SWPP Annual Conference
March 18-20, 2009

Wednesday, March 18

7:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. – Registration

8:30-9:45 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 great 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 & Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels

Meet the Board SWPP Meet. Join the SWPP Board of Advisors for a SWPP Meet, as they present issues and solutions in today’s call center. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to network with your workforce management peers and discuss your toughest workforce management problems. It’s also a great time to meet the Board members and find out more about this group of industry leaders that directs SWPP’s activities and programs.

Workforce Management 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: Todd Gladden, Ramsey Enterprises, Sandra McFatridge, Medco Solutions, Katherine Beinecke, CCSG, & Steve Gordon, Hyatt Hotels

9:45-10:15 a.m. – Break

10:15-11:30 a.m. – Conference Warm-Up Sessions

Performing a Workforce Management Audit. For many organizations, there are gaps or at least doubts as to the effectiveness of the workforce management operation. This session is designed to provide the step-by-step processes needed to analyze the current operation, processes, and results. These include organizational design, division of labor, forecasting accuracy, appropriate "what if" analysis, scheduling that balances company and employee needs, and an intra-day management process that delivers consistent results with a minimum of intervention. – Speaker: Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School

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.

Speed Networking. You’ve heard of Speed Dating? Well, here’s 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.

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, TCCS

Performance Measurements for Workforce Management Processes. Agents in the call center are measured on a multitude of metrics and are usually compensated based on those metrics. But what about your workforce management team? They can be measured as well, but the metrics need to be appropriate for the job functions. Learn how you can put individual performance measurements in place for forecasting, scheduling, and intraday functions. In this session, you will discuss what the metrics are, how to calculate them, and how you can measure individual job functions, as well as finding targets that make sense. . – Speaker: Dick Spearrin, HP & Sandra McFatridge, Medco Solutions

From “Bodies in Chairs” to “Bodies in PJs” – Part I. How do you make the jump from traditional contact centers to using teleworkers? Hear how Unum successfully started this program, and how others are using remote agents. 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): Phillip Nichols, Unum, Kimberly, Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation, & Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels

Workforce Management – Key Architects in Business Model Redesign. As companies continue to evolve in today’s business climate so must the contact center. This valuable and informative session will detail the vital role of Workforce Management in developing a successful business model to support call center workflow redesign, effective workload distribution, and enhanced internal/external customer satisfaction. Hear key insights on: Workforce Management – PMO Partner and Major Stakeholder, Forecast Model Restructuring, Customized Scheduling Blueprint, Staff Proficiency Tracking, Learning Curve Assessment, and Reporting Framework. – Speakers: Rosemary Eady & Lawrence Birch, Excellerx

Using Interaction Analytics to Solve Workforce Management Jams. Smart companies rely on Interaction Analytics (IA) solutions to improve operational efficiency, increase customer loyalty and retention, and improve marketing and sales effectiveness. Even smarter companies rely on IA statistics to unlock the mystery of their call volume and average handling time fluctuations in order to achieve short-term objectives and increase customer loyalty. By attending this session, you’ll discover how new Interaction Analytics technology can improve your workforce management. – Speaker: Paul Leamon, IEX

Planned Performance vs. Actual Performance — Explaining the Variance. When performance does not meet the planned expectation, we as workforce planners are often asked “Why?” Medco Solutions uses an internally developed tool called the “snapshot” to show variances of specific categories planned to actual hours. The snapshot captures many elements to explain variance of plan to actual delivery. This tool, which runs two times per day to collect actual information to create projections, gives the command center perspective and better information to make decisions throughout the day. – Speaker: Luana Boykins, Medco Solutions

