A Complete Guide to Workforce Engagement Management Part 2

If you read the previous article in this series, you know that I started with the basics of Workforce Engagement Management (aka WEM), and walked through the first steps of the workforce management process. I explained historical data, forecasting, and capacity planning, including how to use a forecast to determine how many CSRs are needed to handle the expected workload. But knowing how many CSRs we need is only part of the puzzle. Managers still need to figure out when those CSRs should work. That’s where shift planning and scheduling come in. In this article, I’m going to continue where I left off and take a closer look at shift plans, shift bidding and swapping, and time-off requests in Dynamics 365 Contact Center. We’ll look at how these capabilities help turn our staffing requirements into actual schedules and give CSRs some flexibility in managing their work schedules.

Shift Plans

Now that we know how much work is coming and how many CSRs we need to handle that work, the next question is ‘when should those CSRs work?’ A shift plan takes the staffing requirements from our capacity plan and turns them into actual shifts that CSRs can be scheduled against. It looks at when we expect the work to arrive and helps us determine when CSRs need to be available to handle it. For example, our forecast might tell us that we expect a large increase in conversations between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM. and the capacity plan might tell us that we need 15 CSRs to handle the expected workload. Now we need to figure out how we’re going to get those 15 CSRs there. Some CSRs work an 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM shift. Others might start at 10:00 AM and work until 6:00 PM. We might also have CSRs working later shifts because customer demand continues into the evening. Shift plans allow us to build all of those different shifts so that we have the right number of CSRs available throughout the day.

Another thing we need to consider is that a CSRs workday can include different types of activities. They might spend part of their day handling customer conversations, but they also need time for breaks, lunch, internal meetings, training, coaching, or other activities. Those things need to be accounted for when we’re creating shift plans. This is important because if we need 15 CSRs actively handling customer conversations at 11:00 AM, we may actually need more than 15 CSRs scheduled at that time. The reason for this is that some CSRs might be on a break, in a meeting, or working on another activity. That’s why workforce scheduling can get complicated very quickly. A shift plan helps us take all of these requirements into account and create shifts that meet the needs of the contact center while also considering the CSRs who are actually working those shifts. So, while the capacity plan tells us how many CSRs we need, the shift plan turns those requirements into shifts that we use when creating our actual schedule. Once the shift plan is created, we can start assigning our CSRs to those shifts.

Shift Bidding & Swapping

Lots of organizations want to give their CSRs flexibility into which shifts they work and WEM has those capabilities as well, and the good news is they are optional. This is called shift bidding. Shift bidding allows CSRs to submit bids for available shifts they would prefer to work, rather than simply having a shift assigned to them. For example, let’s say we need coverage for several different shifts next week. We might have an early shift from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM, a standard shift from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and a later shift from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Rather than simply assigning those shifts to everyone, we can open them up for bidding. CSRs can then create bids for shifts they prefer. The great thing about this functionality is that it gives CSRs some flexibility while still allowing the contact center to make sure the required coverage is in place.

Shift swapping (also an optional feature) allows a CSR to exchange shifts with another CSR, rather than having a manager completely rebuild the schedule. For example, let’s say Sarah is scheduled to work from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Wednesday, but she has a doctors appointment during that time. John is scheduled to work from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM that same day and he prefers the earlier shift. Shift swapping allows Sarah and John to swap their shifts.
A CSR can submit a swap request for an entire shift or for a specific block of their shift. Supervisors are notified of the swap request and can review, approve, or decline it. This gives CSRs some flexibility to manage their schedules without requiring managers to manually make every schedule change. Administrators simply need to enable shift swapping and configure how long a swap request remains valid.

Time Off Requests

Once we have shifts created and representatives scheduled, we also need to account for the times when CSRs aren’t going to be available. That’s where time-off requests come in. CSRs can submit requests for time off, and managers can review those requests as part of the workforce management process. Approved time off can then be reflected in the CSRs schedule so that WEM has a more accurate picture of who is actually available to work. I’m sure you understand that this is important because when we’re planning the shifts, we don’t need to know just how many CSRs we have on paper. We need to know how many are actually available. If five CSRs are scheduled but two of those five are out on vacation, that’s a very bad situation!

Putting it all together

So, where does all of this leave us? We started with our forecast, which tells us how much work to expect in the future. From there, capacity planning helps us determine how many CSRs we need to handle that work. Our shift plan then turns those staffing requirements into actual shifts, and we can assign CSRs to those shifts when we build our schedules. We have tools for shift bidding, shift swapping, and time-off requests to give CSRs more flexibility in managing their schedules, while managers can review and manage those changes. Together, these capabilities help us create a workforce plan that isn’t just about having enough people, but having the right CSRs available at the right times to meet the needs of our customers. I hope you enjoyed this article! Be sure to check in again soon for part 3 of this series or subscribe to never miss another post! In the next article we’ll dive into Dynamics 365 Contact Center and I’ll show you how all these pieces work together!