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Is your contact center or back office operating as efficiently as it could? The right workforce optimization (WFO) tools can make all the difference in employee productivity and job satisfaction, not to mention customer satisfaction rates. But how do you know which areas might need to be fine-tuned, and where can your organization benefit most from improvements in WFO? Looking at a cross-section of the contact center community represented by centers of every size and from every industry, this visually informative breakout of survey results takes the pulse of contact centers regarding attitudes toward: • Cloud-based contact center infrastructure • Accuracy in predicting staffing levels using workforce management systems • Investment in agent training • Effectiveness in using workforce management tools to manage back office staff • Advantages of speech analysis vs. continuous speech recognition • Ease of use in workforce optimization software
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MARKET PULSE
Can Your Contact Center Benefit From Advanced Workforce Optimization?
WFO
MARKET PULSE
MARKET PULSE
Can Your Contact Center Benefit From Advanced Workforce Optimization?Many organizations are looking at upgrading or replacing their workforce optimization (WFO) systems in 2014.
But how do you know if your contact center or back office needs some fine-tuning? ICMI and Aspect tell you how
you can enhance your WFO system to ensure the best customer experience, a high productivity workforce and
better employee morale.
The Contact Center CommunityIn mid-2014, we asked 417 contact center leaders to give us their thoughts and experience around workforce optimization. This slice of the contact center accurately depicts the community as a whole, as we had every size of center, industry, and role type represented.
Job Title
How many agents work in your contact center(s)?
Help Desk12%
Customer Service
54%Telesales3%
Blended Service and Sales
26%What is your contact center’s primary function?
<10 10-49 50-99 100-249 250+16% 26% 15% 19% 21%
Call Center Customer Service IT Quality Assurance
Contact Center Director Analyst ManagerVice President
Workforce Training Operations
Healthcare
Financial Services
Financial Services – Insurance
Consulting
Telecom
Software
Education
Outsourced Services Provider
Retail
Computers – Hardware
Manufacturing (non-computer)
10%
9%
7%
6%
6%
5%
4%
4%
4%
3%
3%
What is your organization’s primary business activity/industry?
Manager
Director
Contact Center Analyst
Technology/IT Analyst
C-Level
EVP/VP/AVP
Supervisor
Consultant
President
Agent
32%
19%
9%
9%
8%
6%
6%
5%
3%
1%
Select the role that best describes your work function:
30%0%
10%0%
MARKET PULSE
It’s exciting to see the continued migration of contact center infrastructure over to the cloud. A cloud-based infrastructure is becoming a strategic imperative for most enterprises. The transition to the cloud gives contact centers lower TCO, location independence and ensures that they have the most current best-in-class technologies available.
Workforce Optimization FundamentalsSo how do you know whether a more advanced workforce optimization system can help your contact center run more efficiently, achieve higher customer satisfaction, increase agent engagement, and create an overall better experience? One way is to look at the current state of your workforce optimization fundamentals. If you are like many in the community, there is certainly room for improvements!
11%
28%
32%
We currently have all of our infrastructure running in the cloud
We currently have at least some of our infrastructure running in the cloud
We intend to move some of our infrastructure to the cloud in the next 2 years
We don’t intend to move any of our contact center infrastructure to the cloud
29%
Please describe your contact center infrastructure.
What are the primary advantages you see in cloud-based contact center infrastructure?
Keeps us current with new technologies
Enables agents to operate from any location
Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)
Permits easy scaling with volume fluctuations
Eliminates investment in disaster recovery and redundancy
Keeps us from investing in IT resources
Gives us access to best of breed technology
Enables access to a broader range of data sources
Lower Capex
53.33%
47.18%
39.74%
35.64%
32.05%
27.95%
26.67%
18.97%
14.87%
50%0%
Very accurate
We don’t have a WFM
system
Very inaccurate
InaccurateNeutral accuracy
Fairly accurate
Don’t Know
How accurate is your workforce management system in predicting staffing levels?
What % of the time are your agents idle?
<5 <10 <15 <20 >2014% 23% 20% 12% 9%
Don’t Know - we don’t track this
Don’t Know - this is not my area of expertise
12% 12%Would you invest in more agent training if there were minimal additional cost?
81%19%NO YES
Few contact centers have truly moved to the cloud, but the expectations for benefits from the cloud are high.
There’s definitely room for improvement in WFM accuracy.
Agents are idle quite a bit of the time, so traditional workforce management systems don’t seem to be doing the trick.
Better workforce optimization systems can turn idle time into training time.
MARKET PULSE
Do you know the advantages of phonetic based speech analytics vs. LVCSR (Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition)?
Back Office FunctionsIt is estimated that 60% of a customer’s satisfaction is a direct result of back office operations. Unfortunately, the investment in Back Office operations is oftern not high on the list of priorities. Workforce optimization tools applied in the Back Office can definitely help!
Beyond WFO FundamentalsIf your contact center already has the fundamentals right with good workforce management, quality management, performance management and training, you can go to the next level of sophistication with speech analytics.
Is your back office staff managed with WFO tools that are as effective as your contact center tools?
How much more productive do you think the back office staff would be if they used WFO tools tailored to the needs of the back office?
Up to 10% more
productive
Up to 20% more
productive
Up to 30% more
productive
Up to 40% more
productive
More than 40% more productive
11% 18% 9% 4% 5%We don’t
have a back-office team
24%
Yes No We don’t have back-office staff
Don’t Know
44% 27%17% 12%
61%39%
NOYES
We use it constantly
We don’t own speech or text
analytics software
We rarely use it
We use it several times
per week
We use it several times
per day
How frequently do you use speech or text analytics?
If you use a speech or text analytics solution, what sort of benefits do you think it is bringing you?
Significant benefits
10%Moderate benefits
18%Few
benefits
8%No
benefits
1%We don’t use
speech or text analytics
50%
There is a huge opportunity to improve both productivity and the customer experience with Back Office WFO tools.
Few contact center managers use or know about the primary features of speech analytics.
MARKET PULSE
WFO Ease of UseIn order for WFO systems to truly make a difference, they have to be easy to use and understand.
No matter what stage of workforce optimization you are in, managers and agents alike need to find value in the WFO applica-tions so that they readily adopt and use them properly. This is particularly true if contact centers want to achieve the desired agent productivity and customer experience gains.
Can your contact center benefit from advanced workforce optimization?
YES! To find out more about the Aspect workforce planning and back office optimization solutions, please visit: www.aspect.com
What % of your agent workforce believes that your workforce optimization system (workforce management, QA, performance management, coaching, analytics) is easy to understand and use?
All < 75% < 50% < 25%14% 17% 24% 11%
< 10%6%
What benefits do you think your contact center would achieve if the WFO system were VERY easy to understand and use?
Higher agent productivity
Better agent experience
Better customer experience
Reduced agent training time
More frequent use of complex WFO functions
Lower turnover
Better achievement
of KPIs
68% 58% 63% 33% 25% 13% 38%
WFO systems are generally not easy to use, but there are huge gains to be had by making them so.
About ICMIThe International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals - from frontline agents to executives - who wish to improve contact center operations, empower contact center employees and enhance customer loyalty. ICMI’s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, analysts and consultants are committed to providing uncompromised objectivity and results-oriented vision through the organization’s respected lineup of professional services including training and certification, consulting, events and informational resources. Founded in 1985, ICMI continues to serve as one of the most established and respected organizations in the call center industry.
