What is Call Center Workforce Optimization (WFO)?

Early in my career, I worked as a high-school coordinator. One of the responsibilities of my job included scheduling the classes for the entire year. 

The school provided all the inputs at the beginning of the year: 

• The courses and the number of hours every subject had to be taught in a week and the term 
• The availability of the teachers (many of them were part-time teachers) 
• The teachers cannot conduct the same subject continuously for more than an hour. 

The part-time teachers had specific preferences like the days and the times in which they would be available. Also, the school can function only for a specific number of hours every day. And the public holidays and school holidays were defined. 

I tried many possibilities manually, and I always hit the dead-end. So, I finally decided to write a program to do this scheduling. Once I went this route, within half an hour, I arrived at the schedule that ticked all the requirements specified when I began this exercise. 

This is precisely what Contact Center Workforce Optimization is all about, and it is no different in a call center. Only the constraints and requirements are different in a call center, and an integrated WFO will considerably ease the operations of a call center. 

Check our Blog on : Workforce Engagement Checklist for Contact Center

What Does WFO Call Center Mean?

Call center WFO is about making a call center’s team more efficient and effective. By improving technology, processes, and people-focused strategies, call centers can provide a better customer experience while reducing costs. The goal is to improve overall performance while providing a positive customer experience.

In order to achieve this, call centers need to focus on using the best technology available, streamlining processes, and developing strategies that empower their team members. With these improvements in place, call centers can provide a better customer experience while also lowering costs.

Features of Call Center WFO

WFO for call centers has several features, including Workforce Management (WFM), Quality Monitoring, and Performance Management. 

Let us look at them in detail in this blog. 

1. Call Center Workforce Management

It includes demand forecasting like the call volumes based on historical data, special events, and possibilities of infrastructure and equipment failures. Then, you can schedule the appropriate number of agents for a particular process, considering the agent’s availability, skills, average handling time (AHT),  and customer interaction patterns. 

Besides, it boosts the morale of the employees for nobody is overloaded at any point in time. They can also request time off, bid for a particular shift, or swap shifts using the Workforce Management tool. 

2. Quality Monitoring

Quality monitoring ensures that you provide your customers with the best possible interaction every time they call. 

How do you go about doing this? 

You do call recordings and screen recordings. With analytics, this would allow you to figure out how efficiently an agent has handled a customer interaction and how optimized the solution was. Do they match the expectations? Besides, it would allow you to identify the gaps and upskill the agents to improve the customer experience. 

You should send out a customizable review of the resolution offered to the customers as an automated voice message to rate their experience. 

3. Performance Management

Performance management dashboards give you an insight into how your customer service operations are impacting your revenue. You look at automated data collection, where you get to see all the latest information about a customer – their interactions across channels, and information from the CRM on the types of products and services they have available. This would allow you to understand how best you can interact with them in maximizing your revenues. 

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