Workforce Engagement Management

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  • 1.  Scheduling Filters

    Posted 01-06-2021 09:52
    No replies, thread closed.
    Hoping this gets some uptick.

    Good day fellow Pure Connect users,


    I am using IC Business Manager CIC 2018 R4 Patch37.

    We have our system configured using workgroups to schedule and to manage 'queues' - each 'queue' has it's own workgroup assigned. We currently do not use skillsets but leaning towards switching to skillsets so that there is a clearer picture of who is skilled with what and how many of those skilled people are in the schedules. We have found limitations with this way of scheduling, especially if we needed to do quite a bit of real-time movements in and out of certain activities (this is the nature of the type of work that is required). With Workgroups, unless you pre-planned the specific workgroup to only do one specific activity, it's difficult to filter if multiple work groups do a multitude of activities. For example, an English workgroup sometimes has to complete e-mail type (Non-ACD) work and then when the workload is completed, they return to ACD activity. Typically we can schedule this Non-ACD work in but if this type of work spans multiple teams/workgroups, filtering becomes difficult. One idea was to utilize the Team filter in Agent Details and build specific teams based on the types of Non-ACD work so then we can visibly see those 3 Non-ACD groups' schedules easily and then manage them to go in and out of Non-ACD back to ACD.

    Does anyone else have a better solution (for filtering) other than to move to skills based scheduling?

    Thank you so much in advance!
    Carmen Chapman
    #WorkforceManagement

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    Carmen Chapman
    Workplace Safety & Insurance Board
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  • 2.  RE: Scheduling Filters

    Posted 01-07-2021 03:35
    No replies, thread closed.
    Hi Carmen, i dont have the answer for you, 

    to start off, i am not a WFM expert, but a PureConnect engineer with some Optimizer integrations on my name ;-)

    But your story triggered me to ask some questions to get a better picture:

    • an English workgroup sometimes has to complete e-mail type (Non-ACD) work : 
      • this workgroup is handling email interactions, on the non-acd status? why? is it because email data is not in PureConnect?
      • is there a way to have the email interaction data, also aligned with your forecasting / scheduling, that makes your schedules better reflect reality?

    • We currently do not use skillsets but leaning towards switching to skillsets so that there is a clearer picture of who is skilled with what and how many of those skilled people are in the schedules. We have found limitations with this way of scheduling, especially if we needed to do quite a bit of real-time movements in and out of certain activities (this is the nature of the type of work that is required).
      • i don't completely follow the relation between the activities you have to shuffle and the required skills on ACD.
      • never expect the product to be 100% picture, you will have to make some changes eventually.
      • implementing skills, will implement a constrain for the optimizer to schedule on,
        • if the skill is half the workgroup, then you can imagine what that could do to your schedules,.
        • again, this should not be any issue, when implemented the right way.
      • The key is that the daily activities needs to maybe setup differently, 
        • if the optimizer featureset is not offering the requirements your shifts / daily constrains / daily activities has, think about creating a filter.



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    Vincent Heijmans
    BMW Group Munich
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  • 3.  RE: Scheduling Filters

    Posted 01-07-2021 09:45
    No replies, thread closed.
    Hi Vincent!
    Thanks for responding to my thread!
    Below are some answers to your questions (for clarity):

    • an English workgroup sometimes has to complete e-mail type (Non-ACD) work : 
      • this workgroup is handling email interactions, on the non-acd status? why? is it because email data is not in PureConnect?
        • That is correct. E-mail currently is not integrated to PureConnect.
      • is there a way to have the email interaction data, also aligned with your forecasting / scheduling, that makes your schedules better reflect reality?
        • Currently that isn't possible but yes, that would be ideal if we could do that.

     

