Introducing a new era of support operations with Case Lifecycle

You already know data is the key to transforming your workforce management into workforce magic, but did you know that one layer deeper, beneath the surface-level metrics, there’s an entirely new treasure trove of insight, never unearthed before? Grab your headlamps, we’re going in.

We can’t wait to introduce you to the biggest unlock for your contact center operations, guaranteed to control real-time mayhem, tame forecast inaccuracies, and bring metrics you never knew were possible (no spelunking required).

Today, we’re so excited to announce Case Lifecycle, a groundbreaking new data model that analyzes each case down to its most essential building blocks, fundamentally changing the way teams plan their staffing and resolve customer issues.

Solving the data problem

To deliver the kind of customer experience that builds powerhouse brands, there are a lot of things that support teams need to get right. Staffing has become infinitely more complex with agents distributed across multiple queues in both live and asynchronous channels. And when case work involves multiple handoffs, major blindspots due to omnichannel routing have become the norm.

Legacy WFM tools weren't built for this reality. In simpler times, when support took place on the phone and business hours were standardized, these systems did the job. But the needs of support teams today have surpassed what these tools can deliver.

Without insight into the intricate details of case work, pauses, missed touchpoints, and clunky spreadsheet workarounds become all too common. We set out on a mission to change that by providing a deeper, more precise understanding of support operations to ensure that the right people are always in the right place at the right time.

A model that staffs to meet your business reality

Case Lifecycle is like having X-ray vision for your support operations. It dissects every case into individual steps, or "units of work," such as transfers, escalations, pauses, re-opens, and resolutions — all denoted by timestamps. This allows you to analyze each part of a case's journey, showing who worked on each step and for how long.

But it's not enough to just understand what's happening, it's about understanding why — and what you can do about it. This unlocks a new way to investigate an individual case or uncover team-wide patterns that can help you optimize future staffing, allowing you to set goals and forecast around these units of work.

In the past, teams had to operate within the constraints of their tool. Transfers in case ownership and the duration of each unit of work were captured inside their help desk, but they were never exposed to the workforce management team. Work was only measured by total time spent on any case.

That all changes with the launch of Case Lifecycle. By surfacing the exact breakdown of case work, forecast accuracy and real-time management get the boost that was never possible before.

To paint the picture of how this new model is transforming teams, here are a few examples from early customers:

• Lyra Health manages cases that transfer from non-clinical teams handling initial inquiries to clinical teams providing urgent mental health support, each with tailored SLA goals and complexity levels.
• A major global payment brand uses new metrics to get true visibility into real-time activity, and make smarter, faster intraday decisions for every skill and queue.
• Team leads at a leading software corporation are able to expose understaffed queues causing a bottleneck, because they often sit as a middle touchpoint of cases that see multiple transfers.
• Managers at an international eCommerce company can make more informed business tradeoffs, like reducing SLA to save money on headcount or making intraday schedule shifts to serve understaffed queues.
• The workforce management team at a large Fintech firm was able to expose teamwide knowledge gaps and present opportunities to update the company website and help center.

Before implementing case lifecycle, tracking metrics was difficult due to switching between Assembled and Salesforce. Now, with Case Lifecycle, we have a unified view of volume and productivity metrics, and a roadmap of a case from start to finish. This centralization promotes agent accountability and ownership and aids in debugging cases with excessive interactions. Ultimately, this leads to a better customer experience.

Jessica Bright, Manager of Customer Support, Autodesk

Breaking it down: visualizing units of work

Seeing is believing, so let’s get to the good stuff — Case Lifecycle in action. Here are all the places you’ll see units of work show up within Assembled:

The staffing timeline

At the top of the staffing timeline, where you can already visualize incoming case volume, you’ll have a new option to see the unit of work volume, broken down by channel.

Additionally, you can now configure staffing parameters and set service level targets based on units of work.

New metrics on Assembled reporting

What’s a new data model without some brand-new reporting data? Now you’ll see case metrics and units of work metrics infused across Agent Scorecard, Forecast v. Actual, Team Performance, Realtime Overview, and Trend Analytics. The combo of both gives you the option to keep reporting high level, or go extra granular. New metrics include:

• Total units of work volume
• Unit of work average handle time
• Units of work handled per actual hour
• Units of work handled per scheduled hour
• Unit of work first response time
• Number of cases reassigned
• Rate of cases reassigned
• Number of cases transferred
• Rate of cases transferred

We’ve come a mighty long way with the real-time dashboard, transforming our processes from manually filling out reports to now having a visual, interactive interface. By adding new metrics like unassigned cases, average wait time, and first response time on the touch level, we’ve not only enhanced our ability to act swiftly when SLAs are slipping but also improved visibility for our leadership team. Overall, these changes help ensure our service remains responsive and effective.

Customer Operations at a global mobile payment service

Forecast configuration

This is where Case Lifecycle really comes to life. In addition to using units of work to more accurately track team performance, you’ll be able to forecast on units of work as well. This means you’ll be able to plan for every predicted movement of every case. In our model, every queue or team that touches a case is allocated a piece of that forecast. Meaning, we make sure you’re accurately staffed for agents who may not be case-closers.

Before, we could see case counts and forecast off of that count, but handle time was all over the place, so we wound up doing manual overrides often. Now that we have the case lifecycle insights, we can appropriately see which team did the work, how long the work took, and appropriately assign that handle time data to the right team and the right queue.

Jonathon Hikade, WFM Analyst, Lyra Health

Queue configuration

Now you’ll be able to see the total units of work in each queue by your selected time period, in addition to total cases per queue. Here you’ll see greater insight into queues that require more case work than others, or teams that are less likely to solve a case on their first touch.

Case visualizer

From the queue configuration page, you’ll also be able to double-click into a detailed timeline of any case to see all touchpoints and changes across owners, case status, queue, and more.

Case Lifecycle is more than just a new way of looking at your data — it’s a new way of managing your operations. It provides the tools to make better-informed decisions, optimize your processes, and deliver the best possible service to your customers. By understanding the why behind your operations, you can take greater leaps to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction. If you'd like to see more of Case Lifecycle in action, get in touch.