Workforce Management Featured Article
A Dynamic and Flexible Approach to Workforce Management in the Contact Center
Workforce management in the contact center has been steadily undergoing changes, just as contact centers are moving toward an omnichannel communications model the truly puts the customer front and center. While delivering superior customer service has always been the end goal for contact centers, the method for doing that is complex, and effective workforce management is the only way to truly ensure success.
Workforce management in the contact center is perhaps as complex as today’s technology-focused, high-volume contact centers. The customer is still the main focus, of course, but customers are demanding more efficient, personalized interactions and are also becoming increasingly impatient when it comes to waiting in a lengthy call queue. A good contact center manager understands that agents need to be trained to meet customer needs and deliver personalized interactions that rely on quick access to customer history and important information.
The advent of omnichannel customer service means that agents can no longer rely on strong phone skills to manage customer relationships. Managers must ensure agents are trained to communicate via email, chat, text or whatever mechanism the customer prefers. And if some agents are stronger on the phone while others have superior writing skills, these strengths need to be utilized appropriately through scheduling and ticket assignments that reflect the special skills of individual agents.
A rewards system is always an important tool for ensuring agents are recognized for a job well done, and motivating agents to meet contact center objectives and goals is absolutely essential to a high performance contact center. At the same time, agents need to be encouraged to learn new skills and deliver better and more efficient interactions, and rewards and benefits ensure they don’t become comfortable with meeting the status quo.
A quality workforce management solution can handle many of these objectives, offering scheduling, forecasting and planning capabilities to help contact center managers achieve optimum performance throughout their organization. But managers need to understand the unique needs of both their customers and their agents to truly keep contact centers running at peak performance. And those needs are constantly fluctuating in the era of fleeting, omnichannel communications. A dynamic approach to workforce management ensures all needs are being appropriately met and contact centers are operating at peak performance.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
