Workforce Management Videos for Call Centers

We have just uploaded new workforce management videos to our demo center and would like to invite you to take a look. The videos cover the whole spectrum of workforce optimization, including forecasting, scheduling, staffing, adherence tracking, call recording, quality monitoring and performance management.

The videos show how a unified Workforce Optimization solution connects all aspects of scheduling, skills, adherence, quality, metrics and compliance to better meet customer needs and deliver more effective customer service. They further demonstrate how to identify patterns and analyze metrics at various levels for training and quality assurance purpose and establish quality standards and best practices. In addition, you will learn how to combine quantitative and qualitative information for a complete assessment of contact center performance. For example, if your dashboard alerts you of a potential issue, you can start a live monitoring session to get to the root cause and develop tailored training and coaching programs to address it. An integrated WFO suite allows you “connect the dots” to get the whole picture that allows you to impact the bottom line. Please take a moment to watch the workforce optimization videos and feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to discuss how your call center could benefit from a unified WFO solution.

Workforce Management Software Selection for Contact Centers

When choosing the best workforce management (WFM) solution for your call center, there are a number of considerations to review based on that center’s specific needs. The goal is to increase efficiency and service levels, while also reducing costs. Here are ten important evaluation criteria for any WFM software solution.

1. Capabilities
What can the software do for your call center? Its capabilities should include accurate call volume forecasting from historical data and ACD integration, flexible schedule creation that incorporates foreseen and unforeseen variables, agent exceptions, intra-day changes to both forecasting and scheduling, and performance management reports.

2. Implementation
Calculate how long the software will take to implement, including installation, configuration, customization and training - weeks, months, years?

3. Integration
How well will the system work with your existing systems, for such necessities as sharing of vital data? Will this be possible out of the box, or will custom integration be required?

4. Cost
Incorporate upfront costs, ongoing monthly or maintenance costs, and any hidden costs in your consideration. Can the system be used over the web without equipment purchase?

5. Usability
How long will it take for mangers, supervisors and agents to get comfortable with the system? Is it confusing? Are there too many features that you may not need, but that can complicate usage?

6. Unification
How unified will the user experience be across solution components? Will the dashboards show everything you need to monitor a call and discover how and where corrections should be made?

7. Metrics
Besides forecasting, scheduling and adherence, other key WFM metrics that should be able to be reviewed via dashboard include call answer times, first call resolutions and transfer rates.

8. Scalability
Can the solution grow with your call center? Can users, modules and additional functionality be added without additional hardware costs or other expensive implementation?

9. Risk
What happens if the first system you buy doesn’t pan out? Can you return it or stop using it without incurring any financial risk?

10. ROI
What will the return on investment (ROI) be, and how quickly will you recoup you investment in the system? ROI can be hard numbers (e.g. cost savings) and soft benefits (e.g. higher customer satisfaction) - both will have a positive impact to the bottom line.

We have recently updated our workforce management resource center where you can download various documents that might be helpful in your selection process.

New call center workforce optimization demo center

We just launched a new demo center for our unified call center workforce optimization suite. The demo center makes it easier to browse through the various call center workforce solutions and watch the videos you are interested in. It is organized by the four solutions components of Monet WFO Live: Workforce Management, Call Recording, Quality Management and Performance Management. 

Monet WFM

• Workforce Management Overview: This video provides a short introduction to workforce management for contact centers and an overview of Monet WFM Live.
• Accurate Forecasting: Learn how to run simulations to calculate a precise forecast for future call volumes, agent requirements and average handle time for any time interval of the day, based on historical data from ACD systems.
• Efficient Scheduling: See how the advanced scheduling engine incorporates all call types and other activities to generate staffing schedules that optimize a wide range of factors - agent availability, expected call volume, service level goals and center budget.
• Effective Staffing: Learn how the solution helps call center managers and supervisors to accurately forecast call volumes and conduct 'what-if' scenarios, including seasonal call volumes and special days.
• Intra-day Management: Watch how to track key metrics throughout the day and quickly update required and assigned agents instantly, based on surpluses and shortages for each time period of the day.
• Exception Planning: See how an integrated exception calendar simplifies scheduling of agent exceptions such as time off and one-time or recurring training meetings for contact centers.
• Interactive Dashboards: Watch how a graphical display lets call center managers and supervisors drag and drop breaks, lunches and other changes to make updates to schedules and staffing in real-time.

