Draft Agenda
2010 SWPP Annual Conference
March 17-19, 2010
Wednesday, March 17
7:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. – Registration
8:30-10:00 a.m. – Conference Warm-up Sessions
Making the Most of Your SWPP Membership. Sometimes when you join an organization, you just don’t have the time to explore all the benefits that are provided. This session will show you what you’re missing and what you need to do to take advantage of a membership in SWPP. You’ll learn how to get feedback from other members, find an old newsletter article, locate specific information on a topic of interest, and post a job opening on the website – just to name a few. Hear how SWPP provides you with the most important education and networking opportunities for your career. – Speakers: Vicki Herrell, SWPP, & Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels
WFM Certification Workshop. What is CWPP Certification all about? What will it do for you in the workforce management field? What are the requirements for certification? How do you prepare? These and other questions are answered by a panel of workforce management professionals who have already achieved the CWPP designation. This workshop gives information on the certification preparation and process to attain the title of Certified Workforce Planning Professional (CWPP). – Speakers: Sandra McFatridge, Medco Solutions, & Katherine Beinecke, CCSG
Leave ‘Em Better: Illuminate & Cultivate Positive & Prosperous Relationships. In order to truly be successful in life, one must illuminate and cultivate winning relationships. This program will give you real world solutions on how to improve your relationships at work, home and social situations. How do you connect with people in less than 60 seconds? How do you become the velvet hammer, getting things done while increasing your popularity? – Speaker: Frank Keck, Excellerant!
10:00-10:15 a.m. – Break
10:15 a.m.-11:45 a.m. – Conference Warm-up Sessions
Speed Networking. Everyone has heard of Speed Dating. Attend this session for a variation that will help you start off the conference with a bunch of new friends! In our Speed Networking session, you will spend just a few minutes getting to know some of your fellow attendees, and exchange business cards so that you can talk more over the next few days and keep in touch after the conference is over. – Facilitators: Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels, & Kim Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation
Workforce Management Certification Practice “Bee.” Play this fun, interactive game to test your knowledge and get a flavor for the questions included in the Certified Workforce Planning Professional (CWPP) exams. Attend this session to see what you need to know in order to be successful in the pursuit of CWPP certification. – Facilitator: Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School
Adults are 5-Year-Olds with Experience: Indispensable Principles for Persuading All Types of People. Do you work with internal and external customers who are difficult, unmotivated, bored, mentally absent, negative, and pushy or who just drain the energy out of you? Do they remind you of paint drying? Persuading people in the 21st century can be really quite simple if you will remember ADULTS ARE 5-YEAR OLDS WITH EXPERIENCE! Adults are 5-Year Olds with Experience is a simple and practical guide to becoming more effective and more efficient in getting people persuaded to do their best! It makes passion the fashion! A fundamental approach that will help you and your team develop your abilities to be motivated, inspired, motivating and inspiring every day! – Speaker: Frank Keck, Excellerant!
