About

Steven is the silver winner of the UK National Contact Centre Awards 2019 and was credited Planning/WFM Manager of the year. He has a proven track record of diversified experience in workforce management with more than 13 years of history in contact center planning. Steven has previously worked as Resource Planning Manager for a long-standing Peopleware customer - North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC). The council governs the non-metropolitan county of North Yorkshire in England and employs over 5000 employees. NYCC became an Peopleware customer in 2015 and schedules around 120 agents with the software on a daily basis.

Before changing jobs, Steven had been with NYCC for more than 10 years and was responsible for managing the resource planning function within the council’s multi-channel customer contact center. Today, he is in charge of resource and capacity planning at a company in the health sector. Despite not being with NYCC anymore and managing their WFM operations with Peopleware, he remains an Peopleware evangelist and continues to recommend the tool to other planners. And this is Steven’s Peopleware story.

Challenges before Peopleware

Before looking into Peopleware, Steven and his team were struggling with their previous WFM solution. The system fell short on delivering what they needed in terms of scheduling, forecasting, intraday management and reporting. Steven emphasised that even the basic things, such as getting an interval-based AHT out of the system, were not possible with their old tool.

“We had problems with our previous workforce management system. I couldn’t get the standard things out, and I had only one standard AHT model across the day. So I was not able to see the peaks and the valleys. Because of that, we couldn’t see what was happening. We couldn’t schedule correctly. The forecasting was wrong, therefore the staffing was wrong… and just something so basic. We had a much more expensive system that couldn’t deliver the basic requirements. Peopleware has delivered that for us.”

Eventually, Steven was confronted with a situation where he had to act quickly. In fact, their previous system did not only require a lot of manual adjusting and thus led to inefficiencies. More so, it negatively affected the entire planning process and cost quite a sum.

“When the forecast is wrong, your schedules are useless, and on the bottom line, this is costing the business money.”

So the main challenge for Steven and his team was to find a new but cost-effective WFM partner and get fully operational with a new solution in a very short time frame.

“We had like a 3-6 month window. And we had to bring in a setup - fully configured. Working in local government and knowing the bureaucracy that is involved within procurement, the main challenge for me was to actually get something in rather quickly. And the system we obviously decided to use was Peopleware because we could see that a cloud-based tool was going to move it for us without much risk.”

Steven first learned about Peopleware approximately 6 years ago while looking for a WFM vendor that could do the trick and deliver what they needed.

“I actually found Peopleware on Call Centre Helper, (a leading online contact center and customer service magazine), and I saw that they won an award as the most innovative WFM vendor.” (a leading online contact center and customer service magazine), and I saw that they won an award as the most innovative WFM vendor.”

Steven and his team had a long list of requirements that a new tool had to fulfill for them. They did their research and compared several WFM solutions on the market. Price, feature scope and ultimately time-to-value, was very important to them.

“The pricing model of Peopleware is what truly drew me in. And I knew that Peopleware would be able to deliver what we needed. I think if Peopleware wasn’t out there in the market with that model, I don’t think we would have been able to get a workforce management system. So Peopleware for us was a bit of a lifesaver, to be honest.”

While pricing was a major point for Steven to further look into Peopleware, at first he was sceptical. But Peopleware offered everything they needed and more. Functionality-wise, the tool offered the same powerful features and even more in comparison to other WFM systems - but it came at a much lower price.

“When I contacted Peopleware, I actually said to them, cheap beans may be cheap beans but who wants to eat them? And Peopleware came back to me and they said: ‘If you look at it without the transport and packaging cost and deliver just the beans - this is what we do with our cloud-based model’. I had to go and manage upwards since there was some scepticism within my organization that Peopleware actually wouldn’t come to deliver what we needed because it seemed too cheap. But just that explanation, that was previously given to me, brought me to pull the trigger to bring Peopleware in.”

The Peopleware journey

Steven was keen on getting the system up and running quickly. He was impressed with how the Peopleware platform and the team behind the product enabled him to get up to speed in no time.

“The onboarding that we got from Peopleware was very very helpful. Whenever we hit a problem, Peopleware solved it for us. We could learn quickly how to set up the system. With self-learning modules, we could teach ourselves how to use it. And we were offered sessions and forums, when we had questions, to get the answers we needed.”

The onboarding process went smoothly and the system was accessible immediately - thanks to its cloud-based delivery. The Peopleware team provided support and answered questions whenever and wherever needed. Additionally, a bunch of helpful self-service options, such as do-it-yourself modules, e-learning programmes as well as the extensive user knowledge base, enabled Steven and his team to get the most out of the system.

“It has never been easier to procure a workforce management system. In the past, this would have been too expensive but with cloud-based technology, being able to bring it in quickly, the onboarding, it is open to anybody. If you are a massive contact center, it will work for you, too! No matter the size of your organization, Peopleware is very much a workforce management system that is a valuable tool for any call center operation.”

Value and achievements

Being a loyal Peopleware customer for more than 5 years, NYCC has come a long way to optimize their WFM performance and maximize planning efficiency in its call center operations. As one of the main users of the tool who initially accompanied the setup and onboarding but also managed the entire resource planning process, Steven was and still is certain that he made the right choice to go with Peopleware.

“Peopleware delivered on everything that it promised to provide in the first place. It delivered everything that it said it would.”

Steven and his team stressed the ease of use of the system as well as the extensive feature scope. Powerful functionalities enabled them to close efficiency gaps and streamline their WFM from start to finish. Finally, they were able to produce accurate forecasts which would then fuel their scheduling to come up with the best possible allocation of shifts and resources. Also, the intraday functionality and reporting interface enabled Steven and his team to track performance, retrieve the data they would need for management and optimize their planning continuously.

“The system is incredibly easy to use and delivers us everything that we require throughout the resource planning cycle. It enables us to forecast accurately, quickly and easily. The scheduling interface is easy to configure and is able to handle all of the shift patterns that we require. The real-time functionality is available to track performance through the day in an easy-to-use cockpit of information. And the reporting post-event is detailed.”

Besides the functional side of it, Steven also speaks highly of the human perspective. He was delighted by the availability and personal as well as hands-on support offered by the Peopleware team.

“They are very easy to work with and are available offering solutions to any problem.”

His positive experience with Peopleware as a company and with its product has inspired Steven to recommend the solution to other planners on various occasions.

“No matter the size of your organization, Peopleware can deliver for you. We have been a relatively small organization, we only got 70 FTE but the size doesn’t matter. If you only got 10 FTE and you’re struggling a lot with excel, but you still do all of the aspects in resource planning - for example, if you’re forecasting and you’re scheduling and you want to deliver it in real-time, you then need to report on your planning KPIs - Peopleware will deliver that for you. Peopleware offers incredible value for an outstanding product and I couldn’t recommend them highly enough.”

Although Steven is not with NYCC anymore, he remains an Peopleware evangelist and a friend. Steven has volunteered to be contacted if you have any questions about his Peopleware journey or simply like to exchange experience. Check out his LinkedIn profile and get connected.

We’re especially honoured to have NYCC as a loyal Peopleware customer and partner and look forward to many years to come.