Call Recording Featured Article

While most companies use some type of workforce management in their contact centers, different companies and different industries use it to different extents. Manual processes using spreadsheets are still quite common. While this may help companies achieve the basics – matching the personnel for any given day, shift or hour with predicted demand – it leaves companies out in the cold when it comes to a variety of cost savings and opportunities to improve the customer experience.

According to injixo’s Chris Dealy, the problem often lies in adherence. The best schedule in the world isn’t any use to an organization if the agents aren’t sticking to their schedules. This is one area where modern workforce management solutions can help.

“Accurate forecasts and optimized schedules are useless if the agents don’t adhere to their schedules – the absence of just one agent can ruin service level (SL),” wrote Dealy. “Schedule adherence monitoring and reporting can help you to realize the full potential of your optimized shifts.”

Too often, contact center managers realize that adherence is way off only days or weeks later, after damage has already been done to customer relationships. With real-time monitoring available in today’s workforce management solutions, managers and supervisors can be alerted in a customized way when adherence starts to drop. This allows them to take proactive action to put the schedule back on course, and ensure that metrics such as service levels, average speed to answer (ASA) and abandonment rates stay within the organization’s quality parameters. Sticking closely to staff occupancy levels can also ensure that agents aren’t overworked (which can lead to burn out) or under-utilized, which can lead to boredom.

Modern workforce management can also help save on administrative costs by automating functions that were previously done by human personnel. Manual processes are always rife with wasted time and duplication, and this can cost money in a busy contact center.

“Processes that are tedious and error-prone with spreadsheets or old-fashioned workforce management can be streamlined or automated with a cloud-based workforce management solution,” wrote Dealy.

Another great benefit of workforce management is a sense of fairness among agents. When workforce management is done manually by a human manager, supervisor or executive, accusations of favoritism can develop. (“Why does she always get first pick on the vacation schedules?” “Why do I never get overtime when I ask for it?”) Many WFM solutions today automate the process of requesting vacation time or shifts, which increases perception of fairness.

“Some workforce management tools also include a self-service agent portal, enabling holiday requests and shift swaps to be done anytime, anywhere,” wrote Dealy. “This can help to improve morale and reduce staff attrition, and thus reduce the time and money you need to spend on replacing people.”

If your organization isn’t getting the most out of the contact center workforce, it may be time to change how you manage staff. The opportunities for cost savings, efficiency improvement and better customer experiences are nearly limitless.