Scheduling Tool Traction

Taction, a call center outsourcing company, had worked with its own workforce management forecasting tool for more than 20 years, but the company recognized that this spreadsheet-based forecasting method was time consuming and not very accurate. "We were spending too much time making the other tool fit," says Steve White, Taction CEO. "To change a schedule once it was posted was an absolute nightmare." Schedules needed to be changed occasionally for Taction to provide spot contact center services. Even with more regularly scheduled work, the spreadsheet application forced Taction to over schedule agents to ensure it had enough to meet a client's needs for fast, efficient customer service. This was cost-prohibitive for the labor-intensive company. "Scheduling your workforce is critical to your clients and to your profitability," White says. So the company looked for a workforce scheduling tool that was more intuitive, easy to use, and fit its needs. Taction found a Canadian company called Calabrio, and installed its application about a year ago. Since then, Taction has greatly reduced its agent hours, helping not only in managing costs, but also in providing better service to its end customers, according to White. With the Calabrio application Taction has been able to cut the time needed to produce the agents' schedule by half, White explains. Agent hours have been reduced by 20 percent. Additionally, the best agents get assigned first. So now Taction clients are getting a higher percentage of the experienced agents (since fewer total agents are assigned), meaning the end consumer or business customer is receiving superior service.

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