Monet Metrics

• Performance Management with KPI's, Goals and Alerts: Watch how a graphical dashboard for display and interpretation of key performance indicators (KPIs) helps you improve overall call center performance.

Monet Record

• Call Recording and Monitoring: Learn how to easily capture, monitor and manage customer interactions with call recording to improve your customer service as well as ensuring regulatory compliance.

Monet Quality

• Quality Management and Assurance: This demo video is currently being produced and we will add it to the demo center shortly.

Please take a moment and browse through the demo center and stay tuned for more videos coming soon.

The Business Value of Workforce Management Software - Part 2

In our previous blog about the value of workforce management software we talked about the business challenges, now, let’s take a look at the key value drivers of WFM software compared to the manual/spreadsheet approach:

• Reduces administrative time: Automated WFM drastically reduces the administrative time spent on forecasting and scheduling, data gathering of call history, and creation of management reports. Most call centers see a reduction by a large percentage  after implementation.

• Slashes shrinkage and optimizes schedules: WFM precisely measures the sources of agent shrinkage and provides tools to reduce its occurrence. Managers can create staffing schedules that optimize a wide range of critical success factors, such as agent skills and availability, breaks and holidays, skill types, historical and predicted call volume, budgets, and service levels. Skills-based scheduling and routing processes enable call center managers to assign skill levels and types to individual agents, and then automatically route a specific type of call to a specific agent who will best be able to resolve the customer’s issue quickly and more effectively. In addition, they can take advantage of flexible start and end times.

• Precisely forecasts demand: Automated WFM solutions use historical data to accurately predict the number of agents needed to handle the center's volume in real-time, and allow managers to predict future call volume, handle times, agent occupancy, first call resolution rate, and other service levels. Managers can also run multiple forecast/schedule scenarios, and have the ability to better forecast special days such as holidays and other scheduled time off. It also enables managers to forecast agent requirements based on service level agreements, as well as refine forecasts and performance goals based on collected data. More accurate forecasts ensure more efficient schedules, which prevents under or over-staffing.

• Increases productivity and service quality: WFM software gives managers the ability to compare forecasts with available agent schedules to find time-pockets throughout the day where agents would sit idle, and then use that time for training, coaching, and meetings.

The bottom line? Lower expenses, higher revenues and productivity, and improved service levels and customer satisfaction. A manual/spreadsheet approach simply doesn’t measure up.

What About ROI and Payback Time?
The large return on investment and fast payback time make WFM software the clear choice when compared with any other method of managing a workforce, forecasting call volumes and creating schedules. A workforce management solution helps call centers realize a high ROI by:

• Providing more accurate forecasting and scheduling to reduce agent under-staffing and over-staffing

• Improving agent schedule adherence to reduce shrinkage

• Enhancing supervisor efficiency by spending more time coaching and allowing agents to use the software’s self-service scheduling features

• Reducing overtime expenses of agents by monitoring intra-day statistics and anticipating when additional agent resources will be needed

• Decreasing agent turnover by enabling agents to manage their own schedules and empowering them to improve performance by reviewing their individual metrics

For more information you can also download the "how to calculate cost savings for workforce management software" whitepaper.

How to deliver a great customer experience

It shouldn’t be a secret for companies that it is crucial to truly understand customer needs and then deliver products and services that meet or exceed those needs. However, you have probably noticed first-hand in your own consumer and buying experience that a lot of companies are still too much product instead of customer-focused. As the CEO of my company, Monet Software, I have established a one-word mission statement and that is “Customer”.  There is the old saying which still rings true: “take care of your customers and they will take care of you”. It’s easy to say, but often hard to implement and execute. In this article, I will share with you five simple but effective recommendations that have worked for us and other successful companies.

