Why Every Contact Center Should Have a Developer On Staff with Ericc Whetstone
00:00:11 Dave Hoekstra
Welcome to working smarter, presented by Calabrio, where we discuss contact center industry trends and best practices, as well as sharing success stories and pain points with some of the most innovative professionals in the.
00:00:20 Dave Hoekstra
Entry. We're very glad you're joining us to learn and grow together in order to provide world class customer service to each and every one of our clients. My name is Dave Hoekstra, product evangelist for Collaboratio and my guest today is Eric Whetstone. Eric is a contact center and workforce planning expert, which means he's been doing this for a while. Eric, first of all, thanks for joining us.
00:00:40 Dave Hoekstra
And tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here.
00:00:44 Ericc Whetstone
Thanks for having me, Dave.
00:00:46 Ericc Whetstone
I've been in workforce management in the contact center field for the last 17 1/2 years.
00:00:52 Ericc Whetstone
Prior to that, I was an analyst for a couple of different companies and it just sort of fell right into my sweet spot of what I really enjoyed doing, which is finding the puzzle that's contact centers and then coming up with a way to make them work better, put the best staffing, the best, see staff, whatever it might be.
00:01:11 Ericc Whetstone
Come up with a perfect plan to make it work.
00:01:14 Dave Hoekstra
And see, you know what I love about this particular industry or job, whatever you want to call it is that you know, a lot of us have a similar story of how we landed in workforce planning, but not all of us love it for the same reasons, right? You clearly have a love for the the planning part of it and the.
00:01:34 Dave Hoekstra
You know, maybe the mathematics of of how this works and the reason I kind of fell in love with it was because how often I get to work with people. I was terrible at math in school. I I don't like math. I never even liked it at all. But I really liked working.
00:01:46 Dave Hoekstra
With the people. And so it's really interesting to hear the different ways that that people come about this. Did you always have a love for math and you know that that planning aspect of workforce management?
00:01:59 Ericc Whetstone
Not so much the math. The math is pretty easy when you get down to it, because it's just basic algebra, but it's the fact that you're plugging in the staff you need or where it needs to be at the right time, right place, right cost. And that's just a big puzzle. And I like puzzles.
00:02:18 Ericc Whetstone
Umm.
00:02:20 Ericc Whetstone
It allows me to fulfill that desire, but also work with a wide variety of people. You know, your training partners, operations teams, the people in recruiting your IT folks, the executive leadership, the agents themselves. Everyone has a perspective to bring.
00:02:39 Ericc Whetstone
That can make your job more effective for the entire business, whether it's the customer or anyone else.
00:02:46 Dave Hoekstra
Well, if you saw me in 7th grade algebra, you'd know why I leaned towards the people aspect of this, of of this process. So I think it's really great, right? We we it it, it actually takes all kinds and that's why I think workforce management teams are usually a really important aspect. We usually don't try to go with this alone. We try to work with other people.
00:03:05 Dave Hoekstra
And I think that's that's kind of what we wanted to talk about today.
00:03:08 Dave Hoekstra
OK, right. So we're, we're, we're the idea of what we want to talk about in this is that I know kind of historically you and your teams have really leaned into the extensibility of workforce management. And what I mean by that is that you know API's have become a a really large part.
00:03:29 Dave Hoekstra
Of the success of a lot of these different.
00:03:32 Dave Hoekstra
Animations and one of the things that I think you know wanted to talk about to you guys is what what you've been able to do with this extensibility and this piece. So I know I wanna talk about the use cases, but can you do us maybe a favor and kind of at a, you know, kindergarten first grade level explain what an API is and why some would want to use them?
00:03:53 Ericc Whetstone
Sure. So an API.
00:03:54 Ericc Whetstone
Listen chart for an application programming interface and it's basically the way one piece of software could talk to another. So you would use that to say I want to get the number of calls that I had last week or you could say I want to code my agent scheduled that he was at recess.
00:04:14 Ericc Whetstone
For 15 minutes or whatever it might be and it just allows you.
00:04:18 Ericc Whetstone
To save time.
00:04:20 Ericc Whetstone
And get that information and update things without having to manually do it.
00:04:25 Dave Hoekstra
So instead of running a report out of your ccass and then taking that data and then inputting it somewhere else and then doing something with that data, you can just have WFM and ccast, for example talk to each other and get the information they need from one side to the other without having to do a lot of manual reporting.
00:04:44 Dave Hoekstra
Effort.
00:04:45 Ericc Whetstone
Right. That's exactly it. In fact, I know where some people have used a CRM like Zendesk or Salesforce to link directly to collateral. For example, the WFM portion.
00:04:56 Ericc Whetstone
And get your interval level and daily and weekly trends so you don't have to exactly run that manual report. Paste it in there and then do your forecasting. It saves so much time by doing something like that and it gives you more accurate information.
00:05:12 Dave Hoekstra
Now, do you do this work yourself or do you have a developer that that?
00:05:16 Dave Hoekstra
The work.
