The Top 5 Workforce Management Challenges

Workforce management refers to an integrated set of processes used to optimize employee productivity on both an individual and company-wide level. Any systems with such a wide range of moving parts and variables will inevitably present challenges; however, a sophisticated workforce management solution can help to anticipate these challenges and overcome them.

1. Accurate Forecasting
Forecasting on call volume and agent workload can reduce instances of over-staffing, which wastes valuable resources, as well as under-staffing that can affect services levels and customer service. Workforce management automatically processes all relevant data to deliver more accurate short-term and long-term forecasting projections.

2. Comprehensive Scheduling
Scheduling involves far more than sign-in and sign-out times. There are a multitude of call center activities that pertain to non-call activities that must also be taken into account. Choose a WFM solution that makes non-call activities part of the forecasting and scheduling process. This is especially important since customer engagement today is based on many different channels such as chart, phone, email, social media. More about this in our recent blog post multi-channel agent scheduling.

3. Adherence Tracking and Improvement 
Schedule adherence is still one of the biggest challenges for call centers. With workforce management, a call center can monitor and record the schedule adherence status of all agents in real-time. The system tracks data on every status related to this issue, from lunches to daily breaks to when agents log out. If a problem is discovered it can thus be handled quickly. In addition to a good solution, you also need to put solid processes in place, more about this in our whitepaper Five Strategies to Improve Schedule Adherence.

4. Intr-aday Forecast/Schedule Management
Intra-day management is always a challenge due to particularly complex resource considerations. An integrated WFM solution should be able to monitor intra-day workload information (planning, controls, deployment strategies) that will produce pre-emptive rather than reactive actions for managers.

5. Exception Handling
Workforce management should manage and process exceptions in a way that communicates all necessary information to all parties concerned, accepts or rejects each exception instance based on company criteria, and make certain everyone is on the same page so there is no confusion on the part of the agent or management.

We also invite you to watch any of the short videos about how a workforce management system can help overcome those challenges.

Agent Schedule Adherence Visualized

Agent schedule adherence dashboard

Monitoring call center agent adherence to a rotation schedule is yet another task that used to be handled manually, and now can be achieved in less time and with greater accuracy through a workforce management solution.

With workforce management, a call center can monitor and record the schedule adherence status of all agents in real-time. The system tracks data on every status related to this issue, from lunches to daily breaks to when agents log out.

By having this information easily accessible on a workforce management dashboard, managers can quickly compare the agent’s actual daily activity to the objective intended by the company. One can even create custom states and guidelines to address atypical needs for a specific call center, such as after-hours work.

Once guidelines are customized and set as to which states (or statuses) should be included or not included in a schedule adherence measurement, the system does the rest. The different states are color-coded and can easily be monitored from a dashboard. It is now simple to review each agent’s efforts and classify their work time as within schedule adherence, or find out where he or she is coming up short. Too much time spent away from assigned functions can impact the call center’s productivity.

Accurate time management can be a challenge, as minor exceptions and changes happen each day. Perhaps an agent is scheduled to go on an approved break, but cuts into that time to complete a call that takes another 10 minutes. An effective workforce management solution can be configured in such a way as to record this time extension, and not count the lost break time against that agent. For more detailed information about how to implement effective strategies for schedule adherence, please click the link to download our whitepaper.

Call Center Schedule Exceptions

Handling exceptions is a key component to workforce schedule compliance. Exceptions must be managed in a way the minimizes their impact on productivity and availability, since both will have a negative impact on service levels and also quality of service.

There are four types of exceptions:

Pre-planned
These would include vacation days, training days and work time spent on other necessities such as team meetings.

Unplanned
Sick days and downtime due to technical issues would qualify as unplanned exceptions.

Unplanned but pre-approved
These are schedule deviations initiated by management to maintain performance levels.

Unplanned and not pre-approved
These tend to be reactionary, caused by meetings that run long or added coaching sessions.

Regardless of the exception type, the goal remains the same – customer service consistency and meeting company goals for schedule adherence.

Call Center Schedule Exception Calendar

 
This can be achieved with workforce management software, which provides real-time adherence data that streamlines call center schedule exception tracking, making it easier for managers to maintain service levels, to know which agents are excepted at any given time (and the reason for the exception, whether it’s a day off or time spent in training) and to review reporting data. The solution should also provide an easier method for shift swapping, with management approval.

Multi-Channel Agent Skill Scheduling for Contact Centers

Call centers are contact centers now, which means customers are interacting with agents through a range of channels including emails and live online chat. According to some studies, more than 25% of all customer interactions are now conducted via methods other than the telephone.

One of the goals of any 21st century contact center is to offer the right mix of channels and find an accurate method for multi-channel forecasting and scheduling of agents. The customer experience should be equally positive regardless of how communication is made. 

