Advice Hub

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,...

Do you know how busy your back-office staff are? So, your back-office is busy, your staff look like they’re working hard, but do you really have any visibility of what they are busy working on?  Are they tackling the important tasks that are best for the business and your customers, or are they cherry picking the tasks they enjoy the most? Could this mean you are struggling with the lack of visibility into operational data such as what exactly staff...

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...

Call Recording is utilised in most businesses today, especially customer-facing ones. It is also used in contact centres who implement call centre software in order to boost productivity, engage the workforce and cut operating costs. What is Call Recording: Call Recording software records telephone conversations over a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Voice over IP (VoIP) in a digital audio file format. It also provides you with the ability to retrieve, playback, store and share calls. More simply, Call...

Original article taken from FStech magazine Garth Hinkel, Head of Technical Services at Business Systems outlines to FStech the main applications of RPA within financial institutions. Robotic Process Automation or RPA has become the new technologically driven revolution and, as with all revolutions, it has its supporters and its critics. From major IT companies to large consultancies, they are all experimenting on new ways that Robotic Process Automation will help transform high volume, resource intensive processes that are repetitive and manual. Supporters...

Revised and Edited post from our contribution on Bobsguide With MiFID II, call recording and retention of calls is no longer a ‘nice to have’, but a serious FCA requirement extended under the financial legislation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II). According to Article 16 (6) - "Investment firms must arrange for records to be kept of all services, activities and transactions undertaken which are sufficient to enable the competent authority to fulfill its supervisory tasks (...) and...

Cloud versus On-premise is a popular battle. With growing customer demands, businesses now have to optimise their existing IT infrastructures in order to deliver outstanding customer experience and survive in a competitive environment. A report from The State of Customer Experience 2017, showed that Cloud Contact Centres are substituting on-premise call centres, with 39% of Contact Centres in the UK migrating to the Cloud, and 57% planning to move within the next few years. If you have been considering moving...

What is Speech Analytics? Speech Analytics is the process of analysing recorded audio from phone calls to help you spot trends and patterns within customer interactions. This function can also be extended across other customer contact channels including social media, email, text and web chat. Speech analytics can be used as a plug in or add on technology in addition to a call recording system, helping you make the most out of deciphering customer interactions and unlocking valuable business insight....

The business sense of Speech Analytics for Debt Collection Effective debt collection is a strenuous balancing act having to meet several, often competing, goals at once: hitting revenue targets, ensuring promises are kept and controlling delinquency roll rates, while preserving the relationship of the debtor with the creditor, and all that tailored for different products and clients. Also, let’s not forget the productivity KPIs that run in parallel, for example average calls handled per agent or average call duration. If...