CRIMESTOPPERS IS AN ORGANISATION WITH A VITAL ROLE TO PLAY. It serves as a conduit between police and public: a way for anyone to anonymously report a crime, either one carried out or one being planned. It performs a vital function as a valuable source of information to police services and, as such, needs to be operating at maximum efficiency.
The not-for-profit runs a single UK contact centre and has experienced around a 50% increase in contacts from the public over the last five years, but without a corresponding increase in its provision. The resourcing team was aware of feelings among staff that operationally they were being stretched, but there was no data available to provide evidence on just how busy the staff were.
Was there room for efficiency savings or did the contact centre in fact need more staff? Crimestoppers undertook an assessment of its call handling management and selected Simul8 to help stress test its operations through simulations under a variety of different scenarios designed to reflect real life patterns of demand.
STAFF RESOURCING
Over the last few years, contact centres have been questioning the way that they plan staff resourcing. The traditional method for calculating staffing levels has been to use the Erlang formula, but this is increasingly seen as inaccurate. Therefore, all contact centres are looking for more accurate ways of working out appropriate employee levels; ones that can better reflect real work practices.
The method that has produced particularly effective results is simulation. This technology provides contact centre operators with a much more realistic model of how a contact centre operates, simulating changing levels of demand and providing accurate data on how well equipped it is to manage incoming contacts in the most efficient way possible.
For Crimestoppers, this is where Simul8 came in, and it received a licence to use the simulation software on a pro bono basis as part of the company’s support for charitable organisations. One of Crimestoppers’ key personnel already had experience of using Simul8’s simulation software and chose it to help with the process. It would be used to gain full visibility over its contact centre operations and for the first time indicate exactly how the organisation was set up to cope with its demands.
CRIMESTOPPERS’ CHALLENGES
This was not a trivial task. Crimestoppers is no small undertaking. It’s an organisation that has been in the UK for 30 years and handles 600,000 contacts from the public annually, resulting in 175,000 criminal reports made to the police each year. It’s open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Staff take information online or by phone – with a roughly 50:50 split, with each channel having its own response processes in place. Crimestoppers needs to ensure that the information is handled promptly and efficiently, but there’s also a duty of care to its employees. This is something that the organisation pays great attention to. Many of the phone calls can be distressing, dealing with sensitive subjects like child sexual abuse or violent crimes, so it’s important that the wellbeing of the staff receiving those contacts is given the highest priority and they are not overstretched to breaking point. As Karen Ogborn, Crimestoppers’ chief of staff said, ‘The complexity of all the different things they’re dealing with can be quite stressful. We have to deal with the challenges of the job – which are different from the selling environment in other contact centres.’
BLENDING ART AND SCIENCE
Because of these challenges, the organisation didn’t have the luxury of working from home during the pandemic, as many companies did. Much of the material that was being handled was very sensitive and not suitable for being dealt with at home, while there was also a fair degree of online form filling to be processed. Consequently, any changes had to take effect within the structure of the office and nowhere else.
But the concern for employees’ wellbeing wasn’t the only issue that the organisation had to consider when re-evaluating the requirements of the contact centre. There was a need to make sure that all calls could be handled efficiently – and that means ‘dealing with the changes in demand to make sure that we can offer a complete service,’ said Ogborn.
concern for employees’ wellbeing wasn’t the only issue that the organisation had to consider when re-evaluating the requirements of the contact centre. There was a need to make sure that all calls could be handled efficiently
This ‘complete service’ covers a variety of different functions. The full set-up includes Crimestoppers itself, as well as four other services each, again, with different processes to follow. These include the Home Office immigration enforcement line, energy safe line, NHS fraud line and the integrity line for whistleblowing calls.
Staff at the contact centre can work across any of these services and will get moved around depending on demand. This is where Simul8 really makes a difference. The modelling can account for all of the different streams and each of their processes, which would quickly become extremely challenging without the help of this technology.
In addition, Crimestoppers has been looking for opportunities to work with other organisations as well as the police service. It’s starting to talk to the fire service, offering a similar facility to that of the police. ‘There’s no single national fire department, but separate ones for individual counties. We’ve started running services with a few and are now looking to offer a service to all of them,’ Ogborn added. This will require further variables being built into a resourcing model, but the use of Simul8 means that, from a process optimisation perspective at least, this won’t be a problem.
GENERATING EVIDENCE
‘Simul8 is playing a vital role in changing the way that our organisation manages staffing,’ said Ogborn. ‘We are able to demonstrate to our management team that, through modelling, if we can build a little more capacity into the system, we’d have the flexibility to respond to demand. This not only changes over a 24-hour period but seasonally too – we are able to deal with all of that.’ It became clear through the use of the model that more people were required to be on duty at the weekdays. In presented calls are in purple and answered calls are in light blue. By exploring the relevant gaps for each line in becomes clear which lines are the busiest. indicates that the Crimestoppers line offers interesting and relevant output.
We are able to demonstrate to our management team that, through modelling, if we can build a little more capacity into the system, we’d have the flexibility to respond to demand
FIGURE 1 WEEKDAY DEMAND ON CRIMESTOPPERS (a) ALL LINES, (b) CRIMESTOPPER CALLS ONLY
OPERATIONAL SIMULATIONS
In a short space of time, Simul8 has become essential to the way that the organisation 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.
For example, the use of Simul8 has meant that the organisation is better able to assign priorities to calls and to handle responses better. There is a target to deal with online communication within four hours and there was also a chance to assess the effectiveness of the rate in which calls were picked up.
The implementation of Simul8 has been a great success. ‘The Simul8 installation has been smooth: the team installing it was fantastic, but it helps that you can pick up the phone to virtually anyone to get queries answered,’ said Ogborn. ‘On top of that, the help within the system is really useful, giving us everything we need. And it was easy to handle. You don’t need to be technical to make the tweaks,’ she added. The pressure on Crimestoppers can be intense, given the nature of its calls. ‘We’re much more like a 999 service – even if it’s not quite as stressful as that.’
The Simul8 project is an example of a system that has fulfilled its dual purpose: that of improving response rates and, at the same time, helping employees cope with the pressure of their jobs. While Simul8 was chosen initially to build a data-driven business case as to whether the system was up to scratch, it has since become an indispensable tool in daily planning, helping the organisation to manage its full capacity among the constantly shifting dynamics of a busy contact centre.
the system…has…become an indispensable tool in daily planning, helping the organisation to manage its full capacity among the constantly shifting dynamics of a busy contact centre
Contact centres can be demanding environments at the best of times, and Crimestoppers has the added responsibility of dealing with sensitive and stressful calls. Simul8 offers them the opportunity to optimise operations and work towards process excellence.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Naoum Tsioptsias
Naoum Tsioptsias is a Senior Simulation Consultant at Simul8 with background in finance, informatics and O.R. and with research experience on the interconnections of simulation and learning. He has collaborated on manufacturing and service projects and has a keen interest in data and statistical analysis, including data mining.
Frances Sneddon
Frances Sneddon, a Chief Technology Officer at Simul8, is passionate about all things tech and data. Over the last 20 years she has helped organisations across the globe use simulation to achieve better business outcomes. At heart, Frances is a maths geek turned developer, but it’s her expertise (and passion!) as a business leader that have helped grow SIMUL8 Corp from a start up to the global leader in the simulation market.