Keeping Costs in Check and Quality High in a Growing Contact Center Requires Workforce Management

The contact center business is a great place to be in the U.S. as of late. Growth has been brisk, and many companies that formerly outsourced customer support to foreign nations with lower labor costs are bringing the work back to U.S. shores. That’s the good news. At the same time, many contact center businesses are struggling to keep up with their new hires and the extra work it requires in recruiting, training, managing and evaluating these workers. With a bigger workforce comes more labor costs, and more labor costs mean that real steps need to be taken to gain efficiencies and eliminate waste in the form of overstaffing, or prevent the poor customer service that can be caused by understaffing. This is where workforce management comes in.

Many contact centers today still schedule manually, or if they do use workforce management solutions, they’re using software that is years (or decades) outdated. Newer workforce management solutions can pay for themselves quickly in the form of reduced headcounts, eliminating the need for overtime, and improved customer loyalty.

“With the advanced functionality and the more accurate forecasting and scheduling made possible by workforce management, as well as the data it delivers on agent performance, schedule adherence and KPIs, contact center managers can always be assured the contact center’s resources are being utilized in the most efficient and cost-effective manner,” wrote Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of Monet Software, in a recent blog post.

Adherence, one of the most critical factors for a call center business, is hard to maintain even under the best of circumstances. With manual methods or outdated software, it becomes nearly impossible.

“One of a contact center manager’s most important tasks is keeping track of how the number and length of calls received by each agent matches the volume anticipated before the shift began,” wrote Ciarlo. “Tracking and schedule adherence are difficult, if not flat-out impossible, with just a spreadsheet. Spot-checks are fine as far as they go, but without the real-time tracking provided by WFM there is a higher risk of over/under staffing, shrinkage and missed service levels.”

Modern workforce management also means that cloud delivery is a possibility, which opens up a whole new world of opportunity for contact center organizations. Cost-saving and quality-boosting business models such as home-based agents and remote agents become possible. A cloud workforce management solution means the workforce can be readily spread over multiple locations, and managers can coordinate personnel, resources and schedules at each facility so the service they provide is consistent.

Finally, today’s workforce management solutions allow companies to make better use of agents’ skills, helping to ensure that the right number of workers are available at the right time to handle calls that require special skills, such as product or service knowledge, language skills or customer retention. Cloud delivery means that the set-up is fast, the costs can be kept under control and the number of seats can vary from month-to-month, allowing the contact center to scale up or down as needed.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi