Workforce Management Featured Article
Workforce Management That's Prepared for the Unexpected
Every contact center engages in some sort of workforce management (so do many other enterprise operations). It might be rudimentary and “good enough” according to managers, and it might be cloud-based, omnichannel and come with all the bells and whistles. Whatever method your organization chooses, it’s critical to ensure that your workforce optimization is robust enough to withstand not just regular day-to-day operations, but unexpected spikes in call volume, unplanned absences and disruptive events like a merger or acquisition.
In a recent blog post for Customer Relationship Metrics, Dr. Jodie Monger recounted an experience in which she needed to call her home security company. After a considerable amount of searching, she discovered that her security company had been sold to a competitor without notice to customers. (This leaves customers wondering, am I still protected? What’s my new account number? Will there be a different billing cycle? Will the cost of service go up?
“I finally found the customer service number on the competitor’s…Web site, and by the time I made it to a live customer service agent I was told they couldn’t find my information because the data merge had not been completed,” wrote Monger. “They did give me an alternate number to call, but it’s too little too late. I was never told about the merge, never given a new service number to call, never told how the merge might affect my service or the contract I had with my former company. You can imagine the conversation with the contact center agent.”
If you dug deeper into the scenario, you’ll probably find that the competitor had no plan in place to handle the extra customers, could not see their customer history if they called in, had no answers for the new customers. This is the way you treat people you rely on for your business to stay afloat?
A good workforce management solution would be able to scale up – and quickly – to handle new customers, new communications media and additional agents that might be necessary. A reasonable skilled manager could alter the schedule accordingly from the moment the sale of the company was complete. If the company is unsure of what call volumes will be with the merger or acquisition, it can easily bring home-based workers into “standby” mode to help handle any unexpected call spikes. This is made possible by the nature of cloud-based workforce management and other customer support solutions, according to Shep Hyken blogging for Zopim.
“The technology available today can eliminate the need of having all your customer care personnel under one roof,” wrote Hyken. “You can build a support team that works from home and is located anywhere in the world at a significantly lower cost than transporting people to your location, paying rent, utilities and other assorted overheads at a permanent commercial property.”
Whatever your situation, whether it’s holiday call spikes, increased call volume from new marketing campaigns, a merger or acquisition or an outbreak of the flu, be sure your workforce management solution (not to mention your workforce) is ready and able to scale up and meet the challenges.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi