Call Recording Featured Article

Hosted contact center vendors today should provide customers with workforce management and optimization solution options.

For starters, workforce management generally refers to scheduling to make sure there is sufficient staff on hand in a contact center or on a help desk. It also provides information to make sure there is optimal use of staff.

Workforce optimization suites, which include workforce management, use analytics to provide better knowledge of a business’s interactions with customers, revenues and overall growth. As opposed to a pure workforce management solution, a workforce optimization (WFO) suite provides features that combine to form an integrated array of contact center tools, including call recording, quality monitoring, e-learning, speech analytics, and desktop analytics, in addition to workforce management.

While workforce management is a critical part of the equation to running a successful call center, hosted contact center vendors should also bear in mind that these solutions offer integration with performance evaluation and call recording software in the form of WFO, and that this is an offering they need to provide their clients. With WFO, managers can help agents improve performance. Evaluations and call recordings can be given to agents, who can listen and review the content during training time. That leads to a more efficient training time, and less time spent on lessons.

Workforce optimization solutions also provide managers improved key performance indicators (KPIs) than with older options. They are broken down by individual agent or agent group performance.

Workforce optimization suites give agents tools to provide improved customer experience. Managers get tools to ensure agents are more productive, as well.

One of the most important tools in a WFO suite is call recording, which lets contact centers record calls, find recordings in archives, and train agents.

“Instead of trying to monitor many different calls in real-time, call recording helps record and store calls so managers can easily pull up recordings based on different criteria,” an earlier Call Recording post explained.

The post added that call recording lets managers at contact center managers look at agent performance and customer service.

Yet, according to a Frost & Sullivan (News - Alert) report, 60 percent of repeat calls are process- or training- driven – and “either business processes are not in place to meet the customer’s need or agents have not been given the training required to meet customer expectations.” In addition, Forrester Research (News - Alert) says that just 31 percent of organizations monitor the quality of interactions with targeted customers.

When considering call recording, remember Coordinated Systems, which offers different ways to record calls within a workforce optimization solution.