Start With the Right WFM Tools

Contact centre performance management is led by an operations manager who is dedicated to improving the engagement of their agents.

It requires a toolkit of quality monitoring, coaching, gamification, and most importantly, a top-tier workforce management system. With the right workforce management tools, you will be equipped to boost your contact centre’s success — and strengthen your brand at the same time!

What Does Workforce Management Mean?

In a contact centre context, workforce management (WFM) is both an art and a science.

It involves having the right amount of agents working at all times to answer an accurately forecasted volume of interactions — with an overall goal of delivering schedules that meet the needs of your business, along with the requests of your team members.

What are Workforce Management Tools?

Workforce management tools are designed to support the day-to-day operations of your contact centre team. WFM helps accurately forecast customer interactions and makes scheduling your contact centre agents easy.

But it also includes per-agent dashboards, shift swap requests, and the ability to set status for breaks, lunch, meetings, training, phone, chat and more across digital and voice channels.

As workplace expectations have evolved, the technology and tools that make it all possible have evolved and changed as well.

Your organization’s need for a quality workforce engagement management tool may depend on a variety of factors. The specific industry, growth rate, and business model are all factors in determining the most effective WFM tool for your contact centre.

No matter the business venture, a workforce management system is crucial for maximizing employee productivity.

When is the Right Time to Implement a WFM system?

Understanding your contact centre’s goals is important when determining the best time to implement a workforce management tool.

Generally, you can anticipate deploying WFM software when looking to improve scheduling accuracy, reduce staffing costs, achieve service-level goals, optimize agent performance, and integrate other business systems (i.e. QA platforms and CRMs).

If you’re looking to upgrade any of these areas for your business — and don’t want to be limited by a spreadsheet — it may be the right time to consider a workforce management solution.

Deploying a workforce engagement management system may seem like a major step for your contact centre. Adding modules one-by-one ensures that it will serve its intended purpose and allow for full agent adoption.

How to Select the Right WFM Software for Your Contact Centre

A workforce management tool is commonly implemented in contact centres to optimize employee scheduling, reduce operational costs, and monitor agent performance.

A helpful first step is to identify the key challenges you’re facing in your contact centre. Scheduling? Right-sizing your team? Managing costs? Inaccurate forecasting? When you outline your obstacles, you’re equipped to find WFM software that’s the right fit for your contact centre.

Two Playvox Customer Success Stories:

SeatGeek

The world’s largest event ticket marketplace, SeatGeek, was able to reduce forecasting and scheduling complexity by 10X. By bringing data from each of its channels into one platform, the CX team could clearly see the intraday arrival patterns for each channel and identify coverage gaps.

This ultimately enabled SeatGeek to work collaboratively with its partners to improve staffing models.

Afterpay

Afterpay, a financial tech company, has increased productivity by nearly 30% while simultaneously improving its QA and CSAT scores.

Playvox Workforce Management provides a clear view into Afterpay productivity levels and ultimately reveals an opportunity to reduce variance in output across different teams.