Understand customer needs: Make every effort to truly understand what your customers need, what they experience in their work or day, and what challenges they face. Talk to them, listen carefully, ask questions, observe them, look them over their shoulder at work – experience what they experience! This helps to create and deliver a solution that truly meets their needs and solve their problems. We learned from our customers that they need a Workforce Optimization (WFO) solution that integrates WFM, Call Recording, Quality Management and Performance management into one “experience”, helping them make better decisions and be more pro-active in managing productivity, service levels, service quality, and costs. And that’s what we delivered earlier this year.

Make it easy: It sounds obvious, but there are still many companies that make it complicated for customers to buy and use their products and services. Just make it easy for your customers: easy to understand your offering, easy to buy, easy to pay, easy to set up and easy to use. As a leading provider of cloud-based WFO solutions, our key focus has always been to make it as easy as possible for our customers to buy, set up and use our solutions – and that’s what our customers appreciate about our business.

Keep it simple: The world we live in is complex - business transactions, processes and communication get more complicated by the day. Studies have shown that innovative and successful companies are able to hide the complexity behind the scenes and keep things simple for the customer. Monet Software’s mantra from its inception has been to deliver sophisticated call center software, made simple. Instead of adding hundreds of features, we analyzed and prioritized the needs of our customers and focused on capabilities that are really important for call centers and their business objectives.

Focus on true customer value: True value is often not about the lowest price, it’s about delivering an affordable solution that meets or exceeds customer’s expectations and has a real and lasting business impact, such as reduced costs, improved quality, higher services levels, etc. Also, when thinking about customer value, it is important to include the end-customers of your customers into the value delivery. For example, when we think about the value of our WFO solution, we also think about how it helps our customers to better take care of their own customers.

Deliver a great customer experience: In today’s commoditized markets, the overall customer experience is often more important than the product itself. The key to a great customer experience is an outstanding customer service. There are many facets to delivering great service, but availability, responsiveness, and quality are crucial. We at Monet Software are striving to help our customers deliver great customer service to their customers. With our set of WFO tools, our customers can optimize agent schedules, identify call issues, establish quality guidelines and use agent analytics and performance management to get actionable insights and alerts to deliver a high quality and consistent customer experience, while also controlling costs. 

Please take a moment and think about how your company is delivering on the above five principles and how you can make your customers even more central to your business. (This article was also published in the print edition of Customer Magazine, Technology Marketing Corporation)

What is unified workforce optimization for call centers?

In the last few weeks, we did several webinars about unified workforce optimization in the cloud. We talked about the need for a unified WFO solution and also demonstrated our new offering Monet WFO Live. We received tremendous interest and we would like to thank all who joined us. We are planning to do a few more webinars in January, please stay tuned. Here are some highlights from the webinar:

• Most of the organizations have several different functions and technologies that they would ideally like to work together, so they can balance customer satisfaction and revenue, with the cost of customer service. Typically one group focuses on scheduling and deploying staff, and one focuses on recording and measuring performance. There are also people who analyze and investigate opportunities for change, closing skill gaps and establish goals to measure against.

• As much as we may want these people to work together, today they are forced to make isolated decisions and often act independently because they have limited access to information outside of their area or function. They don’t have visibility into or it takes too long to get to key pieces of information, leaving them to make decisions too slowly and in silos.

• We believe a large part of the problem is that they don’t have access to a unified integrated technology supporting these groups to help bring them together.  They need immediate access to information traditionally found in other areas and they need information automatically passed to them to eliminate slow, error-ridden manual processes.

• With a unified WFO solution you get unique business integrations that can let your organization make faster, more informed decisions with a new level of visibility into workforce performance, customer service processes and customer intelligence across the enterprise.  You can quickly get to the right information to drive a new level of performance improvement.

• Through these integrations users can drill to information traditionally found in other applications and information can be automatically passed between functions to eliminate manual processes.

• In addition, you get a single workforce optimization framework that brings these functions together with features like a single graphical user interface and central administration. Having a single graphical user interface let’s people easily navigate in areas that they don’t spend a lot of time in. 

If you don't want to wait for the next webinar, you can read more about workforce optimization on our website or you can read an article about WFO in the Customer Interaction Magazine.

Workforce management software vendor guide

Selecting and deciding on the right workforce software for your call center is crucial. In case you missed the recent buying and vendor guide about workforce management and optimization software in Enterprise Apps Today magazine, please read on. The article lists four leading Workforce Optimization and Management vendors and Monet Software is proud to be one of them.

