Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Improving Performance and Keeping Costs Contained with Workforce Management Technology
Most contact centers strive to keep control of runaway costs while at the same time trying to improve the quality of service being offered to customers. It often seems like a conflicting mission: doing more with less becomes increasingly hard year after year. For this reason, companies need to be choosy about the new technologies they invest in, and ensure that any new solution will allow for better efficiency, more insight and more control over operations. This way, the contact center can actually achieve the goal of keeping costs under control while keeping quality high.
Workforce management is one of those technologies that can help achieve both goals. An automated workforce management (WFM) solution provides insight into contact center operations and will play an integral role in establishing policies that boost customer service, according to a recent blog post by Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce management (WFM) solutions provider Monet Software. This insight can help contact centers understand where costly and time-consuming training can be applied for the best possible results, even allowing them to skip broad, general training sessions that not all agents may need.
“Once basic training has been completed, agents should be regularly guided toward and tested on their abilities to meet the contact center’s service goals,” wrote Ciarlo. “With the performance analysis component of WFM, managers have access to reports, statistics and analysis of all agent activities, including their schedule adherence and key performance indicators (KPIs). That will help to further target training sessions.”
Using workforce management as a framework, Ciarlo also recommends that contact centers self-evaluate when it comes to goals and achievements (or failures) more often, a task that becomes cost-effective and easy with modern workforce management.
“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 to 7 months with a less than optimal system in place,” he wrote. “The real-time monitoring and work history data delivered by WFM allows managers to track progress toward quarterly goals.”
Finally, flexible scheduling – easily possible with a good workforce management solution but nearly impossible with spreadsheets or other manual methods – can help improve employee retention and boost satisfaction. This leads to lower turnover, which leads directly to lower costs and higher customer satisfaction.
“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,” Ciarlo wrote. “With WFM, shift-bidding and shift-swapping (with a manager’s approval) is streamlined, while holidays and other special events can be factored more efficiently into overall scheduling.”
If you’re looking for an efficient place to put your limited contact center technology budget, upgrading your workforce management may be a purchase that quickly pays for itself, both in cash and customer and employee goodwill.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi