The Book People have chosen injixo WFM to help improve their customer service levels.
The company
The Book People is a discount bookseller based in the UK. They sell books online through mail order catalogues and in workplaces through a direct sales team of over 400 booksellers.
The challenge
Prior to using injixo WFM, The Book People’s planning team used Excel for workforce scheduling. Shift patterns were fixed regardless of fluctuating inbound volume.
While multiple call types are handled by The Book People, they found it difficult to generate multi-skill schedules. This is because the company releases a new brochure every three weeks that always generates a spike in call volumes, compounding planning complexity. Staff planning was a time-consuming and labour-intensive task.
It became clear that an alternative method of shift management – that also included accurate forecasting, multi-skill scheduling capability, flexible rotas with adequate coverage and holiday management – was required.
The solution
The Book People implemented injixo WFM to support the entire WFM cycle, which includes forecasting, scheduling, daily management, holiday processing and real-time reporting.
The benefits
- Affordability – Cost efficiency was the key consideration for The Book People. injixo WFM resolved this concern due to the cloud-based nature of the application, plus the option to increase or reduce capacity and monthly fees based on business need.
- Forecasting accuracy – The ability to view injixo WFM forecast output, such as the increase and decrease in call volumes in graphical form, was a key factor for The Book People.
- Zero effort updates – injixo WFM is a cloud-based application that does not require on-premise installation. Product updates are implemented automatically without any additional effort and with very little impact on The Book People’s IT team.
- Multi-skill scheduling functionality – True multi-skill scheduling unlocks pooling efficiencies, which enables contact centres to do more with less.
- Employee involvement – injixo Me enables The Book People’s agents to have self-service access to schedules and holiday requests any time and anywhere, including on their personal mobile devices, reducing uncertainty and errors in time management while improving schedule adherence and employee morale.
The results
- Increased time and cost efficiencies – The Book People have gained a 5% increase in customer service levels and a 20% reduction in headcount using injixo WFM.
- Continuously updated forecasting capability and real-time reporting – The ability to generate daily real-time reports for staffing and call volumes.
- Effective multi-skill scheduling against requirements – The multi-skill scheduling aspect of injixo WFM is considered a major improvement compared to the laborious manual procedures in Excel.
- Improved agent participation in the planning process – The Book People has found that the self-service agent portal injixo Me enables agents to be more proactive through schedule viewing and holiday requests.
These key areas enable The Book People’s planning team to be more effective through optimised scheduling, where agents are in the right place at the right time, as well as being more engaged in their daily activities.
”injixo WFM has been invaluable to us,” said Mark Shuttleworth, Planning and Reporting Supervisor at The Book People. “It’s a fantastic application.”
For more information about injixo, visit their website.
Author: Megan Jones
Published On: 22nd Oct 2014 - Last modified: 12th Dec 2018
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