Here is an analyst quote from the article: “Workforce management applications are designed to automate the deployment of the workforce through workload planning, scheduling, time and attendance tracking, resource management, and rules and compliance management,” said Lisa Rowan, an analyst at IDC. “Increasingly, workforce management applications are being integrated into customer relationship management applications in a contact center environment.” Some of the key features of WFM, Rowan says, are skills and certification tracking, shift/vacation bidding, workload planning, forecasting, scheduling, scheduling optimization, customer wait-time forecasts, coverage management and absence management.

If you are interested in seeing these solutions in action, please visit our workforce optimization demo center.

Workforce Optimization Software Buying Guide for Call Centers

The software application magazine Enterprise Apps Today just published an article about workforce optimization software for call centers. It talks about the importance of workforce optimization as part of the overall call center strategy and highlights several vendors, interviews with executives and a buying guide for call center workforce optimization software.

Monet Software is mentioned as one of the leading vendors for workforce optimization software in the article. Please click this link to read the full article.

Call center performance management metrics and tips

Often, it is not the sheer number of different call center performance metrics that drive success, rather how well they are presented (graphics versus numbers), how accessible they are (now in real-time versus later) and how they relate to each other (having a big picture versus a "siloed" view). With rising customer expectations and cost pressure, call center performance management becomes ever more challenging. Here are three things to consider when thinking about improved and more effective call center performance management: 

Dashboards: Make data easy and simple to understand
There is that saying "a picture is worth more than a thousand words" - the same is often true for numbers. Having access to detailed reports with lots of numbers is necessary, however, often a simple dashboard with key metrics provides the right amount of information to see if you need to take action throughout the day.

Real-time: Make data actionable and pro-active
For some data and metrics it is fine to review them at a later point and draw conclusion, however, there are a few key metrics that you should get in real-time. This allows you to make changes right then, when you see an issue coming up, such as out-of-adherence, changing call volumes and call pattern (compared to your forecast).

Integration: Connect the "dots"
The challenge in a center is often to optimize one variable (metric) without compromising another. For example, a reduction in call time could impact call quality or customer satisfaction. If you have access to "connected" data you can better understand how one change might affect the overall performance of your call center. Also, it helps different teams and departments (that often act as "silos") better work together by sharing "cross-functional" call center metrics. Unified workforce optimization solutions that integrate workforce management, call recording, quality and performance management can help accomplish this.

If you would like to learn more, please watch the various call center workforce optimization videos on our website.

What is call center workforce optimization software?

Many call center managers are still challenged with having the right number of agents with the right skills, ensuring that calls are handled in compliance with regulations and policies, while also delivering great customer service. Call center workforce optimization software offers a complete suite to automate workforce management, call recording, quality assurance and agent analytics. Call centers can 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. It unifies workforce optimization across multiple processes to better meet customer needs and deliver more effective customer service. The following are typical components of a WFO suite:

• Workforce Management
• Call Recording
• Quality Management
• Screen Capture
• Performance Management and Agent Analytics

The integration and unification of data and functionality of WFO platforms help companies redefine the way they operate and establish a more proactive and flexible call center management. Only an integrated WFO suite allows call center managers and supervisors to “connect the dots” and get the whole picture, allowing them to positively impact productivity, quality and the bottom line. Please follow this link to watch a workforce optimization software video.

VOIP call recording unified with workforce management in the cloud

The integration of VOIP call center recording software with workforce management (WFM) as a combined workforce optimization solution can result in more efficiencies, cost savings and overall improved call center performance:

Simplify Agent Administration
Consolidate your user management activities through centralized administration. This saves time and reduces cost; also avoiding "siloed" user databases and redundant user/agent management.

Improved Performance
Better investigative capabilities and call center insights, metrics and alerts across multiple functions help make more informed and faster decisions, resulting in optimized call center performance.

Easy Data Sharing
Data collected by both, call recording software and WFM software, can be easily shared between supervisors, managers, trainers, analysts and even groups of agents.

