Workforce Management (WFM) technology assists contact centers with managing their staff. Ultimately, it helps to ensure the right number of agents are scheduled that possess the needed call center skills to meet customer demand. Using historical data, Workforce Management predicts the staff required for future demand and assists contact center managers with accurately scheduling their team.
Forecasting, agent scheduling, schedule adherence, and communication tools are a few features of WFM. But how can workforce management benefit your organization and business? What are the features and processes of implementation of workforce management? In this blog, we will explore workforce management to help boost the productivity of your employees.
The Importance of Workforce Management
Recent years have shown the importance of building a hybrid work environment and many employees look for flex time to achieve an improved work-life balance. WFM solutions are the go-to tool for contact centers to manage the changing needs of their workforce. In the past, call center managers used spreadsheets to determine customer demand and schedule agents. Time-consuming and complex, managers found spreadsheets strained their workload while providing less than optimal results.
Workforce Management software provides contact center managers with the ability to accurately forecast demand, quickly generate schedules that are optimized to deliver the highest service levels for your customers, the best experiences for your agents, and the lowest operational cost for your business.
The Process of Workforce Management
Workforce Management solutions deliver the features you need to tackle your staffing challenges. See the process of Workforce Management below.
Forecasting
A solid WFM tool can forecast agents according to their skill sets. For instance, one team may have the skill set to manage sales calls while another team has the skill of troubleshooting existing customer questions or concerns. Workforce Management helps contact center managers forecast demand for each skill set based on historical data.
Multiple communication channels, such as phone, chat, text, etc., must also be considered when scheduling for today’s omni-channel contact centers. Modern WFM solutions create highly reliable forecasts in just minutes.
Optimized Scheduling
Scheduling improves when call center managers are able to develop accurate forecasts. No more customers waiting on hold due to too few agents available, or agents twirling their pens with nothing to do because too many agents were scheduled for a shift.
With intraday management, managers can add activities or drag and drop shifts at any time to respond to sudden spikes in demand or last-minute absences. Supervisors can even redirect agents during idle times and assign them offline tasks without impacting critical service level targets.
Real-Time Adherence
Gain insight into agent performance to support real-time decision making with WFM. Modern tools provide each agent’s real-time status, graphically showing what the agent is doing versus what they should be doing and highlighting any differences. Supervisors can easily see at a glance how their teams are performing and take action, in real-time, to ensure customer service levels are met.
Agent Self-Scheduling
A strong WFM platform allows agents to submit their availability and shift preferences, request shift changes, trade shifts with colleagues, and manage their vacations from home or in the office. Often this is managed through a dedicated agent web portal or mobile app. This reduces administrative overhead and offers agents more control over their work-life balance, providing greater flexibility that leads to lower sick days and attrition.
Cloud-Based WFM for the Modern Contact Center
Reach your contact center’s maximum performance with intelligent forecasting, scheduling, real-time adherence, intraday management, and agent portals in DVSAnalytics Workforce Management. Cloud-based and scalable, DVS provides targeted workforce management features at a budget-friendly price.
Contact DVS for a quick demonstration and see how to leverage your workforce and meet your budget goals.
Download the Buyer’s Guide to Workforce Management to see important points to consider when shopping for a Workforce Management solution.
