WFM Performance Metrics

[Shawn Livengood]

What performance metrics do you use to evaluate your schedulers performance? We are a contact center with 7 scheduling analysts supporting approximately 60 clients, 1200+ CSRs, spaning 8 locations.

Thanks!

[John Cockerill]

Shawn,
What a good question! I don't know if there is an absolute answer without more details but let's consider some ideas.

First, we assume that the scheduling analysts are working with forecasts of calls from your client or client groups. I suggest using this as the starting point. How good are those forecasts? How are they created and what are the degrees of variation over the reporting periods? For instance: a reporting period of a week for service level with a client call load of between 15,000 or so per day to about 10,000 will likely vary between 5 to 10% for 80% of the predicted days.

With this type of variation in the forecast the scheduling analysts should be able to schedule with good accuracy and allow for the usual fudge factors. If their scheduling meets that forecast and the actual they are likely doing that part of the job well.

That said the next area would be to check the number of compliants from CSRs, team leaders and managment. How many of what type, source and reason and if necessary scheduling analyst? There are always compliants about scheduling. It is the nature of our trade and the nature of people not to like something. But a run chart of the number of complaints by the catagories and analyst will quickly show if the operation is being well served by these people.

This is by no means complete but I hope it starts some thinking for you and other people in similar circumstances. On a personal note please let me know what you decide to do and the results.

John

[Karsten Fuhrmann]

Hi Shawn,

you're looking for the WFM "holy grail" ;-)

I use forecast quality as John already mentioned. In addition, I do manual crosschecks. We have a checklist of 12 issues, which we need to cover (legally and based on our company policy). Out of the "ready-to-distribution" schedules, I randomly pick 5% and go through the checklist. This gives a snapshot about quality.

We don't measure complaints because it's too fluffly (sometimes agents complain without a reason). But once a quarter, we have an employee satisfaction survey, which covers also the overall satisfaction regarding planning.

Good luck
Karsten

[John Cockerill]

Karsten,
The 12 items on the check list, what do they consist of? I'm interested in any that you can share. They may be useful to anyone doing similar work. Thanks

John

[Karsten Fuhrmann]

Hi John,

the 12 items on my checklist are:
- 10 working days within 2 weeks
- total number of working days 20
- max. 6 consecutive days on
- min. 2 of 4 weekends completely off
- no consecutive weekends on
- max. 4 single days off
- min. 2x2 consecutive days off
- identical start-times Monday - Friday
- Days off for bank holidays scheduled
- transition from old to new schedules ok
- unavailable times followed

These items cover the legal rules and company policy. They are on a checklist, which is used by everyone in WFM to double-check the created schedules, because some of the rules are hard to fulfill automatically. Every question can be answered with YES or NO.

Hope this helps. Just drop me an eMail if you want to discuss further: karsten_fuhrmann@hotmail.com

[Jbartolucci]

I use a balanced scorecard approach with a performane index. The scorecard consists of key indicators and influtential indicators with corresponding weightings for each.

Key Indicators
1) Service Level vs. Target
2) % of half hour intervals within +/- 10% of service level target
3) Forecast Accuracy
4) Occupancy

Influtential Indicators
1) % of Agent Schedule requests Approved
2) Employee Retention

The key indicators for the scorecard consist of 80%-85% of the total index weight. Obviously the influential metrics are tough for the Staffing Analysts to directly control. I thought it was important to keep these areas in the decision making process though. We've experienced favorable results with this method.

Joe

[healani]

These are the metrics that we are currently being measured on by our supervisor:

1. standard deviation of net staff
2. required fte with schedule template limits/ required fte with no limits
3. actual fte/required fte with schedule template limits

This allows us to see how close to the requirement we are staffing. We have forecasters whose primary job it is to develop forecasts, so that is not something we are held to.