The challenge is how to offer consistent standards of customer engagement through multiple touch points.The solution is an optimized integrated platform that encompasses data on workforce management, agent skill sets, metrics, scheduling and reporting.

Tips for Multi-Channel Skills Scheduling
Multi-channel scheduling begins with a specification of service goals based on the types of channels the call center must handle, followed by agent skill assessment within each of these channels.

Once these standards are set, scheduling will require accurate calculation of the Average Handle Time (AHT) for each contact channel. This is easier to do with calls than with emails or chats where agent can handle multiple chats at the same time for example. A workforce management system takes these differences into consideration. With this information, the call center manager has two options to choose from:

Dedicated Agent Pools
Once an agent’s skill sets are determined, he or she can be assigned to a dedicated group that focuses solely or primarily on their best channel, whether that is inbound calls, emails or web chat.

The Universal Queue
With this method, all contacts are routed to agents based on order and availability. While this is a less specialized method for handing multiple channels, it does force agents to become adept at handling the various methods of customer communication in a shorter time span.

Workforce management provides the necessary metrics on channels and personnel skills to allow managers to make the best decisions for their contact center. You can watch a short video about multi-channel scheduling and staffing to learn more about this. Agents will be placed in situations where their skills can be maximized, thus improving productivity, morale and customer satisfaction – which is also great for the bottom line.

Call Center Agent Shift Swapping

Shift swapping is an inevitable occurrence at every call center, and is one of the more significant agent staffing challenges that management must oversee.

In general, allowing agents to swap shifts solves more problems than it creates. With this arrangement, agents have more control over their working hours, and that flexibility can encourage employee loyalty.

However, if this privilege is abused, it can lead to staffing confusion, lower productivity, a shortage of agents for unpopular shifts, and inconsistent customer service.

Agent Staffing Solutions
While shift swapping should be offered as an option, some center without the right processes in place try to  discourage this. They achieve this by built-in incentives for agents to work the shifts to which they are assigned, and by limiting swaps to, say, three a month or five in each quarter.

Call centers should have a reliable process in place that tracks shifts and instances of shift swapping. This will not only make the process easier for agents and management, it provides managers with insight into which agents may be abusing this privilege, and how working different shifts impacts an agent’s job performance.

While some last-minute shift swaps are unavoidable, as emergencies do happen, a center should require that agents request swaps at least three or five days in advance. That way, managers can adjust schedules accordingly so productivity is not impacted. For example, if an agent who is particularly adept at handling customer complaints swaps shifts with an agent who is not as qualified in this situation, the call center may wish to bring in another agent from a different shift with that same specialty.

The ultimate objective is to satisfy the needs of the center and the needs of the employees, and to make any staffing changes as convenient as possible.

The Role of Workforce Management Software
Shift swaps are yet another function that should be handled through a workforce management solution - through a simple self-service tool that includes shift bidding. An effective system will allow agents to search for shifts to swap, and instantly know if there is a conflict with their arrangement. Supervisors will then have the ability to approve or reject the swap request, and find out if there are any issues with weekly minimum or maximum restrictions on work hours should the swap be approved. To learn more about agent shift swapping and supervisor collaboration, please follow this link to our main website.

With effective workforce management, the system that allows shift swaps should be efficient, transparent and controlled by management with the limitations necessary to maintain service standards. 

When Call Centers Become Contact Centers - the Impact on Workforce Management

While the “call center” designation is likely to stick around for a while, agent interaction via telephone is now just one component of customer communication. Today, the public may reach out via email, online chat or social media. All of these additional channels are ultimately beneficial, but many call centers are just beginning to grasp the impact they will have - from a customer engagement perspective, but also from a workforce management perspective.

Email/Live Chat
Written exchanges of information, whether via email or text chat, have become commonplace. However, these channels work best with simple questions and conflict resolutions where a few sentences from both participants will suffice. Once the point has been reached where the number of exchanged messages tops 5-10, it might be advisable to switch to a telephone conversation.

With online chat, it may take longer to complete a customer interaction, simply because it takes longer to type a message than to say it. However, online chat agents can manage up to five sessions simultaneously, which will impact productivity and scheduling. If five proves too many (measure response times to each customer to determine this), three ongoing sessions might be a more practical limit.

When it comes to workforce management scheduling, you will want chat agents with proven written skills. While the Internet has done no shortage of damage to the disciplines of spelling, grammar and punctuation, it is vital that any written communication from your company to customers is free of such errors.

Social Media
A Facebook page and a Twitter account are great ways for companies to announce new products and specials and exchange ideas with customers. They are less effective for such traditional call center functions as handling orders and returns or resolving disputes. However, this too is changing rapidly.

