Ascensos selected Calabrio technology from contact centre specialists SVL for ease-of-use, scalability and to eliminate time-consuming manual processes. The company relies on Calabrio Workforce Management (WFM) to build fast, efficient schedules for thousands of agents while improving demand planning and forecasting across the organisation.

Agents receive a 12-month upfront view of their schedules, allowing them to book key dates such as annual leave far in advance. This makes it easier for planners to schedule staff around specific customer campaigns or busy periods of the year and manage client service levels effectively.

Agents particularly welcome Calabrio’s self-service app to move their own breaks, book time off and automatically arrange shift requests or shift swaps using their mobile devices.

Team managers in a variety of back office, administrative, digital as well as contact centre roles utilise Calabrio WFM software to schedule and update important offline activities such as meetings, 1-2-1 sessions and ‘return to work’ coaching for example, after parental leave or a career break.

Calabrio’s mobile app notifications makes it possible to alert all agents at the same time about contact centre changes or new scheduling opportunities quickly and efficiently. For example, if a planner needs to release 100 hours of overtime, they use the Calabrio solution to select the relevant agents and send them an email advising them that overtime is available. Agents reply directly via the self-service app, wherever they may be.

Ascensos takes full advantage of Calabrio’s networking events and portals including Calabrio’s User Events and the Calabrio Success Centre to enhance its implementation. As Paul says: “Nothing beats speaking to people who use the technology on a daily basis.”

Calabrio WFM has transformed resource planning efficiency at Ascensos. Whereas previously, the majority of scheduling and forecasting processes were handled manually, automation has yielded dramatic time savings of 375 hours a week, the equivalent of 13 full-time employees.

Ascensos estimates that 3 minutes have been shaved from each action carried out using Calabrio WFM. Team managers schedule 1,700 offline activities a week while agents schedule 4,700 breaks and put in 1,100 holiday requests during the same period. This equates to 22,500 minutes (375 hours) saved per week, extra time that agents can devote to improving customer service.

Calabrio WFM is massively beneficial to agents and to staff engagement. Recent feedback from drop-in sessions reveals how having a long-term forward view of schedules is ‘brilliant’.

Self-scheduling has improved the agent experience by facilitating a healthier work/life balance. If an agent wants to book a long weekend away, they can swap shifts with a colleague in an instant without having to take extra days from their holiday allowance – another bonus. Moreover, automatic notifications give everyone a level playing field that is transparent and fair.

Another major advantage is simplicity. Because the technology is so easy to learn people can become super-users and staff can be quickly promoted to join the planning team from other contact centre roles and even move from other parts of the business.

Ascensos has developed a true partnership with Calabrio through SVL that will benefit future plans. Next on the horizon is fully utilising dashboards, allowing agents to monitor their own performance against specific customer campaigns and team leaders to assign the right-skilled agents to the right customer campaigns.