Workforce management software for call centers: How to convince your executive team

Persuading senior management to change “business-as-usual” call center systems can be a difficult undertaking. A challenging economic environment puts pressure on all areas of the organization to implement solutions that reduce costs and increase revenues—all while improving performance and productivity. As each solution competes for investment dollars, only a select few offering the highest ROI will obtain funding.

Here are three key steps to make your case:

• Business impact: What does it “cost” you to continue using manual processes or spreadsheets? Please see also our posts about spreadsheet based contact center scheduling and the cost of out-of-adherence.
• Benefits: What are the key benefits you can realize with a WFM solution? Please see how does WFM impact call center staffing and the ROI of Workforce Management Software.
• ROI: What is the return or payback time for the WFM investment? A common misconception is that WFM software is associated with a large investment. In fact, new cloud-based WFM can deliver significant value to the top and bottom line with a minimal investment. A cloud-based WFM solution provides the highest ROI and savings of any WFM strategy due to its low upfront investment and low operating costs. Please read WFM software comparison - cloud versus installed software.

If you need help presenting the benefits of an automated WFM solution to your management team please see our workforce management ROI white papers or contact us and we are happy to answer your questions, share some ROI tools and provide guidance.

Contact Center Scheduling and Forecasting Functionality

What are the key functional components of a scheduling and forecasting solution for a contact center? Here is a quick overview:

• Forecasting: Ability to run simulations to calculate a precise forecast for future call volume, agent requirements and average handle time for any time interval of the day, based on historical data from your ACD system.
  
• Scheduling: The scheduling module should incorporate all call types and other call and non-call related activities to generate staffing schedules that optimize a wide range of factors, including agent availability, skills, holidays, breaks, training and service levels.
  
• Exception handling: Integrated exception calendar to simplify scheduling of agent exceptions such as time off and one-time or recurring training meetings.
  
• Real-time adherence: Ability to compare planned agent activity to actual activities throughout the day, as well as real-time views of forecast and actual call volumes, handle times and other key performance indicators.
• Intra-day management: Graphical display of agents' schedules with drag-and-drop functionality to quickly manage breaks, lunches and other exceptions. Real-time updates can be made to required and assigned agents instantly, and display surpluses and shortages for each time period of the day.
  
• Agent - supervisor collaboration: Enables easy and efficient agent-supervisor interaction and collaboration, such as exceptions, schedule bids or swap requests and critical reports. Agents get empowered to be more directly involved in the scheduling process by entering exceptions or bids and viewing their schedules at any time.
  
• Configuration & administration: Ability to set up unlimited number of center splits or agent groups, each with its own set of service objectives and guidelines. Management of multiple sites and time zones. Ability to set hours of operation by day of week, and service level goals down to 15-minute intervals if desired.
  
• Metrics and reporting: Ability to report and analyze all agent activities including their schedule adherence and key performance indicators. Managers need to get actionable insights through tools such as call center dashboards, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and real-time alerts.

If you are interested in seeing a solution in action, please take a look at a contact center forecasting and scheduling demo on our website.

Making Workforce Optimization Easy and Affordable

We are very excited that Monet Software and our new solution suite Monet WFO Live was featured in the March 2012 issue of Customer Interaction Solutions with the title "Making Workforce Optimization Easy and Affordable". Here are some highlights from the article:

“Call centers can now quickly and easily optimize all aspects of their workforce with one affordable solution, resulting in better utilization of resources, better cost management and improved service levels,” Chuck Ciarlo explains. “Monet WFO Live unifies workforce optimization across multiple processes to better meet customer needs and deliver more effective customer service. Customers can create accurate forecasts, efficient schedules for work volumes, track key metrics in accordance to their business goals, record and monitor calls for quality, training and compliance purpose, all in one integrated cloud-based platform.”

Ciarlo added that “Monet is leading the call center workforce technology cloud by addressing some major industry trends”:

• "Customers are looking for one stop shopping and for a fully integrated WFO solution to take advantage of synergies across multiple functions.
• The adoption of cloud-based software is further accelerating due to proven value: scalable, security, low cost, ease of use, and fast implementation.
• Call centers want to move from a reactive to proactive mode of operation with goal settings, dashboards, triggers, and alerts to further optimize resources”.

Monet WFO Live consists of a handful of software modules, including Monet WFM, Monet Record, Monet Quality, and Monet Metrics.

Click here to read the full cover story.

Workforce Management + Call Recording + Quality Management

We are very excited to announce the availability of Monet Record and Monet Quality, expanding our Workforce Management (WFM) offering to a unified Workforce Optimization (WFO) suite. Now, call centers can easily and efficiently automate workforce management, call recording, quality management with one affordable solution. Here is a quick overview of the new solution components:

Monet Record - Call Recording for Compliance & Quality Assurance
Monet Record provides an easy and affordable web-based solution to record, archive and retrieve customer interactions to better monitor call quality and gain more business insights. Call centers can improve their customer service while ensuring adherence to regulations & policies and easier resolution of transaction disputes and other service related issues.

Monet Quality – Call Center Quality Management to Boost Productivity and Service Quality
Monet Quality is a flexible solution to evaluate the performance of contact center agents. It helps call centers improve agent effectiveness and optimize customer interactions through a range of capabilities, such as call assessment and playback, quality monitoring, call quality scoring, evaluation questionnaires and detailed reporting.

For more information please see the press release on our website and our new call recording blog.