WFM Unfiltered | Workforce Management Podcast

Handling Budget Pushback: A Guide for WFM and CX Leaders

• Adrianna Olteanou • Season 1 • Episode 37

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We don’t usually do reruns… but this one? It earned it.

WFM Unfiltered is proud to bring back one of our most popular episodes — with a sharper look and better sound — because Adriana Olteanu dropped insight that’s just too good to get buried in the archives.

Adriana leads forecasting and capacity planning at Groupon, and in this conversation, she and Irina get real about the uphill battle WFM professionals face when senior leadership won’t listen. From building a bulletproof capacity plan to translating data into decisions that drive the business forward, Adriana lays out what it actually takes to make WFM strategic — not just tolerated.

You’ll hear how to turn weekly checks into trust-building tools, how to sell capacity planning to managers who think they don’t need it, and why every line item — from phone line hours to team meetings — costs more than you think. This episode isn’t just practical. It’s permission to push back when your data says you're right.

If you missed it the first time, don’t miss it again. And if you caught it before? It’s worth the repeat.

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Overcoming pushback from senior stakeholders
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Irina:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of WFM Unfiltered, a podcast by RightWFM Today, we're traveling to basically many places, but let's go with Eindhoven, the Netherlands. And I love my guest. She's absolutely incredible, and she has tons of knowledge that she agreed to share with us today. Okay. And the topic is one that's very sensitive for me and it's about capacity planning. But before we kick off with that, hey Adriana, how are you doing?

Adriana:

Hello, I'm doing fine. Thank you for inviting me. I'm ready to say what do I have from my experience to share with the rest of the people.

Irina:

Thank you so much for that and you have amazing background. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about your journey?

Adriana:

Let's say I have around 19 years of experience in customer service. I worked in finance, I worked in banks, I worked in all types of call centers. And for nine years, I'm working as a forecaster in capacity planning in workforce management. Of course, with the background of a mathematician. So adding all this, I'm I'm currently a forecaster management manager in the forecasting and capacity team at Groupon.

Irina:

This is important for you to mention because I have heard from different parties how good you are with calculations. So it's very important to know that Adriana also have a mathematical background, which is a very helpful in the area that we're going to be covering today. But I know that this topic is one that you and I both find very important and also one that's usually ignored. And it's, again, the topic about capacity planning and how we're struggling convincing senior stakeholders to get us seriously and start listening to the numbers that we're presenting. So would you mind sharing if you have ever had the situation where you're not taken seriously for this topic?

Adriana:

I can start with the beginning when I was a forecaster and of course I had to create the forecast and a capacity planner for our customer. And I prepared the monthly forecast, the weekly forecast for the entire year. And the customer came to me and said your forecast is wrong. What do you mean my forecast is wrong? I have a very good forecast accuracy. Why my forecast is wrong? I do not have money for your forecast. I have a budget and you have to work with my budget. So it was a very long conversation, a very long discussion showing numbers, right? Of course, showing numbers that my forecast is good and the budget wasn't created based on the expectation. I can say from the beginning it happened and I had to push back and not accepting to work with the budget, but to work with the actual data and with actual what is happening. And yes, my, my forecast happened, right? So the company had some issues in that part. Next year when we calculated the budget, my forecast was the one that started the budget.

Irina:

But that's a very typical situation and one of my biggest frustrations that I usually go into companies and I'm preparing the capacity planning and I'm explaining why the numbers are as they should. And usually senior stakeholders are telling me, no, we have a budget for X amount of employees and that's it. So the budget is driving the numbers and then we have to add up readjusting everything just to match the budget. So the pushback. Very often I would say is very big. So can you please share some tips and tricks? What does everyone do to convey the message of capacity planning?

Adriana:

That's it. Always be transparent. Always show numbers and analysis based on the numbers that you're showing. Convince your stakeholder to trust your judgment. I'm working at my current company for for a few years now, and I started with one single team. We were handling one single team, and now we are handling the entire department. All the teams, just because we want transparent, we said from our point of view as a capacity planners, what should be included with analysis, with calculations, convince them that the numbers that we show are the correct ones. Tips and tricks. Rely on the numbers, but rely on your concenter as well. Know your people, know the agents that are working, know your locations, know your stakeholders, know what targets do they have. So from my point of view, know everything. I believe this is the best Yeah.