00:05:16 Dave Hoekstra
With you.
00:05:17 Ericc Whetstone
I use a developer because while I am awesome in all that, I do not have the programming skills necessary to run that. I'm working on it but have any experience developer in my companies or people that I've hired as a consultant allows me to make sure that it's going to get.
00:05:35 Ericc Whetstone
Done right.
00:05:36 Dave Hoekstra
Yeah, I'm. I'm kind of in the same boat. I can spell AP.
00:05:39 Dave Hoekstra
Guy, but that's about the extent of what I'm able to actually accomplish with them. So I would understand why a developer would be a really important. Would you go so far as to say that it, you know for let's let's obviously smaller contact centers, it's not really a reality, but once the contact center gets to a certain size and complexity.
00:06:00 Dave Hoekstra
Would it be something that you recommend like looking into either having an on staff developer or at least an agreement to to to have some time from a developer?
00:06:09 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah, definitely. In fact, for smaller contact centers.
00:06:14 Ericc Whetstone
Developer is a good person to have combined with, like your reporting analysts or reporting team because they oftentimes have to set up all of those connections. A developer could be a part of your agent tools program, but at some point, whether it's IT agent tools reporting, if you want to create.
00:06:34 Ericc Whetstone
The most.
00:06:36 Ericc Whetstone
Effective tools possible a dedicated developer ends up generally being necessary because they're going to get pulled in too many pieces if they're a part of another team.
00:06:48 Dave Hoekstra
Right. And now is that would the would you say that's a skill set that maybe a WFM leader should maybe hire for as part of their team?
00:06:57 Ericc Whetstone
ABC.
00:06:57 Ericc Whetstone
Absolutely. If you are looking to extend your WFM tools or your contact center tools further and utilize more of what they're able to do, having that developer as part of your team or as a part of a specific team within the overall contact center is going to make things a lot simpler.
00:07:16 Dave Hoekstra
Now, why would let's let's take somebody who maybe doesn't know this very well and I'm pointing to myself as a perfect example. Why would why would somebody want to be able to build using API's? What? What are some of the things that maybe you have done or that you've seen done that can you know?
00:07:36 Dave Hoekstra
Give us. Give us a primer on what?
00:07:39 Dave Hoekstra
Can be done with an API that makes people's lives easier.
00:07:43 Ericc Whetstone
OK, so let's start with some thing that's near and dear to every person's heart payroll.
00:07:49 Dave Hoekstra
Yes.
00:07:49 Ericc Whetstone
So if you like getting paid, you want accurate pay, you know you might like getting paid extra, but sometimes that needs to be pulled back or you don't want to get paid for not working, you know, or you want to get the pay for everything you did. You just want to get paid. So currently a lot of WPM tools do not connect.
00:08:09 Ericc Whetstone
To the payroll, they're separate systems and it's not because they can't do it. It's because they haven't been designed to do it yet.
00:08:17 Ericc Whetstone
And you know, calabrio, as we know has a payroll export module, but that still requires a specific setup. So if you are not using that, you can then take use the API for CALABRIO and for your payroll system, let's say Kronos dimensions for example or something similar.
00:08:38 Ericc Whetstone
ADP, where it can take that, take the paid information and send it over to the payroll system.
00:08:46 Ericc Whetstone
And if you were absent, you can send that over there so you don't get paid for the absence date, and then it can do the.
00:08:52 Ericc Whetstone
Normal calculation for.
00:08:53 Ericc Whetstone
Overtime. And then if you have incentive pay that also can allow you to calculate that by just sending it from one to the other, then on the backside we like to have our WFM systems be our sole true place where.
00:09:07 Ericc Whetstone
Agents will go and request time off or schedule changes so you can then spend your time offer roles back to your WFM system and collaborators can be in our personal account.
00:09:18 Ericc Whetstone
And that allows you to have the agents know that they're getting the right amount of time off that they have accrued and they can trust that data is going to be accurate. And between those two pieces, you improve agent satisfaction as well as supervisor satisfaction because now they don't have to go in and do corrections. It's automated. They know it's going to be.
00:09:38 Ericc Whetstone
Right, they might.
00:09:39 Ericc Whetstone
Audit it periodically, but if a supervisor has to enter every punch manually or correct a whole bunch of punches, they'll save an hour a week easily.
00:09:48 Dave Hoekstra
That and and that happens a lot in contact centers, doesn't it? A lot of lot of manual entry happening between multiple systems correct? I think I remember myself as a supervisor. You know you'd get an e-mail of an agent asking for time off and you'd approve it and then you'd they'd enter it into the system.
00:10:08 Dave Hoekstra
Into WFM, and then WFM approves it and then they have to turn around and go and enter it again into the payroll system. You're saying this API interface eliminates that double entry or that that extra step?
00:10:20 Ericc Whetstone
It minimizes. It will not always eliminate it completely, but.
