The work of UK Power Networks is heavily governed by the changeable UK weather which can result in an increase in its workforce from 300 to over 800 agents on storm days – not a typical contact centre.

UK Power Networks faced a myriad of challenges. Top of the list was how to mobilise the workforce to meet customer demand and service levels amid fluctuating call volumes. Traditionally, the organisation used manual spreadsheets and databases to create agent schedules. It was a lengthy process that involved a large chunk of administration time, further hindered by error-prone technology platforms.

Furthermore, UK Power Networks had to find a way to utilise its agents more effectively, maximising individual skill sets while identifying skills gaps across teams to better meet customer demand. Limited capabilities around flexible forecasting meant that overstaffing was a common issue. The company required the ability to model the impact of changes and differing/complex shift patterns based on historical data, contact trends and external information such as weather predictions.

UK Power Networks was also seeking to improve the work/life balance for agents and yet agents did not have direct access to their schedules or holiday information. The company wanted its agents to be able to self-serve their rotas and time-off, to boost agent empowerment and engagement.

UK Power Networks was looking for a tool to help manage its workforce in real-time to meet customer service goals, while having the infrastructure in place to support the company’s growth plans.

To help build a first-class customer experience and improve the productivity and occupancy of contact centre agents, UK Power Networks implemented Calabrio Workforce Management (WFM) delivered by workforce engagement management experts Business Systems.

Agents fully utilise a broad range of Calabrio WFM capabilities including intraday management.  Agent schedules can be adjusted in real-time, instantly optimising breaks and lunches and rebalancing the day’s workload with available resources across all channels to smooth out peaks and troughs in demand.

By adding special templates to storm events and using historical volumes and profiling, UK Power Networks can plan and optimise its resources more proactively and cost-effectively.  What is more, when looking at expected staffing levels for multiple channels on a storm day, the ‘What-If’ Scenario Planning is invaluable, helping UK Power Networks to know when is the right time to invoke action and pull in additional staff without wasting time, money and resources.

The Calabrio WFM solution offers high levels of flexibility and this is especially helpful when more agents are working from home.  Managers are able to amend shifts to evenings or weekends to better accommodate home schooling, during the Pandemic, or domestic duties.  They can even see who is working at a particular time for track and trace purposes.

When it comes to improving staff engagement, the MyTime Mobile App is extremely effective, enabling agents and staff at all levels to self-serve their working day. The app is also a game-changer for overtime.  Agents can quickly see what overtime and

shifts are available, with the ability to accept or decline the request, allowing UK Power Networks to efficiently fill the available shifts without understaffing or overstaffing.

Since implementing the Calabrio WFM solution, UK Power Networks has realised a series of impressive results including increased efficiencies, tangible time savings and reduced costs such as a 15% reduction in overtime.

Calabrio’s mobile self-serve app has resulted in a 60% reduction in emails received into the resource planning team and 1.4 (FTE) of 3 Resource Planners being successfully reallocated to frontline roles. And, with clear visibility of what shifts and overtime are available, Resource Planners spend 30% less of their time handling admin requests. Response times for holiday requests have also improved from 1-2 days to 30 minutes and 182 hours a year are saved because 100% of breaks are allocated effectively.

UK Power Networks has found Calabrio to be a useful tool in motivating and developing staff with a positive knock-on effect on productivity and CSAT. Calabrio WFM has provided an efficient gamification framework, linking contact centre activity to strategic goals. While incentivising agents, the introduction of new goals and gamification has led to a 9% increase gained in agent availability.

There is also more time for personal development. In fact, 5% of advisors’ time is now dedicated to their development regardless of what may be happening with a direct and positive impact on the quality of staff and the service being provided.

What is more, applying contact centre statistics intelligently to marry up customer insights with resource planning needs has boosted customer satisfaction from 87.3 in 2018 to 92.3 in 2020.

When UK Power Networks had to move 75% of its staff from office based to home working in a matter of days, as a result of the Pandemic, the company was able to offer a truly flexible working environment which simply wasn’t possible before thanks to the cloud-based Calabrio solution.

The benefits gained from Calabrio WFM has helped UK Power Networks deliver on its vision of becoming an employer of choice and to treat colleagues and customers in the way they would want to be treated.