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Effective Operations Center Management Ideas

By

Sami Al-Shammary

Mobile: 0565856995

E-mail: drs7788@gmail.com

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Key definitions

KPI: Key Performance Indicators, also known as Key Success Indicators (KSI), help an

organization define and reach its goals.

SLA: A service-level agreement is a part of a service contract where a service is formally

defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time

(of the service or performance).

Agent: Agent is one who acts for, or in the place of, another, by authority from him; one

entrusted with the business of another.

Group Leader: Group leadership is the process of providing focus and direction to a specific

group of people. Leadership of this type often involves facilitating and guiding the actions of

group participants as well as accepting responsibility for the outcome of the group’s efforts.

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Super visor: supervisor, foreperson, overseer, cell coach, facilitator, or area coordinator is a

manager in a position of trust in business.

Workforce analytics: Workforce analytics is a combination of software and methodology that

applies statistical models to worker-related data, allowing enterprise leaders to optimize

human resource management

Issue tracking system: An issue tracking system (ITS) is a software application that allows an

enterprise to record and follow the progress of every problem or "issue" that a computer

system user identifies until the problem is resolved.

Average handle time: (AHT) is a the average duration of one transaction, typically measured

from the initiation of the ticket and including any hold time of the related tasks that follow the

transaction.

Longest delay: (LDQ) is the longest time period that it takes to finish a task

Off-peak: describes a time period with less work tasks than are handled in a busy period.

Generally, it is used for non- work, such as training and e-learning, catching up with computer

work or team building activities and meetings. The scheduling takes into account the peak and

off-peak times when planning staffing needs.

Workforce management (WFM): software is an umbrella term for desktop and mobile programs that help a business manage staff scheduling. The term originated in contact centers and other service businesses that employ a large number of workers who are paid on an hourly basis.

The goal of WFM software is to gain visibility into business metrics, such as the fewest number of agents needed at a particular time of day or the amount of time it takes to produce a particular product.

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According to the research firm Gartner Inc., workforce management software has five corefunctions:

Labor scheduling: to help manage employees’ skills and compliance requirements more effectively.

Time and work data collection: to capture and report highly-detailed information about labor use.

Leave management: to process paid time-off requests with visibility into the staffing and liability implications.

Task and activity management: to deliver a more detailed view of labor management requirements to help with the sophisticated decision making required for activity-based management.

Time and attendance: to receive input from the other modules and apply rules against the reported times, based on the company’s requirements.

Workforce optimization (WFO): software is a program suite that combines recording, quality

management (QM) and other company center technologies into one console to oversee

operating center performance. A WFO suite typically includes tools for workforce

management, quality monitoring, liability recording, coaching and eLearning, performance

management, surveying and speech analytics. The technology brings together and reports on

many different functions within the enterprise – from the call center to the back-office.

According to one industry expert, WFO technology can be valuable to the enterprise because it

delivers actionable insight that can help optimize the operating center.

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Operating center hierarchy matrix

Head of Department

Senior Super visor Optimization Dep

(Implementing

new Cam`s)

IT Dep

Floor Group leader

& scheduling

super visor

Training &

evaluation super

visor

Ticket

distribution super

visor

Group leaders

Agents

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As shown in the flow chart (not necessary to be the real CO hierarchy) this is my view of

running the center as giving an exact task to be fulfilled by each person/Dep,

Such as:

The agents are responsible of their job tasks of making sure the work flow of the tickets

are running as smoothly as possible minting the SLA without any LDQ.

Group leaders are the personal that are responsible of assuring the agents are achieving

their SLA and AHT, also give a daily report of the KPI on each shift and make sure the

margin of the shift KPI does not exceed more than 10% of LDQ.

