Workforce Management Featured Article
The Basics of Workforce Management
The success or failure of a call center ultimately rests on the agents who staff it. More than many businesses, workforce management is key when it comes to the call center.
It also is more necessary, since call centers employ a large number of workers, and churn rates often are high at call centers. So there is a large number of new faces constantly circulating within a call center, and good workforce management software is important to keep up with it.
Knowing how to get the most from a workforce management solution is not always immediately evident, however. Monet Software, which makes the cloud-based workforce management solution, Monet WFM Live, recently outlined some of the basics in a recent blog post. These basics are worth emphasizing.
First, remember that attrition rates are high at call centers. This has a number of affects, one of which is that there will be knowledge erosion within the call center over time as longstanding employees leave and new ones take their place. It is, therefore, important to have ongoing training regarding workforce management.
Second, pay attention to how data is gathered when it comes to workforce management. It is easy for bad data collection to mar the usefulness of such data sets. Data integrity is crucial.
Third, make sure to monitor shrinkage and balance it correctly in forecasts. Not factoring this in can cause havoc.
Fourth, set realistic adherence targets, not ideals that will be easily broken. If targets are too strict, they are worthless. Do back up your targets with real-time calculations to make sure you achieve them, however.
Fifth, watch for consistent intra-day forecasting.
Sixth, don’t sweat holiday and shift swaps. This can become a major time-drain. Instead, let the workforce management system handle these issues. Managers should be focusing on other things.
Seventh, don’t ignore long-range and mid-range forecasts. Of course, daily forecasts are the first priority. Without also keeping an eye on the future, however, it is easy to get off track. So even while daily forecasts demand attention, don’t let them muscle out the longer-term forecasting.
Finally, delegate some of the work directly to agents. Invite agents to input schedule and vacation requests directly into the system. This saves time and improves accuracy. It also shifts responsibility to the employee, which can cut down on request disputes later.
Workforce management is crucial for the call center, so make sure your company is on top of all these basics.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi