Workforce Management Featured Article
Strategies to Optimize Workforce Management
Managing the workforce is one of those must-have activities in the call center that can either make or break your success. That may mean you simply layout your goals, available staff and budget on a spreadsheet and hope for the best. If you have a large number of agents and outcomes are dependent upon performance, it may be time to consider putting a strategy in place for workforce management that will produce the desired results.
Blue Ocean contact centers recently published a slide show sharing nine winning strategies for scheduling and managing the contact center workforce. While no one solution should be the overarching theme for any one company, this presentation does share some keen insight on how you can get a better handle on managing your most valuable assets.
First, the company recommends that for optimal workforce management, you review your historical data. This is considered key to your overall game plan. If you look for patterns in the data to inform future performance, you’re more likely to schedule accordingly. When you blend this with an accurate forecast, you’re better positioned for success. Just be sure that your tech, marketing and sales teams all agree on the forecast you’ve put in place.
Next, determine how you will manage success. This means you need to align your contact center KPIs to your goals for the customer experience. In other words, prioritize your efforts based on what you anticipate the outcomes to be for your customer base. Such an important step does require that you take a step back and define the desired service level, but the outcomes will deliver the needed benefit to make this step worth the effort.
It’s also important to determine peaks and valleys in your call volume and look at underlying data to determine whether or not this is the result of trends or just a fluke that isn’t likely to happen again. Be sure to focus on scenarios that are most likely and not those that just interrupt your flow.
At the same time, keep everyone informed. If you lack transparency, it’s much more difficult to optimize your workforce management efforts. At the same time, remember that technology can help and hurt, depending upon how much you rely on it. Remember that your people are the ones driving the results and not some software.
Finally, make it a point to manage shrinkage and learn and improve as you go. Manage shrinkage by making sure you have the right number of trained individuals no matter what the challenge to attendance. Avoid paralysis by analysis by focusing on learning and improvement without being too caught up in the process. Remember, the first goal is to serve the customer.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi