Otto UK - Shift Rationalisation

The Otto Group is a leading world-wide home shopping company, with its UK business comprising the Freemans, Gratton, Oli and Kaleidoscope brands.  In 2007 Otto provided multi-media sales and service support to its customers from in house contact centre operations in Bradford and Sheffield.

Accord had previously worked with Otto to identify and plan improvements to its contact routing strategy, and recognised that a key dependency to realising the projected benefits was the generation of increased flexibility from the workforce so that availability could be better aligned to customer demand. 

Otto was unsuccessful in rationalising its highly bespoke shift arrangements internally and therefore turned to Accord for help in optimising the required shift patterns and implementing the necessary change.

Working closely with staff side representatives/Unions, Accord assessed in/outbound customer demand and Otto's ability to respond to it.  It identified the gap between Otto's existing shift arrangements and those required to meet defined service levels.  Accord then proposed practical optimised shift options which Otto was able to offer to its workforce with Union buy-in.  Accord's recommendations identified 20% greater financial benefit from the shift rationalisation than Otto had previously forecast.