00:10:25 Ericc Whetstone
You can get a 9095% reduction in the amount of manual work easily we got in some of my previous companies. We had virtually no manual work. There were still fixes here and there like back corrections where someone had to change the paid time off to something else. That's not handled by an API. That's payroll because it's a new.
00:10:29 Dave Hoekstra
OK.
00:10:45 Ericc Whetstone
The former pay period.
00:10:46 Ericc Whetstone
But for current pay periods, you can take care of it easily.
00:10:49 Dave Hoekstra
OK, so so payroll automation is A is a great use of an API to. So having your workforce management talk to your payroll system and kind of creating that now you guys did this yourself, correct?
00:11:03 Ericc Whetstone
I've done it in pretty much every company I've been a part of. We've had this sort of connection. It just makes our lives so much simpler and there's no complaints from our colleagues. The employee engagement surveys will tell you that accurate payroll is going to be a number one problem.
00:11:22 Ericc Whetstone
If it is occurring and we don't have that occurring because of the.
00:11:27 Dave Hoekstra
So when is, is this skill hard to learn for a novice? Is, is, is application programming interface programming for lack of a better word? Is it harder? Is it hard to learn?
00:11:42 Ericc Whetstone
It's not hard to learn, but it does take time and that time to become an expert at it is where you're going to find the challenge because you have to know the logic that's going to be done. Let me give you an example of a script that.
00:11:57 Ericc Whetstone
We've got.
00:11:58 Ericc Whetstone
Going from one of the companies I've worked with in that.
00:12:01 Ericc Whetstone
Partnered with in which we connected our absenteeism, my VR to the Wacom system, so somebody that called the phone line that would auto code the schedules. It would do something along the lines of, OK, so the agent enters their employee ID, it goes into.
00:12:21 Ericc Whetstone
The system that it's hosted it to find that employee, it finds their e-mail, it finds their supervisor, then it also looks in collab Ufm to say.
00:12:32 Ericc Whetstone
What is the?
00:12:35 Ericc Whetstone
Agents ID OK. There it is. Who is? The agent confirmed. What is their schedule then? It says. What are you calling out?
00:12:44 Ericc Whetstone
If so, enter this number. If you're going to call out for a partial date, enter the time that you want to start that and the time you want to end it.
00:12:54 Ericc Whetstone
And then it looks at the schedule and does an error check to say. Is this the same time as scheduled? If not, kick it back and check it again. Then if they fix it and it goes in, it'll then say OK do you want to leave a voicemail?
00:13:10 Ericc Whetstone
Again, a lot of error checking throughout this to ensure that the time and everything is right from the agent standpoint, it's not going to seem like all that much effort, but knowing how to code all these error checks and then commenting it so you know what everything is going to say so someone else comes in later to look at your code.
00:13:29 Ericc Whetstone
They will know what it means because coding isn't necessarily going to be English readable. It does require learning an actual language. That's why they called programming languages.
00:13:40 Dave Hoekstra
Right. So let me let me recap.
00:13:44 Dave Hoekstra
You guys took what used to be a very manual process of an agent leaving a voicemail and a human being checking that voicemail and then going into WFM and adding in this sick absence to the point where the agent basically presses, they enter their employee number, they press 1 because they're calling out sick and.
00:14:03 Dave Hoekstra
And the rest is just handled all by the API.
00:14:06 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah. And if there's an error in any of that, he will tell the agent. Hey, we can't find you. Leave a voicemail. Anyways. That's always the backup. But as long as they enter their employee ID correctly and the times that they're not going to be.
00:14:21 Ericc Whetstone
It's very, very seamless.
00:14:23 Dave Hoekstra
And and what kind of time has this saved the team?
00:14:27 Ericc Whetstone
Well, at one of my first jobs, it saved us around.
00:14:32 Ericc Whetstone
4 hours per day for our real time analyst for updating the schedules manually and it reduced quality errors, meaning schedule corrections that have to come back because they entered it wrong or misunderstood the.
00:14:48 Ericc Whetstone
The agent calling in because he remember a lot of our teams are across the world in English may not be their native language or some other language, and so they might misunderstand something. The auto the automation of all this gave us an 80% improvement in.
00:14:56 Dave Hoekstra
Right.
00:15:03 Ericc Whetstone
Quality on that.
00:15:05 Dave Hoekstra
Wow. OK. So you mentioned payroll exports and imports, right, the communication back and forth, you absenteeism, self reporting, that's another one there. Any other kind of key use cases that you've you've been able to solve?
00:15:19 Ericc Whetstone
There's a couple of different ones that we've looked at. We have when we do a forecast and it needs to be overwritten from what our WM system has, we've set it up so we can update that forecast on a daily level or interval level with volume our shrink it could be because we act, we analyze our shrink at an interval level.
00:15:41 Ericc Whetstone
And a lot of WFM systems don't always have great analysis tools for that. So you'll export that into repo.
00:15:49 Ericc Whetstone
Which we pull out with an API to get the interval level data and then we analyze it using weighted or straight averages or something along those lines to say what's likely going to happen for our unplanned shrink and then we will paste that back in there and collaborate terms. That's the shrink or the efficiency.