Irina:

important that you're mentioning, because what often is happening from our perspective, and I definitely have done that mistake so much in the past, is that I was over relying the numbers. Just as numbers, not on the information behind those numbers. And what you're sharing right now is that the numbers are representative of people, of stakeholders, of the business as such. So we basically have to dig deeper in order to translate those numbers in a story that would make sense and other stakeholders would be able to relate to.

Adriana:

And one advice that I got at some point from from my manager was translate what you think, translate what you think. So your stakeholder understands the message because you can come and say we will have an increase of 20 percent of, I don't know what the channel, but translate that information in what it represents to him. When you're working with stakeholders, always translate the information in what it represents to him.

Irina:

What, how do we start? Because usually, and this is another thing that I don't know whether you share the same experience, but even if you're working with a WFM system, whether you're working with Excel or with a WFM system, Usually capacity planning is the weakest spot, so in a lot of tools even, the capacity planning is either unusable, either completely absent as such. And we often have to start from scratch, especially if you're new in your function and there isn't anyone to train you, so how do we start? Where do we start from?

Adriana:

Meeting, knowing the teams that we want to introduce in our capacity plan. For example, I have now a team that I'm trying to add in our staffing overview in our capacity from scratch. We didn't never have them. They never heard about WFM. So the first thing that I did, I had a meeting with the team. To explain him, to sell him what WFM can do to him.

Irina:

Mmhmm.

Adriana:

yes, the management direction was from the beginning. Yes, we are adding them. Point. But I wanted that manager to be convinced that having his team under our scope is the best thing for him.

Irina:

Okay.

Adriana:

So I started with explaining him what issues he has in the peak weeks. When he has to stop the leave allotments to everybody because his agents have to work. Then I explain him what do you do when you have flooding and you have a huge amount of shrinkage. What do you do in that situation? You do not have who to work. Then I explain him about coverage, about reaching service levels, because the agents don't want to work in all the shifts. Yes, but maybe we can adjust the shifts that are, and we can identify the correct pattern for each of them. So I try to sell step by step what capacity planning can do for his team. Yes, you have a team, let's say, of 20 people, but your requirement today is just 5. The rest of the agents can be scheduled in other days, and I try to explain him from capacity planning. We can determine how many agents we need per day, and then from scheduling point of view, we can support him. After the meeting he pinged me and said, yes now tell me what you need.

Irina:

Oh, amazing.

Adriana:

First of all, try to understand your teams. Try to get all your information all the, I don't know, specificity of the team, understand what the team does, understand their service levels. Because this team was practically a part of an entire process, but it was the middle part that I was missing. So I understood the process and I said, no, they need to be in our scope in order to have all the process working. So I had to, To, to convince him that for him is the best thing, not for me, for him is the best thing to be in under workforce management umbrella.

Irina:

You mentioned something so interesting that I haven't really heard before to be phrased in this way. You're saying I needed to sell him the idea of what WFM or capacity planning can do for him. And I think maybe this is where a lot of things are going wrong because we're over relying that if we show the numbers as such, people will be like, Amazing Intel, tell me how to get going, how to start, give you the money immediately. But actually, it is exactly what you're saying, the point of selling, like why are we going to them with these numbers? What are we trying to achieve? And often by not translating the message as such, they are left with the opinion that WFM always wants something. They always want more people. No, we don't care. We're working with the people that you give us overall. We're just trying to explain you what's the best possible way to operate your business.

Adriana:

indeed, and there are a lot of companies that think that they do not need WFM. Or maybe they need just a fine, let's say, calculation on what it's expected next year to start. And after that they rely on senior agents, on TLs, to do the best thing possible. Yeah, no, you have to actually sell them what is the added value that the workforce management and capacity planning can bring to a team. Yes, you can't survive without real time management. Because a senior can do it. But to have someone specialized and calculate how many agents you need in 15 minutes interval in order to reach out to your service level, this is what you need capacity planning. You need to be sure that agent has a holiday, that agent has a break, that agent has a training, that agent has a non productive activity to keep him happy at your work, right? You have to be sure that you're factoring absolutely everything in your capacity and in that requirement of 15 minutes. And this is not something that a TL has time to go into details. Maybe he has a possibility, right? But not have the time to go into that detail and calculate what workforce management can do.

