Why Workforce Management Is Strategic for Your Contact Center

What is your definition of workforce management (WFM)? It probably depends on the type of business you are in. A general description would be, in many markets and industries, WFM is all about assigning the right employees with the right skills to the right job at the right time. That certainly applies to contact centers. If a manager schedules the right agents with the appropriate call-handling skills on the shifts where those skills will be most needed, they are certainly on the best track to an efficient operation. Achieving this objective requires WFM software specifically designed for a contact center environment.

Here, WFM should collect historical call data so it can be analyzed to predict future workload. The best WFM solution will also include flexible schedule creation that incorporates foreseen and unforeseen variables, agent exceptions, intra-day changes to both forecasting and scheduling, and performance management reports.