Outbound Workforce Management Strategies — Work Smarter, Not Harder. Any manager running an outbound contact center is well aware of the daily tactical challenges such as continually trying to improve agent performance and morale, agents calling in sick, the availability of new calling lists, system outages, implementation of new policies and procedures, agent and supervisory attrition, customer experience and more. Working smarter means maximizing contacts with customers and reaching them with a single connect, rather than multiple attempts, to close the deal – whether that means collecting a past due amount, solving a problem, or selling a product or a service. In this session, attendees will learn how workforce management and performance optimization tools can help collections and telemarketing contact center managers assimilate business intelligence data points and utilize this information to optimize contact strategies, provide premium customer service and try and meet stated performance targets to grow revenues and minimize losses. – Speaker: Deborah Mauk, Aspect

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: Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School

Communicating and Presenting Workforce Management Information to Senior Management. Workforce Management professionals are presenting to senior management on a wide variety of topics more frequently now than ever before. For some, this represents a new skill set and a new challenge: figuring how to explain workforce management issues to executives. This presentation combines information about how to communicate with senior management, along with how to design your presentation to deliver the most professional and productive quality you can. Hear executive feedback and various examples to address that gap, so that Workforce Management staff can feel more confident and Operations VPs can get the information they need. Strategies around understanding audience, purpose statements, how much info is “too much,” slide design, visuals, platform skills, Q&A, and handouts are also some of topics included. – Speakers: Michele Borboa, Andy Wainwright, and Todd Gladden

Schedule Adherence: A Case Study. Schedule adherence can be a major challenge in the contact center. International Cruise & Excursions, Inc. (ICE) developed a payroll interface model that has improved adherence and increased productivity. Attendees will learn how ICE completely eliminated agent overtime and implemented a mechanism to pay for the actual time worked on the phone. This model became one strong ally of the schedule adherence process. Learn about the logic of the payroll interface model with the time and attendance system and take some ideas back home. – Speaker: Adelina Petrov, ICE

Excel Tips & Long-Range Planning. Excel continues to be the most used application in workforce planning. This session is designed to demonstrate Excel tips with emphasis on data setup, pivot tables, and charts. Additionally, this session will demonstrate how to use Erlang C add-ins for Excel to create a multi-year long-range staffing plan. – Speaker: Retha Deaton

Not From Around Here? Multi-National Cultural Differences That Affect Workforce Management. In this ever-expanding world of offshore outsourcing, there are many cultural differences that should be taken into account during the workforce management process. This panel discussion will look at practices around the world that can affect the way you forecast, schedule, and monitor agents in your offshore call center. – Speaker: Dick Spearrin, HP, Pamela Trickey, The Call Center School, & Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School

Reducing Turnover in the Contact Center. Learn what the Allstate Financial Contact Center did to improve agent turnover. The discussion will include such steps as making the decision to move to a permanent employee hiring practice (rather than using temporary staffing), having increased manager involvement and visibility, establishing a career plan, and making sure you aren’t expecting too much from the agents. – Speaker: Jodi Wright, Allstate Financial

Workforce Management Practices in a Virtual Call Center. Are you experiencing challenges managing your labor in a work at home environment? Are you interested in learning how to leverage your virtual agents to improve your call center’s service levels and profitability? Hear about the benefits of deploying a flexible workforce to improve customer satisfaction. Learn how West Corporation effectively manages over 10,000 work at home agents. Discussions will include recruiting, scalability, technology, agent empowerment and workforce behavior. Speakers: Joseph Cox, West Corporation and Rod Bennett, Spectrum

5:30-7:30 p.m. – Networking Reception

Thursday, March 19

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

Skill-Based Routing Fundamentals — Part I. 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 multiple contact channels – calls, emails, fax, and web chat – that most centers must handle today. This session provides a map to guide you through a process of applying skill-based routing fundamentals to the multi-channel environment. You’ll learn how to determine and assign priorities in order to manage service differences and make the most of your staff skills. Speaker: Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School

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

Reluctant Recipients: How to Lead a Horse to Water. The word resistance is a common term in the workforce management world. Many workforce management professionals have experienced resistance at some level. This session will show you what the OptumHealth workforce management team did to change the mind set of reluctant managers and front-line staff. Discover how our team implemented workforce management principles to several care solution centers. – Speakers: Sara Veeder & Kathleen Nielsen, Optum Health

