CUSTOMER PROFILE
Belong, an Australian communications company, leveraged NICE expertise to grow its workforce management proficiency. With NICE’s assistance, Belong is correctly mapping and categorizing calls from its ACD and to NICE Workforce Management. Belong has improved forecasting, scheduling, adherence and conformance while also maintaining high service levels.
01 THE BEFORE
From emails to phone calls
Because Belong ‘grew up’ through Telstra, the company was always aware of the advantages of a workforce management (WFM) solution, but the company’s size and email-based contact system didn’t make WFM an immediate priority. However, rapid growth and a shift from emails to phone contacts compelled Belong to find its perfect workforce management fit.
“We had to build from the ground up,” says Phillip Ludwig, Manager, Workforce Management. “My entire team was new. Our WFM Planner was new to the telco industry and everyone else was new to workforce management entirely. We were coming from a world of multiple Excel spreadsheets to an advanced tool, and we had no historical data to build forecasts on.”
02 DESIRE TO CHANGE
Getting a smart start
Belong required a workforce management solution to supercharge customer and agent experiences, and guidance on their transformation journey. They needed a way to set schedule and adherence expectations with agents and to facilitate coaching, team meetings, and shift flexibility while meeting the company’s efficiency and productivity goals. Belong’s success criteria included the ability to accurately forecast long-term volumes and plan for staffing needs, adherence tracking, and a commitment to upskilling and refresher training as their team grew.
“We looked at several workforce management solutions but had a bias toward NICE because of our experience at Telstra,” says Hugo Kovacevic, Head of Sales & Service. “Still, we didn’t want to over-engineer or bite off more than we could chew. NICE recognized that. They understood our needs, valued our starting point, and presented solutions suited to our size and goals—including NICE Value Realization Services. Having that expert guidance post-sale and post- launch was key for us.”
03 THE SOLUTION
Accelerated ACD to WFM mapping
One of Belong’s goals was adherence monitoring which requires proper mapping from the ACD to NICE Workforce Management. Each ACD has nuances and requires different mapping, and Belong’s ACD is newer to the market. NICE’s Professional Services team coordinated with Belong, the 3rd-party ACD engineers and NICE’s R&D team and application engineers to get the ACD mapping completed within a couple of weeks. Specifically, NICE mapped the real-time status codes sent from the ACD to NICE Workforce Management and clarified whether the codes were related to agent states or contact states. While it was all hands on deck to work out the technical pieces, VRS provided business guidance on receiving, using, and accessing the data within the NICE Workforce Management solution for the greatest effect.
The availability and willingness of NICE Value Realization Services and the NICE Professional Services team was a huge win for Belong. “NICE’s teams worked with us to onboard and problem solve post-launch, often working longer and odder hours to accommodate our needs. From ingesting calls to acclimating new team members to the NICE WFM system, we could raise questions, and NICE’s knowledgeable teams answered. Ultimately,” says Ludwig, “We know more about workforce management, our ACD and operational best practices because of their expertise.”
04 THE RESULTS
Enabled with new capabilities
“NICE has provided a level of operational rigour that we couldn’t achieve before,” says Ludwig. “Now that we’re inputting into a system designed for forecasting and scheduling, we have visibility to adherence and conformance. Our agents and supervisors can self- serve when it comes to leave or deciding when to coach, have team meetings, and the like. It may seem pretty basic but the ability to look at a single screen and know that we can take six people off for the next three hours is a monumental shift in our ability to manage the intraday. We couldn’t do that before.”
Belong achieved significant performance gains. Forecast accuracy is within the target ±10%, adherence improved from 60% to an incredible 92%, and conformance increased 20%. In addition, Belong is maintaining a high service level with a low Average Speed of Answer (26 seconds) and a 1.3% abandon rate.
VRS provided guidance and measurement of these KPIs, along with recommendations and cautions for continuous improvement. For example, VRS pointed to over-servicing risks where Belong is over-staffed yet AHT was trending upward. This allowed Belong to investigate whether the upward trend was related to new campaigns and agent knowledge or if there were other issues. VRS also made recommendations to balance schedules and efficiency, including when to conduct training, when to introduce part-time agents, and how to increase shrinkage mid-day.
05 THE FUTURE
Live chat & growing partners
Belong is working toward forecasting and scheduling proficiency for live chat, which is scheduled to launch in 2023.
“I get excited about WFM and our people capability,” says Ludwig. “It’s beautiful to have a workforce management team at Belong. We’ve got a ways to go, but as we’re building out our capability and receiving guidance from VRS, we’re working with our partners and passing our knowledge to them. It’s strengthened our partnerships.”