Floor group leaders & schedule super visor is the person whom all group leaders report

to regarding the shift timing/day offs of all the personal and managing the issues

between the floor and HR Dep, also working in parallel with IT Dep on maintain the

WFM software and the rules that should be included such as Peek hours (Depending on

our Saudi culture, the peak hours are from 6AM – 9AM then again 2PM-5PM and also 8PM –

11PM on SAT-WED , and 11AM-3AM Wed-FRI)

Training & evaluation super visor is a person whom is responsible of training the new

agents and evaluating their progress of learning all the aspects of the software used on

the job or any other programs used, during the time of training (3 month evaluating

period) the trainer would measure the KPI, AHT working in parallel with the Floor &

schedule super visor & IT Dep to generate a weekly report of each agent evaluation and

coaching in case needed for the poorly preformed agents and also assuring the quality

of service on all agents by measuring the SLA ,LDQ and wrong tickets.

Ticket distribution super visor is a person whom is responsible of handling the queue of

the tickets flow depending on the bases of 1st in 1st out base to insure the SLA and

should work in parallel with the other super visors , IT Dep and group leaders weekly

evaluation.

“Some or all of the points are related to a system of software’s to be implemented to generate and produce the

reports and time tables as well as the schedule based on a mathematical equations that defer from company to

other based on their needs,

A strong recommendation from my side to weed out the weak links in the Group leaders or supervisors level

and recruit an experienced people on those 2 positions (as they retain the power of managing the whole process

of the work flow)”

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Operating center analytics system

As for the system, I do strongly feel we do need to implement a serial of software applications

which would help us on those points:

SLA

KPI

LDQ

AHT

WFO

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Q - What do we benefit of an all-digital solution managing the work flow?

A –

Minimizing the time & effort of producing the reports

Cost effective on the short & long run

Minimizing the error margin up to 98% on any manual task

Each person in med management level would keep track of the labor work

The labor themselves would be identified to their KPI, SLA and weekly shift schedules

HR can be informed of all the reports needed directly on the performance of each

person as well the higher management.

Measuring the trend of the peak hours

Depending on analyses of the information input we can get forecast the needs of

increasing/decreasing of labor.

The info output would measure all the shifts depending on the trend of increasing

tickets on queue

“These points I am sure is already implemented in the establishment either some or all, but just

in case if some are not there already or not used at its full potential, then I would hope I have

shed some light of how to improve what already there is. “

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Out of the box

Indicator screen

One idea is to install on the wall(s) a plasma TV that is playing the statistics of the KPI, SLA &

LDQ.

By this we would benefit the agents of knowing how well they are doing and the queue they

have on their shift time as well as the group leaders well be always on alert if there is any LDQ

backing up the queue which is also helpful in distributing the numbers of agents having their

brake times every hour, We can do this with the help from the IT Dep

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Seating Color charts

Another idea, is distributing the agents based on their work performance of KPI, As in we give

a color for each seating area a color starting from “BLUE” “Yellow” “RED” by installing a

colored flag on each seating area.

The KPI generated report should be passed out to the group leaders and each has to mark

their groups depending on the scores to the right seating place,

Blue area is where the most producing agents should be seated based on their weekly KPI,

these agents would have advantage in such areas as a motivation for their work and would

have the privilege of having days off on THU&FRI or having the chance of been Acting group

leaders for a period of time “this would also help us of knowing if they are right for the position in case

needed”, or an appreciation certificate from the CO in their HR files, and so forth..

Yellow areas is where the med performance people should be setting and have fewer

privileges than the BLUE, but by the supervision from group leaders to work them more in

seeing how to increase their KPI to get them to be on the Blue level “by this we test the group

leaders themselves of how they can manage these people and getting the best out of them by motivating them

and fixing their problems if any”

RED zone is with the least performing agents whom should be questioned of their poor

performance and how to fix it by the training supervisor by coaching them with their own

group leaders and mentoring them of how to lead the way through the problem to get the

solution of what is affecting their work performance

“The advantage of having such a method is to distinguish the good from the bad on 2 levels

(Agents & group leaders), it would show how group leaders can motivate the bad to become

good with also measuring the performance of each group leader based on how their team KPI,

and the agents to be in a situation that is in fronted to all the floor of his performance so it

motivates him to be in a better seating area seeing how the others are getting more privileges

than him.”

