Case Study: Ecotricity Increases Schedule Adherence by 10%

Ecotricity was founded in 1995 as the world’s first green energy company. They are also the greenest energy company in Britain, supplying 100% green electricity and frack-free gas to over 200,000 customers. Ecotricity operates a unique model: they use their customers’ energy bills to fund the building of new sources of green energy. They refer to this as turning ‘Bills into Mills’ – energy bills into windmills.

In the beginning, Ecotricity relied on spreadsheets for forecasting and scheduling. A lot of time was spent analysing and fixing problems, meaning they could not track the actual performance of their contact centre. They realized that spreadsheets had reached their limits and they needed to find a solution that would help them serve their customers better, through more efficient forecasting and scheduling.

Solution

Part of Ecotricity’s requirements when selecting a workforce management solution was that it had to meet their current and future needs. When researching about vendors that could offer a suitable solution, they were looking for something that would incorporate superior technologies and services to exceed their expectations.

They were therefore looking for a cloud-based solution that could easily integrate with different systems, especially Salesforce, which they had recently implemented. Ecotricity was looking for a system that would allow them to track performance as well as provide actionable insights for significant improvements. Additionally, a simplified framework that would put together these services in an easy-to-use method was important for a faster and smoother integration.

Verint Monet stood out due to its tight and unique integration with Salesforce and its flexibility in the cloud. Verint Monet would allow them to truly understand handle time and volume in Salesforce. The ease of use of the solution also made the difference, as not everyone in their team had experience with workforce management software. Finally, Ecotricity was able to use the data collected to see where problems lay in their contact centre and make the appropriate changes, providing training or other tools needed to optimize their workforce.

“We can now focus more time on offering better service to our customers, rather than spending time managing our schedule.” Nick Benzie, Ecotricity Resource Planning & Reporting Manager

Benefits

After Ecotricity selected Verint Monet as their workforce management vendor of choice, they saw benefits in the following areas:

Administrative time to develop schedules used to take 2 to 3 hours per week; this was reduced to 1 hour after Verint Monet was introduced.
In 2018, there were 1,500 holiday requests that needed to be approved manually by checking the spreadsheet. With Verint Monet, 85% of the holiday requests submitted are automatically approved.
Administrative time is now better spent doing proactive work.
Adherence has increased by 10% since the implementation, i.e. 20 minutes per person per day.
Reduction in wrap-up time, i.e. the time spent by an agent doing after-call work went from 3½ minutes to 2½ minutes.
Better management of call volume peaks.
Reduction in agent idle time, i.e. reduction of 2 FTEs’ worth of time because of more effective scheduling and management of peaks.
Clearer understanding of individual performance from an analysis of various fields in employees’ interactions.
Better comprehension of individual progression within each of these areas.
Faster access to learning and coaching tailored to employee needs.
Integration of a process for managing performance across multiple areas of the business.
Higher knowledge on which areas directly affect the customer experience.
Incorporation of gamification to help stimulate and motivate staff.
Use of a system that allows more flexibility for work, such as hours, shift-swaps and support for a work-at-home model.
The ability to track, manage and enhance employee performance.
Use of a continuous loop, data-driven process, to set and communicate goals across the organization.
Regular measurement of performance against data to make corrections as needed based on actionable insights.