Workforce Management Featured Article
Do You Design Your Workforce Management with the Customer in Mind?
The talk surrounding the typical contact center is generally focused on agent activities, customer satisfaction, the consistent reduction in overall costs and the efficient scheduling of all available agents. The last item on this list can sometimes be a challenge when the call center is accustomed to running multiple shifts, with various agents who bring quality skill sets to the table. Workforce management often plays a part, but what does that look like on the customer end?
A recent Monet Software blog highlighted workforce management from the customers’ view and how call center management tends to overlook this concept. It’s easy to approach workforce management from an internal perspective only. After all, the manager has to evaluate historical call volumes, campaign expectations, agent availability and more.
They also have to pay attention to overall costs, optimal service levels and improved efficiencies. If these elements are designed and measured only from the inside of the organization, there is a significant opportunity missed for improvements. If the performance of the center and its agents fail to meet the expectations of the customer base, any investments in the process are wasted. As a result, internal goals must match the expectations of the customer.
The best way to achieve this is for the call center manager to put him or herself in the place of the customer. If they were on the other end of the phone, what would they use to describe the positive customer experience? Most likely, we all want someone to answer the call quickly – so it’s important that agents are available. We also want our calls routed to the person best suited to answer our question or resolve our issue – so multiple transfers are out of the question. Plus, we want the purpose of the call efficiently addressed.
So the question remains – is the call center employing workforce management solutions in such a way as to address these key objectives?
Insight into each customer interaction is possible with workforce management optimization solutions, including quality assurance, call recording, performance metrics and more. Managers can gain the insight they need to gain complete visibility into each customer interaction. With this kind of visibility, they should also be able to optimize for both the customer experience and for overall efficiency of the call center.
This doesn’t mean extensive revisions to the current efforts of the call center. Instead, the design of all schedules, scripts and even conflict resolution should keep the customer experience in mind. By doing so, the center is better on track to achieve the optimal customer experience for the entire base.
Edited by Alisen Downey