of possible schedule sets that will satisfy your constraints, make it impossible to schedule agents optimally without advanced optimization technologies. This session will focus on several important scheduling topics including:
- What is “optimal”?
- Staffing and scheduling in skills based and non-skill based environments
- Heuristic incremental schedule building
- Concurrent optimal scheduling
- Schedule efficiency comparisons
Strategic Planning, March 17, 3pm ET – Click Here to Register
Given the time needed to recruit and train new agents, variations in agents available to schedule and the numbers needed, and company’s service level objective over time, strategic planning analyzes the future service levels, identifies the needs, and determines budget requirements. With an accurate strategic plan, workforce managers can take steps to acquire resources needed to deliver targeted service levels while minimizing the cost. This session will focus on the strategic planning process including:
- Long range traffic forecasting
- New hire AHT and productivity ramp forecasting
- Service level planning
- Headcount ramp-up, ramp-down, overtime, and volunteer time off Planning
- Support and management staff planning
- Budget and service level projections
- “What-If” scenario planning
- Strategic plan maintenance
Revenue Optimal Staffing & Scheduling, April 21, 3pm ET – Click Here to Register
Business objectives for services and sales centers are significantly different. The primary objective of a sales center is to generate profits whereas the primary objective of a service center is to satisfy customers’ service needs. Workforce managers at sales and services centers must align their workforce plans with these objectives to be successful. In this session, you will learn how to link your staffing and scheduling processes with your sales centers’ primary business objective of maximizing profits for your company:
- Service vs. Sales Centers
- Performance Objectives for Service and Sales Centers
- Service level, ASA, and maximum abandonment rate
- Revenue optimization
- Revenues and costs at sales centers
- Revenue optimal staffing
- Revenue optimal scheduling
