Driving Efficiency and Revenue Gains with Workgenda

?In a previous blog, we surveyed some benefits of using Workgenda to facilitate scheduling in a contact center environment. In this installment, we drill down on some of the data associated with Workgenda’s use.?

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When it comes to outsourcing, choosing the right technologies that are easy to use and facilitate the scalability of agent numbers are key differentiators. Indeed, these are the core reasons why we adopted Workgenda, a real-time workforce management tool for scheduling across our entire operation in Panama, Colombia and Jamaica.

To be effective, business operations must be guided by hard numbers. Higher revenue, cost savings, and conversion rates are just the broadest metrics by which a business’ success or failure is determined. At the same time, changes to operations entail costs in terms of money spent on new technologies and the opportunity cost of employee time devoted to learning how to use the new technology. But, to everything there is an upside. Tools such as Workgenda have been disrupting traditional costing, helping to alleviate the growing pains our clients may experience adapting to new changes. At Iterum, we have adopted Workgenda because our clients' growth and sustainability are of prime importance, and we go the extra mile to deliver the results they need for success.

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Given the extreme importance of those hard numbers, we understand our potential partners will need in-depth insights to validate our decision-making and the technology’s value. So, in that spirit, here are a few of the metrics that we measure since adopting Workgenda as an essential part of the operations we offer to our enterprise partners.

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Several months ago, when we began working with a major retailer, their abandonment rate was very high. As many readers know, this can be a chronic problem in customer care. Callers get frustrated being left on hold, and they hang up. In this case, about 27% of callers disconnected before ever speaking to an agent.

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Such an elevated abandonment rate can easily result in upset customers choosing a competitor. It is an issue in any industry, but arguably, nowhere is it more of a problem than in retail, where alternatives are boundless.

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At root, the retail client simply did not have their customer service agents scheduled at the right time. Work schedules set a week (or more) in advance using manual procedures on an Excel spreadsheet meant there was no flexibility for the client to tap contact center agents at short notice in response to rising call volumes. Hence, customers faced long wait times. After a few minutes of waiting, over a quarter just gave up.

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We quickly switched to scheduling agents based on Workgenda. The advanced AI behind the tool meant highly accurate forecasts of call volumes 24/7, as well as identifying seasonality and activity spikes. The right number of agents were ready when the calls came. Wait times decreased and the number of hang-ups plummeted. Soon, the abandonment rate was 8%, far better than the industry-wide average.

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More signs emerged of improved efficiency. Barely 30 days after deploying Workgenda, the occupancy rate increased from a middling 56% to over 70%. Now the client’s agents are striking the right balance: they are spending most of their time on calls, but they still have enough flexibility in their schedule for post-call activities like product research or scheduling callbacks.?

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As the weeks turned to months, a series of other metrics showed additional benefits. Our Real-Time analyst saw the time they devoted to scheduling fall by half, freeing them up to focus on tasks of better value for our clients, such as more detailed analysis and report generation. The client notched a 12% increase in revenue during the first 90 days after we deployed Workgenda.

Workgenda reduces abandonment rates, boosts occupancy levels, and lifts revenue. In a competitive landscape where lots of promises are made about operational improvements that may or may not ever materialize, at Iterum we are delighted to offer our clients a tool that delivers clear results—and fast.