Call Center Management Feature Article

April 14, 2011

Effective Call Center Management Relies on Workforce Management

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Those leading in the call center space understand the power of workforce management when it comes to call center staffing. This recent Monet Software blog focused on how this platform can deliver true value for call center management. For managers who are already scheduling and forecasting with spreadsheets – and making this process work – it may be a stretch to recognize the value in workforce management.

When customer feedback is assessed, however, it seems that call center management improves greatly with such platforms as call centers are able to improve staffing accuracy, gain more visibility into call center operations, drive schedule adherence throughout the day, react much faster to fluctuations in call volumes and handle call exceptions much better.

Leveraging more accurate forecasting enables call center management to optimize the call center schedule and increase the likelihood that the targeted service levels will be reached. In other words, call center management can avoid under-staffing and over-staffing, both of which waste money.

With workforce management (WFM) solutions in place, call center management can more easily run different scenarios, forecast for special days, and include call history more effectively to achieve the desired levels of high accuracy.

Call centers are alive with activities and call center management has a significant task in managing all of those activities to the benefit of the organization as a whole. In fact, one of the biggest challenges within the call center is to forecast and schedule non-call activities. When robust WFM solutions are in place, non-call activities are part of the forecasting and scheduling process.

Productivity within the center is driven by schedule flexibility. Call center management can leverage WFM to implement more flexible schedules that address the needs of the center – such as fluctuating call volumes – and the needs of the agent – such as flexible start and end times, or time off – to produce higher productivity for the center as a whole.

Call center management must also pay attention to shrinkage to protect service levels and budgets. WFM allows for real-time adherence and reports so that call center management can work closely with agents to reduce shrinkage, or that time spent not on the phone with customers.

These platforms allow call center management to better educate agents regarding the impact of adherence and set measurable goals. Adherence reports can be shared with agents and causes for out-of-adherence can easily be discussed. In the process, all parties work together to discover ways to improve as a team overall, driving optimal performance and creating satisfied customers.

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