Case Study

JF Medier Dramatically Improves Efficiencies of Busy, Multi-Faceted Contact Center

  • 2-3% forecast accuracy + or – to actuals
  • 25-30% higher active phone time
  • 80% of calls answered within 60 seconds
  • 7% average abandon rate

Automated, integrated WFM significantly increases planner, manager and agent productivity

Challenge

Despite its busy, multi-faceted operations, JF Medier’s planning and management team still conducted all workforce management (WFM) processes manually. Forecasts, for instance, were created based upon “gut feelings”—not by using historical data to accurately understand the likely amount of potential inbound volume. In addition, its resource planner spent at least 1 to 2 hours each day scheduling shifts for the next day, forced to start over from scratch when changes were made. And, managers found it nearly impossible to follow up on their agents’ adherence or effectiveness because of the extreme disconnect between the contact center’s phone system and agents’ Excel-based schedules: by the time team managers were ready to use in one-on-ones the data that took hours of hard, manual work to compile, the numbers were already irrelevant and out-of-date.

Solution

JF Medier integrated all of its communications systems with an automated WFM platform—Calabrio WFM—that arms planners with advanced forecasting and scheduling capabilities like intraday management.

In addition, Calabrio’s self-service portal empowers agents to request time off from anywhere—and receive immediate responses—and view their own KPIs, which they can follow hour-to-hour or at 15-minute intervals.

[Before Calabrio WFM], we didn’t have the chance to look into the future and discern something intelligent about how many calls we would get. Everything was done based on experience and what we thought and felt, [with] no actual statistics to say, ‘this is the right thing to do.”
Jeppe Uhre Havgaard Bjerrum –
Subscriptions and Customer Service Manager – Jysk Fynske Medier

Result

With more flexibility and the ability to self-serve a variety of needs from anywhere—gaining clarity on what they need to do, viewing KPI reports, requesting time off, etc.—agents have become more productive and taken more ownership in their individual and team performance. In just the first week after Calabrio went live, agents quickly became more productive, increasing the number of hours they spent active on phones by 25-30%. Within only two months, agents began answering 80% of calls within 60 seconds, meeting the service level goal that had been set for them (even exceeding the goal on some days by answering 95% of calls within 60 seconds). They also achieved an average abandon rate of only 7%, surpassing the set 10% abandon-rate goal.