Efficient staffing for a contact centre that helps maintain a reputation for hospitality

The Company

Hilton Reservations Worldwide is the customer-service branch that handles reservations and information requests for 2,100 hotel properties, including the Hilton, Conrad, Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn, Hampton Inn & Suites, Hilton Garden Inn and Homewood Suites brands. At five contact centres in the United States, this global reservation system leverages 1,300 customer service representatives whose mission, while it takes a complex mix of skills, can be stated simply—to make sure that the pleasant experience of lodging with Hilton begins when the phone rings in the contact centre.

The Business Challenge

As with almost any contact centre, Hilton Reservations Worldwide is continually focused on trying to manage customer service interactions more efficiently
and cost-effectively. But keeping costs down can’t be done at the service representatives’ expense. “Agent morale is also very important,” said Sandra McFatridge, Manager of Forecasting and Planning for Hilton Reservations Worldwide. “The customer experience begins with us, and we want our agents to be satisfied with their work environment so that their satisfaction carries over to the customers.”

“There’s a lot of interest at HRW in shift bidding,” she added. “Currently we create the schedules and export them via spreadsheets to the contact centres, and the centres have to take agents off the phone to come to the control desk to bid in order of their seniority.” HRW wanted to bring that process online to help reduce the workload on the control desk so that they can focus on intraday management, as well as to reduce the errors that happen during the manual process.

The Solution

To help the company address the challenges of managing customer interactions more efficiently, while at the same time successfully maintaining agent morale, HRW decided to implement Aspect® Workforce Management. This solution enables Hilton Reservations Worldwide to accurately plan, manage and optimise staffing resources. One of the other factors that influenced their decision to
go with Aspect Workforce Management was its seamless integration with their existing Aspect® CallCenter® ACD and Aspect® Enterprise Contact ServerTM products.

The Results

Since implementing the workforce management capabilities, HRW has seen data accuracy go from within ten per cent of actual to within three per cent of actual due to Aspect® Workforce Management. More importantly, the Aspect solution has improved occupancy, which is a key metric for HRW.

Aspect Software

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