We were thrilled to catch up with Crimestoppers to discuss how they are using Simul8 to help manage their busy contact center and daily operations.
Watch the video below to find out how Crimestoppers used Simul8 to help manage its contact center!
Digital simulation specialist Simul8 has been helping not-for-profit crime reporting organization, Crimestoppers, to manage ever increasing call volumes, while at the same time, improving its ability to look after the well-being of contact center staff.
Who are Crimestoppers?
Crimestoppers are an independent charity that gives people the power to speak up and stop crime.
Crimestoppers has, for some 30 years, served as a vital conduit between police and the public: a way for anyone to report a crime 100% anonymously, handling 600,000 contacts annually, resulting in over 175,00 reports of crime passed to the police. With call volumes and online reports going up 50% over the last five years, Crimestoppers was keen to find a way to make its contact center operations more efficient. And, with workers being required to handle often challenging and upsetting information, a key driver was to ensure that the system could work in a way to reduce stress on employees.
As Karen Ogborn, Crimestoppers’ Chief of Staff said: “This is something that we, as an organization, pay great attention to. Many of the phone calls can be dealing with sensitive subjects like child sexual abuse or violent crimes, so it’s important that the well-being of the staff receiving those contacts is given the highest priority. In a short space of time, Simul8 has become essential to the way that the organization is run. It was initially selected to examine a business case for employing more staff, but now it provides guidance to the management team on a variety of different issues on a daily basis.”
Simul8 CEO, Laura Reid commented: “Crimestoppers does invaluable work and we knew we could provide a way to help them improve efficiency and staff well-being without making wholesale, expensive changes and incurring additional costs. We were happy to get involved in supporting the fantastic work they do to help reduce crime across the UK.”
“Simul8 has become essential to the way that the organization is run. It was initially selected to examine a business case for employing more staff, but now it provides guidance to the management team on a variety of different issues on a daily basis.”
Karen Ogborn, Chief of Staff
How does Simul8 help with capacity planning?
Louise Peers, Head of Contact Center Services shares how simulation positively impacted capacity planning, commenting: “What’s fantastic about the simulation model is that we have been able to share it with our operational staff, you don’t have to be technical to use it, which is great news. It’s accessible and intuitive as well. You can see it and play around with it. You can look at what results you want to get essentially. If I have these KPI’s to meet across all of the different services I am providing, how do I do it? I can sit with my team and make it work, we then can staff appropriately.”
Through simulation modelling, Crimestoppers were able to show if you built in a little bit more capacity into the system, there are a number of benefits in terms of the health and well-being but also benefits in terms of flexibility to respond to demand, so they could identify demand changes not just over a 24-hour cycle but also changes seasonally. The simulation model allowed Crimestoppers to successfully predict what demand and resilience they needed to put into the system, so that it is still as efficient as it can be.
How are you now using the model on a daily basis?
In terms of using the simulation model on a daily basis, Louise Peers, Head of Contact Center Services at Crimestoppers said: “The first thing we are using Simul8 for is looking at those thresholds and using it to predict impact. There are times we can anticipate contacts increasing, resources decreasing, looking at our maybe 4 or 5 different skill-sets. At any given day, we can look at the simulation model and of course simulate what might happen. We can move people around, pull people in, pull people back, it’s hugely flexible. As a charity, it is really important for us to staff for demand and it has allowed us to concentrate on that as well.“
“With Simul8, we can look at the data and say to provide this service at that level we are going to need X amount of resources. For the first time, we can build that into the costing properly, which has been a huge benefit to us.“
Louise Peers, Head of Contact Center Services
What’s the biggest benefit of using Simul8?
By using the simulation software, provided on a bro-bono basis by Simul8, managers at Crimestoppers were able to build extra capacity into their contact center operations to cope with fluctuating demand. At the same time, managers were able to use the data from the software to improve day to day management, such as being able to prioritize calls more intelligently and hit rigorous call reporting targets, while also taking into account the emotional impact on employees.
Karen Ogborn, Cheif of Staff, said: “Simulation software has provided transparency and the ability to make decisions based on data and something a bit more tangible than the experience of the person sitting answering the phone saying it’s too busy, we can really demonstrate what that looks like now.“
How has Simul8 helped with budgeting?
With the help of simulation, Crimestoppers were able to transform their daily operations. Louise Peers, Head of Contact Center Services says: “Operationally Simul8 has been fantastic for us. In terms of being able to better assist other departments within the charity it has been really good for us to fully understand perhaps the associated costs with the impact. Typically, we might be presented with a proposal for a new business that has an X amount of contacts which are likely to take X amount of time for our agents. Before now, it was pretty much ‘Can we?’ ‘Do we think we can do it?’ But with Simul8, we can have it there on paper and look at the data and say to provide this service at that level, we are going to need X amount of resources. So, for the first time ever, we can build that into the costing properly, which has been a huge benefit to us.“
How was it working with Simul8?
Karen Ogborn, Chief of Staff, stated: “What is wonderful is you can pick up the phone to almost anyone and they can help you, they don’t need to know our model in order to help us. That has been really good. Also, the help within the system is really useful as well. There is lots of FAQ’s questions and all the online resources there that you need – you just have to look for it, but it is very available and once you have found it, it is very easy to digest. You don’t need to be technical to make the little tweaks.“
Read more about Crimestoppers achievements with Simul8 and how they have transformed their business operations here.