Demand does not end abruptly on the half hour:

Ask a competing vendor how they treat long calls…

Answer: Well there is not much we can do but attribute the entire call to a single planning interval.  You have to.  It’s the only thing we know how to do.

Ask a competing vendor how they plan for long service level events like email…

Answer: We treat them like they are phone calls.  They have to be dealt with during the same interval that they arrive.  That might not be a very good fit with your three hour or three day service levels but hey, those are the limitations of interval based planning.

Ask a competing vendor how they plan for chat…

Answer:  Easy, we take the number of chats, assume they arrived evenly and divide by the number of chats that agents can handle at a time.  If the chats last beyond an interval boundary then we just pretend it is over.  What could go wrong?  Besides, it’s the best we can do.

Ask a competing vendor if their service level calculations include carry-over effects.

Answer: Of course not.  If you lower your service levels for 9:00 to 9:30 then all the customers who can’t be serviced until later in the day will just fall off the radar.  What else could we do?  Besides, under-serving your customer base is a great way to reduce labor costs and pay for your WFM software.

Advantage HD WFM™: Cross-interval planning and service levels

HD WFM™ understands all carry-over effects including:

-         Long calls, chats and emails that span any number of minutes or hours

-         Long service levels that last from many minutes to many days

-         The exact carryover effects of lowering a service level for any planning interval.

This is a radically new and more effective form of planning.   HD WFM™ connects call centers with the realities that competing solutions can only discard or conceal.