Credit: Spark
Spark is rolling out solutions by customer engagement software vendor Calabrio to help underpin its Unified Front Line initiative, a new way of working that sees employees cross-skilled across multiple customer touchpoints, making up part of an end-to-end ‘homebase’.
Headquartered in the United States, Calabrio is supplying its cloud-based workforce management (WFM) solution for the telco’s internal initiative.
The drive from Spark is designed so that resources will flow to where the customer is, in areas such as contact centres, retail stores and at-home customer visits, as demand requires, Calabrio said.
Broadly, the new Calabrio WFM offering replaces an on-premises platform and will manage the workload of frontline staff to accommodate peaks and troughs in customer demand across omnichannel touchpoints including voice, digital and in-person.
Calabrio WFM is expected to enable Spark to manage parallel demand by forecasting, scheduling and dynamically moving capacity between channels and sites.
Additionally, WFM reporting capabilities will give team leaders up-to-the-minute key performance metrics to their mobile devices, providing real-time visibility of the workforce and supporting better decision-making.
The Calabrio ONE platform, meanwhile, will cover some 1,500 Spark employees in over 80 different locations, including across the company’s contact centres, retail stores and those working from home.
Moreover, Calabrio’s self-service mobile app, MyTime, will provide advanced employee engagement options with schedule and performance information capabilities via a smartphone.
“The Unified Front Line (UFL) is a new way of working at Spark, based on simplification, mobility and flexibility,” said Daniel Cooper, Spark digital lead for consumer channels. “Using Calabrio workforce engagement management (WEM) software enables powerful multi-channel agility to meet customer demand.
“Investing in the right tools is an important part of improving both the customer journey and the employee experience. Calabrio’s unique industry experience of delivering unified workforce management functionality across an organisation’s entire frontline was a key reason we selected this solution,” he added.
In March, Spark launched a new innovation studio designed to support Kiwi businesses to identify how emerging technologies can help them adapt, transform and grow.
The innovation studio was planned to be a place where businesses can test technology solutions on all networks (4G, 5G, Cat M1, NB IoT, LoRaWAN) and co-create their own solutions alongside technology engineers and experts.
Spark’s IoT Lead Tony Agar said at the time that the studio aimed to bridge the gap between understanding and action by demystifying emerging technology and showcasing examples of how it can help solve business challenges.