11:45 a.m.-1:00 p.m. – Lunch on Your Own
1:00-2:15 p.m. – Welcome and Keynote Address
2:30-3:45 p.m. – Workshops
Data Collection & Analysis. The most critical step in the workforce management process is the first one: data collection and analysis. The best predictor of future call workload is past data, so gathering the right data is critical to the workforce management process. Attendees will learn where to look for data and how to scrutinize the data to make sure it’s appropriate to feed into the forecasting process. The class will review mathematical techniques for analyzing data and making needed adjustments. The role of business drivers and how to incorporate them into the planning process will also be discussed. – Speaker: Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School
Measuring the Success of the WFM Team. In this session, hear how several companies have created a WFM scorecard, and what metrics can be used to measure WFM success. Some specific measurements that will be discussed include AVV (Absolute Value Variance), SQI (Schedule Quality Index), SFI (Schedule Fill Index), and SAI (Schedule Adherence Index). This session will illustrate how to use these calculations and the importance of managing to the proper metrics. – Speakers: Krissy Bunner, Carlson Hotels, Matt Pitts, Bluegreen Corporation, & Baron Blake, Vertex Business Services
Introduction to Six Sigma. – Speaker: Andy Wainwright
Integrating WFM Teams after an Acquisition. In July 2008, Staples acquired Corporate Express and became a $27 billion company serving businesses of all sizes and consumers across 27 countries on five continents. However, as critical to success as any other part of the merger was the resulting need to integrate two totally diverse Workforce Management teams. This session will address the initial differences and how we closed the gap; what we expected and what surprised us. – Speakers: Heather Ostien & Sharon Jones, Staples
Extending WFM into Back Office Operations. Back office operations are often out of sight, but to corporate management, they are rarely out of mind. For most corporations, back offices handle the communications and fulfillment activities that keep businesses running smoothly and efficiently. However, many companies lack the WFM tools and data collection capabilities to do effective WFM. In this session, you will learn that many companies are extending the use of their contact center WFM systems into the back office to gain accurate insight into work arrival rates and handling times; determine appropriate staffing levels to reduce staffing and overtime costs; increase SLA achievement and improve customer satisfaction; determine employee productivity and boost employee morale; optimize back office processes; and make better, timely management decisions. – Speaker: Andressa Marlan, NICE, IEX Workforce Management Group
Handling WFM in an Outsourcing Environment. Many call centers are outsourcing at least a percentage of their calls. It can be a struggle for your WFM team to work seamlessly with the outsourcing company and their WFM staff. In this panel discussion, hear how these issues have been faced in other companies and be ready to share your own solutions as well. – Speakers: Jodi Wright, Allstate, Michele Borboa, Contact Center Resources, & Chris Watchorn, Teleperformance
The Truths & Myths About FMLA — Part 1. You deal with it everyday, but do you really know the truth about the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)? Which employees are eligible to take FMLA leave? How much leave can eligible employees take? Can an employee be denied FMLA leave? Can an employee be fired for taking FMLA leave? Come to this session to learn what FMLA really means and what your role is in carrying out the provisions of this law. – Speaker: Fred Bissinger, Wimberly Lawson Seale Wright & Daves
3:45-4:15 p.m. – Break
4:15-5:30 p.m. – Workshops
Forecasting Fundamentals. Review the most popular techniques used for forecasting and the advantages and risks of each. You will learn about the step-by-step approach used by most call centers called time-series analysis, including a case study and an exercise to complete after the class. Tips will also be provided on forecasting shortcuts and when to use them. – Speaker: Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School
Evaluating Operating Hours & Service Level Goals in Today’s Economy. With the economy today, many businesses are looking to cut costs, and staffing is usually the biggest call center expense. This session will provide an overview of what to look for when determining if your hours of operations and service level goal are meeting your business needs. Also you will learn a framework for how to determine if you are getting the most bang for your buck at all hours of operations and your current service level goal. – Speakers: Corki Stokka, CDS Global, & Kim Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation
Excel Tips for the Workforce Manager. Excel continues to be the most used application in workforce planning whether you use workforce management software or not. Back by popular demand, this session is designed to demonstrate Excel tips with an emphasis on data setup, pivot tables, and charts as well as features of MS-Excel 2007. – Speaker: Retha Deaton
