Can you think back to one of those times when something seemingly trivial actually was an indicator of something important?  I had one of those moments yesterday morning, when I was least expecting it.  I walked out of the company kitchen with my first cup of joe (certainly not the last) and into the middle of the following conversation.

Alison: “ . . . didn’t have time to get to that yesterday.  I had a bunch of trial followups, plus I skyped with that company in Japan and Vikram in India.”

Michael: “Did that Tokyo call center convert their trial to a paid account yet?”

Alison: “Not yet, but they’re a great fit.  I’m pretty sure it will happen by the end of this week.”

Michael:  “What about that school in Beijing?”

Alison:  “Haven’t heard from her in 2 days.  I gotta prep for this security demo in 15 minutes.  See ya.”

I started back to my desk like my normal drone self in the morning, taking a sip of coffee while thinking deep thoughts (ie should I check my email or voicemail), when I stopped in my tracks to mentally dissect that seemingly everyday conversation.

* I remember  a few years back when a couple of us spent four days wrestling with computers, testing amongst ourselves, and trying to get skype to work.  Now the Account Services team uses skype for overseas customers as seamlessly as me making a cell phone call.
* I remember our first call center customer, a small singer office facility with 20 employees.  Now we have customers like VoiceCurve, with multiple locations over the globe and Managers like Vikram in India providing call center scheduling coverage for hundreds of employees in multiple time zones.
* I remember high-fiving in the office when our first international client came abroad in the UK.  Now we’re working with organizations in 3 Asian cities in a single day, and I don’t even know 2 of them.

With that little revelation, I resolved to really savor my morning java . . . at my desk, just to be sure to stay out of the way of progress.

-Rob

For any employee or volunteer picking up multiple shifts the process is now much faster.  In addition to the Monthly, Weekly, Daily, and Hourly calendars we have created a “List View”.  This view is absolutely genius!

With List View, users toggle various opportunities and with ONE additional click assign themselves to each of the selected shifts.  If enabled by managers, users can also unconfirm themselves from multiple shifts.

Among others, this feature is ideal for EMS scheduling, security scheduling and call center scheduling.  These workforces don’t generally pattern the typical 8 hour workday.  Shifts tend to be extra long or super short, ad hoc, unpredictable and ever changing.  In one sweep workers can schedule themselves for multiple shifts on different teams, at various times, across all locations. Users are only capable of double booking themselves if previously enabled by a manager.

According to one volunteer scheduling manager “list view saves workers valuable time, when it’s easier to pick up shifts, volunteers pick up MORE shifts.”  This is just another reminder that employee scheduling software doesn’t need to be complex or cumbersome.  Shiftboard’s ease of use and intuitive design keeps things simple.

We meet so many people in life that its not surprising many don’t register very long in our memory banks.  At least a couple times a month I receive a “friend” request in Facebook that leaves me scratching my head.  “Did I know this person?  From where?”  But I can tell you that if line up 100 people and ask them to name their freshman roommate in college, every person will remember.

Mine was Himraj from New Dehli, India.  I learned a lot from him about his country, about being an international student in the States, etc.  Generally he broadened my horizons.  We remained close through our four years of college and beyond.  When I rolled off of active duty in the Navy, I had India on my backpack itinerary in order to finally visit him at home. Needless to say, it was great to see where he was from, meet his family, and tour some of India first-hand with my close friend as a guide.  Among many other memories, I had an eventful day-trip to see the Taj Mahal, just myself and a taxi driver, that is worthy of a separate post just in itself.

Best movie of the year

That was 15 years ago, and my wife had been there since, but I had not.  So recently when we settled on the couch to watch “Slumdog Millionaire”, it brought me back.  It’s a wonderful movie, but also a hard movie.  It doesn’t hide from one of India’s and the globes biggest challenges with regards to the huge masses of humanity living in grinding poverty.  None of those images were a surprise after my previous visit, however.

Whatever the reason, the scene from that movie etched into my brain are the rows of callers and computers in a Space Odyssey unnatural blue hue – an Indian call center.  We can all relate to call centers, of course, in terms talking to tech support from a Fortune 500 company or questioning our credit card bill.  Call center scheduling is one of our many market segments here at Shiftboard.  I guess I had just never pictured a call center in the Henry Ford production line sense at that scale.

Our scheduling software is a good fit

We provide call center scheduling to many customers – survey research institutes, product support groups, insurance appointment setters, etc.  Our customers are US and UK based to date, but I am sure some Indian customers are only a matter of time.  We tend towards call centers where the quality and ease-of-use of our software, combined with no IT requirements, consistently beat the big, tired call center switch vendors with some bolted-on call center scheduling software.

Most importantly, many of our customers, ranging from Cornell and University of Wyoming Survey Research Institutes to more traditional sales or support call centers like VoiceCurve are using a self-scheduling paradigm for their workers and managing the exceptions with our real-time coverage reporting.  That paradigm couldn’t be more different from the Indian call center in the movie.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Himraj.  He had run into a 3rd classmate of ours, Brooks, over in Mumbai.  There was the usual 3-way banter and some sarcastic references to past events, Kingfisher Beer vs. the local Northwest microbrews, etc.  It brought a smile to my face in the midst of a busy day.  I haven’t forgotten.

-Rob E.