About
MSC Cruises is the world’s third-largest cruise brand, operating globally with a fleet of 23 ships and employing over 30,000 people. The company is a market leader across Europe, South America, the Gulf region, and Southern Africa, where it holds a greater market share and deployed capacity than any other operator. The world’s fastest-growing cruise brand, MSC Cruises has also built a strong presence in the Caribbean, North America, and Far East markets. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, MSC Cruises is part of MSC Group, a Swiss-based shipping and logistics conglomerate with over 300 years of maritime heritage.
High-quality customer service is a critical success factor for MSC. The company has built a robust network of contact centers, staffed by hundreds of agents in various locations worldwide, supported by two BPOs.
Michele Pepe is the Corporate Workforce Planning Manager at MSC Cruises, based in Naples. With a background in electronic engineering and over seven years of consultancy experience with Accenture, Michele brings a strong foundation in technical expertise and change management. He joined MSC Cruises in 2004, initially working as part of the technical team, and transitioned to workforce management in 2016, where he led a change management project that established WFM as an essential tool across MSC’s contact centers. Today, he leads a team of planners and analysts dedicated to optimizing workforce planning for MSC’s global contact center operations.
Challenges
MSC Cruises’ exponential growth posed a significant challenge for the company’s contact centers, which lacked a unified WFM approach across markets. Each center managed schedules, annual leave, and shift swaps independently—mostly through manual processes and Excel spreadsheets. The role of planner was not even included in the contact center’s organization chart, reflecting the lack of a structured WFM function and culture at MSC.
This decentralized setup created inconsistency in planning and there was a time-consuming and error-prone process. Data from various contact centers had to be manually collected, normalized, and compiled to produce corporate reports.
“Just defining a common way of working with Excel, e.g. recording the number of calls by time slot and date in the same way was a challenge. It was hard work standardizing and ensuring consistency across all stakeholders.”
Additionally, the contact centers had to manage an extremely seasonal business. During peak seasons, MSC often struggled to maintain service levels, as they relied heavily on historical data and lacked predictive insights into fluctuating call volumes.
“Without WFM, we were not aware of upcoming volume surges. We made forecasts based on what happened last year, but had no idea about future peaks—whether it was a new vessel launch or a promotional campaign. Data anomalies were also common, e.g. following system outages.”
In 2016, MSC explored the possibility of adopting a commercial WFM solution to eliminate its dependence on spreadsheets. However, the project ultimately faltered due to the perceived complexity of the transition. At that time, most of their staff were not planners but contact center managers with a sales background, and they lacked a clear understanding of the specialized skills required for effective WFM planning.
Without a specialized WFM system and team, MSC struggled on with inconsistent service levels and abandoned calls, which affected both revenue and customer experience.
Introducing injixo
After the failure of their initial WFM solution, MSC conducted a rigorous search for a more intuitive, reliable system that would streamline their workforce planning and improve forecasting accuracy. They needed a solution that was simple enough for non-planner staff to use but powerful enough to handle the complexities of their contact centers, including managing supporting rapid growth, multiple time zones, and dealing with fluctuating data due to seasonality.
Eventually, MSC chose injixo. It not only met their operational needs, it was usable by all the stakeholders of WFM. MSC also valued the injixo approach to solution delivery, which is focused on outcomes and results, not just on implementing software. The injixo consultants provided impactful advice and insights throughout the whole startup process and beyond.
“One of the keys to our success with injixo was the support we received from Roberto, who was our main point of contact as Account Manager and subject matter expert. His patience, his expertise, and tailored guidance ensured a smooth journey, despite our limited experience with WFM tools.”
The injixo journey
MSC Cruises embarked on their journey with injixo in 2018, launching their first deployment at the Italian contact center. This initial rollout laid the groundwork for a full-scale deployment across other centers over the following two years. Today, MSC has all its users unified under a single WFM solution—a true milestone, fostering alignment across teams and countries.
The deployment process itself was ambitious, with MSC setting a four-week timeline for each center. While the technical setup went smoothly, the real challenge was change management.
“It wasn’t just about teaching people how to use the software. We needed everyone—from operations managers to team leaders—to truly understand the value of WFM and injixo. The planners, managers, and even the country heads had to be on board. It’s a change management project at multiple levels.”
By bringing each stakeholder group into the process, MSC ensured everyone—from operational staff to high-level decision-makers—understood the value of effective WFM and the responsibilities entailed.
injixo’s support was a cornerstone of the project’s success. “Their support has been outstanding! We’ve received assistance from day one and throughout the entire process.” This consistent involvement helped MSC’s teams fully embrace the new processes and laid the foundation for successful workforce optimization.
