Workforce Management for Small and Midsize Contact Centers

Author: ICMI Research

Publisher: ICMI

Number of Pages: 18

Sponsor:

Responding to real-time changes in workload/staff is the top scheduling challenge.

No matter your contact center’s size, the fundamentals of effective management remain the same: having the right number of properly skilled people and supporting resources in the right place, at the right time, to handle an accurately forecasted workload at service level and with quality. Fundamental to this is workforce management: the data collection and analysis, the blending of hard facts and intuition, the real-time management, and the backend evaluation. There are many moving parts to get right, and there is no disputing that WFM is absolutely critical to an organization’s success.

In the SMB contact center, however, WFM practices and technologies are all too frequently limited in comparison with their larger counterparts. The frightening reality of this situation is that smaller contact centers are much more volatile and in need of sound WFM practices to ensure that they maximize their resources. “Not forecasting” is simply not a sustainable or advisable solution, yet it is the alarmingly frequent state in which SMB contact centers find themselves.

This report reveals the true story of WFM in today’s SMB contact centers. It is intended to equip contact center leaders with business intelligence and market data to consider when evaluating or evolving their own WFM practices.

Here are some key findings:

• Only 4% of contact center leaders are “extremely satisfied” with their agent scheduling process
• 28% of contact centers do not measure forecast accuracy
• 79% of contact centers do not use WFM solution(s) for scheduling back-office activities

Download your copy today!