00:16:07 Dave Hoekstra
OK, wow.
00:16:08 Ericc Whetstone
And that way, when we're looking at our scheduled requirements versus.
00:16:12 Ericc Whetstone
Our scheduled staff.
00:16:13 Ericc Whetstone
We have an accurate view about what was likely to happen.
00:16:17 Dave Hoekstra
And this just all happens automatically in the back end.
00:16:20 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah, the longest time is analyzing what you pulled into Excel or some other tool to say does this look right and then smoothing it? But because you're not spending all the time pulling the data.
00:16:32 Ericc Whetstone
Putting into a spreadsheet, putting the formulas together and then pasting it back in manually.
00:16:38 Ericc Whetstone
There's a significant time savings. There's easily two or three hours a week.
00:16:41 Ericc Whetstone
Save just doing that.
00:16:42 Dave Hoekstra
OK. Well, you mentioned there was another one. Is there another use case?
00:16:47 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah. So I mentioned the forecast upload, we do the shrink analysis. We are also doing that to profile agents like one thing that clario can do is it has an API that when you hire somebody.
00:17:04 Ericc Whetstone
New.
00:17:06 Ericc Whetstone
Your service now or whatever ticketing system you're using to create to say I need.
00:17:11 Ericc Whetstone
A new agent.
00:17:12 Ericc Whetstone
Create it. It can auto profile it just using the API. You don't have to wait for it. Plus we have it set up in Excel so we want to.
Uh-huh.
00:17:19 Ericc Whetstone
Do a schedule.
00:17:19 Ericc Whetstone
Model with some dummy agents we can just upload a bunch of agents with the naming convention and all the optional.
00:17:26 Ericc Whetstone
Columns that we want and then go back in later and delete them when we don't need them anymore.
00:17:32 Dave Hoekstra
OK, so you're provisioning agents using the API to keep you from having to again double enter across multiple systems.
00:17:39 Ericc Whetstone
Right. And especially with modeling where you need to, you might need to have hundreds of agents created manually. Doing that takes a long time.
00:17:47 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah, an API upload takes less than 5 minutes.
00:17:52 Dave Hoekstra
Wow. Yeah. So you just, you just kind of mapped out all of these super time saving kind of things and that you know, if you do the math on you know a potential salary or time saved it kind of it seems like these developers pay for themselves and in in, in its own way.
00:18:09 Ericc Whetstone
All they absolutely do, especially when you start looking at the efficiencies like a lot of companies will.
00:18:14 Ericc Whetstone
Say, well, it's my.
00:18:14 Ericc Whetstone
Return on investment. How many heads can?
00:18:16 Ericc Whetstone
I.
00:18:17 Ericc Whetstone
Cut because nobody likes paying for extra staff that is going to be sitting there doing something that isn't productive. We know some things have to be done regardless, but if you can use the API to make your case.
00:18:29 Ericc Whetstone
For a developer and a developer, costs. What do you use U.S. dollars here developer 100K. That's going to be probably two to three agents that you would need to reduce in shrinkage or improve your revenue by an equivalent.
No.
00:18:46 Ericc Whetstone
If you can say I don't need to have these extra agents or these extra WFM analysts, I don't need to hire as we grow or as we shrink, we can be can make them more efficient and add another line of business. The ROI is very quick to add.
00:19:01 Dave Hoekstra
Well, you so you mentioned to something that's kind of near and dear to probably a lot of our listeners. Hearts is kind of the the planning aspect of of have your API's helped you with say capacity planning or being able to understand the kind of longer term capacity in shrink and making sure that.
00:19:22 Dave Hoekstra
We have the right number of.
00:19:23 Dave Hoekstra
Cool.
00:19:24 Ericc Whetstone
Oh, absolutely. The first part of it is in the export of strength data. So or volume and all that because calabrio can align to pull all of that data. Any WFM system can, but I'm talking about Calabria, since you know your.
00:19:39 Ericc Whetstone
Calabrio.
00:19:39 Dave Hoekstra
Sure.
00:19:40 Ericc Whetstone
Leader, you can pull the forecast data.
00:19:44 Ericc Whetstone
That you have run through all of your workloads and your skills put it into Excel and your capacity plan to roll it up to a monthly total.
00:19:52 Ericc Whetstone
And then when you look at your capacity plan and say do I need to have people hired like if you've already got your head in time forecast and everything you need for trends. So it's very easy to say I need to add them in this place. You could then re upload into your budgets or your forecast.
00:20:11 Ericc Whetstone
Changes.
00:20:12 Ericc Whetstone
For that.
00:20:14 Ericc Whetstone
And see what it does when you actually get to the scheduled data so you can look at it and collaborate with the scheduled data. Or you can pull it into a render in Excel to say, well, I want to model out what happens if my strength changes. You don't want to update calabrio's data right away. For that, you can model it out and then upload your changes to say.
