SWPP Announces 2024 Workforce Management Seminar Series Dates — No Cost for SWPP Members!

SWPP announces the 2024 curriculum on the Fundamentals of Workforce Management. These web seminars will begin in February and be offered throughout the year. The courses will provide practical knowledge and skills in all aspects of workforce planning and management, including extensive coverage of topics covered in the CWPP Certification Exam.

SWPP will offer the classes as 90-minute web seminars to be delivered at 1pm Central/2pm Eastern time. Each class can be attended by an unlimited number of students from a single location. These web seminars are provided at no cost for SWPP members. However, non-members may attend at a cost of $300 per web seminar. Non-members can contact Vicki Herrell at vicki.herrell@swpp.org to register.

These web seminars will not be recorded but those who register will receive an article afterward that details the exact content of the session. The presentation materials will not be available either, but the article will provide all the session information needed.

The classes and materials will cover all topics covered in the CWPP Certification Exam. Those workforce professionals intending to take the exam will benefit from seminar content, as well as the additional learning guides and sample test questions in preparation for the certification process.

The Fundamentals of Workforce Management seminars will be presented by popular industry consultants and authors Penny Reynolds and Maggie Klenke. Reynolds and Klenke were Co-Founders of The Call Center School, where they developed and taught classes to thousands of contact center professionals from 2001 to 2012, including a popular series on workforce management.

The following courses are included in the series designed specifically for SWPP members:

February 21

Preparing to Forecast: Decisions and Data for the Planning ProcessThere are many steps in data review and analysis before the forecasting process begins. In this seminar, you will learn about the up-front essentials of forecasting workload. Hear about the sources of input data and how to decide which best represents future needs. Learn about agent work state activity and techniques to ensure you have predictive AHT data. Practice identifying and adjusting for data aberrations and other considerations for data clean-up before it enters the forecasting process.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Outline the elements of forecast workload.
  • Identify the impact of work state usage on forecast data accuracy.
  • Identify data anomalies that require adjustment.
  • Adjust data aberrations to improve forecast accuracy.

Click here to register.

March 20

Forecasting Basics: Predicting for Months, Weeks, Days, and IntervalsIn this seminar, you will learn the step-by-step process of applying Time Series Analysis to predict future workload. Learn how to identify trend rates and seasonality patterns for a monthly call forecast. In addition to analyzing history to predict the future, this seminar will discuss how to identify and assimilate business drivers into the forecasting process to fine-tune monthly projections. After the monthly forecast is in place, the next step in the planning process is to break down the predictions to weekly, daily, and interval numbers. Hear the process and calculations to use to distribute a monthly workload all the way down into intervals for scheduling. Finally, take a look at some right and wrong ways to review forecast accuracy to fine-tune future predictions.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Define the time-series process and components.
  • Calculate annual and monthly trend rates.
  • Calculate seasonal patterns.
  • Use trend and seasonality to arrive at monthly forecasts.
  • Identify intra-month calling patterns.
  • Apply weekly patterns to create single week forecasts.
  • Define and apply day-of-week patterns.
  • Define and apply time-of-day patterns.
  • Create a monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly forecast.

Click here to register.

April 17

Essentials of Staffing: Models and Calculations for Contact Center StaffManaging a contact center means managing by the numbers and the most important number is the right number of staff in seats at the right time. Learn the essentials of calculating staff requirements, including how to assemble workload and apply Erlang techniques to determine staffing to meet service goals. In addition to staffing for incoming telephone calls, learn how to calculate workload and apply the proper staffing techniques for outbound calling, email, and chat contacts.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Define complications of staffing for inbound calling.
  • Identify potential staffing models.
  • Calculate staffing workload.
  • Discuss speed of service definitions and implications.
  • Apply Erlang techniques to identify staffing numbers.
  • Identify calculations and considerations for other contact types.

Click here to register.

