Contact Center Workforce Management

Ovum has outlined five secrets to success that enterprises should follow when implementing e-learning and coaching solutions.

Use data and applications that already exist within the contact center

Enterprises should use the information they already collect on agents’ skills and knowledge to determine the best time to schedule course and tailor the information. There are a number of applications that can be integrated with e-learning andcoaching including PM, WFM, Quality Management (QM) and...

The operational planning process evolved to solve the core inbound contact center business question: given the seasonality of call volumes, the seasonality of agent attrition, the seasonality of agent sick time, vacation requests, and other shrinkage items, the seasonality of handle times, given that all of these items are different by center location and type of staff required, and given learning curves, training times, and other important and complicating characteristics, how does...

Back-office operating areas that process orders, applications, claims, white mail, payments, etc., have historically been left to develop their own staff planning approach. Senior management perception was that little could be done to improve the performance of these people-intensive, but non-strategic operating areas. So, these departments have received limited attention and investment dollars, or have been outsourced.

Call centers used to confront similar challenges before new tools and...

Second in a two-part series

Yesterday we looked at the Payment Card Security Council and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which were established to protect the credit card user. Today we look  specifically at the standard and the requirements it places on contact centers.

DMG Consulting LLC is a leading provider of market research and consulting services for contact centers. The 2009 – 2010 Quality Management/Liability Recording Product and Market Report is the definitive guide to...

Global organizations often have little to no visibility into the non-phone based activities and processes that take place in their contact centers and broader customer service operations. And often times, it shows. The lack of visibility leads to such questions as:

•How can you know whether your agents and personnel are following the right processes?
•How effective and efficient is workflow across your customer service operation?
•Do employees’ maximize the vast number of applications...

Customers communicate with agents through a variety of communication channels, and many centers have been transformed into multichannel contact centers. Customers have the choice of contacting companies by telephone, email, snail mail, and increasingly, using web-chat. From the company’s perspective, the move to new communication channels has benefits in terms of both differentiated customer service and cost reduction.

Research has shown that, on average, the cost of handling calls is five times...

Agent Call Center Performance Optimization tools are a set of applications that seek to increase agent effectiveness, reduce workforce costs and improve service levels. These tools allow contact center managers to plan schedules, forecast agent requirements, measure agent performance, analyze results and improve outcomes.

Call Recording/Logging and Quality Monitoring (QM) software allows users to record, retrieve, analyze and improve agent/customer interactions.  These recordings are...

Twenty years ago, the contact center industry was greatly improved through the application of a mathematical modeling tool now commonly known as  contact center workforce management. We found that computers and mathematics could do a better job of determining agent schedules than we could do by hand or using a spreadsheet. It had long been thought that this modeling technology has run its course and that we have captured all of those contact center workforce management benefits. But we’re not...

More executives are looking at hosted call center solutions. Hosting is a delivery model that allows you to secure needed contact center applications now – not “when the economy turns around,” or “when budgets free up.” Hosting goes by a lot of names. “Application service provider ASP is one. “Software as a Service (SaaS)” and “cloud computing” are currently in vogue. Another trendy term along is “on-demand” services.

The basic idea is that you secure applications you need by paying a...

Authored by Patrick Botz, Vice President of Solutions Marketing, VPI

 

Call center performance management software is now recognized as a valuable solution to a long-standing problem. Much of the information within most contact centers is still collected and stored in disparate systems. Each system typically has its own reports, making it very difficult to make cohesive and accurate decisions based on data that can’t be properly compared and analyzed. With the advent of call center performance...

Authored by Patrick Botz, Vice President of Solutions Marketing, VPI

Call center monitoring software is now a fundamental technology in virtually every competitive call center environment. As the economy begins to recover, 2010 is expected to be another tough year for enterprises, with contact center managers asked once again to reduce their operating expenses while improving the customer experience and satisfaction scores. They will be expected to achieve this goal with limited resources and...

Authored by Patrick Botz, Vice President of Solutions Marketing, VPI

Call recording software plays a key role in many industries. It is a mandatory requirement in the majority of public safety organizations and within various industries, such as financial services and healthcare. With so much valuable information in vast number of customer interactions, the overwhelming majority of many organizations are now recording all their calls. Call recording software helps many organizations optimize the...

First introduced into the contact center market in 2004, speech analytics is one of the fastest growing contact center technology sectors. The market grew from 25 commercial speech analytics implementations at the end of 2004 to 1,764 at the end of 2008, yielding a five-year compounded annual growth rate of 190 percent. Speech analytics continues to grow at a rapid rate, despite the recession, because of its ability to help enterprises provide an outstanding customer experience, cut costs,...

 What Customers Want

 We often lose sight that we’re all consumers – everyone that works in customer service is a customer and with that comes a tremendous amount of experience and expertise.   Many companies to whom I consult spend countless hours trying to figure out what their customers want without tapping into their own experience as a customer.   We often approach our own product or service through the company's self created call center metrics and have a hard time looking beyond the...