Forecasting and Planning When You Have No Idea Which Way is Up: How to Plan to Win. In highly uncertain times like these, we all know two things: first, forecasting and planning is very difficult, and second, it is more important than ever. Companies are making important strategic contact center decisions at times when forecasting is beyond art and is more like a guess. But that doesn’t mean that there are not analytic tricks that can be used to help our executives make better decisions. In this session, we will discuss mathematical tricks and techniques that will help improve strategic decision-making and planning in our contact centers, even with all this uncertainty. – Speaker: Ric Kosiba, Bay Bridge

Team Building Exercises for Your Workforce Management Team. Need ideas for building team cohesiveness, accountability and productivity in your workforce management group? This session will give a variety of exercises to build loyalty, accountability, morale and productivity in the workforce management team, or any other team. Details around facilitating exercises, from setup to debriefing will be discussed, along with a real team exercise delivered in the session. Great for Team Leaders and Managers! – Speakers: Todd Gladden, Ramsey Enterprises, & Andy Wainwright, Toyota Financial Services

A Holistic Approach to Workforce Management. This session will discuss a more holistic approach to workforce management than is typically found. The presentation will make the argument that holistic workforce management consists of long-range forecasting/modeling, tactical forecasting & scheduling, intra-day management and electronic scorecards. While many workforce management teams are very involved in tactical forecasting & scheduling and intra-day management, they probably have never considered that a closed loop process for workforce management needs to be considered and implemented. We'll spend time talking about the differences between long range planning and tactical forecasting & scheduling and spend time discussing why scorecards belong in the loop . – Speaker: Oscar Alban, Verint

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. Enter the attendee contest for most creative scheduling idea! – Speaker: Pam Trickey, The Call Center School

Skill Based Scheduling Case Study — Part II. In Part II of this workshop, you’ll see the basic skill-based routing principles applied using two case study examples. We’ll review two different types of centers with varying sizes and mixtures of skills. These examples will demonstrate a variety of challenges and how they can be effectively met in the routing design and the schedule planning. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own SBR designs, plans and challenges for discussion in this problem-solving session. – Speaker: Maggie Klenke, The Call Center School

The Truths & Myths About FMLA — Part 2. In the second part of this session, we will continue to answer questions about this hot topic. 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

Strategically Plan Your Workforce Management Team Structure. Often workforce management teams are so involved planning for the center that they don't step back to review their structure and they fit strategically into the organization. This session will focus on how to organize a workforce management team, develop a staffing model for the team, create service level agreements with business partners, and set individual team goals. – Speaker: Ana Whitt, SunTrust Bank, Dick Spearrin, HP, & Kristi White, FedEx

Workforce Management for Cisco IP-Based Environments. IP Communications enables multi-site, virtualized and home agent contact centers models. As more and more contact centers are migrating to an IP environment, it is important to understand the unique considerations and requirements for solution integration and workforce management within these centers. This session will focus in on these methods and techniques – particularly in a Cisco Unified Contact Center. – Speaker: Wayne Marlow, Calabrio

Practical Penny Pinchers. If there is one idea that your management would like for you to bring home from the conference, it’s probably one on how to save money, cut costs, so more with less, etc. This session is designed to give you not just one, but dozens, of penny-pinching ideas. Designed like the traditional Scheduling Swap session from previous conferences, this interactive workshop will facilitate the exchange of cost-cutting ideas in a large group format. Each person will be expected to share in writing at least one practical, proven idea that has worked to save money, improve resource utilization, increase efficiencies, etc. Through an anonymous voting process, attendees will prioritize the ideas from top to bottom in terms of savings potential and practicality. If you need to return home with cost-cutting ideas, bring just one good one to this session and leave with pages of them! – Facilitator: Penny Reynolds, The Call Center School

