Workforce Management Featured Article
The Help Desk Learns Workforce Management from the Call Center
What’s the difference between contact centers and help desks? The level of technical expertise is often the only major difference. Calls that come to help desks may be external (from customers) or internal (from inside the organization). The software help desk workers use may be a bit different from mainstream contact center solutions, and the issues that come to the help desk may be referred to as “cases.” Aside from that, the spirit of the functions are similar, and when it comes to workforce management, the help desk can learn a lot from the contact center.
All the things that make a help desk succeed, including adequate staffing, accurate forecasts, intraday management, schedule adherence, and workload tracking are just as relevant to the help desk, and this is where a modern workforce management solution can ensure the help desk succeeds, according to a recent blog post by Monet Software (News - Alert) CEO Chuck Ciarlo.
“It sounds like a lot to have to get right,” he wrote. “But all of these challenges can be effectively managed with Monet’s WFM for Service Cloud. It represents a significant step for help desks wishing to increase customer satisfaction, customer experience and service levels. This is cutting-edge technology that has not always been available to the helpdesk market, where agent adherence visibility and casework tracking has been more dependent on educated guesswork than hard numbers.”
The problem with help desks, traditionally, was that even with accurate schedules in place, help desks often operated with limited visibility into general activity, leaving managers uncertain whether adherence levels were being met and cases were being handled efficiently. This is because most WFM systems are integrated only to the ACD, not to the case management tool. Monet WFM for Service Cloud fills this gap by integrating to the Salesforce Service Cloud case management system, so help desks can create more accurate forecasts and schedules, which leads to improved customer satisfaction, customer experience and service levels.
“Using knowledge picked up over more than 15 years of serving the help desk market, we’ve found a solution that maximizes casework efficiency by delivering more insight into how cases are managed, and the time investment required to address them,” wrote Ciarlo.
Edited by Alicia Young