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Call Center Scheduling Feature Articles
6/8/2009
Schedule Flexibility: The Key to Happier Call Center Agents Want to keep your call center agents happy? Then give them flexibility!
5/8/2009
Call Center Scheduling Software: The Perfect Tool to Control Shrinkage Shrinkage is a topic that is getting even more attention in the call center today. As companies are struggling to weather the recession and budgets keep getting tighter, making the most of every dollar is essential.
3/31/2009
Call Center Scheduling Software Can Improve Agent Training Today's call center scheduling solutions, also known as workforce management solutions, have come a long way in terms of their capabilities, especially compared to the "old days" of spreadsheets.
3/27/2009
Call Center Scheduling Solutions Challenge Spreadsheets for Dominance Spreadsheets can be a wonderful thing, designed to make tracking and reconciliation a streamlined process. In the call center, spreadsheets have long helped managers to schedule agents according to forecasted needs. While moving to computerized spreadsheets was a smart move years ago, automated call center scheduling solutions are now making spreadsheets look cumbersome and time consuming by comparison.
3/20/2009
Top Advantages of Call Center Scheduling Software If you're still using spreadsheets to schedule your call center agents, and you're looking to cut costs, gain efficiencies and improve customer service (and what contact center manager doesn't want to accomplish those things?), then you've got to get on board with call center scheduling software.
3/13/2009
Still Using Spreadsheets to Schedule your Contact Center Agents? Are you still using spreadsheets to schedule your contact center agents? Time to start saving money and improving customer service with workforce management software!
3/4/2009
How Much Can the Call Center Save Through Automated Scheduling? It is not unusual for a call center manager to think about the multiple ways to save money when scheduling for agents within the call center. After all, he or she must be able to keep within specified payroll budgets while also ensuring the right amount of coverage to meet customer service standards.
2/26/2009
Automated Call Center Scheduling Streamlines Customer Service It is somewhat of an understatement to say that call center managers have a difficult job. Not only do they have the responsibility of ensuring an optimal experience for all customers involved in interactions with the call center, they must also effectively manage a variety of people with different skills, educations, work preferences and availability.
2/18/2009
Multi-Skill Agents Present Challenges in Call Center Scheduling Call centers have come a long way since their creation. What was once in place to handle live voice calls to and from customers has now morphed into multi-channel customer interaction centers that handle anywhere from thousands to millions of interactions every year.
2/12/2009
Call Center Scheduling Solutions Improve Overall Call Center Operations There is a delicate balance that must be achieved within the call center to ensure that the proper number of agents are scheduled for a given time period. While call center managers must properly forecast for call volumes in both peak and non-peak times, he or she must also take into consideration cost of operation.
2/6/2009
Automated Call Center Scheduling Eliminates Headaches Associated with Spreadsheets The number of elements that must be managed efficiently to run a smooth call center can seem daunting if each were to be examined separately. It would be even more overwhelming if each of these processes had to be managed and executed manually. The result would likely be a disorganized mess and unhappy customers.
1/28/2009
Report: Home Agents Add Flexibility, Productivity, But What About Security? Home agents are increasingly being seen by contact centers as a valuable asset, thanks to their increased flexibility and productivity, however concerns still linger regarding remote management, and security.
1/16/2009
Call Center Scheduling Solutions Streamline Vacation Requests Although the holidays are behind us once again, the one constant is that they will roll around again. When that time comes, will your call center be ready to handle the influx of call volumes and schedule according to changing needs and vacation requests? As customer service continues to be vital for all companies, falling down on the job during a heavy call time is not an option.
1/9/2009
Reducing Attrition Key to Contact Center Success As attrition costs are a preventable expenditure within the contact center, it is important to understand why employees leave their position. According to an industry benchmarking study, agents cited promotion within a company as the primary reason for agent turnover – a positive reflection on the industry.
12/12/2008
Personality-Based Call Center Scheduling Creates a Positive Environment Call center scheduling is an important aspect of properly managing a call center. In fact, whether or not agents are properly scheduled will determine the level of service provided to customers, the efficiency of the call center, and the satisfaction of each employee. As employee satisfaction plummets, attrition increases.
