Skill-based routing

[ChrisH]

I have responsibility for all aspects of WFM in my call center network, including inbound volume forecasting, AHT forecasting, staff planning, and schedule creation.

We will soon be moving from a non-skill-based to a skill-based routing approach. I have several questions for anyone who has gone through a similar transition:

1). What challenges or obstacles did you encounter?
2). How is your Workforce Management group structured? For
example, do you have one person responsible for creating
schedules, one for forecasting volume, one for maintaining
staffing models, etc...? Is it effective in a skill-based
environment?
3). How do you track handle time by call type, when several call
types are being answered by the same agent/associate?

Also, I'm interested in visiting other call centers in the Phoenix/Tempe/Mesa/Chandler/Scottsdale area who utilize skill-based routing. If your call center is located in the area and you would be willing to allow me to observe SBR in your site, please let me know.

Any advice, experience, key learnings, etc... that anybody can share regarding transitioning to SBR would be welcomed. I'd like to know what to expect so I can be prepared when the time comes.

Thank you.

[MHoaglan]

I am currently the Administrator for eWFM in our 400 agent call center. We are currently using skill-based routing here for all of our inbound programs.

There is a lot of information that I can give you regarding how WFM is set up to forecast, schedule, etc..

Please send an email to: MHoagland@minacsusa.com and I can give you a phone number to contact me so that I can pass on any information that I have.

[FAREED BAJWA]

We also have experimented the option of having skill based routing in our call center in Pakistan. This was done to keep the new unskilled agents away from our corporate high revenue generating customers and also our internal customers.
It was giving us good results and was working quite well.
The probelms we encountered were that our skilled agents became very busy the performance of unskilled agents in terms of number of calls answered went down.
The other constraint we experienced was lack of optimal resource (agent performance)utilization. So we had to revise the targets and standards for skilled and unskilled agents.

So as soon as our new CSRs got trained after about three months we defined the same skill level for all the agents.

Regards
Fareed

[Mark Brannan]

Chris,

We have a complex skills based environment at our center. We do technical support, have 110 agents, about 24 skills, and we use proficiencies along with skills to route callers.

Let me know if you haven't already accumulated the info you were looking for, and I'd be happy to tell you about our experiences.