An Introduction to Six Sigma Through Data. This session is designed to provide an introduction to the concept of Six Sigma by introducing the structure and the language. With that background in place, the data rich toolkit will be introduced. Most of the chart types shown will be familiar to contact center professionals and bringing the data and the language together will make any professional ready to participate in a Six Sigma project. – Speaker: David McNickle, The Boeing Company, & Andy Wainwright, Toyota Financial Services

12:00-1:30 p.m. – Lunch and Presentation of Workforce Management Professional of the Year Award

1:30-2:45 p.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

Secrets of a Forecast Junkie. Hear detailed advice from a self-proclaimed Forecast Junkie on how to improve forecast results beyond the fundamental baseline of growth rates and day-of-week patterns. The session will include the five secrets of a power-forecaster, as well as recent progress with alternative forecasting methods that are now available. – Speaker: Tiffany LaReau, Human Numbers

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 4 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 & Joey Provencio, Toyota Financial Services – Moderator: Debbie Davis, AA Vacations

Agent Productivity: Ending the Guessing Game. Learn how International Cruise & Excursions (ICE) overhauled the need for a complete automation and instant delivery of the agent Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Because at ICE every process revolves around productivity, tracking performance against goals is essential. A new way of putting together the actual performance statistics saved the full time equivalent of three supervisors and eight hours per week of precious supervisor time. This time was reinvested back into more coaching and time spent with the agents. Amongst the benefits clearly observed are: self-correcting behavior, improved performance, speedy detection of agents needing help, higher schedule adherence, and increased team size. – Speaker: Adelina Petrov, ICE

What’s the Difference? Comparing Erlang C to Erlang A. One of the critical assumptions in using Erlang C is that no calls are abandoned. While the mathematics to solve the problem of abandonment was developed in the 1950s, it has only received any attention and been revisited in the past few years. The solution used introduces the concept of operating in quality, efficiency or mixed regimes.This session is a follow-up to the 2008 academic overview session, "Life After Erlang C" and seeks to move the discussion from theory to practical application. – Speakers: Retha Deaton & Eric Klein, Credit One Bank

Why are Call Center Mathematics Important To Me? Understanding the basics of call center mathematics will help you understand how workforce management tools work, and can help you interpret their results. Attend this session to learn more about the math behind call center staffing. – Speaker: Bob Webb, Pipkins

Optimizing Non-Voice Interactions for an End-to-End Customer Experience. From its beginnings, workforce management has focused primarily on inbound TDM phone calls. However, in today’s cutting-edge contact centers, agents are doing more than just handling phone calls. Their days consist of emails, text-chats, faxes, SMS messages, CRM Work-Items, and even good old-fashioned paper mail. How can you best optimize these types of work into an agent’s busy day so that the needs of ALL of your customers are met — not just the ones on the phone? – Speaker: Tom Tritten, Genesys Labs

2:45-3:45 – Ice Cream Social with the Sponsors

3:45-5:00 p.m. -- Workshops

Don’t Forget About the 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. Hidden shrinkage will also be discussed. How are agents occupied? What is the cost to the organization? How can this variable be managed to minimize impact to the organization? – Speakers: Jonathan Hall, Bright House Networks, & Retha Deaton

Advanced Forecasting Techniques: Fine-Tuning Workload Predictions. Garbage in. . . .garbage out. That is certainly true about workload forecasts that are used to create workforce schedules. Without an accurate forecast of workload and staff requirements, the scheduling process will be inefficient. Therefore, it is imperative to arrive at an accurate as possible call forecast. This session will explore various approaches to help fine-tune your tactical call forecasting process. Whether you’re forecasting by spreadsheets or with workforce management software, you’ll learn how to improve the accuracy of your daily and half-hourly forecasts through techniques like exponential regression and use of correlation coefficients. – Speaker: Maggie Klenke, TCCS