12/4/2008
Call Center Scheduling Solutions Drive Efficiency Call centers throughout the global industry have been experiencing increased pressure as a result of the economic turmoil that appears to be running rampant throughout the world. In an effort to ensure that call centers can continue to deliver the high level of service customers have come to expect, many have turned to call center scheduling solutions.
11/24/2008
Call Center Scheduling Ensures Optimal Customer Experience More than once a customer has called into a customer contact center, annoyed that he or she has to answer so many questions in the interactive voice response (IVR) stage of the call. While the consumer may view this as an unnecessary step in the process of reaching a live agent, in reality, this is a critical step for the contact center to ensure the caller is matched with the right agent.
11/19/2008
Effective Call Center Scheduling Creates Optimal Environment A stressful work environment can easily create higher rates in absenteeism, increase work-related illness and drive out of control attrition. Such an environment is not unheard of in the contact center industry, yet it does not have to be the rule. Those contact centers who are using workforce management solutions to manage agent scheduling often find they experience less absenteeism and illness, as well as lower attrition.
11/11/2008
Call Center Scheduling Must Apply to All Agent Activities As the economy continues to put a strain on call centers, organizations are struggling to maintain strong customer service deliverables while also cutting costs. In an effort to ensure that their call centers can remain in place and not succumb to offshoring draws, many of these centers are looking to integrated applications that can improve productivity and reduce costs.
11/5/2008
Call Center Scheduling Leads to Optimal Performance Unfortunately for contact centers, they often have the stigma of a liability. Sure, they play a vital role in the interaction between customer and company, but it is a cost that does not have a revenue association. In addition, it also has to be managed effectively and efficiently as possible or risk being outsourced.
10/29/2008
Ongoing Demand for Live Agents Drives Need for Call Center Scheduling Traditional call centers that existed to merely answer phones or make outgoing calls have morphed over time to become multi-channel contact centers that offer customers a variety of ways to interact with a company, including self-service options via speech automation, Web sites and more. As these changes occurred, the dynamics within call center scheduling also changed.
10/23/2008
Call Center Scheduling Essential with Self-Service Model As the global economy faces a tightening of the belt, companies are seeking ways to reduce their operation costs, while also delivering what customers expect to keep them coming back. Proper call center scheduling can play a key role in critical strategies.
10/16/2008
Proper Scheduling for Contact Centers is Essential for Success Scheduling within the contact center can be a delicate matter. If agents are not scheduled according to accurate forecasts, the center will either experience higher payroll costs due to overstaffing, or poor service delivery as the center will lack the necessary agent numbers to handle the volume of calls.
10/6/2008
Study Reveals Vast Opportunity for Workforce Management Solutions Scheduling within the call center can be a tricky task as each agent has a different skill set, call volumes can change according to campaigns or the economy, and proper forecasting relies on variables that cannot be controlled and therefore can prove to be unpredictable at times.
9/30/2008
Effective Call Center Scheduling Increases Customer Satisfaction Call centers operate in a dynamic industry. Call volumes can fluctuate greatly, increasing and decreasing demand put on the contact center staff. Managers strive to forecast call volumes in order to ensure they have the right number of staff available for any given shift, but the process can be time consuming and flawed when done manually.
9/17/2008
Study Finds U.K. Agents Suffering in Contact Centers It really should not be any surprise to learn that for some individuals working in the contact center industry, their chosen profession can be a detriment to their health. Whether they have a hard time handling the stress of the job or their environment is not designed around ergonomics, the reality is that the job can be tasking for some – even to the point of causing long term problems.
8/18/2008
Study Shows Workforce Management Still Underutilized in Contact Centers, Despite Growth In the world of contact centers, one of the most valuable, yet underused solution is that of workforce management. Robust workforce management solutions have proven to be able to streamline operations, maximize employee work time, forecast for peaks and valleys in call volume, enhance productivity and provide a better overall environment.
7/16/2008
Organizations Benefit by Promoting Relaxing Vacations for Employees The stories of employees so dedicated to their jobs that they struggle to leave the office, resonate throughout a variety of industries. But, is this actual dedication, or is it a result of extreme anxiety due to fear?
