External Posting Title: Customer Service Workforce Planning Lead

Internal Title: Senior Forecasting and Reporting Analyst

Division: Operations

Location: Remote

Type: Full time

About the Team  

College Board’s Operations division (122 ppl) aims to be a world class digital assessment delivery and customer engagement organization that supports millions of students and thousands of test centers, annually. Operations is also leading the College Board’s exciting transformation to support delivery of digital assessments. The Customer Engagement department (55 ppl) is a combination of teams that support our key constituents, including students, parents, educators, and our state partners representing approximately 2 million contacts per year. This integrated team serves as the organization’s ‘front line’ and represents the voice of the customer, partnering across the organization to help improve the overall customer experience.    

About the Opportunity  

As the Senior Forecasting and Reporting Analyst you play a critical role analyzing contact center trends, creating models to produce short- and long-term forecasts for staff planning scenarios and budgets, and facilitating regular meetings between the Finance and Operations teams to maintain ongoing budget performance awareness.  This role will lead the planning for internal and external call center staffing developing and presenting recommendations to Customer Engagement & Experience leadership to drive performance and meet customer support requirements. The Senior Forecasting and Reporting Analyst will work closely across internal and external call centers to monitor and track results to ensure performance benchmarks and budgets are met.  This role is a key contributor to the development and implementation of contact center analytics processes, reports, dashboards, and other tools to transform raw data into actionable business insights for leadership and stakeholders. 

In this role, you will:  
  

Forecasting & Cost Modeling (50%) 

• Create contact center forecasts for all contact methods (e.g., phone, email, chat, etc.) across all lines of business. 

• Design, develop and continuously improve forecasting models and tools using historical data and anticipated volume to establish annual, monthly, weekly, and daily forecasts for volume, handle time, shrinkage, attrition, and hiring plans. 

• Evaluate volume forecast against actual demand and trends in order to determine if a re-forecast or other actions are required to meet contact volumes and service goals. 

• Create and manage contact center vendor spend plans and fiscal forecasts.   

• Conduct what-if analysis and other scenario-based analysis and provide insight to Senior Leadership as to impact to staffing and budget. 

• Gather inputs, analyze trends and seasonality, and create and maintain yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily forecasts.  

• Monitor budget trends and key operations metrics including overall budget performance, cost of service as a percentage of revenue, cost per contact, and other key division finance measurements, and collaborate with Finance and Operations leaders on management practices.

Strategy & Planning (20%) 

• Use forecasts to develop staffing strategy and operational planning recommendation. Participate in the execution of the plans. 

• Engage across the Customer Engagement team and our partners to facilitate the development of short- and long-term plans for strategy execution. 

• Build relationships across internal stakeholders to collect required data and information to develop volume and staffing recommendations to meet customer experience goals.  

• Participate in regular planning meetings with operational leaders. 

• Collaborate across internal and external stakeholders to define metrics to measure success. 

• Drive organizational understanding of staffing needs to support drive a positive customer experience.  

• Oversee review and approval of call center vendor invoices. Track, monitor and report on actual to budget variance monthly.  

Reporting & Analytics (30%) 

• Collaborate with the Customer Engagement & Experience team to build reports and dashboards to share visibility, identify challenges and opportunities. Analyze data and identify trends, and areas that need action. 

• Present staffing model recommendations and other data analysis to operational and business partners on a routine basis. 

• Develop approach to monitor and track results to ensure performance benchmarks are met by internal and external call center teams, e.g., handle time, after call work, speed of answer, etc. 

• Prepare and deliver meaningful reporting of performance by collecting, analyzing, and summarizing data and trends.  Reporting will include key metrics and interpretation of the results, providing actionable insights. 

• Perform ad-hoc analyses (both simple and complex) to identify and make recommendations on efficiency improvements, adjustments to planning metrics, staff movement, and workload balancing. 

• Use analytics to identify improvement opportunities in support of Customer Engagement’s ongoing program of change and continuous improvement. 

You have:  

• A bachelor’s degree and 5+ years of experience in call/contact forecasting, workforce planning. 

• Advanced skills in Excel (sophisticated formulas, pivot tables, etc.); PowerPoint, business analytic tools. 

• Able to work with large data sets to distill conclusions and recommendations for operational adjustments when required. 

• The ability to analyze business and financial strategy, understanding how one area of the business can affect another area of the business, with excellent attention to detail 

• Strong consultative, analytical, planning, and organizational skills  

• A propensity for hands-on work and a high level of execution, data driven and analytical. 

• A strong desire to learn and improve  

• Experience leveraging feedback and performance levels to course correct.  

• An ease working in undefined situations and evidence of creating clarity and path forward.  

• Ability to travel 4-6 times a year to College Board offices and/or vendors.  

• Eligible to work in the United States 

About Our Process 

• Application review will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled  

• While the hiring process may vary, it generally includes: resume and application submission, recruiter phone screen, hiring manager interview, performance exercise and/or panel interview, and reference checks.  This is an approximately 8-week process 

About Our Benefits and Compensation 

College Board offers a competitive benefits and compensation program that attracts top talent looking to make a difference in education. As a self-sustaining non-profit, we believe in compensating employees equitably in relation to each other, their qualifications, their impact, and the relevant market.  

The hiring range for a new employee in this position is $80,000 to $130,000. College Board differentiates salaries by location so where you live will narrow the portion of this range in which you can expect a salary.  

Your salary will be carefully determined based on your location, relevant experience, the external labor market, and the pay of College Board employees in similar roles. College Board strives to provide our best offer up front based on this criteria.  

Your salary is only one part of all that College Board offers, including but not limited to:    

• A comprehensive package designed to support the well-being of employees and their families and promote education. Our robust benefits package includes health, dental, and vision insurance, generous paid time off, paid parental leave, fertility benefits, pet insurance, tuition assistance, retirement benefits, and more 

• Recognition of exceptional performance through annual bonuses, salary growth over time through market increases, and opportunities for merit raises and promotions based on increased scope of responsibility 

• A job that matters, a team that cares, and a place to learn, innovate and thrive 

You can expect to have transparent conversations about benefits and compensation with our recruiters throughout your application process.