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24/7 shift

Such task is not done by thinking out of the box, it all gets down to numbers and mathematical

equations, but based on my experience and study of the matter I found that going simple is

the best way, so therefore here is some of the things I already have learned from my past

experience by using a software that can generate the shifts based on the inputs

Name Rotating 8Hr Plan

Applicability 24/7 operations

Teams Required 4

Shifts Morning (8-hr), Day (8-hr), Night (8-hr)

Repeat Cycle 28 days

Rotation Slow, forward rotation from morning shift to day shift to night shift

Average Hours per Week 42

Staffing Fluctuation Balanced from shift to shift and day to day

Pluses At least 2 days off after any 7 working days

3 days off after 7 consecutive night shifts

8-hr shifts

Minuses A free weekend (Tuesday & Friday) comes only once every 7 weeks

7 consecutive work days

7 consecutive work nights every 28 days

Requires an average of 2 overtime hours per employee per week

Common Usage Popular with 24/7 operations that prefer 8-hr shifts

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Now I am sure no one would work 7 days in a row, so by inputting the 24/5 work days we get

this outcome, putting in mind having 90 agents and the result was:

But still for best performance and out of the box is to combine the 2 methods as

follows:

Divide the agents into 4 teams and use the previous idea (Seating color chart)

Team 1 (Sat-Wed) 7AM-3PM, 30 Agents (Preferred only BLUE category)

Team 2 (Sat-Wed) 9AM-5PM, 25 Agents (Preferred BLUE & Yellow category)

Team 3 (open date schedule) 4PM-12AM, 20 Agents (Preferred Yellow & RED category)

Team 4 (Wed-Sun) 11PM-7AM, 15 Agents (Preferred only RED category)

“By categorizing the time table and Color of performance of the agents we motivate the poorly

preformed agents to see the privileges other agents are getting so they would perform better and

insuring the best quality from the rest knowing how distinguished they are, coming from this

culture I do understand how important to everyone to have the same weekends and a fixed job

timing so they can practice their family and social relationships, so by performing this shift time

table we do score 2 birds in one stone”

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Global cultural Cuisines day

Understanding the human nature is hard, we do come from deferent countries, cultures,

religions, ideology and education back grounds,

Some people are so closed minded about such matters and feel obligated to have negative

feelings about the others surrounding him just because they are from a deferent back ground

than him and very cautious of understanding or even to be indifferent about others cultural,

One way to tackle such sensitive matter is through the most basic human needs, Food.

We as humans when it comes to food are always open minded to try something new after the

eye sees it,

by having ALL of the employees from all nationalities have a day each month to have a 40 min

lunch break bringing something from their own homes and it has to be a traditional food from

their culture back ground, people would look and want to try some of it,

“And by this simple act a barrier is gone and opens a new path of talking with this person and

knowing him more, even if it starts by talking about food and such but with time it would get

to have an open mind about this person personality and considered to be a work colleague whom

is just like him working at a job and earn a honest living, to have an ending result of having a

professional friendly work environment.”

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Company Picnic

One substantial factor of any work environment is to have a release time of all the pressures &

the routine work on daily basses,

Having a 2 time event each year for all the employees (With inviting other influential people

from other Dep or even outside the company) would gain all of the people from all the stress

of the work,

At such events there are no boundaries between management or labor levels, all are there for

fun and having a good time by doing a variety of activities and contests with prizes to be given

to all the winners whomever they be, putting in mind no prizes at this gathering is determined

by their work or performance, it has to be 100% fun event and not associated to any work

related matter.

“Again as a human nature it would make all workers have more loyalty to the company and his

own work, also break another cultural barrier with their colleagues”

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maslow pyramid

In order to have a successful work environment I have placed some of the ideas and thoughts in

my own point of view and from my back ground experience & education both from work & life,

in this summary of thoughts I tried to give out a general ideas and not to the exact precise state

of affairs of the company as I don’t know all the facts or system to evaluate upon,

But I do know that management is not to manage people or work, it is in fact how to be a

leader and build future leaders by coaching them on how to perfect their work and be as much

valuable to the company as possible and widen of how to think and act accordingly for their

own benefits, it builds trust, confidence and loyalty to the company.

To archive it all we must always collaborate to be a team effort from all departments and

workers with knowing of how to use technology to achieve the final goal of our human needs in

life.