If the call center is to take the lead on establishing and maintaining a company’s social media presence, adequate resources must be made available to do so, to make certain pages are updated, questions are answered, and ongoing communications are having a positive impact on branding and customer loyalty.

That starts with creating and scheduling a social media team based on experience and training. Agents should not just be familiar with these outlets, but be well versed on the company’s social media strategy and best practices.

And, as with email and online chat, choose agents and experts with written communication skills, and when a problem arises try to route that customer back to a call-in situation where it might be easier to resolve the situation verbally.

Each of these new communication channels should get included into your overall forecasting, scheduling and staffing planning process.

Schedule adherence alerts - do you get status alerts in real-time?

Schedule adherence tracking and monitoring is important, tracking in real-time is even more important. But, do you get alerts if agents or teams are our of adherence or have a different status than what they should be in? Getting notification in real-time allows you to make changes that have an immediate impact on the call center performance. The faster you can react, the easier it is to achieve and maintain your targeted service level.

Wouldn't it be great to get status alerts based on the various activities and exceptions you have set up? Wouldn't it be nice to define custom states and exceptions that are aligned with your unique call center requirements? Wouldn't it be nice to get either pop-ups, email or text message alerts based on thresholds you set up?

There are many scenarios and use cases for an adherence status alert system as you can images, here are just a few examples:

Agents not adhering to schedule: There could be various reasons for out-of-adherence and an alert can help call center managers and supervisors to find out how to improve the situation.


Agents return late from break or lunch: If this happens often, it might have a big impact on your service level. An alert will help solve that problem and establish more discipline. 

Call duration is too long: If a supervisor or subject matter expert is needed when calls exceed a certain threshold, Monet can alert that person to assist on the call.

Agents forgot to log out: A frequent issue that can occur if agents must manually log out at the end of their shift.  This alert will tell the supervisor that an agent has forgotten to log out of the ACD so they can take action. 

If you are interested in learning more about adherence status alerts, please contact us and we are happy to provide you more information and show you a demonstration.

How to improve schedule adherence and get it to the next level

Even with schedule adherence tracking in place, one remaining challenge is often the fact that agents can have so many different non-call tasks, exceptions and states that standard WFM solution are not able to plan for and monitor. That's where Advanced Schedule Adherence comes in. It enables supervisors and call center managers to create custom states and rules to match their unique center needs. Here are a few examples:

1. Create custom states for call wrap-up, special after call work, outbound preparation and other activities
2. Establish thresholds for each state that indicate how much time is considered “in adherence”.
3. Define which states are included or not included in the agent adherence calculation

Exceptions and non-call activities can be considered “scheduled activities,” along with available, break, lunch, and logged out states. Call center managers can customize which statuses are allowed and not allowed for each scheduled activity. Since every call center has unique agent activity types, this flexible approach to agent adherence monitoring gives centers a new level of accuracy in managing call center performance, while also providing more transparency and clarity to both, agents and supervisors. To learn more about this, please also download the Strategies for Improved Agent Adherence whitepaper from our resources library.

Call center schedule tips

We have created a list of seven practical tips for call center scheduling to not only keep your call center running efficiently, but also maintain high service levels, and keep costs under control. We would like to share these tips with you and hope it proves to be useful in your daily call center operations.

You can download the whitepaper by clicking this link 7 Tips for more effective call center scheduling. If you are also interested in schedule adherence, you can also download our whitepaper with the topic: Practical strategies for improving call center schedule adherence.

Call center management tips - part 2

This is part two of our series "call center management tips" with strategies, practical tips, and best practices on how to manage your call center more effectively and efficiently. This post focuses on how to improve call center schedule adherence and agent motivation:

Schedule Adherence

• Strategies for Improving Schedule Adherence - whitepaper
  
• What does lack of schedule adherence cost a call center?
• 7 Tips for improved schedule adherence in your call center
• Important call center metrics: schedule adherence
• Best Practices Video: How to improve call center schedule adherence
• Are you monitoring schedule adherence in your call center?
• What is real-time schedule adherence, and why is it important?
  

Agent motivation

• Motivation of call center agents, employees and workforce
• Important call center metrics: Agent turnover
• How to make a call center schedule work for your staff
• Keep top talent on your team

In the following weeks we will write more about call center metrics, intra-day forecasting/scheduling and real-time adherence - stay tuned.

Great online event about Call Center Schedule Adherence

Yesterday, we hosted an extremely well attended webast with the topic: "Six simple strategies for improved call center schedule adherence." People asked a lot of great questions and we had lots of interactions during this online event about the following topics:

1. How to quantify the cost and service implications of missing staff
2. Learn about options for setting adherence performance goals
3. How to identify the reasons why staff don't adhere to the schedule plan
4. How to develop reward and consequence programs that support adherence goals
5. How to effectively track, monitor and measure adherence

In case you missed it, here is the link to the recorded session - enjoy!

