Amazon's Customer Service (CS) planning department, Worldwide Capacity Planning is seeking an experienced Headcount Planner to join the EU CS Headcount Planning (EU CS HCP) team. The team is responsible for long-term operational contact centre headcount planning, for multi-site, worldwide, internal and outsourced CS sites. This is a highly visible role and one that is ideal for an experienced contact centre planner with a capacity planning background.

Key job responsibilities
The role holder is responsible for the creation and delivery of the long-term capacity plans for against the forecasts across the 1-4 year window. The HCP leads strategic and tactical discussions with their business partners in finance, operations, outsourcing and capacity planning to optimize the plans and build the required level of flexibility for peak planning to ensure excellent customer experience.

Through strategic planning, the HCP focusses on customer centric plans that enable a good experience for Customer Service Associates (CSA) while optimizing for cost. This requires experience of network simplification, ability to dive deep to understand complex data sets, and identification for optimizing staffing that balances customer and CSA experience.

The role provides exposure to senior operational leaders which requires the HCP to earn trust through effective collaboration and negotiation. Leading meetings to present the long-term plans and gain buy-in for network strategy is a monthly and quarterly requirement where the HCP can be very influential in shaping the future of the business.

This all requires the ability to dive deep and produce regular reporting and analysis what helps to shape the strategic decision making for the operational plans.

A day in the life
In the role there are weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual cycles for delivering the plans. While there is a level of preparing for these planning cycles, other days are filled by working on projects to automate processes, standardize ways of working, or building new tools. There are also strong connections to business partner teams where we collaborate to solve problems for our customers or people.

About the team
The team size is 14 in total, working across locations in Europe and India. There is a mix of tenure from 1 year to 17 years and a range of diverse backgrounds from automotive engineering to contact centre planners from different industries. It's a very close knit team that supports each other really well and draws on the unique strengths of the team to keep improving year after year.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience in planning for contact centers across multiple sites and countries.
- Requires a degree in statistics, engineering, mathematics, economics or relevant discipline
- Ability to work efficiently in a dynamic and ambiguous environment by combining analytical rigor and judgment.
- Excellent communication skills both verbal and written (ability to present detailed technical analysis, assumptions, and recommendations succinctly.
- Proficient in Microsoft Excel and comfortable in dealing with large amounts of data.
- Experience utilizing SQL, VBA.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Experience in various WFM planning tools
- Application of data mining/machine learning algorithms is preferred
- Experience with making large scale optimization and predictive models is preferred
- Some programming experience is a plus to automate tools whenever appropriate
- Experience in operations management role will be an added advantage.
- Strong commitment to exceptional customer experience, enthusiasm to drive positive change and persuasive ability.