Why Care About Workforce Management

Workforce management (WFM) solutions are among the most important productivity tools in contact centers. These applications allow managers to forecast the volume of transactions that a contact center will have to process and schedules the optimal number of agents to meet the anticipated need, factoring in agent breaks, training needs, vacations and sickness absences. These solutions also streamline the hiring process, enabling managers to address both the number of agents required for a contact center and the skill sets that are necessary to provide the best service to customers.

Contact Center Uniqueness Presents WFM Challenge

All contact centers are unique, and it is difficult to develop a standardized approach for addressing staffing needs in every organization. Agent scheduling requirements are likely to be very specific to each environment. To meet the diverse needs of contact centers, WFM vendors have developed systems capable of addressing many approaches and options. This has resulted in sophisticated applications that were often highly complex and challenging to implement and maintain. Although there is still room for improvement, recent innovation has focused on improving the simplicity and usability of these valuable solutions.

WFM Benefits Contact Centers Large and Small

WFM applications benefit the contact center, its agents and customers. As productivity tools, WFM applications reduce agent waste, inefficiency, and absenteeism and minimize idle time. At the same time, WFM can increase agent adherence and improve customer service by decreasing the rate of abandonment and the need for “call backs.” The skill-based scheduling feature of WFM increases customer satisfaction, ensuring that agents with the right resources are available to address inquiries. Staff satisfaction is another benefit of WFM, which removes much of the arbitrariness of manual scheduling, empowering agents to manage their own schedules and enjoy schedule preferences for outstanding performance.

WFM is essential for improving productivity in very large contact centers, where the penetration rate of these solutions is currently the highest. These applications are also becoming increasingly critical for mid-to-large size multi-site, multi-skill and multi-channel environments. The options in the market are more varied than ever, with many new vendors and products to choose. Enterprises can select either purchased or hosted solutions. Applications are available to target the specific needs and budgets for centers of all sizes. A single WFM solution can address the needs of the contact center, the back office and remote sites, centralizing and simplifying the support burden. WFM solutions can be integrated with other workforce optimization products, such as quality management, eLearning, coaching and performance management; the resulting synergies increase the benefits and value of these offerings.

Selecting the Right WFM Solution

Contact center WFM solutions are more promising and varied than ever. Today, enterprises of all sizes and in all industries can find high-value WFM solutions targeted to their needs, at the right price. To help users navigate this complex and evolving market segment, DMG Consulting is releasing its first annual Workforce Management Market Report in December 2007. The Report presents an in-depth analysis of WFM functionality and technology, along with detailed coverage of market trends, challenges, ROI, vendor market share, pricing and best practices. The Report makes sense of the many choices available today. Users who take the time to select and implement WFM solutions properly will realize many quantifiable and qualitative benefits.

Regards,

Donna Fluss

President, DMG Consulting LLC

Question: Dear Experts,

Need to know the method contact centre could adapt to calculate seat requirement once the long term plan has been developed. Furthermore, we’re looking for an effective method to calculate seat utilization.

Thank you, in advance

Telecom Vendor

Answer: Contact center workforce management (WFM) solutions forecast the volume of anticipated calls (or other transaction types, like emails and chat sessions) and then use this information to schedule the optimal number of agents to meet projected needs while taking into account breaks, training classes, planned vacations, and unplanned sickness. The leading solutions address both single and multi-site environments with the following seven primary modules:

1. Administration – used to set up the application and to define work rules, agents and security.
2. Forecasting – projects incoming call volumes, generally in 15-minute increments.
3. Scheduling – determines the optimal schedules for the contact center, based on either contact center productivity, agent satisfaction, or a combination of both.
4. Intra-Day Capability – allows managers to view their intra-day statistics, compare forecast vs. actual performance, make same-day changes to schedules for absences or training, and conduct “what if” analyses to project the impact of any changes.
5. Real-Time Adherence (RTA) – reflects real-time variances between agent schedules and actual performance. Allows supervisors to detect slippage, identifying agents who are not where they are supposed to be, based on the schedules.
6. Self-Service – allows agents to input their scheduling needs in a Web-based self-service environment. This will include reflecting their schedule preferences, hours and days they want to work, preferred vacation time, time-off accruals, overtime/under-time, etc. These environments are also set up to allow agents to do shift bidding, where they actually "bid" for their preferred hours and trade shifts.
7. Reporting – provides standard and ad hoc reporting capabilities. The best applications have built reporting into all of their modules and allow users to produce reports from within any of them.

The exact breakdown of functionality varies among the applications. All leading WFM applications are also able to integrate out-of-the-box with all major and many smaller ACDs and PBXs in the market.

There are many optional modules, including:

1. Multi-Channel Forecasting – forecasts incoming transaction volumes for emails and chat sessions. In the future, it will also need to address SMS transactions.
2. Multi-Skill Support – enables the call center to schedule calls and other transactions based on the specific requirements of the transactions and the skills of available agents.
3. Performance Management – analytics-oriented module that creates scorecards and dashboards to assist users in managing and enhancing their call centers.
4. Long-Term/Strategic Planner – Allows a call center manager to plan a few years into the future. Will also include the ability to project staffing costs.

Increasingly, multi-channel and multi-skill functionality are considered “core” components, as most contact centers are engaged in these activities.

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