Call Center Management Featured Article
Why Call Center Management Must Be Proactive
What is the top priority for you in your call center management role? Is it to ensure that your call center scheduling matches all forecasted activity? Or are you more concerned with the performance metrics coming out of your individual teams? Your primary focus may not even be considered in these options, but to stay focused you do need to stay proactive, anticipating activities before they disrupt business.
Monet Software recently published a blog on this topic, highlighting the importance of the proactive call center manager. The primary reason for this focus is to ensure you’re staying ahead of the curve, keeping your sights on careful, strategic planning, calculating the variables and delivering the right forecasts that ensure proper scheduling.
At the same time, you also have to be able to respond to last minute changes in demand and availability. It’s the makings of constant stress if you don’t have the right solutions in place. Monet Software’s workforce management (WFM) solution allows you to make the process easier, more precise and even more flexible. Intra-day trends are easily tracked for immediate adjustments and for optimal schedule creation.
Monet also offers a few tips on how you and others in contact center management can be more proactive, including adding meetings, time off exceptions and training before the roster is generated so as to close gaps in shift placement or roster assignments. If these things need to be added after the fact, the WFM system will automatically optimize them so that manager overhead is reduced. Plus, this automation is in line with your business initiatives so as to deliver the intended benefit.
Scheduling team meetings in a way that doesn’t disrupt business is also critical for optimal call center performance. When sessions are an impromptu occurrence, the WFM platform makes it easy with little to no impact. Plus, it allows for wider lunch and break windows through flexible shift profiles. To give agents and schedulers more flexibility, you can enter the maximum allowable time in the Exception Calendar/Time Off Manager.
While no single approach to proactive activities is the right solution in every environment, simply making it a priority to be proactive can make a difference. The point is to identify those areas that are causing inefficiencies right now and making the necessary adjustments to start proactively tackling these challenges. As a result, you’ll ultimately spend less time on these activities and enjoy better outcomes.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi