What's Next for Workforce Management?

In the contact center, workforce management (WFM) has come a long way since its earliest days, which (for those of you youngsters) meant graph paper and Erlang-c calculations. Determining the right number of agents needed at the right times was both a science and an art, as many retired call center managers can attest. While spreadsheets and then workforce management software have supplanted more old-fashioned methods, this isn’t to say that workforce management technology is standing still.

The next generation of workforce management solution will be even more precise, more omnichannel, easier to use and more feature-rich. Not only will they benefit contact centers and customers, but agents, as well. In the long run, better managed agents are happier agents, and happier agents lead to significant benefits for customers and employers, according to a recent blog post by Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization solutions provider Monet Software.

“Tomorrow’s WFM solutions will help agents use their time more efficiently (example: automatically finding slow periods and scheduling coaching sessions during these lulls), while also providing even more tools to enhance the customer service they provide,” wrote Ciarlo. “In addition, as WFM gains the ability to automatically identify which agents are best suited for which platforms (phone, chat, email, etc.), they can be scheduled accordingly. That results in more confident, satisfied agents and happier customers as well.”

The contact center is becoming more complex as new channels are added. In the next few years, the average company will be juggling not only telephone, e-mail and Web channels, but also mobile Web, mobile app, social media and even connected devices (machine-to-machine, or “Internet of Things.”) While these new channels will offer new opportunities, they will also present huge challenges to contact center managers when it comes to keeping the communications media staffed with people with the right skills to report them.

Newer WFM solutions will not only need to support this proliferation of channels, they will need to make managers’ jobs easier by automating more tasks. Most contact center managers are already tapped out and spend too much time putting out fires and too little time actually managing. While technology can never replace a skilled manager, it can help spot trouble areas and diagnose problems. It can also help take of routine training for (for example) new product or service campaigns.

“Automated training processes will recognize when agents are doing well and require less attention, so more focus can be put on agents that under-perform,” wrote Ciarlo. “E-learning, especially as incorporated into other training sessions, will make it possible for agents to get better at their jobs at times when they are not busy doing them.”

In the near future, speech analytics tools will help mine data from customer conversations to help fine-tune workforce management, smarter WFM solutions will actually be able to make recommendations for changes to improve efficiency, and back-office functions will be brought into close integration with the contact center to increase everyone’s effectiveness on the job. Add all this functionality to cloud delivery, and workforce management will become the solution that can improve a large swathe of company functions from anywhere and at any time. 

Edited by Stefania Viscusi