Best Practices for Increasing Schedule Flexibility. The shifting workforce demographic demands new ways to attract and retain good employees. Being a contact center agent is a challenging job, very different from management, but it is possible to bridge the gap by providing flexible options for time off when the agents need it. Come listen to a case study on how one Progressive Insurance Contact Center uses schedule flexibility options to retain high performers while meeting the demands of the business. – Speakers: Mark Rhodes & Nancy Colie, Progressive Insurance & Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels
Improving First Contact Resolution Through Formal Expert Escalations and Collaboration. Utilizing an Ask-the-Expert strategy is one of the best ways to improve first call resolution and customer satisfaction. This session will discuss strategies for implementing an Ask-the-Expert program, including executive buy-in, technologies, scheduling of experts, and measurement of Expert contribution to customer satisfaction. – Speaker: Brett Williams, Aspect
Strategic Planning for your WFM Team. Sometimes the WFM team gets caught up in developing the long term forecast or the call center's strategic plan, and frequently overlooks its own departmental strategic vision and development. In this session, see the outline of a process that ensures you are managing/evolving the WFM team’s functions and capabilities to address the increased demands and complexity of the modern contact center. See the roadmap that can be followed to evolve basic capabilities into a strategic asset for the corporation. – Speaker: Andy Wainwright, Toyota Financial
The Truths & Myths About FMLA — Part 2. In the second part of this session, our FMLA legal experts will continue to answer questions about this hot topic. You will learn specifics about new legislation and regulations that have been implemented and/or proposed. – Speaker: Fred Bissinger, Wimberly Lawson Seale Wright & Daves
5:30-7:30 p.m. – Opening Reception
Thursday, March 18
8:00-9:00 a.m. – Breakfast
9:00-10:15 a.m. – Workshops
Calculating Call Center Staff. Learn how to fine-tune staffing requirements to get the “just right” number of resources in place. This session will discuss cost vs. service concerns, the impact of large groups and economies of scale, call arrival rate, and staff occupancy. You’ll also learn about calculating staff for emails and outbound calling campaigns. – Speaker: Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School
Setting up a Teleworking Program. How do you make the jump from traditional contact centers to using teleworkers? Hear how companies have successfully deployed remote agent programs. Learn about the various components that need to be considered in building a business case for a teleworking set-up and identify the benefits and challenges of initiating and maintaining a telework program to make it a WIN-WIN-WIN situation. – Speaker(s): Kimberly Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation, & Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels
Call Center Transformation/Integration. In this session, hear how the workforce management team at Capital One has partnered with the operations team to transform their call center into a unit that meets all customer needs instead of using a “one-size fits all” approach. Also see how the capacity planning team played a vital role within the transformation. The second part of the discussion will be about integrating a new call center/company into the mix and how capacity planning plays a role in this process. – Speaker: Meghan Gill, Capital One
The Perfect Marriage – Operations, Command Center and WFM. In many centers, there are three entities that all feel they are separately the most important part of providing good service. Operations may feel they have the most to lose or gain so they should be most important, Command Center has that same feeling as the Operations team's performance is a reflection of their job and the WFM Scheduling and Forecasting team feels it is their responsibility to start the process. The secret is getting them to work together to form the "Perfect Marriage" of all these entities to provide world class service. If you have these issues or wish to avert these issues with a reorganization, don’t miss this session. – Speaker(s): Kelly Fraley & Rick Seeley, Convergys
Everything is Changing: How to Plan in This Crazy Environment. It’s been a wild year for planning professionals, and all indications are that things are getting wilder still. For many organizations, forecasting has become nearly impossible. But that’s just the beginning. External and, now, internal forces are shaking up our planning process and our operation. Email, chat, back-office, and outbound calls are being intermingled with our standard inbound call center. Center networks are being consolidated, virtualized, and broadened. And it’s precisely now that many contact center organizations have decided – with good reason – to significantly improve their operation. In 2010, companies plan to invest in the new technologies necessary for organizing the multitude of communication channels. But planning for this opportunity is, yet again, more difficult. In this session, we’ll discuss tips, tricks, math, and modeling ideas to help you sort through forecasting and planning for your multi-channel, multi-skill contact center in a crazy environment. – Speaker: Ric Kosiba, President, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies
Customized Reporting in a Multi-Skill Center. It’s not only a challenge to skill agents in the ACD, but also to setup the ACD to correspond to the WFM applications. In order to ensure accurate reporting data is provided, a complete understanding of how the routing is set up, how the agents are skilled, and the relationships between the staff groups and skill levels of the associates is needed. See the impacts of having too many levels and skills assigned to associates, as well as how Sears created customized reporting in a multi-skill environment. – Speaker: Donna Edwards, Sears
Contact Centers & Back Offices: Similar, Yet Vastly Different. It is no secret that contact centers and back-office customer service operations are similar and share a common end goal. However, what is not clear are the subtle differences between the two. Attend this session to find out the top differences that should form the basis for selecting the right software technology and adopting the best management practices for your back-office operations. – Speaker: Chris Zaske, Verint Witness Actionable Solutions
10:15-10:45 a.m. – Break
10:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m. – Workshops
Scheduling Principles & Problems. Learn the basics of scheduling your personnel to meet call center cost and service goals. This session outlines the most common scheduling problems call centers face and will provide some traditional solutions as well as some creative new ones to help with your scheduling dilemma. Be ready to share your own scheduling challenges and solutions. – Speaker: Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School
The Many Faces of Schedule Adherence. Various levels of schedule adherence monitoring are appropriate for different-sized call centers. Attend this session to hear a discussion about the benefits of schedule adherence to the organization versus the effort required to measure schedule adherence. – Speakers: Anne Burns, EyeMed, Michele Borboa, Contact Center Resources, Rick Seeley, Convergys, & Dick Spearrin, HP
Teleworking Roundtable. This session is an interactive forum for those companies who have already put a remote agent program in place. If you are currently using remote agents, come to this session to network with others who are dealing with the same issues. Share your challenges and best practices for teleworking success. – Facilitators: Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels, & Kim Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation
WFM Extreme Makeover: Forecasting Edition. The forecast is the foundation for running an effective contact center. Does your current forecast model incorporate what you know about your business and your customer for enhanced forecasting accuracy, staffing optimization, and operational efficiency? excelleRx has incorporated key business metrics as part of the forecast model to provide detailed insight into performance variances and changing customer behavior to better anticipate future business trends. This session will provide an in-depth look at traditional forecast model components vs. a forecast model that also incorporates workload integration, business metrics & customer knowledge to achieve an efficient contact center operation. – Speakers: Rosemary Eady & Lawrence Birch, excelleRx
Optimizing the Supervisor Desktop – Tips and Tricks for Real-Time Productivity. This session will provide best practices for optimizing the supervisor desktop to drive productivity at both team and agent levels, including establishing streamlined workflows, alerts, team collaboration and coaching techniques. We’ll look at how to leverage a variety of applications, including workforce management, performance management, quality management, and coaching/training tools. – Speaker: Gerry Johnsen, Calabrio
Long-range Planning with Excel. In today's economic environment, everyone is looking for ways to manage expenses. This session explores developing a multi-year long planning tool using MS-Excel. Tips for estimating staffing requirements for both online and offline staffing will be provided along with a process outline for developing and maintaining a long-range strategic plan. – Speaker: Retha Deaton
Re-Thinking Your Contact Center KPIs the European Way. There is much discussion about the best KPIs for contact center management. While there may be a time and place for almost any single metric, the most effective metrics actually depend upon the developmental phase and maturity level of the center. A relatively young center will need a different set of metrics than a mature center to ensure the desired results. PlanMen, one of Europe's premier consulting firms focused on call center planning, will share best practices and methodologies for defining contact center metrics that have made a difference in some of Europe's high-performing centers. – Speaker: Dannis Nieuwpoort, PlanMen
12:00-1:30 p.m. – Lunch and Presentation of Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award
Sponsored by Aspect Software
1:30-2:45 p.m. – Workshops
