Car Company Case study

The Organization 

This automotive online retailer provides customers with the ability to shop for affordable used vehicles from wherever they are. They employ more than 15,000 people with approximately 2,000 call center agents. 

Motivation for Change 

As the company experienced growth, they found their previous workforce management (WFM) system was unable to meet their needs. There was an overall lack of flexibility that created limitations on what could be accomplished. The company needed a workforce solution that would scale to meet the needs of their expanding agent roster. Using spreadsheets to track meetings and coaching opportunities became unmanageable and didn’t always provide accurate information. Additionally, the company wanted a way to see the performance of their team over time and be more proactive at correcting issues in advance.

Why Alvaria 

The company turned to Alvaria Workforce because of the scheduling assistance provided as a part of the core functionality of the Alvaria workforce management solution. Agent trends combined with their specific business rules provide more accurate forecasting, ensuring they were scheduling the right agents at the right time. Since there is a strong seasonality to their business, the company also found Alvaria Workforce helped them forecast for drastic changes in call volume during peak seasons and ensure they have the right staffing resources to accommodate. Plus, the proper forecasting helps the team better understand when they can afford to have agents work on back-office activities like car registration or title processing, going above and beyond what they were able to accomplish with spreadsheets in the past. 

The company leveraged Alvaria Performance to have a bird’s eye view of all the agents reporting to managers or supervisors. Alvaria Performance made it easy to see a holistic picture of not only agent adherence to lunch or other periodic breaks but overall adherence. This view helps the company’s leaders be more proactive than ever before; allowing them to schedule coaching or meetings on a particular area where their agents can improve in advance verses waiting until the day after or the day of, which can risk changing the schedule. 

Alvaria Performance also gives managers or supervisors the ability to drill into the performance metrics they want to learn more about. With customizable widgets in Alvaria Performance, a supervisor can look deeper into schedule information without having to navigate to different applications. All the performance information they need is right there at their fingertips, helping supervisors or managers save time and be more proactive in addressing areas for coaching opportunities.

The Results 

The perspective schedule updates in Alvaria Workforce requires fewer manual adjustments, allowing the company to allocate time and resources to other areas and high value projects. Furthermore, day-to-day schedule updates are easier, cleaner and more efficient than the previous system the company was using. A key differentiator for the company includes utilizing real-time adherence monitoring allowing the company to see real-time views that automatically uncover non-compliance. 

Because of the improved flexibility achieved with Alvaria Workforce, the company has taken advantage of the autonomy and control they have by encouraging pre-planned time off, which has made advance planning easier. 

The flexibility had also allowed the company to introduce voluntary time off (VTO) by interval level, defined by business policy or rules the company sets up, and advanced VTO, allowing agents to see a week out if there is availability, helping improve the overall work / life balance while preventing understaffing. 

The company has gained visibility into agent performance like never before. With Alvaria Performance, the company’s leadership can go from a more reactive coaching methodology to a proactive methodology by seeing important KPIs across their team and proactively getting ahead of areas where additional coaching can improve the team’s outcomes. 

The Future 

The company is planning to expand Alvaria Workforce to departments outside of the call center. Since they have seen the power of Alvaria Workforce and its ability to forecast, schedule and track front office work, the company is looking forward to expanding their Alvaria usage to the back-office. This way, other departments can hold employees accountable from a scheduling perspective and offer the same time off capabilities and attendance tools the call center has experienced success with. The company has raised the bar when it comes to handling rapid growth, a high seasonality business, and high performance with Alvaria Workforce and Alvaria Performance. 

The company looks forward to how they can continue that momentum of success throughout the broader organization and into the future.