Workforce Management Featured Article
Workforce Management Forecasting Solutions Turn Assumptions into Educated Guesses
Making assumptions can land you in hot water in any situation. But add some intelligence to what would otherwise be an assumption and you end up with an educated guess, and a much better way to make the decisions that drive your business on a day-to-day basis.
Workforce management software is designed to collect information about trends in your call center, and generate reports that allow you to effectively schedule for maximum efficiency. Many are now also capable of generating simulations that can effectively determine the staffing requirements of your call center at any given time.
A simulator engine analyzes all call types and routing policies when it creates forecasts. This tool allows you to accurately forecast staffing levels to manage all call types within your center, and build scenarios for budgeting and planning purposes. You can even use simulators to produce center budgets by running a costing of all forecasted agent shifts and agent schedules.
There are a number of benefits that a workforce management solution with this kind of automation can have on your operation. First and foremost the service allows you to quickly generate automatic forecasts for multiple sites, complex routing strategies, and multi-skilled agents. With that you can accurately forecast staffing levels to manage all call types, as well as build scenarios that test preparedness.
The volume of calls coming into your customer service solution undoubtedly rises and falls depending on season and the number of agents you have in the call center. Adding the utility of workforce management software gives you more control by allowing you to plan for unforeseen volume increases.
Being able to make educated guesses is at the crux of proper workforce management, and forecasting is the best way to generate the information you need to support those decisions without assumptions.
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Chris DiMarco is a Managing Editor for TMCnet. He holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) Chris worked with e-commerce provider Suresource as a contact center representative and development analyst. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page. Follow him on Twitter (News - Alert) @cpdimarco.
Edited by Juliana Kenny