    • We currently do not use skillsets but leaning towards switching to skillsets so that there is a clearer picture of who is skilled with what and how many of those skilled people are in the schedules. We have found limitations with this way of scheduling, especially if we needed to do quite a bit of real-time movements in and out of certain activities (this is the nature of the type of work that is required).
      • i don't completely follow the relation between the activities you have to shuffle and the required skills on ACD.
        • So there are activities that have a workload that we don't capture in the schedules as forecast; the offline activity (for now) considered like shrink (not ideal, I know). What happens is, that workload that is in "Non-ACD", has swinging fluctuations with volume of work. We are capturing this data in the hopes to build a working forecast however, we are not there yet. In the meantime, we have had to manage by being very agile - once "Non-ACD" workload is cleared, we then move those people back into ACD. While most of this initially planned when schedules are published (i.e. allotted X number of hours to "Non-ACD" work), there are times when we just need to pull them back into ACD due to increased call volume (CODE RED all hands on deck situations). When this happens, we notify the agents to go back into ACD and we can exception the deviations in Adherence Exceptions module. This is all fine. The issue is that the groups of people who were working in the "Non-ACD" are not all one team; they span several teams which makes it challenging to update without proper filtering.
      • never expect the product to be 100% picture, you will have to make some changes eventually.
        • Agree 100%
      • implementing skills, will implement a constrain for the optimizer to schedule on,
        • if the skill is half the workgroup, then you can imagine what that could do to your schedules,.
          • Understand - this is a risk
        • again, this should not be any issue, when implemented the right way.
          • Yes, hoping that if we do go down the skill route that we have it all set up properly
      • The key is that the daily activities needs to maybe setup differently, 
        • if the optimizer feature set is not offering the requirements your shifts / daily constrains / daily activities has, think about creating a filter.
          • Yes, exactly. This is what I was trying to figure out - what is the best way to create a filter. I think I found the answer - virtual workgroups which have no impact on the call routing; this would simply be a schedule filter.

    Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my thread and provide your insights!
    Carmen

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    Carmen Chapman
    Workplace Safety & Insurance Board
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  • 4.  RE: Scheduling Filters

    Posted 01-08-2021 03:03
    Edited by Vincent Heijmans 01-08-2021 03:06
    No replies, thread closed.
    Hi Carmen,

    the way to include external applications / workflows that are not covered by the optimizer, is that you can import data when making a forecast,
    not sure if the best option for this is, creating a "email workgroup", but i have seen this multiple times at customers.

    and then again, i dont "like" the non-acd status, for workgroup work, this could be fixed by creating a new status, that for example is called "working on email" and is not a acd status. (could be status mapped in the optimizer as well) but i guess this is minor optimizations ;)

    can u explain this : 

    The issue is that the groups of people who were working in the "Non-ACD" are not all one team; they span several teams which makes it challenging to update without proper filtering.

    still talking about the same workgroup / workload here? 
    ideally the shared load, or same workflow/ type could be one workgroup. what is the scale here?


    and to go back to activities, the filter file we used/created was mainly there for these reasons:
    • to constrain (dynamic) shifts (0-40 hours), where we want the shift lengths into acceptable sizes, for example, 8 6 and 4 hour shifts. nothing in between.
    • no breaks planned at the start or the end of the shift,
    • define within a shift length the amount of breaks/meals.
    With the filter and combination of setup in optimizer and admin you can minimize the amount of iterations (simulating the schedule), therefore it could be quicker and a better result in the end.

    try to pinpoint those code red situations, look at your shrinkage, look at the forecast info vs historical info (just open a old forecast), so see what's been missing, etc.




    ------------------------------
    Vincent Heijmans
    BMW Group Munich
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: Scheduling Filters

    Posted 01-15-2021 14:26
    No replies, thread closed.
    Hi Vincent :)
    [Vincent] The way to include external applications / workflows that are not covered by the optimizer, is that you can import data when making a forecast,
    not sure if the best option for this is, creating a "email workgroup", but i have seen this multiple times at customers.

    and then again, i dont "like" the non-acd status, for workgroup work, this could be fixed by creating a new status, that for example is called "working on email" and is not a acd status. (could be status mapped in the optimizer as well) but i guess this is minor optimizations ;)

    [Carmen] So you're saying that we can create a workgroup for an non-integrated e-mail channel, assign a phone status code and schedule code as ACD that is mapped in optimizer to recognize this as ACD? Fascinating!

    [Vincent] can u explain this :

    The issue is that the groups of people who were working in the "Non-ACD" are not all one team; they span several teams which makes it challenging to update without proper filtering.

    still talking about the same workgroup / workload here?
    ideally the shared load, or same workflow/ type could be one workgroup. what is the scale here?

    [Carmen] What I mean here is, we have multiple people with various 'non-acd' skills (i.e. It's non phone skills) and they do not all report to the same manager. Ideally, we are looking at isolation those groups of people without having to re-assign them into one team.  There are approximately 60+ people with varying skillsets that share one commonality, which is the phone skillset. Their other skillsets are various combinations of the non-phone skills. Does that help?

    Thanks for your input again!
    Carmen



    ------------------------------
    Carmen Chapman
    Workplace Safety & Insurance Board
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