Hiring and Staffing Q&A with Laura Dillon, TD Bank Financial Group
As a user of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies’ contact center strategic planning software, Laura Dillon offers insight in the everyday use of CenterBridge. Laura Dillon, WFM Consultant at TD Bank, works hand-in-hand with CenterBridge to optimize short-term and long-term hiring and staffing plans. CenterBridge enabled growth in performance and output at TD Bank and ultimately helped drive excellence to meet demand.
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1. How many total agents are you staffing at TD Bank’s contact centers? How many sites do you plan for?
TD Bank just did a count on that, so around 1500 specialists in my business segment and across TD Bank Canada 5600 FTE in our contact centers. TD Bank just added two more sites. As a result of the added sites, we are planning for 7 contact centers within my business segment and 21 call centers in total for our Workforce Management team.
2. Prior to CenterBridge some of your businesses hired on gut-feel. How were you able to sell CenterBridge to them?
Bay Bridge Decision Technologies’ CenterBridge demonstration was all we needed to sell the change. It was a very helpful and informative presentation. Not to mention, we consider CenterBridge as a competitive advantage. Before, we didn’t have an accurate service level prediction. When we knew we would be understaffed by 5 specialists we didn’t know how this would influence service levels. With CenterBridge we know the exact service level we will provide being understaffed by 5 specialists. CenterBridge allows you to see the direct impacts your business decisions will have!
3. What is the number one benefit you have found using CenterBridge?
The impact of CenterBridge’s hiring and staffing recommendations is endless for us. CenterBridge provides long-term and up to weekly hiring plans, which helps us at TD Bank reduce staffing costs, while having the exact FTE’s when we need them. CenterBridge also takes into account each new hire’s “learning curve,” so we as planners can forecast service levels, handle times, etc. using each FTE’s skill-level and knowledge base.
4. After implementing CenterBridge, what are your measured improvements? For example, absenteeism was reduced by x%? Staffing accuracy? Forecasting variance%?
We did see improvement. We are significantly seeing the impacts of having individuals staffed at the right time. We have witnessed improvement in service levels, which helped to reduce handle time. We are also seeing less absenteeism in our call centers. We haven’t always been able to tell our staff to “go home early.” We now implemented a “go home early.” Before CenterBridge, we weren’t able to say what our service level would be if knowing how many specialist were staffed. Now with CenterBridge, we can say “This is the number of staff we need to achieve this service level.” Using CenterBridge’s what-if analysis we are able to demonstrate the impacts of staffing to our business partners effectively and efficiently.
5. When creating new hire recommendations does CenterBridge take into account volume, average handle time, & attrition based on seasonality factors. Meaning, if we know our volume spikes in January and goes down in February how does it balance that out so we aren’t overstaffed in February?
CenterBridge does take all of this into account. So it becomes a business decision. For example, during the first week of each month our calls increase by 50,000-60,000, so we don’t expect to have the same service level as we do throughout the month during that time. If we intended on having a constant service level we would have so many specialist scheduled during that week, as opposed to the rest of the month. CenterBridge takes seasonality and attrition into account when you are planning as well. It is up to your business to determine the service level you want to have. It tells you exactly how many FTE’s you need to produce the service level that you wish to achieve, and you can prove this easily using CenterBridge.
6. Does CenterBridge look at site efficiency when hiring? How do you ensure you don’t hire too many FTE’s at each site?
Yes it does. Within the CenterBridge model the average handle time, and different load factors for each site are taken into consideration. It is site specific! You may see higher handle times at one site, so when hiring CenterBridge will determine which individual site(s) need specialists. Additionally, CenterBridge accounts for seating restrictions for each site, as well as training sessions. One of TD’s centers only has 35 desks; CenterBridge takes this into account when producing a hiring plan.
Built to Hire- Putting Hire Recommendations into Action
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SPEAKER: Laura Dillon, TD Bank Financial Group
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