Better Collaboration across Teams
One way to expedite improvements is to create cross-functional teams that can work together on such challenges as optimal scheduling and improving the quality of each customer call. When call center recording and WFM are in sync, informational silos are eliminated and customer service improves.

Lower Costs
By using a unified solution of call recording and WFM software, a call center can lower some costs and eliminate others, such as the need for third-party integration. A call center can reduce overhead expenses by centralizing all administrative functions in a single source.

For more information about this topic, please also see our call recording blog.

How Workforce Management Software and Call Recording Software work together

It’s common knowledge that workforce management software and call recording software are powerful tools for contact centers to improve quality, service levels and productivity. But today’s complex customer interactions require more than a set of disjoint call center tools. More and more call centers implement unified workforce optimization solutions, that enable them to connect all aspects of scheduling, skills, quality, metrics and compliance to better meet customer needs and deliver more effective customer service. Managers and supervisors can easily identify patterns and analyze metrics at various levels for training and quality assurance purposes and establish quality standards and best practices. For example, if they notice a potential issue, such as out-of-adherence they might get to the root cause by retrieving selected call recordings and then develop tailored training and coaching programs to address it. Our new call recording whitepaper will answer two key questions:

• First, we will take a look at why call recording is essential for every call center
• Second, we will discuss how call recording as part of a unified workforce optimization solution can deliver even greater benefits, allowing you to “connect the dots” and get the whole picture to quickly improve call center performance.

Download this whitepaper and learn why call recording software is a must-have for your call center and how its integration with cloud-based workforce management takes call center performance to a whole new level.

Contact Center Workforce Software for a Better Customer Experience

TMCnet, a call center software publication, is featuring an interview with the CEO of Monet Software, provider of contact center workforce optimization solutions, as part of its launch of a new magazine called "Customer". The interview addresses the following call center related topics:

• Improving the customer experience and customer interactions
• Key developments in customer interactions over the last few years
• What impact does CRM have on the customer experience
• Impact of workforce management, call recording, quality management and call center metrics on the customer experience
• The future of cloud-computing on the delivery of software

You can read the whole interview called "Monet Software Paints a Picture of the New Customer Experience" on TMCnet's website.

Call center workforce optimization - what is it and why is it important?

Many call center managers are still challenged with having the right number of agents with the right skills, ensuring that calls are handled in compliance with regulations and policies, while also delivering great customer service based on quality standards.Call Center Workforce Optimization (WFO) solution suites for call centers help automate workforce management, call recording, quality assurance and agent analytics in one integrated package. Call centers can quickly and easily optimize all aspects of their workforce with one solution, resulting in better utilization of resources, better cost management and improved service levels. Typically, WFO consists of the following modules:

• Workforce Management
• Call Recording
• Quality Management
• Performance Management and Agent Analytics

With a unified WFO solution, call centers can connect all aspects of scheduling, skills, quality, metrics and compliance to better meet customer needs and deliver more effective customer service. Managers and supervisors can easily identify patterns and analyze metrics at various levels for training and quality assurance purposes and establish quality standards and best practices. In addition, they can combine quantitative and qualitative information for a complete assessment of contact center performance. For example, if they notice a potential issue, they can easily drill down across functions to get to the root cause and develop tailored training and coaching programs to address it. Only an integrated WFO suite allows you to “connect the dots” and get the whole picture to quickly improve call center performance.

If you are interested in learning more, please watch the workforce optimization videos on our website.

Workforce management and optimization in the cloud

The Cloud-based model for workforce management software uses a new multi-tenant and scalable architecture that was designed to efficiently and securely deliver web-based applications at the lowest possible cost. It focuses on fast set up, low operating costs through shared services, high security for web-based deployment and high performance and scalability through instant and seamless scaling of computer resources (also called "elastic cloud computing"). 

• Lower operating costs: With the Cloud provider managing the IT infrastructure, costs are lowered by securely sharing IT infrastructure and resources, avoiding "hidden costs" for hardware replacements, upgrades, and IT operation resources that are typical for premise-based software.
• Ease of use: The new web-based user interface of Cloud-computing solutions focus strongly on usability, ensuring an easy to use software. This helps to drive fast user adoption within your organization.

For more information, please download our cloud-based workforce management whitepaper.

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.