Why Your Small Customer Support Operation Needs Workforce Management

Workforce management is for huge companies…right? In small contact centers or support centers, the hairy eyeball of the supervisor should be enough to keep everyone working at their best. So goes the ancient “conventional wisdom” of support operations. But unless the supervisor’s eye is omniscient (like the Eye of Sauron), it’s going to miss a lot, particularly since a great portion of service today isn’t happening over the telephone or in a physical call center.

Simply put, workforce management is a process by which contact centers or sales organizations ensure that the right number of people are doing the right job at the right time. Because there are a lot of “moving parts” to this – even in a smaller contact center – it’s vital that companies with an eye toward quality have a formal solution in place to track workforce operations.

A good workforce management solution can accomplish the following:

Ensure the right headcount. Understaffing a support center leads to poor customer service, and overstaffing is expensive. A workforce management solution can tell you not only if your staffing levels are right today, it can help you predict the right headcounts tomorrow, next week and next month by analyzing historical data.

Lower turnover. Agents that are either bored (in the case of overstaffing) or burned out (in the case of understaffing) are likely to leave in pursuit of better jobs. By getting staffing just right, companies can help keep agents in their seats and hiring and recruiting costs down.

Better quality customer support. By matching the right agents to the right contacts at the right time, workforce management solutions ensure that customers are getting better service, and returning as repeat customers to buy again. Nothing kills customer loyalty faster than a bad service interaction.

Better time management. To run a successful contact center, operations managers and directors need to ensure that all the non-customer support related tasks – training, motivation, reviews, etc. – are happening on a regular basis. Companies that can’t find the time to engage in these vital processes risk deterioration in the quality of their customer support.

Automation. A good WFM solution can automate some manager processes, such as granting time off, schedule-building or shift-swapping, which frees managers up for more high-level tasks such as training, coaching and motivation.

Cloud-based workforce management solutions like those from Monet Software are ideal for small companies that want to pay for only what they use, while taking advantage of advanced “big company” functionality that can greatly enhance service and efficiency.

Edited by Maurice Nagle

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