Workforce management in call centres

Workforce management.  It started as a need that landed in the IT guy’s lap and has grown to become a formal discipline.  Millions of dollars have been invested in software development and training of individuals.

Workforce managers have grown to a point of critical mass.  The Workforce Management Network Group was formed in Melbourne in 2001 with a view to sharing knowledge and solving problems.

The group’s president, David Grant, says “workforce management is a critical function in every call centre in the country.  The WFMNG is all about establishing a professional identity for workforce planning practitioners as well as developing national benchmarks”.

Technological developments and software has taken much of the guess work out of WFM.  However, IT firms will always claim the superiority of their software. It is important to be able to benchmark and compare different user experiences and evaluations.

On average, labour represents 65% of a call centre’s costs.  Technology accounts for another 10%.  Getting the most out of your people and utilising the most appropriate software has obvious benefits to call centre results.

“Real time monitoring was the big breakthrough a few years back” says David Grant.  “Everyone had to get hold of it.  The only problem was no-one knew how to get the most out of it”.

The workforce manager has definitely evolved from just knowing about IT.  Professional and competent workforce managers have to be across the broader business goals, have empathy with the agents and the ability to second guess the customer.

They also have to be analytical and honestly assess the new products or techniques that come across their desk in a constant stream.  Call centres continue to evolve into new areas of business and new methods of doing business.  The workforce manager must keep pace.

According to David Grant “email is the next big step we have to integrate into call centres.  People have made a lot of noise about the savings it will make but it still takes a great deal of time and effort to integrate thoroughly”.

“We have unpredictable volumes to plan for and unpredictable responses to anticipate.  We also need to carefully consider the skill set as potentially quite different to that of our telephone agents”.

Web mail, Video Over IP, multi media – the list of applications for these technologies is endless.

It really is an evolution.  Call centre to contact centre.  All technological cards have to be laid on the table for the intuitive assessment by the managers who need to extract the benefit.

The Workforce Management Network Group is determined to raise the bar and ensure swank software salesmen actually have the product that will deliver the promised outcomes.

White elephants are costly, a waste of time and not something professional workforce managers want to be associated with.