Knowlagent has identified the biggest challenges and opportunities workforce managers face concerning contact center productivity through a survey it conducted of nearly 400 workforce managers and workforce management team members.

About 65.7 percent of workforce managers surveyed said their biggest challenge was balancing service levels with other off-phone activities. Enhancing forecasting and staffing processes (59.1 percent) and improving forecasting accuracy (55.1 percent) was also identified as challenges by the Knowlagent survey. Improving agent morale/satisfaction was one of the top four challenges by workforce managers and eighty-five percent of them want the ability to better schedule/forecast.

About 35 percent want revised forecasted schedules daily or multiple times throughout the day; 44 percent revise schedules weekly or multiple times each week; and eighty-two percent said that the smallest time segment used to create daily schedules ranged from 15 minutes to one hour.

“Workforce management teams have a lot of moving parts to contend with when developing schedules that keep agents productive and satisfied , while meeting service levels throughout fluctuating call volumes,” said Matt McConnell, president and CEO for Knowlagent. “The survey results echo some of the frustrations we repeatedly hear about the challenges of making intraday management efficient through manual processes.”

Also, seventy-seven percent of respondents said that delivering off-phone activities during idle time was an opportunity to improve agent productivity.

Knowlagent was in news last month when it partnered with DMG Consulting, a provider of contact center analytics research, market analysis and consulting services to jointly publish two white papers and two corresponding podcasts.