Questions to Ask Before You Buy
General Questions
Q: How much does it cost?
A: Easy Start Call Center Scheduler costs $499 and is available for immediate download. Included with your purchase are the User Guide (PDF file, requires Adobe Acrobat) plus a paperback copy of Call Center Forecasting and Scheduling: The Best of Call Center Management Review (shipped separately if you download, of course).
Q: Exactly what does the product do?
A: Easy Start Call Center Scheduler helps you create agent schedules to meet your service level objectives for incoming calls and response time objectives for email (or other response time work). For more details, see our one-page summary of the Easy Start Call Center Scheduler's features, or view a narrative explanation of the benefits you can expect from using Easy Start Call Center Scheduler.
Q: Will it work in my call center?
A: Easy Start Call Center Scheduler is designed for small call centers (about 60 agents or less). If you have more than 60 agents or so, then scheduling with a spreadsheet, even one as feature-filled as Easy Start Call Center Scheduler, will not be as efficient as using a workforce management system. However, if you're running a large call center without forecasting and scheduling tools, Easy Start Call Center Scheduler is a low-cost way to get started. Try using it for some of your teams or in a division, and measure the results: You'll be well on your way to building a business case for the workforce management system needed to schedule large call centers efficiently.
Nothing beats good old spreadsheets, however, for ad hoc analysis, high-level staffing plans and budgeting scenarios. Easy Start Call Center Scheduler is currently used in large call centers alongside workforce management systems as a complementary planning and analysis tool.
Q: What are the licensing terms?
A: Purchasing one copy of Easy Start Call Center Scheduler grants you a license to use the program on a single personal computer. You may have more than one personal computer, and you are welcome to use the program on any computer you like -- as long as there is no possibility of your copy being used on more than one computer at the same time. ICMI software is copyrighted to ICMI, Inc. Unauthorized use, duplication or distribution is prohibited.
The program is not designed or licensed for installation on a network, although once schedule files have been created they can be stored anywhere, including a network server, but they will only work correctly when opened by users who have the Easy Start Call Center Scheduler installed.
Technical Questions
Q: Is there a link between your software and the ACD or PBX to feed in actual results?
A: There is no link or automated feed between the Easy Start Call Center Scheduler and your PBX or ACD. You can certainly find such features in full-featured workforce management systems (WFM) systems. That's a powerful and desirable feature, but also a very expensive one.
Try comparing your labor cost for manually keying the actual results you really need for forecasting into a spreadsheet with the cost of systems that will automate this task. Sometimes simple solutions are the most cost-effective.
Many call centers have pretty consistent intraday call arrival patterns, and that's how Easy Start Call Center Scheduler takes daily call volume forecasts and instantly generates interval-by-interval forecasts. Once you have set up your call arrival pattern (the percentage of daily calls that arrive in each interval), updating the forecast only requires changing the daily call volume.
All of these principles of forecasting and scheduling are explained in the electronic user's guide provided with the software, along with supplementary detail in Call Center Forecasting and Scheduling: The Best of Call Center Management Review (also included with your purchase).
Q: What software platform does it run on?
A: Easy Start Call Center Scheduler is designed to run on Windows 95 and above. It has not been tested with Macintosh operating systems.
Easy Start Call Center Scheduler requires Excel 2000/2002/2003 or Excel 97, but Excel 97 must have the Service Release patch from Microsoft installed: SR-2. The program will not run on other versions of Excel, and it will produce error messages in Excel 97 if SR-2 has not been installed. SR-2 is available free from Microsoft on their web site. Most companies installed SR-2 years ago.
Q: Can I install it on a network server?
A: The program is not designed or licensed for installation on a network, although once schedule files have been created they can be stored anywhere, including a network server, but they will only work correctly when opened by users who have the Easy Start Call Center Scheduler installed. The program files must be installed on the hard drive of each user's PC.
Feature/Capability Questions
Q: Does the program automatically generate agent schedules based on the call forecast?
A: Easy Start Call Center Scheduler automates and simplifies many parts of the scheduling process, but assigning specific agents to specific activities (e.g., phone, email, meetings, break, paid time off, etc.) requires management judgment. It is possible to automate management judgment in the form of detailed business rules (if this, then do that), but such complex programming is beyond the scope of our inexpensive Easy Start Call Center Scheduler.
We've taken the much simpler approach of allowing you to assign agents manually, while offering you the Excel shortcuts you expect, such as copying and pasting, dragging and dropping, and unlimited file duplication, along with worksheet and workbook linking. Although assigning agents is not automated, it is easy and efficient. With a little practice, it can be done very quickly.
Q: Does the program produce individual agent schedules? How do agents get notified when they are supposed to be on break, at lunch, etc.?
A: We considered building individual agent schedule reports, but in the interest of keeping the product simple and the price low, we did not include that feature. Easy Start Call Center Scheduler produces an Excel worksheet that displays all of the agents' activities by 15-minute interval. You could print this, enlarge it, email it, post it as an HTML file on your intranet, copy and paste it in an Excel file on your computer network and allow reps to view it, and so on. You can try any of these ideas or others right now, by downloading a copy of an Individual Schedules worksheet (this copy is not functional -- in Easy Start Call Center Scheduler the worksheet would update instantly to reflect the impact of any change you make).
If you want each agent to receive his/her own individual schedule only, then the good news is that if you have experience using Microsoft Excel, you have many options for manipulating the agents' schedule information. All of the schedules are in one rectangular block of cells, so Excel's pivot table, database and LOOKUP functions would be easy to apply. You could even use Microsoft Access or a dedicated reporting application such as Crystal Reports to create custom reports from the Easy Start Call Center Scheduler spreadsheet.
Q: Does the product do forecasting?
A: Easy Start Call Center Scheduler helps you develop interval-level forecasts, and both the User Guide and Call Center Forecasting and Scheduling: The Best of Call Center Management Review (included with your purchase) will teach you how to do forecasting. Since approaches to forecasting can vary significantly among different call centers, and the focus of Easy Start Call Center Scheduler is on scheduling agents, developing the daily volume forecast and the intraday call arrival pattern has been left up to you. We even allow you to forecast your talk time, after-work time, and adherence-to-schedule rate for every interval.
Once you have your forecast, we make it easy for you to set up agent schedules to meet your service level and response time objectives. We also make it easy for you to evaluate multiple forecasts (such as worst case, best case, most likely, etc.) and quickly see the impact each would have on your service level and occupancy rate. These impacts are shown for each 15-minute interval, as well as for the end of day results.
Q: Is this a workforce management (WFM) system?
A: Easy Start Call Center Scheduler is not a Workforce Management (WFM) system. Workforce Management systems are "software systems that, depending on available modules, forecast call load, calculate staff requirements, organize schedules and track real-time performance of individuals and groups" (see Incoming Calls Management Institute Call Center Glossary, on this web site).
Easy Start Call Center Scheduler creates Excel workbooks, customized for your call center, that you use to schedule agents to meet your service level objectives for incoming calls and response time objectives for email (or other response time work). Workforce Management systems do much more than this, and cost much more, too. Easy Start Call Center Scheduler is designed to meet the scheduling needs of small call centers that cannot afford Workforce Management systems.
