Workforce Management Featured Article
Call Centers Can Greet a Better New Year by Revamping Workforce Management
Most businesses begin a new year looking for a way to reform operations, improve efficiencies and save money. There are a nearly endless number of paths to this goal – some, like mass layoffs, more destructive for the long-term than others. For companies looking to help the bottom line and improve the business for the long-term, however, it simply makes sense to do some tuning of the company’s workforce management processes.
For call centers, workforce management is one of the most critical operations. To many companies, however, it’s still a manual process done with spreadsheets, paper and pencil and even algorithms. (Did you ever wonder what would happen to your contact center if the only person who knows how to do Erlang-C calculations suddenly retired?) While manual processes may have served many companies well a few decades ago, the amount of efficiency a company can gain by moving to a workforce management solution is vast, and these solutions can play a critical role in improving many aspects of business, according to a recent blog post by Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of Monet Software.
“The difference between handling the important functions of forecasting, scheduling and adherence with the right technology versus with a system that uses spreadsheets, for instance, is significant when it comes to proper utilization of resources, and the level of customer service delivered.”
In other words, it’s not only about internal efficiencies and saving money, but also about the quality of the customer experience your organization can offer. Workforce management is about assigning the right employees with the right skills to the right job at the right time, and in every case, there are opportunities to improve operations and the customer experience.
“The best WFM solution will include accurate call volume forecasting from historical data and ACD integration, flexible schedule creation that incorporates foreseen and unforeseen variables, agent exceptions, intra-day changes to both forecasting and scheduling, and performance management reports,” wrote Ciarlo.
Areas call centers can improve internally include in scheduling, which is one of the most difficult processes to get right with a manual method. An automated solution allows managers to automatically manage start times, end times and break times, so that agent needs are acknowledged, while call center performance capabilities are always met. These solutions also offer real-time adherence data, so managers can understand where problems are occurring before they have a negative impact on operations. Forecasting becomes an easier prospect and can draw from more sources, including historical data, with ease. A modern workforce management solution can deliver seasonal stats, monthly stats, daily stats, even numbers analyzing one portion of one hour, so variations can be determined and adjustments made accordingly, according to Ciarlo.
Whatever your business’ New Year’s resolutions are this year, workforce management should figure into them, since it’s one of the easiest ways to turn operations and customer support quality around for the better.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi