COVID-19: NICE Reports a Surge in Self-Service Scheduling Usage

NICE have announced that they are seeing a significant uptake in agents adapting their contact centre schedules in response to the recent outbreak of COVID-19.

Agents were highly engaged in helping their contact centres rapidly meet the unprecedented change in demand by leveraging NICE’s Employee Engagement Manager (EEM) solution.

NICE EEM provided agents with exceptional scheduling flexibility while simultaneously improving staffing levels and increasing productivity.

As a result, organizations using NICE EEM are showing increases as high as 193% in average daily self-service schedule changes, addressing the fluctuating staffing needs as employees move to remote working environments due to COVID-19.

This trend is being seen across multiple verticals, including healthcare, telecom, BPO, financial services, insurance, high tech, travel and more.

In addition to changing their schedules to be available for their contact centre, agents also relied heavily on flexible self-scheduling capabilities such as the automated self-swap of hours, which increased in average volume by 90% as a proportion of all self-service scheduling.

The automated self-swap has enabled optimized staffing levels by allowing agents to instantly move shift intervals within the same day or between days while maintaining aggregate hours worked.

Organizations are also reporting high rates of success with agents self-scheduling for extra hours, doubling on average.

In addition, a 43% average reduction in voluntary time off over this period, compared to previous weeks, has been reported.

As self-service scheduling usage increased across all verticals, specific industries demonstrated exceptional elasticity in staffing responsiveness.

In the banking industry, agent-initiated self-swaps increased by 408%. At a major telecom service provider, total self-service schedule changes overall increased by 700%, with agent-initiated extra hours increasing in volume by 1012%.

Barry Cooper, Enterprise Group President, commented, “It’s truly remarkable to see contact centre employees adapt in this exceptional time of change and uncertainty.

“We’re pleased to do our part in this with our EEM solution, which empowers employees to better adjust their schedules, regardless of their physical location, all while meeting the evolving needs of their organizations.”