What Contact Centre Workforce Management (WFM)?
Contact Centre Workforce Management (WFM) is a set of processes and tools used to optimize the productivity and efficiency of a contact centre’s workforce. It involves forecasting, scheduling, and managing the staffing requirements to ensure the right number of agents with the appropriate skills are available to handle customer interactions at any given time.
The key components of Contact Centre Workforce Management typically include:
Forecasting: Predicting the expected volume of customer interactions, such as calls, chats, or emails, over specific time periods based on historical data, trends, and business factors. This helps determine the staffing requirements for each interval.
Scheduling: Creating agent schedules that align with forecasted demand. Schedules are designed to ensure adequate coverage, considering factors like agent availability, skill requirements, and business rules. It may involve assigning shifts, breaks, and time off to agents.
Real-Time Monitoring: Monitoring and tracking contact centre performance in real-time, including agent adherence to schedules, service level achievements, and other key performance indicators. It allows supervisors to make adjustments as needed to optimize resource utilization.
Intraday Management: Making adjustments to the workforce plan throughout the day to address unexpected events or changes in demand. This may involve reallocating agents, implementing overtime or undertime, or making other staffing adjustments to ensure service level targets are met.
Performance Management: Analyzing agent and contact centre performance metrics, such as average handling time, service level, and customer satisfaction. Performance data is used to provide feedback to agents, identify training needs, and drive continuous improvement.
Effective Contact Centre Workforce Management aims to strike a balance between meeting service level targets, optimizing agent utilization, and controlling costs. By aligning staffing resources with customer demand, it helps maximize agent productivity, enhance customer experience, and achieve operational efficiency within the contact centre.
In summary, Contact Centre Workforce Management involves forecasting, scheduling, monitoring, and optimizing the staffing and performance of agents to ensure efficient operations and superior customer service delivery within a contact centre.