Over the last few months, we’ve looked at the relationship between key metrics and higher-level business objectives. Choosing these metrics and determining appropriate target values is critical for ensuring that the contact center contributes to the success of your business in a quantifiable way.
Now, let’s take a look at a few processes underlying many common key metrics: agent scheduling and adherence. Staffing is probably the most significant, ongoing expense of running your contact center. To remain cost-effective while meeting expected service levels, effective scheduling means making sure that the right number of agents with the right level of knowledge are available to meet expected call volumes. Yet, no matter how effective or streamlined your schedules are, they are of little value if agents don’t follow them.
Agent Scheduling
Few contact centers are fortunate enough to be able to use static schedules on an ongoing basis. Most contact centers employ numerous agents, and handling vacation time, rotating shifts, and full- versus part-time availability can be daunting. To make matters more complex, call volumes can increase dramatically with the announcement of time-limited promotions or the introduction of new products or services. The nature of your business may also mean that call volumes are affected seasonally, such as a slowdown over the summer months.
The ability to schedule agents in advance while forecasting call volume peaks or decreases is critical to the performance of your contact center. Being caught off-guard by an unexpectedly high call volume means that wait times may become excessive, resulting in high abandon rates due to customer frustration. Over-staffing during slower periods is expensive, with agents waiting for calls that don’t come.
Agent Adherence
The best schedules can’t offset the effects of agents who don’t follow them. Even with the “right” schedule, a shift can have poor phone coverage if agents are absent or need extra time to wrap up calls. Real-time monitoring of agent activity lets you take corrective action, if necessary, showing you instantly when agents who should be logged in and taking calls are not doing so.
Reports on past agent activity can assist with future scheduling needs. For example, new processes or tools may mean that agents take longer to research issues or close calls. Historical data helps you identify this trend, and adjust future schedules accordingly.
Consider Workforce Management Software
Workforce management (WFM) software can assist with both agent scheduling and adherence. Many WFM solutions are available, with the features and technical capabilities to handle even the most complex business requirements, which may include: inbound and outbound call centers, inhouse and outsourced services, as well as centralized and satellite work environments.
Keep in mind that a good WFM solution should
- give you the flexibility to choose from a range of forecasting and scheduling methodologies, so that you can use the one that works best in your environment.
- provide features for alerting you in real-time of changes in contact center conditions that you should be aware of (such as a sudden increase in call volume).
- generate reports based on historical data on which you can refine your forecasting efforts and determine areas where further agent mentoring or training would improve performance.
While it’s important to choose a WFM solution with the features and capabilities you need, always check the integrity of the processes that pass telephone system data to the WFM. Many solid-value WFMs, including NICE IEX Workforce Management and Verint Impact 360 Workforce Management, integrate with TASKE solutions, a combination that provides customers with a strong WFM feature portfolio based on proven data extraction and provisioning technologies.
If you’re using a WFM solution and have any tips or experiences about how it has improved your ability to schedule resources or monitor agent adherence, let us know. Feel free to comment on this blog and we’ll join you in a discussion.
See you next month.