Parallel Capacity Agents

This is re-post from Marlon Martinez  – original post can be found here “Parallel Capacity Agents”

Parallel capacity agents

In a nutshell Parallel capacity agents can be created by letting all your agents keep their work from home hardware/kits, even if let’s say the majority come back to at site desks. The basic concept is to move to UBER style scheduling (read more about this in this article: Gig Economy Scheduling) AKA flex scheduling, many orgs have had an issue doing this as most of us are used to that camel hump style scheduling. Typically, all agents want (7am-3pm,8am-4pm and 9am-5pm) and we know there is less of an appetite for EVE and weekends shifts. So, if they became “Parallel Capacity Agents” they could jump on during peak periods from home and get paid a set premium as supposed to things like 2X OT, 3X OT ect. The advantage to the agents of course is they can pick up hours, shifts and save on transportations costs, parking, daycare costs etc…

Pro’s of “Parallel Capacity Agents”

·       Less office space rental/lease fee’s

·       More employee satisfaction (Less cost to agents getting to work) to do 2-3 hours of OT

·       Can literally get up to double your FTE amounts during peak periods and weekends if a premium if offered or doing a product launch / Media issue/ or peak sales periods like Black Friday or Cyber Monday

·       Works well in a FLEX schedule model

·       Work well in an OMNI Channel model

·       Camel hump be gone! ????you can flex in agents in those AM and EVE spikes or on weekends

·       FTE OT requests for special events and launches can be made well in advance and planned via the FLEX uber style (We tell you what we need) you just pick it up type shifts

·       If you had 1000 FTE as an example and 70% came back onsite (30% will be WFH) but the 100% will have WFH kits… making them “Parallel Capacity Agents” and instead of have only 30% flex staffing you have 100%

·       Info-structure is already in place (as we can see with this WFH pandemic issue), and you can subsidize your agent’s internet costs as well

·       No need to contract 3rd party/outsourcers to meet EVE or weekends demands

·       No need or a reduced amount of seasonal hiring (Less training cost/ Less seasonal attrition)You can handle volumes easily in excess of your  (YOY) year over year base. YOY contact volume would be based on contact rate % and your customer base and scrubbed out anomalies and events non-reoccurring , ect.

·       Less load issues, less absenteeism, and also can help agents stay at home when sick (Reduce virus/cold spread)

·       WFH kits investment has already been made. You can assign each unit to each employee ID and make it part of the IT intake process/Have mobile techs come to agent’s home to fix any issue that cannot be fixed remotely