The Case for Workforce Management Software

41% of contact centers use spreadsheets for workforce management (WFM). WFM software, though, makes optimizing operations easier and faster.

Forecasting and Scheduling - finding the optimal balance of resources to deliver the best customer experience possible. It keeps contact center managers up at night.

Why? The high cost of customer churn, for one, along with the fact that agent labor costs account for 60% - 70% of a contact center’s total operating expenses. Interestingly, even with stakes that high, 41% of contact centers still rely on spreadsheets for manual forecasting and scheduling.

4 Keys to Forecasting and Scheduling

Creating optimal schedules is as complex as it is essential. Too complex and too essential to rely on spreadsheets.

Optimizing schedules requires:

• A Baseline: The starting point for an optimized schedule is historical data.
  • If you’re using spreadsheets for forecasting, do you have enough time in your day to manually analyze demand across channels? If not, you probably don't have a solid fact-basis for predicting the number of agents needed for a given period.
  • Are you able to exploit historical data’s full value, or are your forecasts – and your schedules – based on assumptions?
    
    
• Speed: Ensuring the right agents are in the right seats at the right times is the essence of scheduling, and it requires precision and sometimes highly complex, time-consuming calculations.
  • How long does it take you to perform all the calculations and consider all the combinations necessary to account for all the constraints that impact schedules? Those constraints include agent break frequencies and durations, multi-channel assignments, multi-skill agents, shift balance, sick days.
  • What is the impact of almost inevitable human error while doing this manually?
    
    
• Agility: Schedules are fluid. A schedule will crumble if customer demand or agent availability doesn’t follow the script.
  • How long does it take to adapt your schedule to an unexpected spike in demand, an agent who’s calls in sick or two multi-skilled agents who want to swap shifts?
  • Are you able to adjust your schedule on the fly?

• Shareability: Schedules and schedule changes need to be timely and distributed quickly to agents.
  • Can you instantly push the most current schedule onto agent calendars?

The Limits of Spreadsheets

As proficient as you might be – and as powerful as a spreadsheet can be as a scheduling tool - a human being working from a spreadsheet simply can’t match technology’s ability to consume, analyze, process and utilize all the data needed to develop an optimized schedule. Nowadays, schedulers have so many variables to consider that spreadsheet-based forecasting and scheduling is impractical, or it can even be a liability.

Those variables include:

• Call volumes
• Multiple channels
• Multi-skilled agents
• Agent preferences
• Schedule Adherence
• Agent shift swapping
• Agent PTO, sick days
• Fluctuating demand - seasonally, event-driven or throughout the week or even a single day

Each variable adds complexity. Each makes creating a schedule on a spreadsheet more time-consuming and less accurate. And, unless you devote a considerable amount of additional time to constantly modifying it, that schedule is static – obsolete from the first unexpected deviation from plan.

Even then, nobody else can see your revisions until you manually distribute it.

How To Know If You’ve Outgrown Spreadsheets

If you’re grappling with just a few of the issues below, you might consider replacing your spreadsheets with WFM software for Forecasting and Scheduling.

• Forecast inaccuracies
• Too much time spent developing forecasts and schedules
• Inability to adapt quickly to unexpected changes in call volumes or agent availability
• Inability to communicate schedule changes to agents in a timely manner
• Chronically over- or under-staffed
• Consistently falling short of your SLA goals
• Poor visibility into agent adherence to the schedule
• Too much time spent managing shift swaps, time-off requests, and other agent self-service needs

The bottom line is, if you’re using spreadsheets, WFM software represents a significant step up in sophistication. The impact on key CX and agent experience is direct and significant. WFM forecasting and scheduling tools help you create optimized schedules that ensure the right agents with the right skills are interacting with your customers professionally, when they’re needed and across every channel.

Isn’t it time to take a closer look at what it can do for your contact center?