Whether your Call Center or Contact Center is inbound, outbound, or blended, maximizing human resources to cover open hours is an ongoing challenge. Countless books have been written, algorithms developed, and training hours devoted to effective forecasting and staffing. Workforce Management (WFM) is the type of complicated, detailed work that is time-consuming for humans — but exceptionally easy for computers.
Our Workforce Management systems use proven, industry-leading software applications to simplify and automate all of the primary areas of Workforce Management for your Call Center.
Forecasting
Accurate forecasting of workload, and building schedules to match, is a daunting task for even the most math-loving supervisor. The more agents in your Call Center, the more quickly it becomes clear that manual methods and spreadsheets are simply not enough.
Our Call Center and Contact Center Workforce Management systems integrate directly with your phone switch to upload historical data and to create forecasts. You can also set up recurring events (such as seasonal spikes) and manipulate data for special circumstances (such as new marketing campaigns). Our systems let you run “what if” scenarios to assist in staffing plans well in advance of your actual need.
Scheduling
A Workforce Management system from Sound Communications automatically produces schedules that are optimized down to the quarter hour. These schedules balance the forecasted contact volume with data you define:
- Shift rules
- Work patterns
- Breaks
- Off-phone times
- Service-level goals
- Agent skills, proficiencies and preferences
The end result is a schedule that drives down costs by better aligning staffing levels with workload.
Ongoing Management
The best forecasting and the most accurate scheduling can be rendered nearly useless by day-to-day reality. That’s why our Workforce Management systems help you quickly identify and respond to everyday challenges with built-in tools like:
- Real-time graphic displays of contact volume (forecasted, actual and predicted), handle time, and service-level statistics.
- Email alerts when there are intra-day deviations from plan so staffing can be immediately adjusted.
- Instant alerts for out-of-adherence states, as well as management functions that show agent exceptions in real time, allowing supervisors to approve or deny them in increments as small as one minute.
- An agent self-service web portal that lets them see their schedules as well as request start times (by day), overtime, and days off.
- An online “swap board” where agents can post, negotiate and request full or partial-day shift swaps, with all activity monitored by an automatic conflict checker and all swaps forwarded to managers for quick and easy processing.
- Comprehensive, out-of-the-box reports on Call Center activity, adherence, performance, staffing, time off and more…plus audit trail functionality that lets administrators track any changes made to the Workforce Management system.
Perhaps the most appealing quality of our Workforce Management systems is their fast and demonstrable ROI.
If your Call Center is large enough to schedule agents, it’s large enough to benefit from a Workforce Management system. To learn more about the variety of systems available, and discover which one is right for you, please call us at 1-800-556-8556 or click here to schedule a FREE demo.