Ultimately, the impact on MSC was profound: injixo has completely transformed the way their teams work. From planners to agents, everyone now speaks the same language in terms of processes and KPIs.
Value and achievements
injixo enables MSC Cruises to proactively manage staffing needs, enable data-driven decision-making, and promote a collaborative, transparent work environment across all centers.
Customer benefits
Increasing customer expectations have made effective workforce management more critical than ever. MSC Cruises has achieved critical customer benefits by optimizing workforce management with injixo. By ensuring “the right people in the right place at the right time,” MSC reduced waiting times, delivering a smoother experience for B2C (business to consumer) customers, who are often first-time cruisers with high service expectations.
The contact center became essential to both sales and service. It also needed to support channels beyond traditional calls, like social media and instant messaging. By supporting staffing for these diverse channels, injixo is helping MSC meet new demands across regions and platforms.
Employee benefits
MSC Cruises’ workforce management transformation with injixo has had a significant impact on employee satisfaction, particularly among planners and agents. Planners, in particular, have gained confidence in managing schedules with greater accuracy and efficiency, thanks to the automation provided by injixo. The shift has allowed planners to save considerable time that was previously spent on manual tasks in Excel, eliminating the need for repetitive back-and-forth communications.
The injixo Me 'app' has given agents a new level of autonomy and control over their schedules. In more mature contact centers like the one in Italy, agents now use injixo Me to request time off and even swap shifts with suitably-skilled colleagues—all without requiring manager intervention.
This ease of scheduling and flexibility has streamlined day-to-day operations, making injixo invaluable to MSC. “We were asked to consider another workforce platform, but in the end, we refused because of the usability injixo provides. It’s simply the best we’ve seen,” Michele added. This comprehensive WFM solution is enhancing not only the planners’ experience but also empowering agents, fostering a work environment where employees feel more engaged and supported.
“We were asked to consider another workforce platform, but in the end, we refused because of the usability injixo provides. It’s simply the best we’ve seen”
Business benefits
Enhanced control over abandonment rate (ABR) and service level (SL) — MSC's team previously used real-time monitoring of ABR and SL reactively. When the ABR turned red, immediate action had to be taken. With injixo's forecasting and scheduling, ABR goals are now built in at the planning stage and achieved “with little intervention on the day”. injixo enables the planning team to proactively ensure service quality.Clear visibility of shrinkage — Shrinkage is now easily tracked through dashboards, available to all stakeholders, including external BPOs.Thanks to the injixo API, Michele has created fantastic dashboards in Power BI and shared them across the company, making external stakeholders aware of each KPI and its importance. This transparency supports better decision-making and accountability throughout the organization.
Introduction of new KPIs — injixo enabled MSC to broaden its KPI monitoring to include important metrics such as adherence, occupancy, and utilization, which are now tracked for both in-house and outsourced teams. Schedule adherence has been gamified by creating a score composed of various KPIs. This fosters motivation and has improved team performance.
Breaking down silos across departments — injixo facilitated cross-functional collaboration, bridging the gap between departments like planning, marketing, revenue, and HR. WFM is now the entry point for budget questions that come not only from the contact center but from revenue and other departments, which strengthened the role of WFM within MSC’s broader business strategy.
Seamless integration for change management — injixo’s flexibility has supported MSC in major transitions, such as a CRM migration, ensuring continuity and collaboration. MSC is sharing one system and one technology with planners in every contact center. This unified approach significantly enhances change management capabilities and overall operational efficiency.
The future
Looking ahead, MSC Cruises is facing key transformations in customer interaction and workforce management with injixo will be key in supporting these shifts.
Non-phone channels such as chat and instant messaging are increasing in volume and importance. This means that workforce strategies need to be adapted to manage the new digital channels efficiently. injixo's flexible WFM solution will be essential in helping MSC Cruises to forecast demand for these evolving channels, ensuring smooth transitions and optimized scheduling.
Looking further into the future, the potential of AI is top of mind. Michele notes “if artificial intelligence can be harnessed, the capacity of our contact center will be infinite.” This revolution will require careful planning of workforce capacity. For example, if AI handles routine customer queries automatically, the queries that still need human intervention will inevitably have longer handling times and more volatile volumes.
In this evolving landscape, injixo’s expertise in workforce optimization will be essential for MSC Cruises to adapt, stay ahead of digital trends, and manage a hybrid workforce where both technology and human agents play key roles.