Workforce Optimization (WFO)

Workforce Management (WFM) solutions help call centers achieve and maintain operational efficiency by ensuring that the right number of agents with the right skill sets are staffed at the right time. The ultimate goal of WFM for call centers is to create the best possible fit between the forecasted workload and the number of agents scheduled while using the fewest number of paid labor hours. And all without jeopardizing revenue opportunity, increasing employee discord, or creating customer dissatisfaction. That’s a lot of balls to juggle at once.

In the call center, WFM comprises a recurring cycle of component tasks:

1. Forecast customer interaction volume
2. Utilize the forecasted data to create optimized agent schedules
3. Assign agents to schedules based on their preferences and business rules
4. Manage intraday activity

Each task in the WFM cycle is dependent on input from the prior task so it is vital to understand each component of the cycle, the role it plays, and how it interacts with its counterparts. While it sounds straightforward, the sheer volume of customer touchpoint data that must be collected and analyzed can be overwhelming before you’ve even done your first forecast! Keep reading about WFM for call centers.

Whether we understand them or not, there are a number of fundamental “truths” about the manner in which contact centers ensure their customer contacts are handled efficiently. For example, all contact centers are faced with the challenge of how to do more with less. However, not all experience the same results or achieve their desired goals. What causes the difference? It may be a matter of principle.

FORECASTING PRINCIPLES lay the groundwork to accurately predict the number of agents to hire and schedule.

SCHEDULING PRINCIPLES guide efficient planning of agent time in a way that assures adequate resources to accomplish required tasks while accommodating each agent’s personal needs.

INTRADAY MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES inform your ability to proactively respond to changes in customer demand and agent availability throughout the day.

PERFORMANCE REPORTING PRINCIPLES direct the way you monitor and measure effectiveness to ensure that any issue is quickly identified and addressed.

The more you understand these WFM principles, the better equipped you will be to handle more customer contacts with fewer agent resources and to “do more with less.” Learn about the 5Ps of Workforce Management.

A workforce forecast is only as good as its inputs. Failing to take critical forecasting factors into account can cause your contact center to fall short of its goals. These factors include:

Shrinkage: coffee breaks, training, meetings, and other events in the contact center can account for up to 35% of and agent’s day.

Forecast Accuracy: Nearly 20% of contact centers do not measure forecast accuracy. Those that do measure often see a large discrepancy between their forecast and actual intraday requirements, indicating faulty data or a faulty model.

Back-office Activities: If you have back-office employees, you need to include their activities in the call center forecast. Back-office tasks performed by blended agents must also be factored in.

Non-inbound Call Channels: The vast majority of contact centers do not forecast for email, social media and web chat channels, even though they support them.

If you overlook these key factors, your contact center forecasting may run into trouble.

Here’s why.

Should call centers aim to overstaff a little bit, just to make sure all bases are covered throughout the day? Or is it more cost-efficient for the call center to be just a bit understaffed with reserves on call if needed? This is an ongoing dilemma for worktime schedulers because overstaffing is costly and so is understaffing, each in its own way. It’s also one of the main reasons call centers adopt WFM solutions – to help them get it right. Getting is right is called zero-net staffing, where just the right number of agents are on the job on any given day.

Trying to move every work interval closer to zero-net staffing is herculean task. Attempting to do this manually is not practical, which is why so many contact centers live with a marked imbalance in net staffing. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With a WFM system that brings automation and intelligence to the scheduling process, employees can become active participants in scheduling voluntary time off (VTO) and paid time off (PTO) and in re-purposing overstaff to other tasks. Read how BPOs (business process outsourcers) also benefit from right staffing and workforce management scheduling.

No matter which industry your call center serves, Intraday Management is a constant challenge and often a constant headache. Even though workload forecasts are made months in advance and agents are given their shift schedule weeks in advance, something always seems to go awry. Understaffing isn’t the only problem. Agents sitting idle due to over-allocation is also unproductive and wasteful.

The path to better efficiency and productivity lies in intelligent automation. WMF systems that use AI and advanced machine learning to automate Intraday Management help the call center to:

• Forecast accurately
• Simulate real-world prioritization
• Schedule with flexibility
• Manage changes in real-time

That’s why it’s time to automate the Intraday Management process.

Rather than a once-a-year task, employee performance management should be an ongoing process that happens as needed and on demand, as well as at scheduled intervals. When employees receive transparent and frequent feedback as well as the ability to self-evaluate, you create a better environment for personal development and success. Whether employees are individual contributors, supervisors, managers, or senior leaders, an ongoing performance management process helps everyone in the organization improve the quality of their own work, and to understand how it impacts others.

The overall performance management process is based on goal-setting, evaluation, and reward. Employees will surely become more valuable contributors to the organization when the following steps are planned and executed correctly:

1. Data collection
2. Prompt insights
3. Motivate to take action
4. Gamification
5. Guided Coaching
6. Coaching Measurement

See how technology and automation make these performance management steps more efficient and effective.

Workforce planning is essential to running a cost-effective call center. Proper planning determines the number and skill set of employees that are needed to handle the workload, probable attrition rate, and what is required to assure that occupancy, shrinkage, SLAs and other operational goals can be met. Workforce planning is also tricky, because it requires us to see into the future and plan for various scenarios, some of which have a high probability of occurring and others that have a low chance of happening. Ideally, workforce planners should be able to model any number of scenarios based on different forecast data. If forecast data are accurate, the resulting plans are converted into scheduling, hiring, onboarding and training activities. If forecasts are off, planners can easily model the “new reality” and adjust the plan quickly.

Read more about the Benefits of Workforce Planning.

When evaluating performance management, contact centers are driven by metrics such as average handle time (AHT), first call resolution rate (FCR), net promoter scores (NPS) and many others. Improving call center performance typically means improving these metrics.

Effective performance management rests on the simple principle that “what gets measured gets done.” When you adhere to this principle, you know what to measure and what not to measure – so you avoid collecting metrics that you will never use. The first order of business is to establish performance goals and the metrics to measure whether you’re achieving them. Then call center managers and employees can continually monitor those metrics and regularly evaluate their success. Good performance is rewarded. Underperformance triggers action to address the problem. Sounds complicated? Actually, you can improve call center performance management in 5 Easy Steps.

Data is crucial for running a successful inbound call center. With so many calls to handle every day, you need meaningful metrics to know what’s going on. These are the top 6 call center agent performance metrics you should be measuring:

1. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) metrics obtained from surveys and QA measurements
2. First-Call Resolution (FCR): the single most important KPI related to customer satisfaction
3. Service Level, or the time it takes to answer a service call. Is your goal to answer calls within 10 or 20 seconds? Should that apply to all (100) or most (80%) calls?
4. Average Handle Time (AHT): is the time it takes for an agent to complete a customer interaction.
5. Abandon Rate counts the number of people who hang up before connecting to an agent.
6. Cost: how much does the current level of call center performance cost and what must I spend to improve it?

Why are these the top 6 metrics for measuring agent performance? Find out here.

Call center supervisors want to be able to show management that their teams are making a measurable difference to the organization. To do this, they need to quantify how much and in what way the call center contributing to company growth, helping to detect problems, uncovering opportunities, and increasing customer satisfaction.

Organizations that want to see measurable returns from the dollars invested in call center quality programs would be wise to implement these best practices for call center evaluation:

• Measure the right agent KPIs to achieve your call center quality goals.
• Use BI to bring all that data together into meaningful performance scorecard for each agent.
• Leverage your BI to create structured and personalized quality programs tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of each agent.

Find out more about using Call Center Evaluation to Make a Measurable Difference in Your Organization

Employee engagement is considered to be one of the most important contributors to an organization’s competitive advantage. Studies find that people who are highly engaged at work tend to be committed to doing a good job and happy with their work environment. Conversely, disengaged employees tend to have a negative attitude that often affects the level of service they provide and in extreme cases, may drive away customers. As a result, companies have started to focus on employee engagement strategies as a way to improve performance and retention and to nurture innovation.

Like most WFO efforts, managing employee engagement is not an isolated activity, but part of an overall WFM solution. It relates to the way employees are treated, how well they are informed, how well they have been trained to do their jobs, how much control they have over their work schedule and performance, etc. NICE outlines five of the top employee engagement strategies and offers an intelligent and automated toolset for Employee Engagement Management (EEM) in the call center. Read more.