5/19/2008
Call Center Scheduling Prevents Chaos Most people would be hard pressed to find an individual consumer who has never had the privilege of interacting with a call center. Stories can be both good and bad, but chances are that most of us have had the pleasure of waiting on hold for the "next available agent."
4/23/2008
Working While Sick Does Not Lead to Productive Environment Absenteeism in the contact center can have a significant impact on the center's ability to provide proper customer service, meet KPIs, improve performance and meet team goals for the day, week or month.
4/4/2008
Call Center Scheduling Call center scheduling plays an important role in today's call center for its ability to effectively manage and plan agent work schedules to maximize productivity while also keep agents happy.
2/19/2008
Research Shows Workforce Management Gaining Ground Workforce management software is considered by some to be one of the key software applications in the contact center that can help promote efficiency and productivity. The challenge in the market has proven to be complete acceptance throughout the contact center.
2/7/2008
2008: The Year of Workforce Optimization As anybody who manages a contact center knows, the seemingly impossible task that needs to be accomplished every day is, "Make More With Less." While budgets and headcounts get cut, expectations of better sales, better service, greater customer retention and satisfaction rise.
1/10/2008
Workforce Management Solutions Provider Left Bank Solutions Inc. Changes its Name to Monet Software Inc. To better reflect the product brands it offers, Left Bank Solutions Inc. has changed its name to Monet Software Inc. In addition the company has adopted a new corporate identity, including a new logo and a new website that can be found at www.monetsoftware.com.
1/10/2008
Contact Center WFM Market to Grow by 20 Percent in 2008 DMG Consulting has published the "2008 Contact Center Workforce Management Market Report," a comprehensive and timely guide to the essential and evolving contact center workforce management market, products and vendors.
11/26/2007
Software as a Service Trend Continues to Sweep the Call Center Industry The Software as a Service (SaaS) trend continues to sweep the call center industry, as companies are discovering the many advantages of going with hosted versus on-premise solutions. With SaaS for the call center, applications such as IVR, ACD, predictive dialing, workforce management and CRM are hosted on a shared platform in a data center and delivered to the agents via a dedicated network or the public Internet. With these increasingly sophisticated turnkey solutions, which have much greater power and flexibility compared to the ASP solutions of the past, a company can rapidly deploy full featured contact center for fraction of the cost of a new, on-premise system.
8/3/2007
Left Bank Solutions Releases Three New Editions of its Monet WFM Solution Left Bank Solutions, Inc., a provider of hosted workforce optimization solutions for the contact center, has released three new versions of its workforce management solution, Monet WFM, each tailored for a specific market segment.
2/23/2007
An Effective Workforce Management Solution Makes Sense for the Call Center Take call center scheduling with a call center that operates on a 24x7 schedule, for instance. In such an environment, call center managers need to know what time of day the center will experience the highest call volumes, what type of calls they will be and how to properly schedule the employees that can address specific issues and others that can handle basic calls. If each of these employees were available 24x7, proper forecasting could go a long way in preparing the call center to handle any number of peaks and valleys.
12/11/2006
Workforce Management: Automated Solutions Help Industries Outperform Using an automated WFM solution, it is easier to forecast and develop optimal schedules free from over or understaffing, which could hinder performance or increase cost. With real-time labor tracking, levels of work can be monitored; at whatever time the information is needed.
12/8/2006
Call Center Scheduling Must Go Beyond the Calls Effective workforce management solutions can be a great tool to use to properly forecast and schedule in the multi-channel contact center.
12/1/2006
Unified Communications (UC) Pays Off In "Customer Productivity" Rich, Web-based customer services are continually increasing and displacing the limitations of the voice-only telephone as a first step for customer access to information and self-service applications.
11/21/2006
Steps to Effective Call Center Scheduling Call Center Scheduling can be a challenge in that the manager wants to ensure that the center is staffed to respond to anticipated call volumes, but not overstaffed so that agents are sitting idle. Understaffing can create an even bigger problem as customers are forced to wait longer to speak with a live agent and agents are stressed with a heavier work load while trying to still deliver excellent customer service.