00:20:33 Ericc Whetstone
What if I do this? What if I want to drive my ASA higher or my service level lower because I need to save a little bit of money or I'm going into peak and I don't want to hire 20 people for three weeks.
00:20:35 Dave Hoekstra
OK.
00:20:45 Dave Hoekstra
Right. OK. So even even just doing normal quote UN quote normal capacity planning is a really good idea. But when you can use the API's to kind of enhance and boost that, it probably reduces the amount of time it takes and probably increases the accuracy I would say.
Yeah.
00:21:01 Ericc Whetstone
Oh yeah, because collaborator uses a fairly accurate requirement calculation. When you've got everything plugged into there and then you can pull that out and you say, well, I know I'm going to need this and this is what my result is going to be in my occupancy.
00:21:15 Ericc Whetstone
So why not utilize the efficiencies that you've got to as a leader, go to your leadership and say, here's what's going to happen. But if you want this result, here's what you need to do.
00:21:28 Dave Hoekstra
That's that sounds. That sounds like what we're all shooting for, right? It's that that sounds like the the dream scenario is to, you know, have have senior leadership say, what should we do here and then actually execute on that plan so that that sounds like a little bit of a pipe dream I'm telling you. But it sounds like you've mastered it.
00:21:48 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah, it's we have to do it regularly and financial forecasting, so why not?
00:21:53 Ericc Whetstone
Translate that to our WFM tool tool to say hey, you're getting a great return on the investment you made in this tool.
00:22:01 Ericc Whetstone
Now we've added some extra capabilities because we also have a developer available and if we didn't, we'd go to collaborate or somebody to say, hey, we need to professional services to help build this for us because we can't justify this year hiring a developer. But you guys have them and your experts in your.
00:22:19 Ericc Whetstone
Tool. So let's take advantage of that expertise.
00:22:22 Dave Hoekstra
Yeah, we, you know, in a lot of cases that does happen, especially around the payroll exports, right? It does happen quite frequently. But you know, expanding beyond kind of the standard package of developer, yeah, that's that's absolutely something that can happen across this. Now, let me ask you this. There's going to be somebody listening to this that says this all sounds well and good.
00:22:43 Dave Hoekstra
Eric. But I don't have any idea where to start in this. If you if somebody would say were to ask you where to start in trying to get this API development process potentially going, what would you say where? Where can somebody start at the ground?
00:22:58 Dave Hoekstra
Floor of this.
00:22:59 Ericc Whetstone
So there's a lot of websites that you can go to see what people have done. Reddit or GitHub or the like. Just Google.
00:23:10 Ericc Whetstone
How has APIs made?
00:23:14 Ericc Whetstone
A particular software that you're talking about better go to the user forums and ask questions. Hey, I want to get involved in this. Go to the success Center for collaborate. There are a lot of people in there that are experts that are already using these.
00:23:28 Ericc Whetstone
Take advantage of saying, hey, I don't know anything about this, but I want to learn what do I need.
00:23:32 Ericc Whetstone
You ask your success managers for the API link so you can go in and look at those and say, well, what I don't understand this. Let me look up on data camp or.
00:23:47 Ericc Whetstone
LinkedIn learning what each of these things that it's talking about do you need Python or VBA or something like that to use a?
00:23:53 Ericc Whetstone
Lot of.
00:23:54 Ericc Whetstone
These so learn Python. Python is a programming language that is free for the pretty much everything, and it's very easy to stick in there. You can get 100 days learning to become.
00:24:09 Ericc Whetstone
Entry level developer.
00:24:11 Ericc Whetstone
So.
00:24:12 Ericc Whetstone
Or you can just learn enough that when you talk to developer, you can tell whether or not.
00:24:17 Ericc Whetstone
They're in the right direction.
Wow.
00:24:20 Ericc Whetstone
Because being able to read code without having to program puts you at a higher level and allows you to know whether or not something's moving, right? Right.
00:24:28 Dave Hoekstra
Yeah. And I mean it's it's accessible. I mean the the tools to do this are generally no cost, right? They're like you can generally get the information that you need and start the at the ability for two programs to talk to each other without.
00:24:44 Dave Hoekstra
Really, any investment except for time, correct?
00:24:47 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah. And what we did, so we did the payroll integration first and the with our actual developers. But from a WFM team, what we have been doing is we've said, OK, what are specific use cases profiling agents in calabrio, how do we do that?
00:25:03 Ericc Whetstone
Well, what we're looking at the APIs and there's a specific identifier for each type of data point in Co.
00:25:11 Ericc Whetstone
Mario.
00:25:12 Ericc Whetstone
So we would go in, we said, OK, how do we identify that? So we found an API poll that allows us to pull that into an Excel sheet and say here's what everything is. This is if you're going for this.
00:25:22 Ericc Whetstone
Team.
00:25:23 Ericc Whetstone
Or this string code or this absence code. This is what that not that it's a string of digits that says this is what that is.
00:25:32 Ericc Whetstone
OK, next.