How to improve schedule adherence in your call center

One of the most challenging jobs related to managing any call center, is often ensuring there is the right number of staff with the right skills available at the right times of the day. How do you get your staff to show up for work on time and stick to their planned schedule and break times?

Monet Software is sponsoring a free webinar that exactly addresses this topic: "Six simple strategies for improved call center schedule adherence." Please join our special guest speaker and industry expert, Penny Reynolds from the The Call Center School, for this webinar on May 11th. She will share with you proven practices on schedule adherence that have resulted in increased availability. Please register here.

Tips for improved contact center agent scheduling

We have published several tips for more effective call center scheduling on this blog over the last year. We have summarized those tips in a short Call center scheduling whitepaper. If you didn't have the chance to download it, please do. You will learn about:

• Shrinkage
• Flexible shift-models
• Schedule adherence
• Multi-skilled agents
• Activities to include into schedule
• and more
  

Call Center Scheduling Tip #6: Keep top talent on your team

How to keep your talent? Make sure you accommodate scheduling needs and provide schedule visibility to your call center team members. Top agents will be more likely to stay loyal and productive because of their understanding of how their needs and your schedule can match up. Here are some ideas and suggestions:

• Involve your agents: Survey about preferences and personal needs and work with them to match those with the needs of the business.
  

• Rank your agents: Creating a schedule by agent rank can be very effective in achieving certain goals of you business (e.g. cost or revenue goals). You can rank agents according to call completion time, call per hour or other performance measures including sales and order size.

• Match personality and team: Studies have shown that a good relationship with colleagues drives motivation and performance in call centers. Your schedule should leverage this by teaming up the “right people”.

Call Center Scheduling Tip #5: Include all activities into the schedule

A schedule driven by forecast and basic agent requirements might work, but won’t boost performance and productivity. When trying to determine agent requirements to meet a desired service level, if not all agent activities are being factored in, it will lead to under-staffing and lower service levels including abandoned calls. When developing your forecast and schedule make sure to include breaks, multiple skills of agents, training, time-off and a realistic buffer for shrinkage.

It might help if you categorize all activities based on your unique situation. Here is an example:

1. Work related to incoming “call” load

• Call time and after work related to calls
• Outbound if triggered by inbound calls
• Chat (if important to your business)

2. Other activities that are related to calls

• Breaks, lunch
• Training
• Absenteeism

3. Measurable activities, not part of core staffing

• Meetings
• Admin or research work
• Correspondence
• Emails
• Outbound calls

4. Unproductive time

• Smoking, etc.
• Getting supplies
• Other

Skill-based scheduling and routing in your call center

With the growing number of call types due to more complexity (pre-sales, sales, support, service, etc.) and the increasing number of channels (phone, web, email, twitter, etc.), it becomes more difficult to efficiently handle the incoming "traffic", especially in small and medium-sized call centers. One solution is skill-based routing and scheduling. If you have agents trained to handle multiple types of calls and you use skill-based routing, you can reduce the number of agents needed to handle your call volume. The productivity gain from giving each agent two skills could easily be 5 to 15%. The importance of multi-skilled agents is that they form overlapping groups. For example, having one group that can handle calls type A and B while another group takes calls type C and D, can be substantially improved by adding a group that is able to handle calls type B and C (or one of the other three combinations). This model provides a lot of flexibility especially in times of fewer resources and changing call volumes and patterns.

Are you monitoring schedule adherence in your call center?

In December 2009, we did a workforce management survey and asked call centers (non customers) about their practices regarding forecasting and scheduling. One question was related to schedule adherence. We were surprised that 50% did not monitor schedule adherence. Lack of schedule adherence causes inefficiencies such as increased shrinkage and declining service levels. Here are some best practices and consideration for managing adherence in your center:

• Inform and Educate: Agents need to understand the relevance of schedule adherence, how a mere 10 minutes here and there impacts other agents and the entire call center performance.

• Measure and Manage: Measure and track adherence using workforce management tools and solutions, tracking adherence in real-time and running reports. Share these adherence reports with your agents and discuss how they are doing. It is important to give regular feedback regarding adherence statistics.

• Provide Incentives: Reward agents that adhere to their schedule (95% within adherence scores) through recognition within the team and tie bonuses to good scores. It is also critical that all agents are aware of the consequences for out-of-adherence behavior; this establishes their responsibility towards the success of the call center.

Over the next weeks, we will share more survey results - stay tuned. However, if you are interested in learning more right now, please go to www.monetsoftware.com and send us a note.