Workforce Management Feeds Workforce Optimization

At its core, workforce management is about forecasting. It’s about predicting the volume of customer contacts (calls, emails, etc.), using those predictions to create schedules that will meet your service level requirements, assigning individual agents to cover those schedules, and managing changes from unforeseen circumstances as they arise. In practice, it can be difficult to achieve, so contact centers need to follow some best practices to ensure it’s forecasting and scheduling properly.

Don’t Just Manage…Optimize

Today, the name of the game for successful customer support is workforce optimization (WFO), a practice that keeps workforce management at its heart but expands to use information from other solutions, including call recording and screen capture/quality management, performance management and analytics, as well as the automatic call distributor (ACD) and the company’s CRM system. A good workforce optimization solution uses all the data at its disposal (in a single solution), which results in better allocation of resources, better cost management and an improved customer experience.

Ensure It’s Omnichannel

Research by Ventana has found that customers use up to 17 channels of engagement – both human-serviced and self-service -- using a variety of technologies such as interactive voice response (IVR), web sites, mobile apps and social media. Workforce optimization solutions that are only addressing phone calls will fall far short of performance goals. Ensure you’re capturing data from all channels – screen capture is a must -- and fusing it together to use as a basis for your forecasting and scheduling.

Consider a Unified Solution

Solutions like Monet WFO, a unified cloud contact center optimization solution that includes workforce management, quality management, performance management and analytics, can ensure that customer support departments are utilizing their workforces to the best of their skills and abilities.  A single, cloud-based solutions is affordable (companies pay for only what they use) and result in better cost management and improved service levels.

Choose a Solution That Was Built in the Cloud

Many workforce management and workforce optimization solutions today were migrated from premise-base solutions. As a result, they are hybrid platforms that may not be as flexible or scalable as a fully cloud-based (and built) option.

Finally, Ensure Agents are Using It

The best workforce optimization solution in the world won’t do you much good if agents are fully utilizing it. Overly complex solutions may have low usage rates because agents are finding them difficult to use. Look for a solution with a single interface that can pulls data from multiple sources and state it simply so users can ensure they have the right information they need at the right time.

Edited by Maurice Nagle

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