Basics of Workforce Management in a Contact Center

The chances are good that your company has one or more contact centers. There are about 62,000 formal contact centers in North America, employing over 3 million agents. They go by many names – customer support, help desk, telephone sales … They answer telephone calls from customers or fellow employees and increasingly they handle other on-demand communications such as e-mails, or chat requests.

Management of human resources is key in contact centers. Agents account for more than 70% of the cost of running a typical contact center.

In contact centers, the workload depends on demand from clients. These may be customers of the business enterprise or co workers in need of support. Usually clients expect an immediate response from a contact center, and contact centers need to have the right workforce available at all times to meet client demand. But they also need to manage closely to avoid costly overscheduling

In this session you will learn the basics of contact center workforce management. You will learn the steps in creating and managing a contact center schedule. You will learn the vocabulary of contact center workforce management and you will learn about key performance metrics for agents and for the contact center. You will also learn how employment policies and work rules interact with the special demands of contact center scheduling.

We will cover the fundamentals of planning, operations and analytics and you will learn about the tools available to accomplish these tasks. You’ll learn how to be prepared for employee churn, understand the impacts of seasonality on your business, and project future staffing requirements based on growth and other changes to the business. We will review the best means to meet not only the needs of the business unit but also the needs of the workforce with regard to vacations, training, coaching and schedule constraints. Although the bottom line is a primary consideration, factoring in employee preferences and fulfillment will reinforce your critical recruitment and staff retention goals.

We will complete the picture by showing you the analytics side of a workforce management solution where you can track the expenses in your business unit at a macro and micro level. You will also be able to drill down to the individual employee level to focus on individual employee productivity and performance.

Our basic proposition: a workforce management solution can be a critically effective tool for businesses of all sizes with a contact center, enabling them to plan for the future, manage the current staff, and determine the cost components of unit operations.

HR professionals who are responsible for the planning, recruiting, and/or management of contact centers or a team that responds to customer contacts via phone, emails or chat. The presentation would be of great value for anyone who would like to reduce employee churn, or who needs an understanding how to project future staffing requirements based on changes to their business.

1. The steps in creating and managing a contact center schedule 2. How to best prepare for employee churn 3. How to project future staffing requirements based on season fluctuations and changes to the business

White Papers: www.isc.com and www.perorusassoc.com

		Al Cuccinelli ISC Consultants, Inc. View Profile

		Nancy L Miller ISC Irene View Profile