ICMI's Customer Management Insight - December 2007 - (Page 18) PEOPLE than 10 percent improvement in customer satisfaction upon implementation of home agents (and 62 percent of best-in-class centers report improved customer satisfaction of 10 percent or less). Additional benefits of implementing a home-agent initiative (according to case studies and research) include decreased facilities costs (assuming the center implements a large enough initiative), and more flexible and reliable staffing models (e.g., home agents can be “on-call” to help out during unexpected spikes in contact volume, and are less affected by inclement weather that would otherwise hinder their ability to get to the contact center for work). Offer Compressed Schedules Many full-time workers would kill for three days off each week. But why make agents even consider murder when, instead, you could just let them work a couple extra hours four days a week to earn that extra day off? The 10-hour, four-day workweek is perhaps the most common, and the most popular, example of a compressed full-time schedule. Agents fortunate enough to land such shifts not only get an additional day off each week, but they are often able to avoid painful commutes by arriving to the contact center prior to rush-hour traffic and/or leaving the center after heavy traffic has dissipated. The contact center also benefits, especially when it carefully chooses how the 4x10 workweek is organized. For example, by offering such strategic schedules to select agents, AMVESCAP’s Retirement Resource Center has not only enhanced agent morale and quality of life, but also helped the center more effectively cover its peak calling periods. icmi’s insight M Why Workplace Flexibility? Families and Work Institute conducts nationally representative studies of employees and employers. These studies find that flexibility is a critical component of workplace effectiveness—just as important as better known components of workplace effectiveness, including challenging and meaningful work, learning opportunities, job autonomy, input into management decision making, and supervisor and coworker support for job success. Research finds that employees in effective and flexible workplaces are more likely to be engaged in helping their organizations succeed, more likely to be satisfied with their jobs, more likely to stay with their employer and more likely to be in better mental health. Workplace flexibility is a way to define how, when and where work gets done, and how careers are organized. Flexibility is a strategic business tool to respond to the changing economy and changing workforce. SOURCE: Family and Work Institute “Our busiest time of the day is between 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.,” explains Thomas Ballard, the center’s director. “In the past, we had spread the shifts out over the day, but our latest shift came in at noon and left at 9 p.m., leaving us pretty vulnerable in the morning.” Today, eight of the center’s 70 agents work from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., four days a week. Each agent rotates his extra day off weekly, so that once a month each gets a Friday off — for a coveted three-day weekend. (Nobody is ever off on Monday, the center’s busiest day.) In addition to meeting the center’s peak coverage requirements, the 4x10 work schedule has enhanced the number of skilled agents on staff for the nightshift. Prior to offering the 4x10 shift, agents working at night were typically newer, inexperienced staff who got stuck working the least popular shift due to their lack of seniority. As a result, service quality and efficiency in the center often dwindled a bit after dusk. However, now that working until 9 p.m. means more days off, many of the center’s top agents have signed up for the 10-hour stint — and customer service no longer suffers when the sun goes down. “It’s a popular shift, with some of our most experienced, longest-tenured reps bidding for it,” says Jeffery Little, operations analyst at RRC. The 4x10 workweek isn’t the only viable compressed schedule option for contact centers. A center may want to experiment with a 9x80 schedule, which operates over a two-week cycle. Here, agents commonly work four nine-hour days and one eight-hour day the first calendar week, then four ninehour days with an extra day off the second calendar week. Federal law requires payment of overtime for non-exempt employees who work more than 40 hours in a workweek. To avoid paying overtime with a 9x80 arrangement, you can redefine the workweek to start at the midpoint of the eighthour day in the agent’s schedule. | DECEMBER 2007 www.icmi.com 18 http://www.icmi.com
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