Improving the Contact Center from Its Workforce Optimization Foundation Up

While it’s an oft-stated statistic that Americans work longer and harder than the people of nearly every nation in the world, it’s not clear whether they work smarter. Long hours at the office don’t really seem to add to productivity – not in the long run, either – and they certainly don’t add to innovation or job satisfaction. When turnover is high, ideas and potential are lost along with them (not to mention lots of money that’s been spent on training and career development). So before you decide to redecorate the office, launch a new product line or put forth a marketing gimmick, think about investing in the foundation of your organization…the workforce.

Success or failure in business today hinges on the customer experience far more than at any time in history. Customer loyalty is low, and companies need to repeatedly please their customers in order to retain them, according to a recent blog post by Chuck Ciarlo, CEO of workforce optimization (WFO) solutions provider Monet Software.

“One good customer experience can have a very positive impact on loyalty, retention and word of mouth recommendations,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, the same is true of one bad experience. WFO helps contact centers operate more effectively, by delivering the tools and data necessary for agents to do their jobs. When agents know what to do, and managers know what their agents are doing, the result is more satisfactory customer experiences.”

Workforce optimization goes far beyond workforce management and includes call recording and analytics, and other technologies and techniques to ensure that workers are being utilized to the best of their abilities. According to Ciarlo, WFO becomes most effective when it’s deployed in conjunction with speech and desktop analytics. This provides contact center managers and directors even more data on agent productivity and performance – and a greater ability to interpret and use that information -- and contact centers gain faster insight into different types of customer questions and inquiries so they can be routed to the right agents. It helps companies know where they need to build up their agent knowledge bases, where they need to train up or cross-train agents to improve their skills, and where duplicate processes can be eliminated to save time and avoid errors.

“New ideas are great, but they should be built from a solid foundation, and that means an older idea that always works – workforce optimization,” wrote Ciarlo. “This is the clearest way to make your business stand out when it comes to customer service.”

Edited by Stefania Viscusi