Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Make WFO Part of Your Digital Transformation
Studies suggest that a good portion of call centers still use spreadsheets for forecasting and scheduling. If your business is one of them, now’s the time to consider a workforce optimization solution that can automate and bring added value to that work.
After all, digital transformation is upon us. That means new, more connected competitors are raising the bar on customer experience. But it also means businesses of all types can now leverage technology to become more efficient, innovative, and profitable. And that can include you.
New WFO solutions can help call centers create more accurate forecasts, enabling them to be more efficient in how they set schedules. That’s important, considering it will drive optimal customer service, help call centers stay within their budgets, and increase agent satisfaction by allowing for more predictable workloads.
A Monet Software (News - Alert) white paper illustrates how businesses that use spreadsheets for forecasting and scheduling can miss important trends that can adversely impact their call centers. In this example, a manager finds a weekly variance of four percent on a forecast. Monday, the forecast is 12 percent under call volume, Tuesday it’s eight percent under, and Wednesday through Friday are all eight percent over. So, the four percent sounds pretty good.
The problem is that customer service probably suffered early in the week, and the call center was overstaffed later in the week. Plus, customer service representatives were overloaded early in the week, and they may have seen stressed out from that, creating the potential for agent churn. This broad variability during the week is not ideal, and it could’ve been more consistent using a workforce optimization solution.
WFO systems also play a key role in helping call centers meet their key performance indicators. They do that by allowing managers to check KPIs against historical data, and they can exhibit relationships between various KPIs, like how Average Talk Time affects Service Level, for example. That way, managers can make adjustments where needed for optimal results.
These solutions also track adherence in real time, helping call centers avoid over and under staffing, missed service levels, and shrinkage. WFO systems can also send alerts when guidance is required and provide dashboards that indicate when further training is advisable.
Businesses shopping for a WFO solution should consider the following factors in their selection: capabilities, cost, ease of implementation, ease of use, integration with existing hardware, metrics delivered, ROI, scalability, and unification.