00:25:33 Ericc Whetstone
Let's figure out how to upload a forecast. We're going to overwrite the entire forecast, figure out what has been in there. Can we?
00:25:39 Ericc Whetstone
Do.
00:25:39 Ericc Whetstone
That, and we figured out how to do it. Now we use some help, some additional AI tools to help us get that coding. We use GitHub. We use a couple of other websites just to get ideas on how to put it.
00:25:52 Ericc Whetstone
Together and then.
00:25:54 Ericc Whetstone
We just sat down and started working on it and now we've got several tools to make our lives.
00:25:59 Ericc Whetstone
Here.
00:26:00 Dave Hoekstra
Man, that's that's fantastic. And it it fills me with a lot of hope and joy to know that that potentially we could we could have more people take advantage of this. And so yeah, I mean, what if what an amazing overview like your knowledge is fantastic and I really, really appreciate you spending some time with us to try and share some of that with the world.
00:26:20 Dave Hoekstra
Out there. Curious. Do you have any questions for me like or or anything that you wanted to bring up during this during this?
00:26:29 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah. You know, I actually do.
00:26:30 Ericc Whetstone
Oh, OK, so my I have two questions in particular, but the the biggest question I've got is what do you wish prospective customers would ask you when?
00:26:42 Ericc Whetstone
Evaluating calabrio as a solution, not just WFM, but the entire.
00:26:47 Ericc Whetstone
Suite.
00:26:49 Dave Hoekstra
Well, what a good question.
00:26:52 Dave Hoekstra
You know, I I personally don't have a problem telling people what I want them to know, but one of the things that comes up pretty frequently is that when we do, when we have conversations with prospective customers or even current customers that are looking at new features is.
00:27:12 Dave Hoekstra
You can always tell that they're a little hesitant to really ask the tough questions, right. And what I mean by tough questions are really digging deep into those, those various things that, you know, say, for example, you're looking at workforce management and they want to know if if it forecasts.
00:27:31 Dave Hoekstra
For a particular channel, right and and you say yes, it absolutely does well nine times out of 10. That's the last question you get. If you say, yes they they say OK, very, very rarely do they continue to dig beyond that. So I wish that customers.
00:27:46 Dave Hoekstra
Would be. Don't stop asking about something until you're comfortable with it, right? We we're we're proud of our capabilities. We're proud of what we're, what we're capable of doing. But I can very, I can usually tell when a customer is kind of accepting what we say at face value versus actually truly understanding and feeling really comfortable because.
00:28:06 Dave Hoekstra
That conversation, once that phone call or once that video conference is over, that customer is going to make judgments based on how they felt at that time and if they're not comfortable, they're not necessarily comfortable with us. And the solution that we might deliver.
00:28:20 Dave Hoekstra
So.
00:28:21 Dave Hoekstra
Dig a little bit deeper and and know that you know, I know sales organizations are always going to be sales organizations.
00:28:28 Dave Hoekstra
But.
00:28:29 Dave Hoekstra
We've been through this dance before. We know what it takes. And so when we recommend something, we're not just trying to, you know, sell you something extra. We we really are in this for your success and not just not just the to to get a deal or to get a a piece of information from you. So that's a great question and I.
00:28:49 Dave Hoekstra
Hopefully that was kind of the answer you're looking for, but.
00:28:51 Dave Hoekstra
That's yeah, keep digging.
00:28:53 Dave Hoekstra
Really understand what you're trying to.
00:28:55 Dave Hoekstra
You.
00:28:56 Ericc Whetstone
So one thing I would add to that is that if you're exploring a new solution or expanding an existing solution.
00:29:04 Ericc Whetstone
One thing that tends to come up that nobody thinks about upfront is reporting.
00:29:09 Ericc Whetstone
They say do you have reporting? The answer is yes. And then that's generally it.
Right.
00:29:14 Ericc Whetstone
I would recommend that collaborator ask customers where the reports that you cannot live without.
00:29:19 Ericc Whetstone
So you can either make sure they're there or and if not, use the power of the databases that are there and insights to say we can build it for you and make it look exactly the way you need it to. Make sure that you don't lose any value with what you currently have, and then the customer should say here is my specific problem.
00:29:41 Ericc Whetstone
And here's how I have solved for it in the past. How is calabrio going to make my?
00:29:47 Ericc Whetstone
Solution better. Can that problem go away or at least be minimized?
00:29:53 Dave Hoekstra
Yeah, I think it's great. It's a great point because reporting reporting solutions are not built the same across the board, right, the reporting if you ask me if we do reporting and I say yes, this could be like your very basic.
00:30:07 Dave Hoekstra
HTML reports that that are static and you can't change. You can't add anything or it could be on the other side. A very robust back end database with a business intelligence tool built on top of it, or somewhere in between. And I really like that the the specific conversation of saying what can't you live without? Let's let's dig into that a little bit. And I think that's.
