When you compare what was committed to what was executed, you’ll uncover the issues. It could be poor worker performance or traffic in certain zones, or your plan may not be robust enough because it leaves little room for error. After capturing all this information about each and every appointment you must conduct a detailed analysis to develop relevant corrective actions. 

Your analysis isn’t just about whether or not you can change the appointment window, but what the impact will be if you do change it. A shorter window will affect your scheduling: You’ll have narrow commitments, so there’ll be more restrictions on how you build your schedule. It’s likely the shorter appointment window will have the impact of more travel time and less load balancing of work between your employees. Also, the shorter window may have a greater effect on other objectives that are important to you.

Another significant aspect of your analysis is measuring risk — in this case, the risk of missing appointments. There will come a point when the risk is so high that it’s unlikely you’d suggest this appointment window to your customers. Yes, you want to shorten the window and provide better service, but you don’t want to make promises you can’t keep. Review the average time lapse when you miss an appointment as well as the variance. Perhaps you miss appointments by 5-10 minutes, but 1 percent of your missed appointments are missed by 25 minutes; you need to consider these metrics when calculating risk.

From your historical data you can prepare for “the unexpected.” For example, if you know that traffic in certain zones is unpredictable, leading to 1 percent of appointments being missed by 20 minutes, you can build on this knowledge so that your new plan includes the shortened appointment window and the calculated risk of missing appointments before you provide new offerings to your customers.

In addition you must analyze how well you’re communicating with customers about missing appointments. For example, how far in advance do you relay the potential for missing one? While communication won’t reduce the number of missed appointments, it can improve the customer experience by minimizing the negative impact.

Data in real time — and at the right time

Data collection is needed along the planning spectrum, both long-term and short-term. You’ll use real-time data and data generated at specific time frames to improve the customer experience and differentiate your service.

For communications service providers, time-to-service initiation is another service differentiator. To shorten this initiation, the first question to ask is: did I build the workforce correctly? Basing your analysis on historical data, you can forecast load and profile your workforce to determine how much work it can actually do. And if you combine forecasted load and workforce profile you can conduct a gap analysis between supply and demand to answer questions such as:

• Do I need more workers?
• Do I need more skill sets?
• Do I need to relocate workers?
• Do I need to change overtime policies?

For example, given a load of many new installs, you need to decide whether adding a certain amount of overtime hours per month would help you accommodate the load. Your first step is to build your workforce correctly, ensuring that the forecasted load corresponds to how much work the workforce can do. To simulate building concrete plans that accommodate the backlog of commitments you’ve made — again, to ensure you’re in a position to meet those commitments — you must conduct multiday planning.

When you get the call for a new install and book the appointment with the customer, you must perform a sophisticated analysis to review available capacity in real time and confirm you have the right resources. But you also must conduct a planning exercise to ensure the necessary preparation work can be completed prior to the appointment.