Contact centers have been using workforce optimization (WFO) technology for as long as disco, Microsoft, and SNL have been around to make sure that the right agents are in the right places at the right time. While WFO technology has become more sophisticated and accurate, …
Coaching and Training
Why You Need A Workforce Department, The Sequel: Defining Roles
In my last blog, I talked about the need for contact centers to create an official Workforce team. (Remember? With great software (should!) come great processes.) This time, let’s talk about the individuals that should make up this team and their roles and functions.
Forecaster
The Forecaster …
All Contact Center Reports Were Not Created Equal
I’ve recently been dieting, and though it’s been slow, I’ve managed to trim a few pounds. How did I celebrate? By shopping of course!
With a newer, trimmer outlook on clothing, I was ready to dive in. What I learned very quickly in entering …
Changing the Face of Workforce Optimization
Einstein said it best, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” There is an art to simplifying the unnecessary complexity out of our lives, and it usually involves lots of break-rock work to get there. It’s true for astrophysics and it’s …
With Great Software (Should) Come Great Processes: Why You Need a Workforce Department
You may have gotten the reference in title of this blog to the Spiderman theme, “with great power comes great responsibility.” What I mean by this that if your company just adopted Aspect’s Workforce suite of applications, software alone won’t solve all of your problems. …
Before you Leap into Multi Skill, Look at your Center
Multi skill is an Aspect Workforce Management configuration option that lets you model skill based contact routing in forecasting staffing requirements, scheduling, and tracking intra-day performance. The purpose of a multi skill configuration is to allow contact centers to strategically manage a cross trained workforce …
The Dog Owner’s Guide to Contact Center Management
A year into my first job at a contact center I got two surprises in the same week. I was offered a front line management role and a rescued husky puppy named Sierra. Accepting the management position was a no-brainer and Sierra eventually won me …
Using Workforce Optimization Best Practices in Your Contact Center
At the last roundtable hosted by CRMXchange, I had the pleasure of participating alongside several of my peers from Enkata, Intradiem and NICE to explore topics related to workforce optimization, focusing specifically on the issues facing front and back office managers such as agent performance, …
A Risky Game: Gamification in the Contact Center
In the past few years, there has been significant discussion about gamification as a potential tool for enhancing workforce productivity. Most people have an initially positive visceral reaction to the idea, because we have all experienced the thrill of winning at a challenging game and …
Beyond Onboarding: The Need for Systemized Training
What’s more expensive for your company? Training or hiring?
Especially in skill-hungry fields, like IT, companies are beginning to find that training employees in new skills may actually be more cost-effective than hiring. Consider that when hiring an employee, the company is not only paying for …