To centralize or not to centralize WFM staff

[tintin]

Hi everyone,
First of all, thanks to everyone who contribute this forum; I have been visiting this forum for some time now and find it very useful.

I would be extremely grateful if any of the knowledgeable people around would shed some light on my question below:

I am talking about a telco company which has 4 call centres with around 1300 agents in all. They are investing in a WFM solution as they finally found out how difficult and inefficient it was working with farms of excel spreadsheets. Now seeing the amazing capabilities of the proposed WFM application, they would like to know whether they should be centralizing all their WFM staff into one of the 4 contact centres instead of having dedicated WFM staff at each centre. Cost savings due to lesser WFM personnel being one of the prime reasons for considering this option.

My personal take is that considering only Forecasting, Staffing and Scheduling processes only, it might make more sense to have a centralized WFM dept instead of 4. But when we talk about things like Real Time Adherence/Monitoring, having onsite WFM staff might be far more effective.

Any inputs on this would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

[Martijn]

Hi Tintin,

we have a centralized staff and also decentralized staff. Our planners and reporters are centralized, the schedulers and people who make all the mutations in our WfM package are decentralized.

[n_meghanath]

If you are looking at a center which has roughly 325 (1300/4 centers) agents then my experience says that you have to have dedicated WFM guys taking charge of it independently at the center, not remotely. You may not have a full structured WFM department in each of the center however each center supervisor may report to a Manager stationed at one of the center.

Originally Posted by tintin

Hi everyone,
First of all, thanks to everyone who contribute this forum; I have been visiting this forum for some time now and find it very useful.

I would be extremely grateful if any of the knowledgeable people around would shed some light on my question below:

I am talking about a telco company which has 4 call centres with around 1300 agents in all. They are investing in a WFM solution as they finally found out how difficult and inefficient it was working with farms of excel spreadsheets. Now seeing the amazing capabilities of the proposed WFM application, they would like to know whether they should be centralizing all their WFM staff into one of the 4 contact centres instead of having dedicated WFM staff at each centre. Cost savings due to lesser WFM personnel being one of the prime reasons for considering this option.

My personal take is that considering only Forecasting, Staffing and Scheduling processes only, it might make more sense to have a centralized WFM dept instead of 4. But when we talk about things like Real Time Adherence/Monitoring, having onsite WFM staff might be far more effective.

Any inputs on this would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

[tintin]

Thanks guys - Martijn and Meghanath - for your replies. I tend to agree with Martijn that we can separate the roles and do a bit of both. Also Meghanath I will keep your point in mind.

[thetuan]

Tin Tin,

Before you can decide on a centralized national workforce management team, you need to know if your ACD is centralized or not. By having a centralized ACD, you can potentially route calls to all 4 call centers equally. If that is the case, then your forecasting, scheduling and reporting functions should be performed in by the "national workforce team" in one of your larger call center or at your HQ. This team should be managed by a National Workforce Manager that has years of experience in managing a multi call center sites workforce management system. If your call centers have the ACDs in the call centers and you can not route calls between call centers, then you should have the each call center perform the forecasting of workloads and scheduling the CSRs schedules at each call center. You don't need a national workforce team in this scenario.

You are correct in identifying the daily tasks of real time workforce management (schedule adherence, shrinkage approvals/daily reporting, overtime/undertime management, queue load management, etc..) should be done locally at each call center. The reason behind this is the local workforce team will have immediate feedbacks on the activities of the workforce and they can either report back real time to the national team or, if the local team is empowered, they can take immediate corrective action(s) to get the calls answered quicker.

To set this up correctly in either scenario, you will need a strong workforce manager/director that can do this correctly. I have seen it done many times incorrectly and it can cause chaos and inefficiencies in the call centers. This can lead to undue stress and low morale on everyone in the center when the problem could have been easily avoided given proper planning and execution - this starts with the workforce department.

Good luck