Labor Strategy & Performance optimization

The Northridge Group – A Leading Management Consulting Firm

Workforce Management

Assessing needs, strategizing solutions

Whether you are staffing a Contact Center or back office environment, we believe an effective labor strategy must start with a solid labor market analysis and a review of your staffing, hiring and retention policies.

The Northridge Group is dedicated to assessing all labor issues and offering solutions that align with your business goals.

Labor Market Analysis

Is your Contact Center in the right location to attract the talent you are looking for? This is often a difficult question to answer because there are so many competing considerations.

As part of a general labor market analysis, The Northridge Group assists clients with three key areas.

Staffing & Facilities Assessments

Our comprehensive staffing and facilities assessments result in recommendations for optimizing staffing efficiencies in current locations and in additional locations/facilities if necessary based on the competitive environment, the current labor market, pay rates, the organization’s work from home strategy and utilization of current and future facilities. When assessing against future growth, if additional facilities will be needed, we will include the best way to optimize the future use of existing and potential new facilities in our analysis.

Insource/Outsource Ratio

Outsource partners can provide labor balancing and cost savings to organizations; however, keeping the essential customer functions in-house is key when driving relationship-based growth strategies. Northridge can help you determine what insource/outsource ratio is optimal for your business.

Location Assessments

Our comprehensive location assessments include an evaluation of all current and potential new locations to determine which locations or combination of locations would most optimally meet your organization’s business goals. If our assessment indicates that new locations are needed, we will provide expert guidance on site selection strategy based on workforce availability, alignment with educational and experiential needs, the competitive environment, local pay rates and site costs. Optimal site locations are important for business continuity, time zone coverage and effective utilization of domestic/offshore and in-house/outsource resources.

attracting & retaining the right talent

In today’s digital age, with a variety of channels that allow for the automation of transactional tasks, Contact Center agents who have the right skillset and experience are more important than ever for a strong customer-centric focus. Establishing a long-term hiring strategy is crucial. The Northridge Group can help ensure you are engaging with the right candidates. Our team will partner with you to understand your recruiting process and how to optimize your hiring strategy.

High attrition drives added operational costs and compromises a company’s ability to deliver a consistent Customer Experience. Northridge can help you develop and implement a plan that provides employees with the opportunity and motivation to build long-term careers with your company. It is vital to focus on strategies that allow employees’ talent and performance to result in steady advancement, loyalty and employee retention.

Performance optimization

Once you have people in place who are committed to a long-term career with your company, how do you coach and guide them to achieve their best performance? The key is to ensure that you are using the right metrics to motivate and educate them while simultaneously using best practice coaching techniques that are proven to drive performance improvement.

Quality Monitoring

Unbiased monitoring and actionable feedback are just two of the many reasons why outsourcing your quality program needs to Northridge can result in better agent performance. With a quality program that correlates to key business indicators, improvement in business outcomes is bound to follow.

Quality Redesign

While business leaders are concerned about improving business outcomes like First Contact Resolution (FCR) and increasing CSAT survey scores, agents need guidance and metrics that measure the behavior that drives to these outcomes. Northridge can help you redesign your quality program to correlate to behaviors that drive the business outcomes that matter most to your business.

Coaching for Performance

Many supervisors who are tasked with the important responsibility of coaching front-line agents have never properly learned how to motivate and clearly communicate ways for agents to make changes that will move the needle on performance. The Northridge coaching & training program teaches supervisors the skills needed to take their agents’ performance to the next level for measurable quality and customer experience improvement.

Scorecards

Well-designed scorecards create opportunities for an actionable, cross-functional alignment that support the overall strategic objectives of your business and drive measurable results. Poorly designed scorecards can have the opposite effect and can even drive negative performance to business outcomes. Northridge can help you develop a scorecard that aligns to your company’s KPIs and, in turn, translates into results.

experience + excellence

The NRG Assessment

Would a full assessment of your contact center operations help you to gain a better understanding of what’s working, what isn’t …and what’s available that will work for your operation?

We provide businesses with the tools they need to make informed decisions. Once our assessment is complete, our team of experts will work with you to build a custom solution that fits your needs. Our use of state-of-the-art technology guarantees you’ll be able to access your data whenever and wherever you need it.