Scheduling by Preference: It’s All About Agent Expectations. Agent schedules were a large source of agent dissatisfaction at Bell TV, a 24/7 call center that with more than 1000 agents located in two sites. To find a solution to the problem, many scheduling methodologies were reviewed. However, after much analysis and many meetings, they discovered that the current scheduling process was the best choice, but just was not well understood by agents and team managers. This session will review how Bell TV improved agent satisfaction with their schedules by improving communication and better managing agent expectations. – Speaker: Melanie Sauvé, Bell Canada

Building an Effective Budget Forecast and Gaining Senior Management Buy-In. Find out what questions you should be asking before beginning your budget forecast. Learn what potential pitfalls there may be if you don't ask all the right questions. Hear tips and techniques for creating a workable, flexible budget model that includes managing seasonality and shrinkage, preparing for the unexpected, and tracking changes. You will also learn some proven methods of how to successfully present and sell your budget! – Speakers: Sandra McFatridge, Medco Solutions, Kim Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation, & Kristi White, FedEx

Software and Staffing Synergy: Scheduling for Phone and Non-phone Contacts. The IRS operates 26 networked contact centers nationwide with a staff of approximately 14,000 agents. Around 70 percent of these agents are skilled in handling telephone and taxpayer mail inquiries but, historically, only phone staffing was scheduled half-hourly from a central office. To better balance workload and required staffing among the high-volume work streams, the IRS now uses workforce management software to schedule agents nationwide from a central location for both telephone and non-telephone contacts, supplemented by spreadsheets to help with Forecasting both work streams. – Speaker: Ray Szczesny, IRS, & Rich Firely, IRS

Workforce Management Certification Jeopardy. Everyone has enjoyed the Workforce Management Jeopardy game played during previous SWPP Annual Conferences, but this year, here’s a new twist – a session dedicated to the game that will also help you prepare for the Certified Workforce Planning Professional (CWPP) exams and project! Attend this session to see what you need to know in order to be successful in the pursuit of CWPP certification.

Proven Cost Reduction Strategies: Maximize the Value of Your WFM Software Investment. In this session we will look at business strategies that will reduce labor costs in your environment. How can 80/20 be the right service level? What is the value of flexible scheduling? We will also review employee benchmarks to look inside the mind of the contact center agent and understand how to implement strategies. – Speaker: John Frehse, Core Practice

6:00 – Buses depart for Evening Event

6:30-9:30 – Party at the Wildhorse Saloon

Friday, March 20

8:00-8:45 a.m. – Breakfast & Behind Closed Doors Sessions

8:45-10:00 a.m. -- Workshops

You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a Good First Impression! One of the keys to a good relationship between agents and workforce management is a great understanding from the very beginning. So start workforce management’s working relationship with agents in the best possible way with an effective presentation during New Hire Training. This session addresses the planning, development and delivery of workforce management training for new hires. Topics will include the issue of securing the time required, items to cover, and suggestions for making sure the session accomplishes your goals. We’ll share ideas on knowing your audience so you can tailor the workforce management presentation for optimal understanding of all the basic principles. We will also share some success stories and some “learning experiences,” and hope you’ll share some of your own as well. Speakers: Michele Borboa, Contact Center Resources, & Todd Gladden, Ramsey Enterprises

Understanding Your Variation, Statistically. This session will describe an alternative view of measuring performance by statistically understanding the significance of the variation. Most often we analyze our variations as a percentage, e.g., 5% over forecasted volume. The problem arises that this variation has a different meaning if it were 100 calls vs. 10,000 calls. We will explore how to statistically evaluate the variance and determine if it is in an acceptable control, and if the variation is significant. – Speaker: Miguel Ortega, Express-Scripts

From “Bodies in Chairs” to “Bodies in PJs” – Part II. Continue the discussion about the implementation of remote agents that was started in the first session on Wednesday. Come prepared with all your questions and hear real-world responses from people who’ve been there, done that. – Speaker(s): Phillip Nichols, Unum, Kim Henderson, Bluegreen Corporation, & Louise Andrew, Fairmont Raffles Hotels