11/17/2006
Understanding Competencies Will Lead to Effective Training Programs Training in the call center can make the difference between an agent’s success and failure. Ultimately, the same is true for the entire center. The challenge for call center managers is finding the right balance of training among the variety of experience, talents and skills for the different agents.
10/30/2006
Left Bank Solutions and HigherGround Combine Workforce Management and Business Intelligence Tools Call Centers challenged with optimizing their call centers in both the workforce management and business intelligence areas will now have a bundled solution with an innovative advantage.
10/26/2006
Call Center Scheduling: A Vital Element in Workforce Management One of the most important elements in workforce management solutions of today is scheduling. Call center scheduling not only helps meet staffing needs, but also takes the burden of maintaining schedules and workflows away from managers, and allowing them to focus on business areas that matter most for their operation.
10/9/2006
Start with the 'Must Haves' When Searching for Workforce Management Solutions Proper forecasting and call center scheduling of employees to handle customer issues from multiple communication channels can be complex to the point that it consumes nearly 100 percent of that manager’s time and 100 percent accuracy is literally impossible.To help combat the challenges that these managers face, many contact centers implement workforce management solutions to better manage employees and projected workflows.
10/3/2006
Call Center Scheduling: What a Relief Call center scheduling can sometimes seem like a guessing game for managers. Deciding what hours to give agents and working around their schedules, holidays and other events can be daunting enough. Introduce the idea of staffing agents based on their skill sets and the need to change staffing levels based call volumes--- and an even more difficult element is created.
9/27/2006
Left Bank Solutions' Call Center Scheduling Channel Launches on TMCnet The latest news, feature articles, white papers and case studies educate call center management about scheduling solutions using the Call Center Scheduling platform.
9/25/2006
Five Key Elements to Remember When Selecting an Outsourced Contact Center Solution Considering that the contact center selected will be employing individuals to interact with your customers, treating the selection of such services as a mere inconvenience is putting your future revenue, profit and growth potential at risk. Even if contact center solutions are not your prime area of focus, there are things that you can look for in selecting this outsourced service to ensure that your customer interactions are handled as efficiently and professionally as possible.
9/18/2006
Workforce Management: A Good Investment for Call Centers of Any Size It is in this type of situation where workforce management makes sense, as it is focused on making agents as productive as possible. Put simply, workforce management ensures that there are plenty of agents on hand for peak call periods and that these agents are not sitting idle during lower volume periods through accurate forecasting and optimization call center scheduling.
8/29/2006
Proper Contact Center Employee Training Leads to Optimal Environment Contact center supervisors know that proper call center scheduling is one of the biggest challenges that they face in creating efficient operations. Peaks and valleys in call volume dictate the level of staff required and when those levels fall short. Under these conditions, agents can become rushed and stressed and customer service levels can suffer, thus impacting the bottom line.
8/9/2006
The Best Call Center Customer Care Services Are Achievable With the Right Mix The best call center customer care services consists of the perfect mix of an inbound call center with 24x7 access, a proper workforce management that provides appropriate call center scheduling and call center training, effective call center software that affords the appropriate tools for efficiency and a talented and enthusiastic pool of agents.
8/4/2006
Staffing: Management's Greatest Headache Call Center Scheduling and Staffing are typically the greatest headache in contact center workforce management – too many staff and costs rise; too few and customer service suffers badly – and if service deteriorates too much, callers will defect to the competition. Striking a balance, therefore, is the key to productivity and efficiency.
6/23/2006
Contact Centers Stand to Gain Productivity from Empowered Agents Contact center managers today are constantly paying attention to performance measures in a bid to improve workforce management. Things like service level, abandon rates, contact rates, sales per hour, resolution rates and more are monitored daily. While these measures are important and necessary to report the effectiveness of workforce management in the contact center, agents are not always aware of how their performance affects those metrics. Call Center Scheduling ChecklistCall Center Scheduling WhitepapersCall Center Scheduling Case StudiesCall Center Scheduling ResourcesCall Center Scheduling Daily News Alerts |
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