00:30:28 Dave Hoekstra
That's a perfect example of what I was talking about. People will ask do you do reporting? Yes, we do. And then it's off to the next thing. But if we spend a little bit more time digging, we're gonna make you feel comfortable with the reporting solution.
00:30:41 Dave Hoekstra
That's great. OK, that was 1 you said you.
00:30:42 Dave Hoekstra
Had two.
00:30:44 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah. The second one is with the with the systems that are out there that Claro has, what's the one that you are most excited to see rolled out with the enhancements for this year?
00:30:59 Dave Hoekstra
Are we talking about workforce management or the entire calabrio suite?
Any of that.
00:31:05 Dave Hoekstra
Eric, you and I have known each other for for a while and you know at my heart I'm I'm one of the biggest workforce management nerds on on the planet, right? I love workforce management.
00:31:17 Dave Hoekstra
But I have to tell you what Calabrio is doing with voice analytics, transcription and AI.
00:31:26 Dave Hoekstra
It it's one of those things that it makes me very, very jealous that people today get a chance to take advantage of this in their contact centers and in their organization because if I'd had tools like this in 2003, 2004, my career would probably be on a very different path and.
00:31:44 Dave Hoekstra
So what we're.
00:31:45 Dave Hoekstra
What we're able to do now with.
00:31:48 Dave Hoekstra
Automatic QM right? Really being able to QA every call that a customer gets it is. I mean it's it's borderline magic at this point and it and it makes me really, really happy. What we're able to do with that root cause analysis. You know, the question I like to ask WFM people all the time is.
00:32:08 Dave Hoekstra
If you're under over forecast and your boss says, why were we under forecast? How do you answer that question? Let me ask you, how would you answer that question if if you came in 15% under forecast and you're and and management says, why is that? How do you research?
00:32:24 Ericc Whetstone
Well, it gets very complex and it takes.
00:32:26 Ericc Whetstone
A lot of time.
00:32:27 Ericc Whetstone
Yes. So you have to go into your back end if you happen to have sentiment analysis built in, you can look at that, but that doesn't always tell you what's actually driving the calls.
00:32:38 Ericc Whetstone
If you could have like for me being able.
00:32:41 Ericc Whetstone
To have a.
00:32:42 Ericc Whetstone
Report already there saying here's what happened yesterday just from the customer experience and then I can marry that to.
00:32:50 Ericc Whetstone
You know, let's say I'm a retail organization and there was a mail drop that didn't happen.
00:32:58 Ericc Whetstone
Or a mail drop that happened, but it went to the wrong customers or something like that. Tying those two together quickly doesn't happen very easily.
00:33:02 Dave Hoekstra
Yeah.
00:33:07 Dave Hoekstra
Right. And and and so that's that's great, right. If I were to answer that question from my past, it would be I, I would probably send an e-mail out or a chat to a bunch of agents and say what the heck happened yesterday. Any ideas and you know, I might get an answer. I.
00:33:23 Dave Hoekstra
Might not, but what?
00:33:25 Dave Hoekstra
We're able to do now with being able to categorize.
00:33:28 Dave Hoekstra
Calls automatically and take a look at the trends and the handle time trends that work, but.
00:33:32 Dave Hoekstra
I mean those man it is. It is so exciting. It is so cool. It's just like I can't believe I'm genuinely excited about something that's not WFM, but here we are. Right. So that's a great question.
Yeah, but think about it.
00:33:45 Ericc Whetstone
This way you know when you were an agent. You know, when I was an agent, I was.
00:33:49 Ericc Whetstone
I.
00:33:49 Ericc Whetstone
Did sales having something that would real time tell me, hey, you're not you're you're losing the customer. Move on to the next.
00:33:58 Dave Hoekstra
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:59 Ericc Whetstone
You know, because you're trying to build a relationship, but maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
00:34:03 Ericc Whetstone
Then you know being able to tell me that I can move on and not worry about it and focus on the next one that would have been so much easier than having to get into a coaching session two days later, going well, why didn't.
00:34:03 Dave Hoekstra
Right.
00:34:13 Dave Hoekstra
I make that sale. Yeah. Remember this call that you took 6 1/2 days ago? No, I don't remember that call. Those are. Those are. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:20 Ericc Whetstone
Yeah, I didn't make a sale.
00:34:22 Dave Hoekstra
That I I immediately forgot that. So yeah, what a great question. And man, I'm I'm so stoked about the future and what we're trying to do here, so.
00:34:30 Dave Hoekstra
So yes, thank you for ask asking that. And so now I I I'm genuinely enjoy this conversation. We're having such a good time and I'm I'm loving all this information. I usually like to give our guests who have been in contact Centers for a long time. The call center life for quiz. Are you game for me to fire a few rapid fire.
00:34:51 Dave Hoekstra
Questions at you kind of get a sense of who Eric is. Sure, go ahead. OK. All right. Call center life for question number one. What is your favorite KPI?
00:35:01 Ericc Whetstone
Handle time.
00:35:03 Dave Hoekstra
Handle time. OK, good.