Power of One Activity Session. What other session utilizes a wading pool, tennis balls, and a bucket from your favorite fried chicken joint? Probably none, because this one is unique! Come to this session to find some proven techniques and activities to show agents how important they are – that one person really does make a difference! – Speakers: Todd Gladden, Ramsey Enterprises, & Kim Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation
Metrics for Evaluating your WFM Team Success. How good are you really? Bring your laptop and your data and see how good your WFM team really is. In this session, learn how to evaluate the performance of your WFM team on a whole new level. Learn how to evaluate your center's service level interval performance and what to do about it. For this interactive workshop, you will need to bring your interval volume forecasts and service levels for at least 30 days in an Excel file. You’ll learn new metrics and methods to evaluate forecast and service level performance, and review typical performance and discuss how to improve your center's results.– Speaker: Dan Rickwalder, Proactive Planning
How Important is Forecast Accuracy? As our software tools get more sophisticated, forecast accuracy continues to be an important statistic for workforce management teams. Attend this panel discussion to see how companies are measuring forecast accuracy and information about scorecards specifically for forecast accuracy. Speakers: Krissy Bunner, Carlson Hotels, Dick Spearrin, HP, & Rick Seeley, Convergys
1800flowers.com Case Study: Special Event Scheduling & Managing At-Home Agents & Outsourcing Resources. In this session, you will learn how 1800flowers.com uses workforce management software to develop creative scheduling practices to absorb seasonality and line commitments with outsource partners. This will include model generation and layering, importing of outsourcer lines commitment, and generation of the internal agents to absorb changes in customer behaviors. – Speaker: Valarie Carbo, 1800flowers.com
Certification Prep – Taking the Exams. Get an in-depth look at what you need to know for the testing in SWPP’s Certified Workforce Planning Professional (CWPP) certification process. In this session, you will review the competencies for the tests, look at some sample test questions, and get feedback from your peers who have successfully completed the test. – Speaker: Sandra McFatridge, Medco Solutions, Michele Borboa, Contact Center Resources, and Katherine Beinecke, CCSG
Keys to Successfully Operating a Home-Based Agent Solution. Many of today’s leading companies are aware of the tremendous benefits home-based agents can bring to their contact center mix. But for some, key questions remain around the areas of hiring, training, workforce management, operations, infrastructure and security. In this session, not only will you discover how incorporating home agents into the staffing mix combined with the right workforce management system can deliver a variety of advantages, but you’ll also walk away with critical takeaways to help you gain a better understanding of what it takes to operate a world-class home-based agent solution. – Speaker: Joe Cox, West Corporation
2:45-3:45 p.m. – Ice Cream Social with the Sponsors
3:45-5:00 p.m. – Workshops
The Importance of Shrinkage. After call volume, average handle time, and Erlang formulas, the most critical element to forecasting staffing requirements accurately is shrinkage. This session focuses on identifying and tracking all types of shrinkage that impact call center operations. It addresses the importance of shrinkage reporting and communicating that data to all levels of management, including the executive level. We will discuss hidden shrinkage, agent occupancy, and how to manage shrinkage to minimize impact on the organization. – Speakers: Jonathan Hall, Bright House Networks, & Retha Deaton
The Scheduling Swap – Countdown of Scheduling Best Practices. If you’re struggling with what else to try in order to match up your schedules to the forecast workload, this is the session for you. You’ll hear about scheduling best practices from your workforce planning peers in a format that’s organized and practical, yet fun and entertaining. Bring one great scheduling idea with you to the session. You’ll have the opportunity to share ideas one-on-one with other participants and hear what’s working best in their centers. – Facilitator: Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School
Teaching Agents & Supervisors about WFM. You know the importance of workforce management. But how do you convey that to frontline staff and supervisors? Communicating the impact workforce management has on profitability and service quality can help you form a partnership that will benefit you both. This session provides best practices for educating the frontline about call center staffing. – Speakers: Rick Seeley, Convergys, & Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School
Dealing with Turnover in the WFM Team. Learn tips and techniques on how to deal with losing staff on your workforce management team. Topics will include cross-training, building a document library, hiring the best candidate when turnover occurs, and getting the replacement up to speed quickly. – Speakers: Beth Csernovicz, Magnet Consulting, & Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels
