Since the cost of staffing in most call centers is between 60 and 70 percent of the total budget, the incremental benefits of selecting the best solution for your operation and implementing it successfully are significant. Companies in the market for a workforce management tool today face a mind-boggling array of choices. Automated workforce management systems range from quite simplistic to highly complex, with a wide range of price tags to match. This paper will help contact center managers navigate the choices.
White Paper
Realizing the Full Promise of Workforce Management Technology
Avoiding Mistakes that Short-Change Your Investment Maggie Klenke, Founding PartnerThe Call Center School
Since the cost of staffing in most call centers is between 60 and 70 percent of the total budget, the incremental benefits of selecting the best solution for your operation and implementing it successfully are significant. Companies in the market for a workforce management tool today face a mind-boggling array of choices. Automated workforce management systems range from quite simplistic to highly complex, with a wide range of price tags to match. This paper will help contact center managers navigate the choices.
Americas EMEA APAC 2425 North Central Expressway Kaap Hoorndreef 30 16/F Allied Kajima Building IEX Corporation Richardson, Texas 75080 3563 AT Utrecht 138 Gloucester RoadPhone +1 972 301 1300 The Netherlands Wanchai, Hong Kong w ww.iex.com Toll Free 1 800 433 7692 Phone +31 (0)30 265 2850 Phone +852 2598 3838Realizing the Full Promise of Workforce Management Technology
Introduction and use, these tools offer limited flexibility to accommodate highly complex situations. Some will Workforce management systems can make a substantial interface to other systems to import and export data; impact on operating costs and service delivery in others do not. contact centers. Companies in the market for a workforce management tool today face a mind-boggling . High-end workforce management tools have many array of choices. options and capabilities to adjust to nearly any kind of contact center environment. These tools may sacrifice Automated workforce management systems range ease-of-use in order to provide the sophistication from quite simplistic to highly complex, with a wide and flexibility needed to match the unique needs of range of price tags to match. The decision on which complex staffing situations. system to invest in should be driven by the overall potential for return to an operation rather than simply the cost and ease-of-use of the solution. Deciding Which Tool is Best
Experience has shown that gaining the maximum Almost all contact centers can benefit from a return on investment requires a commitment to a workforce management tool. The question is which sophisticated tool and a workforce management team tool, the high-end tool versus the less expensive with the expertise to make the most of it. Since the simpler models, offers the highest potential for return? cost of staffing in most call centers is between 60 and First, it's probably safe to say that if a contact center 70 percent of the total budget, the incremental benefits has 35 people who all handle incoming calls from 8 a.m. of selecting the best solution for your operation and to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, they probably do not implementing it successfully are significant. need a highly sophisticated tool to tell people when to come to work and go home.
Workforce Management Marketplace Even a simple workforce management tool offers the ability to help this type of operation develop a more Since workforce management software tools arrived accurate forecast of when the workload will arrive, on the market in the 1980s, the capabilities and options when breaks, lunches, and training should be scheduled, have grown rapidly. Today the marketplace is essentially and adjust to the daily variations that are the standard divided into three distinct categories: fare of contact centers.
. Low-end tools assist in one facet of workforce management, usually calculating the staff needed in The Impact of Operational a half-hour period to handle a defined workload Complexityto meet a specific service goal. Being somewhat single-purposed, tools in this category provide Even if small and simple now, most contact centers few configuration options to adapt to operational expand, consolidate, and/or add more requirements differences and rarely provide for automatic over time. Add just a little operational complexity and collection of data from other systems. the operational challenges grow exponentially. What if the center in the previous example expands their . Mid-range workforce management tools perform hours of operation just slightly, possibly 7 a.m. to 9 the functions of forecasting, scheduling, and daily p.m. Monday through Friday and ... [download for more]
