Virtual Workforce/Call-Center Scheduling

Current Situation and Challenges

Virtual Workforce/Call-Center Scheduling

The growth of small and medium sized centers with less than a hundred agents has been phenomenal in the last ten years. Determining the right number of agents and scheduling them quickly and optimally actually becomes more critical for small groups. Adding to the growth of call centers is the ability for agents to work remotely in distant locations or even at home. The benefits of this type of virtual workforce have been tremendous. Now organizations can offer service personnel from any geographic location to their clients far away. We are witnessing counselors, medical specialists, interpreters, educators, and other business professionals conducting business online directly with their clients online, in the same city or on the other side of the world. But like many other new technologies, problems also arise. These include:

  • Organizations are relying more heavily on freelance and contract specialists to fill specialized or off-hours positions making scheduling more challenging
  • Virtual workforce scheduling requires more remote and from home service specialists, forcing communication challenges for scheduling and coordination
  • Customers and clients demand the lowest prices for an improved service, putting a squeeze on overall costs
  • Current scheduling solutions don't work because they assume consistent working blocks of 2, 4 and/ or 8 hours. In the new workforce, resources are required to work inconsistent time periods in the same day from various locations.
  • There is a need to diversify roles and schedule multiple roles simultaneously
  • Third party vendors may become part of the process and are required to get involved in the scheduling process, helping to collaborate on what they can and can not do.
  • Paper based job allocation leads to inferior service levels where managers are not able to control the productivity
  • Need to reconcile multiple parties in one system: administrators, resources, customers (payers), third party vendors and the clients themselves.

Avianco Solution

Optimizing workforce performance for virtual work forces / call-center means allocating multiple personnel with the right skills to fit the needs of guidelines, the client's needs and the programs that make up the business side of the organization providers strategic plans. Knowing which people have the best skills and at the optimal pay rate for a given process makes all the difference and helps distinguish organizations as "world-class." Whether the organization is a large service provider or a specialist agency offering a variety of services programs, Avianco's solution can help:

  • Take into account demand across the whole organization on a granular level (half hour by half hour basis for each day give a date range)
  • Allocate demand to multiple organizations, sub organizations, work/call-centers, and third party vendors.
  • Allow third party vendors the ability to log on and collaborate with organization administrators on a single assignment schedule.
  • Identify resource and assign as needed on sporadic basis through the day meeting demand and allocation requirements.
  • Monitor fulfillment activity from one centralized location
  • Provide a means for resource to sign-in, review their schedules, claim time and expenses
  • Allow for management and team leaders a way to review work schedules, claims and export the results for external financial settlement for both billables and payables.
  • Reduce labor costs through a centralized time and attendance management function. Increase accuracy of payroll with automated tracking of hours and attendance and automation of 100% of pay rules.
  • Improve operational efficiency through Avianco's scheduling tools. Ensure that the right staff, with the right skills, are in the right place, at the right time.
  • Improve employee productivity and satisfaction through self-service access to frequent administrative processes, such as leave requests, shift trading, and schedule management.