WFM 2.0. Today’s contact center technology is evolving rapidly. Just as Web 2.0 heralded a new standard for the Internet, and VoIP 2.0 did the same for telecommunications, WFM 2.0 represents the next stage of excellence in contact center staff management. During this session, explore the growth of WFM technologies from ACD-centric solutions to robust software that is fast, efficient, and able to meet the real-time demands of today’s multi-channel / multi-skill contact centers. The session will also include a review of the new advancements in WFM you shouldn’t go without. – Speakers: Craig Shambaugh & Rick Daley, InVision Software
Streamlined Training + Accurate Skills Database = More Efficient and Effective Contact Center. Today’s contact centers are demanding more from their workforce – from managing multiple channel customer interactions to a multitude of applications. Maintaining an accurate skills database by assessing agents to identify gaps and quickly pinpointing areas that require training is now a critical formula to optimizing employee performance and obtaining the most accurate forecasts and schedules. We will discuss how organizations can better position their contact center agents to succeed by creating this closed-loop in a more automated way. – Speaker: Karen Hardy, Genesys
Certification Prep – How to Survive and Succeed in the Project Presentation. In this session. learn how best to prepare a project, the dos and don'ts of project preparation, the best ways to build the presentation, and hot key issues that reviewers have discovered while serving on project review panels. Also hear the top five things that all successful presentations have in common. – Speakers: Steve Gordon, Hyatt Hotels, Todd Gladden, Ramsey Enterprises, & Dick Spearrin, HP
6:00 p.m. – Buses depart for Evening Event
Friday, March 19
7:45-8:45 a.m. – Breakfast
8:00-8:45 a.m. – Behind Closed Doors Sessions
8:45-10:00 a.m. – Workshops
Attendance & Adherence. One of the toughest jobs related to workforce management may not be the intricate calculations of forecasting nor the numerous iterations of coming up with the best schedule mix. The hardest part may come after the schedules are in place – simply ensuring there are frontline staff available when and where you need them to be. Some call centers are much more successful than others at this attendance and adherence dilemma. So how do you get staff to show up for work on Mondays and stick to their planned break times? This session will share proven practices on attendance and adherence that have resulted in increased availability. – Speaker: Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School
Understanding the Complexities of Skill-Based Routing. Skill-based routing is a powerful tool that can help call centers with many different call types handle them more effectively from both a customer and staff perspective. It can be equally powerful when applied to the multiple contact channels - calls, emails, fax, web chat - most centers must handle today. But it’s not easy to design a skill-based routing system that makes sense. Come hear this panel discussion about the do’s and don’ts of skill-based routing design. – Speakers: Maggie Klenke, Rick Seeley, Convergys, & Matt Pitts, Bluegreen Corporation
60 Ideas in 60 Minutes – WFM Tips & Techniques from Real-Life Experiences. This fast-paced session with a panel of your WFM peers will have you writing furiously as you try to capture an idea a minute on paper! This format will give you some last minute tips to take home and implement immediately – if you can catch them all! -- Speakers: Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels, Chris Watchorn, Teleperformance, Michele Borboa, Contact Center Resources, Sandra McFatridge, Medco Solutions, Debbie Davis, AA Vacations, and Krissy Bunner, Carlson Hotels
Essentials of Communications for WFM Professionals. Successful workforce management is more than just sitting at a desk analyzing past history and creating workforce schedules. The successful workforce management professional will be one that is an effective communicator. This session explores the value of communications in the workforce planning and management process. You'll learn techniques for communicating with other departments to gain data needed for planning, communicating with senior management to get needed funding and approvals, and how to communicate with frontline staff and supervisors to make the workforce plan work. Hear proven ways to take a 360 degree approach to call center communications. – Speaker: Brett Redman, Call Design
Best Practices in Maximizing Seat Utilization and Overall Real Estate in Contact Centers. In today’s economic climate, companies are looking to optimize their resources, especially in the contact center. In this session, attendees will learn how to leverage workforce optimization capabilities to maximize existing workstations, as well as training room facilities, through automating the seat planning process by matching up the right seats with the appropriate agents. Maximizing seat utilization can help companies easily assign seats across teams, floors, sites and facilities, enabling organizations to reduce their physical footprint, postpone adding unnecessary capacity, and reduce operating costs. – Speaker: Brett Williams, Aspect