00:35:04 Ericc Whetstone
Because it doesn't. It's not about hitting the lowest handle time, it's about hitting the right handle time to enhance the.
00:35:11 Ericc Whetstone
Customer end result.
00:35:13 Dave Hoekstra
Love it. Alright, what was the moment in your career that you said? I think I kind.
00:35:18 Dave Hoekstra
Of like this.
00:35:19 Ericc Whetstone
That would have been.
00:35:22 Ericc Whetstone
When I was building some schedules and analyzing shrink and analyzing trends, so I was like a year and a half into my tenure as a in WFM and I was able to show that this cable company that was my.
00:35:41 Ericc Whetstone
Account needed to do a certain approach to drive handle time or not drive. Handle time to drive extra hours which was using tiered schedules.
00:35:51 Ericc Whetstone
And people said I never thought about that and we had a great result out of it. It was just the fact that all these pieces of the puzzle, like you mentioned earlier came together, and I was able to use that to explain to my team. Hey, here's what.
00:35:54 Dave Hoekstra
Yeah.
00:36:06 Ericc Whetstone
We can do to solve this problem.
00:36:08 Dave Hoekstra
What a what a great moment. I I can. I can feel like like I could feel it through me like like that would be such a great thing to have people kind of externally recognize. Wow. That's great. OK, fantastic. Who is the person who's had the most impact on your career?
00:36:24 Ericc Whetstone
That would be a guy by the name.
00:36:27 Ericc Whetstone
Of Matthew Robinson, he was my senior manager when I was a manager and he helped me learn to be a good leader like I or sorry, a great analyst, but I wasn't a great leader and he helped show me how to be empathetic, how to be deliberate in my decision making, how to take that and.
00:36:47 Ericc Whetstone
Use that with my team to help them grow and develop, and as a result of working with him, I was able to get myself to the senior manager, director level.
00:36:59 Ericc Whetstone
Because I took those tools that he gave me and I've been applying them to the people I've met ever since.
00:37:04 Dave Hoekstra
That's great. Hopefully you'll send this podcast episode directly to him after after it comes out, right? OK. I'm assuming you wore the headset, correct? You've you've taken calls as an agent.
00:37:15 Ericc Whetstone
Yes, I have.
00:37:16 Dave Hoekstra
OK. What was your first agent job?
00:37:19 Ericc Whetstone
My first agent job was registration sales for a tax company where or no small business company and you call in to register your software with them. And I would try to sell payroll and stuff.
00:37:30 Dave Hoekstra
Excellent. Alright. Did you like it?
00:37:33 Ericc Whetstone
I didn't at first, but I got the right leader that helped me get excited because I never did sales before and he got me excited in doing sales. You know, as an analyst, it's not about interacting with people and selling them stuff, but becoming going through that sales process and learning how to convince people that the solution that you got is the one that they need.
Good.
00:37:55 Ericc Whetstone
That's an interesting way to approach things.
00:37:57 Dave Hoekstra
Yes, I love it. I love it. That's that's fantastic. OK, final question. What's the biggest mistake you've made in your career that other people can learn from?
00:38:07 Ericc Whetstone
Don't micromanage, even as somebody that's directly there. Don't micromanage. When you micromanage, you're doing extra work, and then the person that you're doing it for doesn't trust their own work, and they know that you don't trust their work. So learn to let your people make mistakes, and then.
00:38:26 Ericc Whetstone
One of my former leaders at a company, Renee Nyman, he said.
00:38:33 Ericc Whetstone
Let your experts be experts. It's OK if they fail and it's OK if they make a mistake. You can correct it later, but let them be the expert so they can build their own credibility. And then your team becomes stronger as a.
00:38:45 Ericc Whetstone
Result.
00:38:46 Dave Hoekstra
Let them cook. That's that's. That's the phrase that is amazing. Well, Eric, I can't tell you how much of it's a pleasure to finally get a chance for us to have this conversation. You know, I've talked a lot about a lot of this stuff, but to get it on record to other people.
00:38:50 Ericc Whetstone
Yes.
00:39:00 Dave Hoekstra
You can learn. I really do appreciate you spending some time with us. I always like to give our guests the final word. Anything you want to say to anybody before we get out of here.
00:39:09 Ericc Whetstone
Excelsior.
00:39:10 Dave Hoekstra
Excelsior there could only be one. Yes, that is, that is fantastic. So thanks again, Eric. Really appreciate the time you spent with us here. I'm really excited to make sure that a lot of people are going to learn from the wisdom you you shared with us today, so.
00:39:25 Dave Hoekstra
I really appreciate you coming by.
00:39:27 Ericc Whetstone
Thanks for having me, Dave. I appreciate the.
00:39:28 Ericc Whetstone
Opportunity.
00:39:29 Dave Hoekstra
Absolutely. And thanks to you, our listener here on the Working Smarter Podcast. Thanks for giving us some time in your day and we will see you on the next episode of Working Smarter. Take care everybody.
But.