May 15

Staffing Tradeoffs: Achieving a Balance of Service, Occupancy, and CostAfter determining base staff requirements, it is critical to review all the tradeoffs that impact contact center stakeholders. Learn about how callers are impacted by staffing decisions that drive speed of answer and quality of service. Review how staffing levels impact frontline staff in terms of productivity or occupancy. Finally, see how staffing levels and telecommunications factors affect revenues and costs. Hear about how one person can make an impact on service, occupancy, and cost, as well as the factors to consider when making decisions about agent group size, multi-skilling, or consolidation of sites or groups.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Analyze the impact of staffing levels on service.
  • Describe how occupancy is affected by staff changes.
  • Outline the cost and revenue implications of staffing levels.
  • Describe the concept of Power of One in contact center staffing.
  • Describe the economies of scale of agent group size.
  • Outline considerations for location or group consolidation.

Click here to register.

June 19

Scheduling Strategies: Definitions and Decisions for Successful SchedulesA successful schedule plan involves many decisions on the front end that can impact the long-term and short-term effectiveness of the work shifts. In this session, learn about the fundamental concepts of calculating and applying shrinkage to arrive at schedule requirements, along with considerations of defining schedule components. Hear about how to decide on optimal schedule horizon, shift definitions, and schedule constraints, as well as some of the best strategies for optimizing schedule coverage and minimizing cost.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Identify the steps in schedule creation
  • Identify and apply shrinkage
  • Understand the impact of rules & constraints
  • Understand trade-offs of occupancy and abandon goals
  • Explore options for staff assignment to schedules
  • Review options for scheduling secondary work

Click here to register.

July 17

Managing Daily Service: An Intra-Day Plan to Keep Staffing and Service on TrackAchieving intra-day success involves a process of monitoring, tracking, assessing, and acting to ensure staffing levels stay intact to deliver service regardless of the events of the day. In this session, you will learn about ways to monitor and track call volume, handle time, and staffing throughout the day in time to make changes as needed to impact service. Hear about communications and reaction strategies to affect both under-staffing and over-staffing with minimal disruption and maximum coverage.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Outline the basic components of an intraday management process.
  • Compare forecast to actual workload.
  • Identify when a new forecast and/or plan is needed.
  • Outline a variety of schedule exception management practices.
  • Identify service management communications strategies.
  • Outline potential reaction strategies for understaffing and overstaffing scenarios.

Click here to register.

September 11

Signs of Success: Metrics and Measures of WFM PerformanceAlmost every contact center employee has a performance scorecard, outlining expected levels of performance in many different areas. The workforce management team is no exception. While the tasks may vary from center to center depending on size and functional design, there are common ways to define metrics that point to good performance and a job well done. Learn about the four components of WFM success, along with different ways to measure and report the numbers. See measurement case studies, along with best practices for defining WFM metrics.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Identify the four components of WFM success.
  • Calculate results with three different approaches.
  • Apply the analysis steps to sample data.
  • Define customer and employee satisfaction metrics.
  • Identify specific questions to gauge satisfaction with the WFM team.

Click here to register.

October 16

Setting Strategic Goals for Workforce Management — Just like the organization as a whole and the contact center within it, the Workforce Management department needs to have strategic goals that define the direction for the team. Clearly set overall goals make short-term decisions easier and performance more consistent. In this session, you will learn:

  • The 10 most common goals.
  • Definitions and applications.
  • Implications of different calculations.
  • Tradeoffs when goals create conflicts.
  • The essentials of creating a strategic plan.

Click here to register.

November 20

Managing Schedule Adherence: Creating an In-Place and On-Time CultureAn accurate forecast and perfectly constructed schedules don’t mean much if the frontline staff are not following the plan. In this session, you will learn various measures of how to measure adherence and quantify the problem of schedule non-adherence. See how common principles of performance management can be applied to identify reasons for non-adherence and what you can do to change adherence behaviors. Hear how some centers have created an adherence culture that works.

Seminar attendees will learn to:

  • Define ways to measure schedule adherence.
  • Describe considerations for setting and communicating adherence goals.
  • Calculate and quantify the problem of non-adherence.
  • Identify reasons for non-adherence and associated performance problems.
  • Identify ways to apply proper consequences to create an adherence culture.

Click here to register.