By Kristyn Emenecker, Director, Solutions Marketing, Verint Witness Actionable Solutions
As the economic engine seems bound toward a recession, cost-conscious companies are faced with difficult choices when assessing their ongoing business IT needs. The general trend is to become conservative when times are tough, mitigate uncertainty, optimize business practices and seek quality. In today’s challenging market environment, business owners are increasingly seeking solutions that offer near-term return on investment (ROI), while striking a balance between managing operating costs and ensuring high-caliber customer experiences. This can be particularly true for mid-market contact center operations, where resources can run tight, but customer expectations remain high. Smaller companies in the healthcare, financial services, telecommunications and other key vertical industries with contact centers, increasingly face the same business requirements as their larger competitors – providing high levels of customer satisfaction with limited resources.
To achieve their goals of improved operational efficiency, agent effectiveness and overall cost-savings – while maintaining and even improving customer service levels – the management of today’s companies, including small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), are taking a renewed approach and strategy – one focused on workforce optimization (WFO).
WFO is comprised of complementary, unified technologies that work in tandem with one another, creating a closed-loop performance optimization solution – one that includes such capabilities as call recording, workforce management and training – developed specifically for center operations in the sub 200 agent range. To remain competitive and provide customer service that has real business impact, these SMB contact centers are deploying WFO solutions that feature monitoring, forecasting and scheduling, coaching, evaluation and development tools to help enhance agent performance, heighten customer satisfaction, align the right staff with the right skills at the right time, meet compliance and regulatory requirements, and coach and train employees.
A Recording Infrastructure That Fits SMB Contact Centers
Given the unique operating, regulatory and compliance challenges faced by many SMB contact centers, software vendors are now offering customized recording applications through innovative delivery models that address those specific demands without requiring significant investments in infrastructure found in larger organizations. In evaluating recording platforms, these center managers must seek out solutions that offer reliable and criteria-driven, on-demand recording, searchable archives and advanced discovery tools, remote live monitoring and playback, and flexible storage capabilities that are compatible with major third-party media. The net result of implementing such a solution is better adherence to compliance and regulatory requirements, the ability to better manage disputes and minimize losses, enhanced customer service, and in a challenging economy, streamlined business processes and operational cost-savings.
Reducing Cost and Optimizing Agent Performance
Because of limited supervisory resources at many SMB contact centers, efficiently managing staff schedules, quality, staff training and development in a cost-effective way can be a challenging undertaking. In an environment where every member of management typically has to pull their own weight and then some, supervisors often serve as coach, planner and sometimes even try to coordinate schedules in some elaborate excel spreadsheet. By equipping these key members with tools to intelligently automate scheduling and forecasting, make quality monitoring dramatically more efficient and provide the tools necessary to make training part of every day development, small contact centers are able to do more with less. Through the power of WFO, managers can optimize performance by aligning training and coaching programs in support of customer needs and business goals, and ultimately generate a faster, more impactful ROI.
For SMB contact centers seeking to “recession proof” their business, a best-in-class WFO solution from a single vendor can help them boost agent productivity, reduce attrition, enhance customer service and satisfy compliance and risk management requirements. With the improved workforce management and customer service efficiencies gained through WFO technology, SMB contact center managers have more time and resources available to address strategic and mission critical business goals. In a down economy, such flexibility can help reduce uncertainty throughout the business and drive down costs. In the end, a focused, highly efficient WFO strategy, including recording, quality monitoring, skills enhancement and workforce management enables SMB contact centers to achieve peak performance, deliver quality customer experiences and increase their organizations’ competitive edge.