PIPKINS, Inc. today announced that SkillSense™, the second generation of their multi-skill functionality, is immediately available for Maxima Advantage®, PIPKINS’ premier workforce management system. SkillSense is a culmination of the skill-base routing and skill-set scheduling capabilities that have been designed into Maxima Advantage since its inception, and in use in the call center industry for years.
At the heart of the SkillSense forecasting system is Merlang®M, an industry recognized advanced forecasting algorithm, that directly calculates requirements in a multi-skilled environment, avoiding repetitive analytical simulations. Service objectives are set for each skilled activity for any interval of time. SkillSense then simultaneously generates a single forecasted set of requirements for all interwoven skilled activities, regardless of the queues offering the work.
“SkillSense forecasting eliminates overstaffing in a multi-skilled environment by recognizing secondary skills, and accounting for call overflow to available secondarily skilled agents. Analytical simulations based solely on primary skills will generally overstaff, since this overflow cannot be considered as a factor.” said Jim Pipkins, President and CEO of PIPKINS, Inc.
Maxima Advantage SkillSense provides one-step ease of use when forecasting and scheduling. Using PIPKINS’ Multiple Application Server technology (MAS™), a SkillSense weekly schedule can be automatically and regularly generated at any day and time. The optimized multi-skilled schedule is then waiting for the operations manager, increasing call center productivity and efficiency.
“One of the driving factors in my decision to purchase PIPKINS’ Maxima Advantage was its ability to forecast and schedule our call center’s multi-skilled environment. Considering all of our agents are assigned at least two skill sets, it was very difficult to optimally forecast the requirements needed to service our calls. Since the induction of Maxima Advantage, our call center has been able to reduce staff by nearly 10%, and virtually eliminate our overstaffing concerns.” cited Dennis J. Coval, Director of Call Center Operations for Kingdom Vacations, Plains, PA.
“SkillSense is a natural evolution of the inherent multi-skilled functionality built into the core of Maxima Advantage. PIPKINS’ technology has steadily solved the many entangling problems associated with skill set scheduling.SkillSense maximizes your call center profits, and reduces the managerial workload by automating repetitive workforce management tasks.” commented Joel Gilbert, CIO of PIPKINS, Inc.
An accompanying full and robust integrated set of tools monitor and report on multi-skilled agents. SkillSense Real-time Adherence goes beyond reporting agent states. It monitors agents by their individual skilled assignments, reporting an agent’s scheduled skilled activity, and the skilled activity that the agent is currently performing. SkillSense customizable reports detail the multiple intraday skilled assignments that comprise agents’ daily attendances, informing the agents exactly which duties they will perform during the upcoming week. Deviation reports are also available for individual skilled activities, detailing the efficiency of each distinct call center operation.
PIPKINS’ Maxima Advantage is the world’s first third-generation workforce management system. Maxima Advantage forecasts call volumes, handling times, and multi-skilled staffing requirements while correlating special business activities. Maxima Advantage then produces an integrated skill-based optimized schedule.
PIPKINS, Inc, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is committed to being the leading supplier of innovative and quality workforce management systems and services to United States call centers and to strategic international customers. Since the company’s inception in 1984, PIPKINS’ software has been designed from the ground up to excel in demanding call center environments – PIPKINS’ proprietary algorithms today forecast and schedule more than 40,000 agents in 150 call center locations world-wide.
“PIPKINS, Maxima Advantage® is the only Workforce Management system today that has the flexibility to provide the complete skill-set scheduling solution. Skill set capabilities were designed into Maxima Advantage from inception to handle all multi-skilled call center environments.”