Workforce Management

Use this simple Workforce Management (WFM) ROI calculator to understand potential savings that could help transform your workforce planning and resource planning contact centre operations.

What should your employees be expecting from a Self-Service Workforce Management toolkit? What exactly employees should be expecting from a Self-Service Workforce Management (WFM) toolkit? Flexibility & Availability Most employees today are looking for flexibility and availability to help meet their busy and complex lifestyle schedules. They want to be able to take control of their work patterns. Employees for example who have children may prefer to take on shifts which allow them to be available around the school run....

'Original article and picture taken from the FStech website June 2016.' Workforce Management within the financial services sector - is there real value to be gained? Whether we are talking about a financial institution’s branch network or contact centre, both channels are still central in the delivery of personalised customer service, and indeed they are both people-intensive. Managing, however, a workforce of hundreds or thousands of employees with different skills across different locations can be a complex balancing act between the demands...

Workforce management (WFM) software helps organisations, in particular contact centres, with resource planning by automating the process of forecasting and scheduling when and which staff should be working, in order to operate efficiently, cost effectively and within acceptable service levels. This in turn, will help boost the customer experience (CX).  Its main purpose is to help calculate the number of agents or staff with the necessary skill sets needed at particular times of the day to manage customer interactions optimally...

With one of the UK’s largest Workforce Optimisation consultancy teams, we’ve installed and provided training for Workforce Management tools across a variety of industries including Banking, Public Sector, Telecommunications, Health Services and Transport -  just to name to a few. Our experience has taught us that these industries all share a common factor - they will all experience various seasonal peaks and lows, dependant on certain variables, when it comes to their contact volumes and talk time. For example, one...

Mistakes you should avoid when scheduling agents with Workforce Management technology  Running an efficient and profitable contact centre can be challenging. Scheduling agents to manage the workload is extremely important to ensure service level agreements are constantly met. In order to do so effectively, you need to be able to constantly match your finite staff resources and budgets with the following: Different requirements and KPIs as agreed with your internal and/or external customers Expected and unexpected fluctuations in the volume...

Are you still thinking about whether it's time to part with your spreadsheets? The answer is easy - here are 13 simple questions to help you decide which workforce planning tool is best for your operation. Download our handy infographic and tick the answer (Yes/No) that best applies to your resource planning contact centre and operational needs - add them up and find your answer! WFM vs Excel - Business Systems

Any organisation looking to implement workforce management (WFM) technology is normally at the tipping point where growing pains and the limitations of spreadsheet planning are becoming problematic and there is a need to automate the workforce planning process. Futureproof your WFM investment Whatever the level of resource planning in the organisation, it’s important to ensure the proposed WFM application is agile and flexible enough to change with the organisation. Even if you are starting with planning for front office only,...

Originally taken from our contribution on the Corporate Modelling website Workforce productivity is usually at the top of every organisations priorities. But when it comes to a contact centres back-office, being able to measure performance and productivity isn’t always as straightforward as it is for the front office and customer facing agents. In most organisations, back-office environments perform operations which are vital to keeping the wheels of the business turning. However, even though it has been established that the back-office forms a...

Our brains love to run ‘what-if’ scenarios, we’re in a constant state of what if’s!  What if I win the lottery?  What if I injured myself home-alone? What if my staff suddenly all fall ill? And…  as a result of that you catch your mind taking one of those situations and preparing for the future.  So what if I win the lottery, will I retire?  What if I injure myself home-alone, can I get to the phone for help?  What...

ERLANG A WITHIN WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT MAY HAVE THE ANSWER 'Original article taken from Response Source March 2019.' Erlang C has been a WFM firm favourite for decades. Now there is an alternative. Rebecca Philp at Telelopti explains the differences and five advantages of Erlang A. For many years, contact centers have used the Erlang staffing calculator to forecast how many agents they require to meet agreed service levels. Calculations are based on two mathematical formulae: Erlang C and Erlang A. Paradoxically, Erlang...

A key challenge for any resource planning team is the ability to create workforce management long-term forecasting techniques that provide accurate capacity and workforce planning. Based on 100 contact centre workforce planners, the top 5 forecasting challenges are: Need to forecast for multiple skill sets Changing business needs negate usefulness of historical volume data Volume driven by external events, not controlled by the company Volume is seasonal and can vary greatly Volume patterns change frequently, making projections difficult Workforce Management...