Call Center Management Featured Article
Call Center Management Needs a Flexible Workforce Management Solution that Accommodates Changing Goals
Most companies that run contact centers today have a series of goals they aim to meet daily, monthly or yearly. This may involve metrics that measure contact center efficiencies such as the time it takes to handle a call, whether the call was handled properly and whether the customer reports being satisfied. Keeping costs down is usually of paramount importance.
Still, even with goals in place, many contact centers find that they’re simply not doing a good enough job of keeping customer satisfaction high. It may be because contact center management is putting the wrong goals in place, or using the wrong methods to achieve them, according to Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software (News - Alert).
“’We want to improve customer service.’ ‘We want to improve our training.’ Great – now how are you going to do it? The more specific you can get with your objectives, the more likely you will be to accomplish them. When you set more precise goals (‘We want to lower our average handle time’), WFM will provide the data that can be used to make it happen.”
In a busy, complex contact center, manual workforce management methods simply won’t work: there are too many factors to account for. In addition, managers need customized alerts for when one factor goes out of whack. This may mean making significant and fast changes to the schedule. It may also mean that agents will need targeted training on a regular basis in order to meet new goals.
“With the Performance Analysis component of WFM, managers have access to reports and analysis of all agent activities, including their schedule adherence and key performance indicators,” wrote Ciarlo. “That will help to further target training sessions.”
To enable the contact center to meet its often-fluid goals, they may need to be changed frequently. New product or service launches, changing contact center volume, new communications media or even outside events like storms or shipping delays could result in a resetting of the goals for the call center.
“Don’t make a list of goals for the year and wait until December to review them,” wrote Ciarlo. “With quarterly targets, you’ll know sooner if your efforts are working, and can make beneficial changes – which is certainly better than going another 6-7 months with a less than optimal system in place. The real-time monitoring and work history data delivered by WFM allows managers to track progress toward quarterly goals.”
Most important, companies need the ability to make changes to goals that don’t overly burden agents with confusing and conflicting information, which can lead to significant agent dissatisfaction. (As in, “Does my manager even know what he’s doing?”) A good workforce management solution can keep schedules and training fair for agents without confusing them or burning them out. For this reason, it’s vital that schedules aren’t rigid and written in stone. With manual methods, this simply isn’t possible for most call center management.
“Agents are employees but they are people first, with families and outside interests and holiday plans they would like to keep,” wrote Ciarlo. “Flexible scheduling makes it easier for agents to work shifts that are more convenient, and when they have that option they are likely to be more productive and provide better service.”
Edited by Stefania Viscusi