Inspired People Go Above & Beyond

Business Systems (UK) Ltd recently had the pleasure of speaking at @The Forum Customer Strategy & Planning 2020 Event.  

It was a fantastic session, where myself, my colleague @Alex Stenton-Hibbert and @Jamie Airey from UK Power Networks (Business Systems customer) came together to discuss the different ways you can inspire your employees to promote engagement and drive impressive ROI – which of course is one of my favourite topics, being the passionate Workforce Management (WFM) enthusiast that I am!

The session was packed full of best practice tips, real-life examples and key takeaways so I couldn’t resist writing a re-cap article to make sure no one misses out!

Using COVID as a time to try out new things

Most of us are now used to the ‘new normal’ which 2020 has brought. At the beginning of lockdown, many organisations had to embrace change – from the channels they were offering to their operations and services, to suit the unusual environment we all found ourselves in. Change was welcomed, and for many, it was necessary.

Fast forward 7 months, and we’ve seen that organisations are still using this period as a time to try out new things, which is fantastic!

For example, we’ve now seen organisations experiment with different ways of scheduling such as:

-         Micro-shifts (agents filling in intervals during spikes)

-         Staggering start and end times

-         Allowing self-scheduling

-         Using preference-based scheduling (whereas in the past, organisations have been reluctant to do this)

In fact, we had a great example from Jamie who spoke about how UK Power Networks utiltised their WFM system during COVID, to help them maintain the split of working from home and working from the office, to always ensure great customer service whilst adhering to government guidelines.

Using the configuration on the shift category module within Calabrio WFM, they were able to identify different working zones and who was working at which zone at a particular time, so that if a case of COVID occurred, they could trace who else might have been infected at that time.

This set up has now continued and is now part of the daily routine, ensuring UK Power Networks do not go over capacity and maintain social distancing.

Download workforce management checklist here:

https://www.businesssystemsuk.co.uk/paper/workforce-management-performance-checklist

Key Takeaway: Try new things! Experiment with trial teams and or/trial periods to see what works. Embrace this time to welcome change and new ways of working.

Attract and Retain Staff

According to Forbes, highly engaged teams show a 21% greater profitability (1), so it’s critical that engaging your agents, particularly during this time, remains top of your list.

Alex talked us through how @Zen Internet (voted Sunday Times’ Top 100 Companies to work for) have been utilising their mobile app – MyTime to engage employees. The MyTime app allows agents to access shifts and freely swap and book holidays themselves at the touch of a button, reducing attrition as well as sickness. A win-win situation all round!

Alex also discussed a great example of how Zen Internet are now able to offer double the number of employee’s time off during Christmas, thanks to having full visibility of service levels and allocating shifts accurately. It’s safe to say, there will be no more Christmases being cancelled for the Zen Internet team!

Jamie also spoke about WFM helping to simplify the booking process for holidays and therefore employee engagement. Previously, booking holidays used to be long-winded. Now, with self-service options, agents can do this quickly and efficiently as well as requesting overtime straight through the app. According to Jamie, this has also improved the engagement of the resource planning team who can now spend 30% less of their time handling admin requests such as these.

Key takeaway: Find out what works for your people and make sure you put them first. Looking after your employees means looking after your customers!

Personal Development Time

Personal development time is now more important than ever, particularly whilst agents are working from home. In fact - a poll we ran during the session showed us that 25% of our audience   found that agents are now less engaged and productivity has dropped whilst working from home, building an even bigger case for why you should be investing in personal development time and understanding how WFM can help with this.

In fact, after implementing WFM, Zen Internet were able to increase their monthly scheduled personal development time by more than 500% across the team – fantastic!

According to Jamie at UK Power Networks, WFM has also enabled them to schedule and protect personal development time, which they have chosen to do as part of short-term planning rather than scheduling in many sessions, never getting round to it, and having to cancel it which can be extremely demoralising for the agent. Personal development time has become sacred for UK Power Networks where regardless of what may be happening, they never cancel the session for individuals.

Download the Zen Internet case study here:

https://www.businesssystemsuk.co.uk/casestudy/zen-internet-workforce-management

Key takeaway: Allocate and protect this time – it is vital!

Showing your agents the value they deliver

As well as allocating personal development time, it’s also just as important to be able to track agent’s performance. A second poll we ran during the session, showed us that 48% of you are not able to track performance as this is being done manually and therefore provides little visibility.

Making use of the data within your WFM or in fact any system within your contact centre is key to improving. WFM reporting for example, can show you gaps in performance and help you understand where there may be coaching requirements.

In fact, Jamie discussed how UK Power Networks are using data available to them from within the analytics database within their WFM system to connect to Power BI. This has allowed them to track and understand staff better, whereas previously they were manually reporting and found themselves to be reactive rather than pro-active when it came to employee coaching requirements.

Let’s not forget that tracking performance can also be done in the back-office where you can see how well employees are performing based on their touchpoints and processes. This means you can target their learning and identify the inefficiencies even in your most efficient workers. It’s all about implementing the right technology which will allow you to locate and analyse the data that will drive real tangible change.

Read back-office article by clicking here:

https://www.businesssystemsuk.co.uk/how-to-measure-productivity-in-the-back-office

Key takeaway: Use the data that is available to you and make correlations between this data so that the value can be tracked, measured and celebrated!

Gamification

Lastly, we all spoke about Gamification. The marmite of the contact centre world where you either love it or hate it!

A poll we ran during the session showed us that 79% of you are not using any form of Gamification. However, the benefits of Gamification seem to be overlooked, particularly during this time of remote working.

Gamification in simple terms helps drive the right behaviour from people and can help improve company culture. And in an environment such as the contact centre, it could potentially work wonders. The idea behind Gamification is that contact centre agents can be positioned as players of a game and the game can be based on rewards performance based on pre-determined parameters and metrics. An example of these metrics could be CSAT scores or first contact resolution.

As a result, agents are encouraged to reach specific targets and improve their performance, helping to reduce agent turnover and absenteeism.

Read Gamification article by clicking here:

https://www.businesssystemsuk.co.uk/gamification-what-it-is-why-it-works-and-how-you-use-it

Key Takeaway: Embrace Gamification! It’s engaging for staff and results will improve. In an environment such as the contact centre it can work wonders!

As always, I am extremely passionate about how organisations should be inspiring their employees to be the best they can be and how technology plays such a large part in this.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss any of the topics further with me, then please feel free to drop me a LinkedIn message!

(1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/nazbeheshti/2019/01/16/10-timely-statistics-about-the-connection-between-employee-engagement-and-wellness/#33437a5822a0