Irina:

It is good that you're mentioning that because that was actually one of my next question towards you. I have so often seen, and you know what, it's always dependent on scale and size of the company, of course, but so many times it's seen as a side task at an exercise that you can do once a year and then you forget about it until next year and then you're presenting a plan and then. At best, you're refreshing that plan, some numbers in it once every couple of months and that's it. So how successful can we be with that approach? Oh,

Adriana:

any type of success in this type of approach. For me a good capacity plan. A good team held under good points is checking every week, check your attrition every week, see if your forecast on attrition goes where you expect, check your shrinkage, if it goes where you expect, if you see spikes, if you see something abnormal, reach out, right? Try to see what happened, try to exclude the situation that needs to be excluded, check your volumes, check your staffing. Check your agents, right? So from my point of view, a capacity plan, and in my capacity plan, the capacity planners have a check. So I can see that every week they checked something and it has a timestamp to be sure that we haven't missed anything. Yes we are checking everything because if you're not checking this week, you're attrition. You're not checking next week, you're attrition. Neither the other week, right? You're going to get yourself in a situation that you're losing 10 percent of your batch just in a month and you haven't seen it. Recruiting the 10%, it will take up to three months for you, right? So what if you've seen it and flagged it? Maybe the agents are not happy with their targets, right? You see it and you flag it from the beginning and discussion can happen, right? So you're stopping the attrition, but if nobody flags it, nobody will action on it. And we had situations when suddenly we've seen a spike on attrition, 10 people in one week. Wait a

Irina:

wow.

Adriana:

minute. So we reach out to our budget manager, to the delivery manager, to the TLs, and we try to understand what is the reason. Atiyah left and he left with with his people. To stop the attrition for the rest of the teams, they had discussions. They, but they didn't notice it because the agents were going with the resignation directly to HR. So they didn't see in the big picture that in that day, they will have 10 agents leaving because who can follow up in a team of 200, 300, 500, right? So be careful and do it every week. From my experience, this is the best way working. We are flagging, we have monthly meetings with the management, with the budget management to explain where we are and where the attrition is going and where the volumes are going and when we need hiring. So keep your team close because this is how you gain trust.

Irina:

I love that. And this is such a key advice that you have shared that, okay, if we're not revisiting our capacity plans, maybe you'll see a split. Pike in one month of the attrition, you wouldn't know, you wouldn't mention, you wouldn't care, you wouldn't understand what's driving it, but everything that happens have impact on the business. And I think this is the key thing that people are missing. We are gathering that story to understand what's happening with the business. That's it. And I love how detailed you are because you are You're effectively and actively looking for the story and for the information behind that numbers and trying to understand what's the root cause of a number, what's driving it and what other number it will impact and in what way. And I think this is the main and major story about capacity planning that people are missing, especially senior stakeholders. But because this, our listeners probably know that, adriana and I are joining a lot of webinars together, and we have been talking for, I don't know, probably the past year and a half, maybe. And I love your knowledge, love your expertise, and I remember something that you mentioned in one of our catch ups, behind the scenes, is that you don't understand why people are not paying more attention to a capacity plan, because this is where the money is. Because WFM can save you money, can optimize the money that you spend, or can waste a lot of money. Please give me the view behind that quote.

Adriana:

Yes, from my point of view, capacity planning is the one that actually creates the budget, creates the money, saves the company for unexpected, unnecessary spend, as you said, because if you're not making the correct assumption over your attrition then you just say usually in that country, the attrition, it's 10%. But that attrition doesn't happen because of your pool. I had situations when I had a team in Kuala Lumpur. One team was Chinese, one team was Muslim. We had no attrition in the Muslim team. Ever.

Irina:

Okay.

Adriana:

Never. When it came to Chinese, it was a huge rotation. We changed the entire pool twice per year.

Irina:

Oh, wow.

Adriana:

