You know them, you love them, and they’ve likely come to the rescue of someone you know recently—it’s TaskRabbit! The company's inspiring mission (to transform lives, one task at a time) is one that’s made real by its stellar support team. This mighty group of agents focuses on providing efficient, empathetic service to two member bases: the clients, who use their platform for a variety of services (furniture assembly, mounting, moving help, cleaning—you name it!), and the Taskers, who use TaskRabbit to earn a meaningful income.
Workforce Analyst Kevin Rury felt compelled by this mission. He came to TaskRabbit from Accenture ready to roll up his sleeves alongside a workforce team that handles forecasting, scheduling, and reporting for seven different countries and ~300+ agents. When Kevin joined, he noticed the team’s existing workforce solution required an immense amount of manual work from team leads, schedulers, and just about everyone.
Just to add an event to anyone’s schedule…it was very manual. You had no ability to copy and paste things. Even adding the same event to a hundred agents’ schedules would be a time consuming ask.”
Kevin Rury Workforce Management Analyst
Without a flexible drag-and-drop interface or keyboard shortcuts, changes could only be made through endless clicks and precise keystrokes. When it came to making modifications for 100+ agents, this was nothing short of a nightmare—a nightmare that extended beyond scheduling into other areas, such as reporting, real-time data, and forecasting. Kevin and his team knew it was time for a tool that could keep pace with their needs and growth.
Finding the perfect (modern) fit in a sea of old-school workforce management solutions
Having experienced legacy WFM platforms in previous roles, Kevin knew what to expect. Other tools he had used in the past also required manual effort, despite having broad capabilities. Scheduling was a lot more toilsome and lacked the flexibility to create longer-term schedules for agents. Templates had to be created one at a time, and it took some effort to do so. Onboarding also took a lot longer; it was at least a few months to get up and running, and agent information was not integrated with their contact platform, which made inputting personal details a burdensome process.
Anytime we had product feedback, the answer would be "it's in a new release or another package" and wouldn’t be acted upon. A lot of the features were complex and underutilized. Assembled actually gives us exactly what we need in a delightful way and truly partners with the companies they work with.”
Kevin Rury Workforce Management Analyst
Crossing legacy WFM platforms off their list, the TaskRabbit team focused on finding a flexible, scalable solution that would serve as more of a long-term partner than a short-term vendor. Serendipitously, Kevin and his colleagues saw Assembled cofounder and CEO Ryan Wang presenting about the platform. Compelled by Assembled’s modern, agile interface, along with its philosophy around a true partnership with the brands it serves, TaskRabbit signed up for a demo and was quickly won over. Right away, the team was struck by Assembled's real-time and adherence reporting. No AUX codes ensured the highest accuracy of an agents’ real-time state, and saved time by turning a two-step process into one: only having to change the agent state via Zendesk! The honor system based on trusting that an agent switched to the right state in the first place could finally be a thing of the past.
We love adherence in Assembled. With previous tools, agents had to manually select their status, so it was really an honor system. We had to trust agents to switch their statuses when they should and secondly, it was not an ideal agent experience. They would have to switch their status in both the tool and Zendesk, and having to focus on two screens would mean more manual work and less time focused on solving a customer issue. Our agents absolutely love this—it’s one of the biggest gains we have seen with our agents in Assembled.”
Kevin Rury Workforce Management Analyst
Putting Assembled's notoriously speedy onboarding and implementation to the test, the TaskRabbit team pushed to get Assembled up and running in two weeks to quickly prepare for the holiday season.
With a nimble team of three (one manager and two analysts, with one team member out on maternity leave), we made the decision to push the timeline forward and get everything implemented in Assembled—schedules, agent onboarding and training, and implementation—in two weeks!”
Kevin Rury Workforce Management Analyst
Immediately, Kevin and the team saw many positive changes from the newly streamlined and efficient experience in Assembled. Optimizing lunches and breaks in their previous tool took eight or more hours, but in Assembled, inputting these events in an SLA-proof way was cut by at least 33%. Schedule creation and modification—with Assembled’s drag-and-drop interface and lightning fast keyboard shortcuts—was also accelerated, going from 30 minutes to just 30 seconds when it came to scheduling the same event for all agents. This freed up Kevin’s bandwidth to focus on the true needle-moving activities, like gathering agent feedback to improve their experience on the support team overall.
If I need to schedule a meeting on 100 agents’ calendars in Assembled, I can knock that out in 30 seconds. This is a huge timesaver for us.”
Kevin Rury Workforce Management Analyst
When it came to forecasting, the team was used to its previous tool, which collected and routed inaccurate data and conversations. This led to inaccurate forecasts (versus actuals) that were then managed in other tools. To make things worse, the support team was unable to help with any of the forecasting pitfalls across all channels—chat, phone, email, and more. But with Assembled, Kevin was at last able to trust the automated forecasts that were generated and powered by data flowing in from Zendesk, as well as models based on queue- and channel-specific needs.
Beyond the day to day, Kevin needed a direct view into insights that helped senior leadership understand the health and needs of the CX organization. In Assembled, Kevin has immediate access to data on queues, team, and staffing needs.
Assembled’s reporting—from the agent scorecard to productivity metrics—definitionally aligns with our philosophy here at TaskRabbit. Supervisors and agents can set goals based on productivity really easily! It’s so nice to see all of our reporting in one place, with exports being a thing of the past!”
Kevin Rury Workforce Management Analyst
The icing on the cake? Assembled and TaskRabbit were both highly aligned in their ethos toward agent empowerment. Kevin loved the crossover both companies had with their longer-term vision.
A majority of WFM professionals start in support, so we know what it’s like to take contacts and have schedules built for you. Because of this, we are constantly taking in agent feedback and making sure their voices are heard. For us, it’s important to keep our agents top of mind and choose a system that does the same. We can’t choose a platform that's going to give a workforce manager great data but deliver a subpar agent experience. Assembled is the first platform we've worked with that also embraces the same ethos, and our agents can confidently say that Assembled has improved their day to day.”
Kevin Rury Workforce Management Analyst