Managed WFM Services Case Study. Challenging economic times are affecting call centers in all industries. They are experiencing losses of highly knowledgeable and experienced workforce management personnel, with limited ability to backfill those key positions. Additionally, many companies are finding themselves facing funding pressures for new technology no matter how significant the ROI. Learn how Delta Air Lines embraced WFM Managed Services (outsourcing from ac2 Solutions) to handle their global forecasting (IDP, shift bid and budget), scheduling, and special projects, how it is working for them and the gains that they have achieved. – Speakers: Robin Stone, Delta Air Lines, Inc., & Liz Turner, ac2 Solutions
10:00-10:15 a.m. – Break
10:15 a.m.-11:30 a.m. – Workshops
The Perils & Pitfalls of Performance-Based Scheduling. This session will address the benefits of moving from seniority based schedule bids to a performance-based system. We'll address the perils and pitfalls to avoid along the way based on our experience of migrating four different call centers to performance-based scheduling. Topics will include: what statistics to base performance on, transitioning smoothly to performance-based bids, communicating effectively to agents to maximize performance, using new hire schedules between bids to “entice” agents to perform, and lessons learned by experience (do's and don'ts). – Speakers: Richard Brooks, Bright House Networks, Meghan Gill, Capital One, & Rick Seeley, Convergys
WFM in the Bargaining Unit Call Center. The Bargaining Unit Contact Center is one of the most unique work environments imaginable in the customer service industry. Because we generally make up a small percentage of the contact center environment, networking, strategizing, and brainstorming is often difficult. Hear how one center deals with the challenges, and come prepared to share your strategies for how to partner up with your union counterparts, use the master labor agreement to your advantage, or share the pain you've endured staffing and scheduling in these unique environments. – Speakers: Brian Lewis, BC BS of Michigan, & Tammie Nichols, SMUD
60 Ideas in 60 Minutes – Tips & Techniques for Making the Most of Your WFM Software. This fast-paced session with a panel of vendor experts will have you writing furiously as you try to capture an idea a minute on paper! This format will give you some last minute tips to take home and implement immediately – if you can catch them all! – Speakers: Bill Durr, Verint Witness Actionable Solutions, Bob Webb, Pipkins, Rick Daley, InVision Software, NICE IEX Workforce Management Group, Brett Williams, Aspect Software, Michele Copenhaver, Genesys, Ric Kosiba, Bay Bridge Decision Technologies, and Gerry Johnsen, Calabrio
Balancing Workforce Planning & Employee Engagement. In the call center, it is hard to overestimate the importance of work life balance for associate engagement. If you can be successful in this area, you can make it a win/win opportunity through workforce planning initiatives. Learn how AIR MILES used creative thinking to develop flexibility to meet service level targets and still provide associates with work-life balance, and increased engagement through many creative workforce options. – Speaker: Fawzia Drakes, AIR MILES Reward Program
Make Virtual Agents Feel Right “At Home” in Your Operation. When a contact center adopts an "at-home agent" strategy, the expectation is to increase the overall performance of the center while improving agent productivity and customer satisfaction. Likewise, home-based, "virtual" agents enjoy flexibility when it comes to avoiding commutes and achieving a work/life balance. It's truly a win-win scenario. Aside from these benefits, how do you address the challenges of managing at-home agents? For instance, how do you integrate your at-home agents with on-site agents to have them effectively work together as one operation? Attend this session to discuss the everyday issues of managing an "at-home agent" workforce, including thoughts on how your center can: effectively schedule at-home agents with traditional agents for optimal coverage; keep at-home agents happy and motivated; make at-home agents truly feel like they're a part of the team; ensure that at-home agents receive timely training and coaching; and leverage the flexibility of at-home agents. – Speaker: Andressa Marlan, NICE, IEX Workforce Management Group
Building Cross-Departmental Partnerships. Understanding how workforce management should be integrated into an organization and the role it should play is vital to its success. Nearly all departments in an organization either directly or indirectly impact the contact center, thus impacting the WFM group. These departments/groups include: Marketing, Human Resources, Quality Assurance, Training, Facilities, IT/Telecom/CTI, Contact Center Operations Management, and Senior Leadership. Conversely, workforce management can also have a direct or indirect impact on each of these groups. Knowing that, further understanding the interrelationship of these groups and how to build a partnership will lay the foundation on which critical communication flows can prosper. – Speaker: Baron Blake & Carla Blake, Vertex Business Services
11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. – Conference Wrap-up General Session
2010 SWPP Annual Conference Ends