have to understand. And they were in the same city, right? But you need to understand your pool. You can have a correct assumption over your attrition. You're looking at some data, let's say, for a call center in a city that has a huge university. Most of your agents are students and during the year that nothing happens to your attrition and you say my attrition is zero and you forecast your attrition zero, but you do not look that in November, when school starts, you're going to have a huge spike on attrition. Your entire pool will change. This means change your strategy when it comes to hiring. Hire students, or if you hire students, hire them as part timers or split shift, Right? Change your attitude, change your way of hiring people. And this is what we are saying, right? As capacity planning, we are the ones calculating how the agents need to work for what shifts and what locations. Let's say you have a call center, you have a, not a call center, you have an activity, right? And you're basing it fully in one location. You have floodings, you have I don't know natural causes. That stop your agents to work. What do you do in that period? You're losing money. You're not selling anything. You're not supporting anyone. You get the fines from the state because nobody can reach out to you. So this means you're losing money. Why? Because you're hired just in one single location. Business continuity, split it in two. This is what capacity planning does. Capacity planning finds the correct. Place to hire. Yeah, but we cannot hire in other location because we do not have a manager there. Hire a manager! Come on! are situations that actually happen. Hire a manager there. Put someone in charge and split your workload into locations, three locations, multiple locations, just to be sure that your business is going. And this is capacity planning let's say, outcome. Because we see the agents and not hiring in time means that you're losing you're losing money. Hiring too much, you're losing money, right? Having activities that shouldn't happen, you're losing money. If a TL comes to me and say, Hey, I want for my team to have update time daily. Team meetings every week, coaching every week, and another meeting for the agents to have time to read their emails. But what do you do during the update time? Come on, let's take a step back. Oh, and on top of this, I want a quarterly meeting for the team, and I want a monthly meeting for the team. Wait a second, you have a weekly. Transform the weekly, right? So this is what capacity planning does. We make calculation on impact. Every time when a TL comes and say, I want another type of meeting to my team. Yes. This will decrease the capacity with 1. 88. Who's budgeting this? And we go and discuss with the budget manager, with the delivery manager. Okay. Is this cost correct? Should we have it? And I guarantee you 100 percent of the time that the TL will say, we do not need that meeting. No, it's okay. I don't need it.

Irina:

Because they don't think about the cost behind the activity. I think this is the sad part that once we're sucked into operations, we see what's happening right now, but we're missing the point of okay, but every single thing that we do or don't Cost money is the reality. Somebody goes to break 75 times. It costs you money. Somebody stays on after indefinitely and does nothing. It costs you money. Somebody is late twice every week, costs you money. And those are the things that we need to track, translate, predict, explain, factor in, and I love your passion so much about capacity planning because The way that you're describing it solidifies a message that I'm hoping reaches more people that capacity planning is not a side task, is not a task that you do once a year, it's a strategy. Any strategy behind your operations, as you mentioned, it has an impact on your recruitment. It has an impact on your cost, if you will, on your operations, on your business, on how you manage your agents, on how you manage the tasks of the teammates, and what they are supporting the agents with.

Adriana:

Yeah.

Irina:

I don't know, do you have any more tips and tricks for people?

Adriana:

Capacity planning is not just

Irina:

Mm

Adriana:

helping operation. It helps the business as well, not to lose money, but I'm going to give you an example. A few years ago I was contacted by one of our managers telling us do we need to have the phone lines opening weekend for a country, for a specific country, the small country? What we went and made an analysis for all the countries. To see where do we need to have the lines open and where not. They were 24 7 open. We reduced them Monday to Friday from 9 to 5. That's it. Why? Because we were in contact with merchants. And no merchant was saying it's his job after five, because he was a business owner, right? So he wouldn't stay after five or in weekends. There were no calls coming in weekend, but we were paying call agents to be there. There were no calls during the night, but we were paying the agents to be there. And they were locked in calls because if you get a chat, you cannot answer a call, right? So we were having capacity blocked and paid for nothing. We got back that time a lot of money for the company, just because we went a little more uncalculated. But what if? No country needs it. What if we needed just this? Let's calculate. Then we went and calculate for all the real time transactions, what is the actual need? Because the rest, you have the email, right? The deferred transaction. And nobody stays on the phone. Everybody sends an email or a chat if it's needed, right? Capacity planning did brought a lot of money back to the company by calculating the correct need of contact. So from my point of view, start of workforce management should be forecasting capacity planning, then a requirement with the schedules and real time monitoring. But have your forecasting capacity planning very well determined. The company can work with that.

Irina:

I second that and I echo everything that you're saying. And I feel like this should be always the starting point because before you start handling customers, open business and do, you need to understand how many people you have for your customers. And I think. We're, of course, everything is a balance in organizations, but we need to start thinking that the numbers, the story, the message that we're translating with capacity planning only exists because there is a corresponding business that needs to answer to this, to these requirements. So I think it's a great way to wrap up that conversation. Thank you so much, Adriana. As always, it's absolutely a pleasure to. To get your insights and your brain because you have so much to share and promise to, to visit the podcast again.

Adriana:

Super, super. Thank you for having me and hear you again later.

Irina:

See you. Bye

Adriana:

Thank you. bye.

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