Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Automation Driving Demand for Highly-Skilled Jobs in the Call Center
The focus on global service delivery providers in the past few years has been driving a competitive advantage through more efficient processes. While such an approach is sometimes just sugar-coated policies put in place to keep people in line, those actually driving change in their environments are reaping the benefits.
In the customer service arena, call center scheduling is one of the more important and more challenging activities. You must have accurate forecasting to determine the level of anticipated business. If this forecasting has too large of a margin of error, call center scheduling will either result in too many or too few agents for a given period of time.
Automation in this space is certainly contributing to a shift in the industry as a whole. According to HfS Research, advances in digital labor solutions are quickly offering new benefits in productivity for those in service delivery. These benefits are realized through a reduction in the size of global IT and business services workforces.
The research company’s model, theHfS Future Workforce Impact Model offers insight into the true impact of intelligent automation. The model is the result of 1,477 primary research interviews of industry stakeholders to evaluate the impact on low, medium and skilled employment in the global services industry, especially with emerging developments in automation and digital technologies.
As a result of this research, results point to the potential for a 56 percent increase in highly-skilled positions and an 8 percent increase in medium-skilled positions by 2021. For those individuals looking to find low-skilled positions, the opportunities are expected to decrease by as much as 30 percent in the same timeframe. These positions are being phased out over the next five years as the demands of the typical call center environment are changing.
HfS Chief Analyst and CEO, Phil Fersht, lead author of the report, shared in a statement: "There are challenging times ahead, but where there is change there is always opportunity. The advantage will go to those nations investing in the next waves of opportunities, not those stubbornly resisting innovation and obsessively trying to protect legacy business models that won't be around in another decade."
In short, automation in activities like call center scheduling, forecasting, workforce management and other capabilities within the call center is streamlining activities and reducing the need for the larger agent base. To ensure optimal performance, those able to recruit and retain highly skilled individuals will achieve a competitive advantage, weeding out those who do little to advance the bottom line.
Edited by Alicia Young