Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Why the Modern Workforce Calls for WFM
The rise of digital technology and connected devices has created a lot of change in the workplace. And that’s both beneficial and challenging.
For example, today more people can and do work at home than in the past. Cloud-based applications make business content and processes more accessible to workers who are away or on the move. IP phones make long-distance calling affordable and can be made to look like just another business extension despite their location. And smartphones allow workers to access content and people to do their jobs from wherever they are.
That’s good for business. It can lower office real estate, connectivity, and equipment costs. It can provide greater flexibility for workers, which can create higher employee engagement and productivity. And it gives businesses a larger potential pool of candidates – and in some cases allows them to call on an on-demand workforce.
But managing work and the workforce becomes very complex with all these moving pieces.
Creating worker schedules, and tracking who did what when, using manual processes and spreadsheets can take hours, be frustrating, and deliver less than ideal results. However, modern workforce management solutions can help contact centers manage that complexity, and enable managers to avoid wasting time trying to hit the moving targets of contact center demand and worker availability. WFM also can support on-demand workforces and allow for greater worker flexibility.
New WFM solutions don’t require contact center organizations to reinvent the scheduling wheel every week. Instead, they leverage data on available and unavailable workers for a given day or week, generate and adjust to forecasts based on historical traffic trends and other considerations like special campaigns and promotions, and agent skills, and then generate schedules.
These solutions also can provide managers and agents with access to schedules. And the businesses that use them can elect to give their agents the ability to input their availability, and even to swap shifts with coworkers.
These platforms can do real-time monitoring and reporting as well. That way, contact centers will know when someone is not adhering to the schedule and can take action when needed.
Edited by Maurice Nagle