Call center managers are always looking for ways to assure that agents are engaged, work productively, meet their KPIs, and stay with the company. It’s a constant challenge to figure out what kind of activities will foster employee engagement and motivate them to meet performance expectations and even raise the bar on the KPIs they are able to achieve.

Thankfully, there is no lack of employee engagement activities that can boost motivation and encourage responsible ownership of various tasks. The key is to determine which of these activities will work best in your call center. In that regard, it is best to simply ask your employees about it. Their input will help you host the right activities and ensure their willing participation.

Here’s our list of the Top 10 Strategies for Employee Engagement Activities.

Once you dedicate the time, resources, and budget to prioritize these activities, you’ll be well on your way to creating an engaging work environment.

If companies think that Employee Engagement Management is just about helping contact center agents “feel good” about work, they are mistaken. Employee engagement is actually a major contributor to ROI and revenue growth in three big ways:

1. Increase retention by engaging employees in the scheduling process. When you give agents a modicum of control over their work schedule, they are able to achieve the work-life balance they desire and will not leave for perhaps greener but more restrictive pastures. Increased retention reduces costs.
2. Engage employees in professional development programs to expand and hone their skillset. Better trained employees provide better service to customers.
3. Engaged employees are more satisfied, and satisfied employees drive higher customer satisfaction, decreasing churn and increasing sales.

Learn more about the role of employee engagement in ROI and revenue growth.

When consumers had limited ways to contact and interact with an organization, Contact Center and Quality Management (QM) solutions were built around nurturing good conversation and problem-solving skills over the phone, by fax, and in face-to-face contacts in service centers. Today, customer journeys have evolved into unstructured, omnichannel experiences.

Call centers are now using AI-driven analytics to gain the cross-organization insights needed to deliver value and satisfaction with each omnichannel customer experience. Learn how artificial intelligence is driving efficiency and customer satisfaction in omnichannel call center management.

Call center agents tend to be wary of Quality Assurance (QA) initiatives. Agents claim that QA programs often detract rather than contribute to their ability to do their jobs and perform well. However, smart QA programs that actively engage agents at all stages, including development, roll-out, calibration, and ongoing improvement, have been shown to have greater impact on agent behavior and to achieve the desired results.

NICE has identified 15 best practices to make sure that your QA initiative is carried out successfully.

1. Seek agent input in the development of the QA Program. By involving agents in quality measures, you foster a collaborative environment, and fuel ambition.
2. Include the QA Program at new agent training. Agents are more apt to follow QA requirements that they understand.
3. Ensure QA Team Leaders possess the necessary knowledge and have the skills to handle inquiries and manage interactions.

See all 15 best practices for Call Center Quality Assurance.

The goal of Call Quality Monitoring is to identify calls that are failing to meet your standards for good quality and to implement corrective measures. To do that, you need accurate and complete data on theinteractions between call center agents and customers. Otherwise, you risk making wrong decisions based on incomplete or non-representative data, and therefore not achieving the quality results you want.

NICE has identified three ways to make sure your call quality monitoring practices are on the right track:

Record and monitor 100% of calls to ensure that action items in your quality plan are based on empirical data and not anecdotal evidence and subjective observations.

Involve agents in the Call Quality Monitoring process. Their experiences can provide valuable input in determining the benchmarks that make their customer interactions successful.

Keep everyone in the quality loop with quality dashboards for Call Center Managers, Agents and Executive Management

See details on these three important Call Quality Monitoring practices.

Yours is not the only call center in the industry. Chances are your competitors are doing a few things right and you could learn from them. Quality managers who benchmark their call center quality programs against industry competitors can learn a lot and will be better able to:

• Identify best practices
• See industry-wide trends they might have missed
• Determine the best path to improvement for their own call center
• Provide greater value to the contact center

Benchmarking encourages call centers to take a critical look at their activities and see how they measure up. It provides perspective on the maturity of quality program and helps managers focus on the kind of improvement they need to make.

To get started on benchmarking your quality management program, you’ll need to… read more.