Does WFM Really Pay for Itself?

Chris Dealy explains how introducing a workforce management solution could save your contact centre money.

Match supply with demand

Workforce management helps you produce more accurate forecasting and staff scheduling, so that shifts better match supply with demand.

It also lets you reduce periods of under-staffing and improve customer service, as well as reduce periods of over-staffing and reduce waste.

Yet accurate forecasts and optimised schedules are useless if the agents don’t adhere to their schedules – the absence of just one agent can ruin Service Level (SL).

Schedule adherence monitoring and reporting can help you to realise the full potential of your optimised shifts.

Consistently achieve service levels

Workforce management has a direct impact on KPIs such as Service Level, Average Speed of Answer (ASA) and Abandonment Rate (ABR). This has a monetary value for organisations with SLAs (Service Level Agreements) with penalty clauses, such as outsourcers and regulated utilities.

Workforce management helps to minimise SLA breaches, avoid penalties and secure bonuses.

Give the planning team the tools to do the job

Processes that are tedious and error-prone with spreadsheets or old-fashioned workforce management can be streamlined or automated with a cloud-based workforce management solution.

Productivity in the planning team can be improved and savings applied in several ways. For example, enabling planners to engage in strategic planning, collaboration across departments and improvement initiatives.

Reduce staff turnover and hiring costs

Better staff planning can also lead to more consistent staff occupancy, thus reducing agent stress and burnout.

Some workforce management tools also include a self-service agent portal, enabling holiday requests and shift swaps to be done anytime, anywhere.

This can help to improve morale and reduce staff attrition, and thus reduce the time and money you need to spend on replacing people.

Reduce sick days and absenteeism

‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ Nowhere is this truer than with staff absences.

Workforce management applications make it possible to monitor and control all unplanned absences in a fair and transparent fashion, as they produce reports that act as impartial evidence for appraisals and 1:1s.

With thanks to Chris Dealy at injixo