Reducing Attrition in the Contact Center. Agent attrition is a big problem for contact centers – not only does it impact morale and the quality of service, but it also presents an unnecessary financial burden in the form of wasted dollars on recruiting, hiring and training a revolving door of new candidates. With the average cost to train an agent around $5,000, organizations have a great incentive to make efforts to keep agents happy and productive. This session will explore how training, quality management, and other techniques can be applied to ensure that the right people are being hired, that coaching and training programs are tailored for maximum effectiveness, and that agents are empowered to succeed. – Speaker: Michelle Gaffney, Aspect

The Adherence Swap – Countdown of Best Practices to Promote Agent Adherence. If you’re struggling with what else to try in order to promote agent adherence to schedule, this is the session for you. You’ll hear about adherence best practices from your workforce planning peers in a format that’s organized and practical, yet fun and entertaining. Bring at least two proven ideas 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. We’ll use a large group voting process to select the top five creative adherence ideas with prizes for the winners. Whether you take home a top prize, or just a list of new adherence ideas to try, everyone’s a winner in this session – and we guarantee you’ll have fun in the process. – Facilitator: Penny Reynolds, TCCS

Building a Performance Management Strategy For Uncertain Times. In the current economy, with concerns about shrinking resources, aligning agent performance to the economic needs of the business is more critical than ever. Performance management strategies that are WFM-centric and highly collaborative in nature can help contact centers do much more with much less. Hear about the performance management strategy developed at Choice Hotels International that has enabled the company to respond more effectively to changes in the economy, and to see sales and revenue production increase, while downtime and error rates have decreased. – Speaker: Chris Roche, Choice Hotels

10:00-10:15 a.m. – Break

10:15 a.m.-11:30 a.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

The Cost of Implementing a Contingency Plan. In this session, hear a review of service level contingency plans and the associated cost model. Hear how to provide feedback on the cost of each “incident,” help “size” issues, and put pressure on other part of your business to resolve key, controllable issues. – Speaker: Ana Whitt, SunTrust Bank & Dick Spearrin, HP

To Adjust or Not Adjust: A Principal Financial Group Case Study. The Principal Financial Group implemented workforce management within their contact centers in 2005. From the start, schedule adherence exceptions were received and processed by the workforce management team. In this case study, learn how members of the Principal Financial Group's workforce management team were able to reclaim 80% of their day's time by eliminating schedule adherence exceptions. Attendees will not only see the process Principal Financial Group went through to eliminate exceptions in each of their 9 centers, but will also see the surprising adherence results after the changes were implemented. – Speaker: Stephenie Tiedens, Principal Financial Group

Identifying Optimal Service Levels and Cost of Forecasting Accuracy in Revenue Stream. The cost of staffing increases as service level increases and vice-versa. The cost of lost opportunity increases as the abandon rate increases and vice-versa. The interaction between these variables leads to an optimization curve with a single low point in the curve which would be the optimal service level goal. And when your forecasts are off, there is a cost of over-staffing or a cost of lost opportunity and deterioration in customer satisfaction. How do you put a cost around this forecast variance? Will the cost justify the means to improve forecasting? Learn about a methodology that leads to a controlled forecasting process and helps in attributing variance to each driver in the forecast model and thus increase accountability of inputs from your business partners. – Speaker: Rajkumar Narasimhan, Discover Financial Services

Extending Workforce Management into the Back Office. 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. Ably managing this vital asset requires building accurate forecasts and schedules that balance workload and staffing resources. In this “how-to” session, you will learn ways to extend workforce management systems and practices into the back office. Discussion will focus on the similarities and differences between the front and back offices, the impact of the “middle office” on bottom line results, and ways to overcome data collection obstacles. – Speaker: Paul Leamon, IEX

60 Ideas in 60 Minutes. This fast-paced session will have you writing furiously as you try to capture an idea a minute on paper! This format will give you some great tips to take home and implement immediately – if you can catch them all! – Moderator: Pamela Trickey, The Call Center School

11:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. – Conference Wrap-up General Session

2009 SWPP Annual Conference Ends